Savage Awakening 253. Third Floor's End (I) (Patreon)

Hours later…  

It turned out Evan managed his Nascent Soul evolution. 

“I did it!” he beamed.  

He did a little show and tell. He sped around everywhere, a little ray of sunshine bouncing off the walls. His aura spilled over with warm happy feelings. He crashed into Zane a few times but that was okay. When Zane’s body was relaxed, not in full fight-mode, he was more of a firm pad than a hard wall. 

Evan had been a little mopey these past few days after he had been whacked by that Storm Titan. Zane had been getting a little concerned, actually. But it seemed Evan had bounced all the way back, and then some. Zane gave him a pat on the head. 

Apparently Evan had been through quite a journey. It was nothing like Zane’s own breakthrough. Midway through Evan’s breakthrough, he had gotten quite scared. He kept remembering getting whacked. Then he had some kind of vision where he had to fight his evil doppelganger. At first it was very scary. He had to remember what he was fighting for—to help those in need. That got him all determined again, and he won. In the end, he’d learned an important life lesson. 

Zane wasn’t really sure what that was all about. But the gist of it was Evan seemed okay now. 

Evan’s Nascent Soul grade was up there—peak Profound, just shy of Heaven-Grade.  

By the end of their little training session, Avery ended up pretty close to her Concept too—something to do with mirroring bouncing back attacks. Just a little more and she would make it. She was a little miffed she didn’t get it this time. She was bumbling around with her hoodie strings all drawn up, making sad noises. This also meant she ran into Zane a few times. She was soon okay too though. 

Zane figured once they got to the end of this floor and collected what Levels were left, they would all be pretty close to Nascent.  

By the time they made their way onward, they were all in good spirits. Out of the temple, toward the last staircase.  

*** 

They weren’t met with much trouble on the way. 

A few living-stone statues Zane quickly smashed. But that was pretty much it—they found surprisingly few red dots on the mini-map. They all kept their eyes peeled. 

But it was as though the Monsters had just vanished.  

Reina’s brow furrowed. “Strange,” she muttered. 

Things only got stranger from there.  

It had gotten dark out in the time they’d been inside. A host of black clouds was brewing overhead… It was getting cold. Fast. Every hundred feet they went, it seemed to drop another dozen or two degrees. 

As they went along, the trees started to wilt all around them. Shriveling, hunching over, darkening, like very old decrepit creatures—the farther along they went, the more shriveled the forest got. The colder things got. 

The dark clouds thickened overhead. 

“Look!” said Evan, pointing.  

Black snowflakes, falling from the sky. 

Stranger and stranger… 

The grounds were frosting over all around them. Frosted over with black crystals, as though caked in frozen soot. The trees fading away, the land flattening out…  

You didn’t need Reina to know something wasn’t right here. 

They went ahead cautiously.  

There were no auras that Zane could detect anywhere. Not even from the fallen trees or the shriveled grasses. Nothing lived. It was like an awful blizzard had passed through here and left nothing but wasteland behind.

It was so cold now their bodies had to work, burning essence to fight off the chill. 

The land was flattening out. The biome, changing decisively. Up ahead there was just a frozen tundra. All frost creeping over black ice, ice that crept up your feet if you stood still on it for just a moment—a cold they could feel even through their boots. Going on and on, melting into a deep gray horizon.

Lightning forked across the distant sky, fading fast. No thunder. No sound at all. A deathly silence. 

Then at last—in the far distance—they saw just one figure. Hunched over, it looked like. A dot, miles away.

And red translucent walls flared up behind them.

Lair Lock!

Clearance condition:

Slay ???

(0/1)

His friends stiffened at once. 

Then—“Oh, come on!” cried Avery, throwing up her hands.

“…I was worried this might happen,” said Reina darkly. 

It had happened to them before. Up until then, they’d all been kind of waiting for the hammer to drop. 

But they weren’t as nervous as before. They’d settled down now. They’d all Leveled up. They all knew they could handle whatever this dungeon threw at them. 

And after Zane’s last power-up, after he showed his strength here, Reina and Evan and Avery felt more secure and safe with him there than ever before—Reina met his eyes, nodded to him, encouraging. Even without Sage Mind he could see how much she trusted him—it was plain in the way she looked at him. She had always had a deeply-held kind of faith in him. It warmed him. 

That was his promise to his friends, he felt. An unsaid promise, but he held himself fiercely to it. Whatever happened—whatever they came across—he would always rise to meet it. He would carry the world for them if he had to. 

Zane set his jaw. 

They began to march across the plateau. For what they all knew would be the final battle.

The icy ground started flaking away all around them. Huge chunks peeling off, like dead skin shedding. Strange trails meandered through the air. When the black snow passed through, it stilled. Slowed to a halt, suspended in air. Chunks of ice, soft gusts of wind—held there by some unseen force, peppering the world around them. Like even gravity was frozen at certain points.

It had gotten so cold now his friends were all shivering a little. They could handle it—their Bloodlines were quite strong. They had to burn some to resist it. Even Zane. This was a biting cold, a cold that gnawed at you from all sides…

He frowned.

The deeper in they got, the more he felt the presence of a Law.

A Law that didn’t feel on a level with any they had fought so far. Something that felt like it did not belong in this world. Zane remembered when he had just seen the complete Stormfire—the kind that incinerated body and soul, that lived in the heart of stars… this felt sort of like that. 

And that did give him some pause. 

Zane stepped out in front. “Stay behind me,” he said firmly. 

Watching the huddled figure as they came closer and closer... Reina nodded, biting her lip, started powering up, getting ready to heal him. Evan and Avery both got their weapons out, shivering a little. But ready. 

Just a hundred-odd paces out now. And the Boss was coming into view.

??? (Monster Grand Knight)  

Essence Level 499

They all stiffened at that.

It looked like a man. Tall and sinewy, with cat-ears and a long spiked tail. Crouched over.

Something about that aura, though, was unlike anything Zane had ever felt. It did not merely give off a pressure. 

That aura was so tangible it could not be called an aura. He did not know what it was—it was more like a field. A field that carried its powers far and wide, blanketing everything unfortunate enough to stand in its presence—everything within, the grounds, the skies, the very air—frosted over. Even the wind passing through it slowed down. As though it was imposing its own little world on this realm. Its own reality. 

Essence and Law saturated that space so thickly they nearly felt physical. Wiping out all other kinds of essence, other Laws, that dared enter its territory. Making a dead zone… that was what had changed this world. 

It seemed to be eating as they arrived. Its back was still turned, bleak juices dribbling off of it.

Before it lay an Elephant Monster.

Elder Mammoth (Monster Grand Knight)

Essence Level 463

Thick runes ran down its trunk, mapping patterns onto its back—patterns glowing weakly. The beast was shrunken. Withered. Mouth gaping, rheumy eyes unseeing. Nearly reduced to a corpse, torn completely open. Its organs, its blood, were missing. Its insides were a frozen wasteland.

The Elephant-Monster looked like it belonged to this world—it looked like it was supposed to be a final Boss. 

The thing that was eating it did not look like it belonged to this world.

But it was feasting noisily, slurping in the entrails. It only grew stronger.

Evan let out a little squeak. Reina’s breath caught.  

The sense of wrongness just kept growing—an instinctual feeling, deep in the bones. Everything was wrong. The sky, the earth, this creature... 

Zane just frowned.

It turned. Its black teeth were all stained red. Its smile seemed too wide to fit in its mouth. Its eyes were looking two separate ways.

Reina paled.

I have been waiting… Zane Walker… it croaked. It moved haltingly, like it was not used to its body. Its head listed heavy to one side. 

Its claws spread out. And the ends of them, those wickedly sharp points, were so dense with Law and Essence they made little stars of frostbite. The air cracked around them as they moved, leaving frozen, shattered trails….

The Monster shrieked. Its aura exploded.

And it felt like they'd all been plunged into the bottom of a freezing lake. 

Zane felt his friends all lock up behind him, spike up in fear—a feeling that crashed over them with the cold, that went after their very souls, made them feel like they were suffocating and drowning and freezing, all at once—

Even for Zane just moving, thinking, was suddenly immensely hard, slowing more every fraction of a second—

Zane narrowed his eyes. 

And a red glow burst over him. The image of a moon, bright and strong, stretching to cover as much of his friends as he could. Flaring against that deathly cold. Giving them some relief.

For the first time, he felt his Red Moon Pagoda flickering. Like it had to work to take all that brutal Law-weight. But it held.

Zane bellowed. 

And came right back.

His Bloodline ignited. 

In that moment, Zane let loose everything. Burned with all he had. 

His heart gave a heavy thump. Like an engine jump-starting. 

His own Asura aura roared out of him. Skyrocketing in an instant. A searing heat flared up inside him, surged out into the world, lighting up every inch of him—his blood began coursing white-hot, a vital heat rolling off him in fierce waves, smashing against those bitter gales, driving back the blanketing cold—wrestling them to a flickering halt… 

It was not what this Monster had. Zane had to ignite everything just to match it. But he did. He looked to his friends, saw his heat washing over them; protecting them; color came back to their faces. They could breathe again. 

He stood there. Bearing the weight of it, feeling it gnawing away at his Health, bit by bit—a lone pyre holding back the terrible darkness. He had made a promise. 

“Zane!” cried Reina—she was on him in an instant, pouring on healing, buffing—Avery and Evan snapped back too, hefting their weapons at the Monster. Flushed, shaken, but letting out their own little battle-cries. 

Zane clenched his fists. And his Chains dropped through. Lit up with Stormfire.

The creature blinked at him, head cocked. Like Zane was an amusing curiosity. 

Such vitality… such life… 

It whispered. 

My Master says…left alive… you would become… a Champion of the Age… I see it… 

It let out a shrill laugh. 

Zane Walker… must die.

Its claws unsheathed. Its jaw unhinged. 

And it lunged.