Savage Awakening 336. Fifth Tier Breakthrough (IX) (Patreon)

It wasn't long before their surprise guests were at the door. Burnwater was still busily rearranging the seating mats, pouring out fresh cups, when it slammed open—no knock.

He jumped.

The Patriarch swept into the cabin as though he owned the place. An imposing man, thickly built—he barely cleared the ceiling. He had proud features and a mane of golden hair, and there wasn’t much joy in his smile. Just lots of teeth.

“Noughtfire!” he boomed. “How the hell are you?”

Before Noughtfire could respond—“And Butcher! What a surprise.”

Burnwater winced. “Honored Patriarch—what a surprise! But I, ah, don’t go by that anymore—”

“Nonsense! Still playing at retirement, are you? We all know what's hiding beneath your little lamb act.” His grin widened. “Once the war comes, once you get a whiff of blood—we’ll see how long that lasts.”

Burnwater squirmed, eyes on the floorboards. “As you say, Patriarch—”

“And this is my son, Haxorax.”

Behind him, the Prince of True Dragons gave a stiff bow.

Haxorax was what most of the billions of folk in the Azure Flame Faction imagined when they imagined a Prince—a picture-perfect heir. Extremely handsome, with jet-black hair and striking golden eyes. He looked like a sculpture; a perfected version of his cousin Kakorax, with all the rough edges sanded off. And though he wielded the fiercest heat ever achieved by a True God, his eyes were ice-cold.

“It’s a pleasure,” said Haxorax with exactly as much warmth as was polite, and not a little more.

The Patriarch turned on Noughtfire again.

“Hax’s the one you put on your precious disciple’s hit-list. Zane Walker—you think he’ll whip my son. Is that right?”

“Indeed,” said Noughtfire, meeting his gaze levelly.

Haxorax stayed silent, though his jaw tightened.

There was a silence. Noughtfire didn’t look away.

Burnwater gulped. The tension in the air all of a sudden was getting a little too much for him—he was just about to speak up, try to calm things down, when the Patriarch barked a laugh. “Good. Very good! Iron only sharpens iron… and as it happens, I, too, am of the opinion that Zane will prevail in the end.”

Haxorax stiffened at that. Stared at his father, eyes widening in surprise—a bit of betrayal.

Heedless, the Patriarch plowed on.

“Perhaps not this decade,” he mused, stroking his beard. “Perhaps not even this century! But in a thousand years? Two? With that boy’s talent, it’s an inevitability. Grasping a hint of Destruction, this early… why—you’ve got yourself a once-in-a-Chaos-Cycle talent, I daresay.”

There was that bared-teeth grin again.

“The Faction has itself a great talent,” Noughtfire corrected. “It is a boon for all of us.”

“Yes, yes,” said the Patriarch, waving an absent hand.

Then he looked over at his son, who’d gone quite stiff. The Patriarch cocked a brow. “What? Have you got something to say?”

“That man,” said Haxorax icily. “Is not my match.”

“Of course you’d wreck Zane now,” snorted the Patriarch. “But that’s hardly impressive. In the future—who can say?”

“I’ve seen the recordings. I do not find this ‘Zane Walker’”—Haxorax spat the name—“any more impressive than any other so-called genius who believed they could challenge me.”

The Patriarch snorted. “Is that so? Or is your pride running your tongue, boy? That is no normal genius. When he grows—”

He jabbed a finger at the scrying glass, which was resolving to show Zane standing before the gates of Ragnos. “He’ll come for you, no doubt. Then we’ll see, won’t we?”

The thought seemed to amuse the Patriarch. “He’s well on his way to taking your spot as the #1 Core Disciple. He’s already taken #1 on the Rising Dragon Ranking from you. What else will he take?”

The tightness in Haxorax’s jaw grew with each word. But the Patriarch kept going on merrily, as though oblivious.

“And to think—the kid comes from a backwater planet. He’s got hardly a thousandth of the treasures you had!”

Burnwater was starting to sweat a little.

By the way the Patriarch was speaking, you’d think his son was some second-rate mediocrity, rather than one of the most talented geniuses this galaxy had ever seen. He’d carved a bloody warpath up to the rankings when he first rose centuries ago—wrecking so many geniuses on the Rising Dragon ranking on his way up, they’d called him ‘Dragonslayer.’ The True Dragon Dragonslayer.

Haxorax was already a legend of the age, in truth. He’d slain the True God Monster Prince, the Frost Giant Helenius, as a Minor God. He’d beaten down every other top Core Disciple in the Faction in dominant fashion to claim the #1 ranking. He had the purest True Dragon Blood since the Dragon Ancestor himself—so much so he imbibed two Sacred bones at Minor God—one of them a legendary hundred-thousand-year-old Bone. He’d only built on that legend in True God…

He and the Moon Reaper Lain—son of the Nameless King, heir of the Guild of Endless Shadow—were the two acknowledged great True God talents of the era. A clear notch above the rest.

Even Burnwater would have to take Haxorax seriously in a fight.

Still, there was only scorn in the Patriarch’s voice.

Burnwater got the sinking feeling the Patriarch knew exactly what he was doing.

“I remain the strongest disciple in the Faction,” said Haxorax tightly. “Every challenge you’ve set before me, I’ve crushed—”

“You say that as though it isn’t expected. Every challenge I’ve set before you, you ought to crush, with all the resources I’ve wasted on you!” said the Patriarch. “Enough elixirs to stock a floor of the Deep Superdungeon, and you’re not even the best in your own Faction—”

“Enough!” snarled Haxorax.

The Patriarch looked pleased.

“If he dares challenge me,” breathed Haxorax. “I’ll give the Scrying Guild—and the clan—a sight to remember.”

“Those are fighting words,” said the Patriarch. “But something tells me he won’t beg like the other Chosen do when you broke them. This Zane’s got spine.”

The fury was rising to the surface—Haxorax’s cheek twitched, like there was a break in his cold mask. And suddenly an unseen pressure leaked into the room, shivering the air.

Burnwater was quite worried father and son might truly come to blows.

“We’ll see how much spine Zane’s got left,” snarled Haxorax. “When I’m through with him—”

“Pardon—but it’s starting!” yelped Burnwater. “How exciting!”

***

Challenging Ragnos meant Zane had to go through each of its planets, one by one—without rest. A test of endurance, as much as it was of battle prowess.

He was quite looking forward to it.

He’d seen what his Solar Flare could do, as one shapeless mass. But he hadn’t wielded it in his domain, his Skills yet….

He hadn’t come close to his offensive potential. It was time to see just what he could do.

The teleporter dropped him off at the main hub of Ragnos. A craggy asteroid bathed in bloody light, light coming from that distant blood-red star. Ragnos itself. Six teleportation stations ringed the asteroid.

Ragnos’s planets were arrayed above him, one by one—six in all, arching closer and closer to Ragnos itself. Some icy, some fiery, others wreathed in shadow…

Zane headed for the first teleporter.

It would lead to the first planet. The one that looked like a stone sphere that’d been shattered in a thousand pieces—a sea of broken stone held together only by gravity. Stormclouds crackled across its surface.

He stepped on through. And moments later, touched down on that shattered surface.

He surveyed the skies—the sagging grayness spanning the horizon, on the verge of thundering…

Planet 1

Begin

The ground began to tremble. The surface heaving and falling, like waves on a choppy sea.

And the Monsters spewed forth.

Serpents descended from the sky, their bodies like thick cables, finished in metallic sheen, wreathed in purple lightning.

And rolling up from the depths came twenty-foot-tall golems with bodies like wrecking balls, clawing their way up on cable limbs.

Storm Serpent (Simulated Monster)

Essence Level 399

Hypergolem (Simulated Monster)

Essence Level 399

That Level…

Zane couldn’t find it in his heart to be excited.

These things were no challenge anymore.

He took out his Chains, and resolved to make things quick.

His new Domain blew out of him for the first time. And the attack began.

The Domain of Tier 5—Heavenly Solar Flare; and instantly the world was flush with light, horizon to horizon. It was as though Zane had brought the surface of the sun down to ground level.

A sunrise brighter than any in recorded history. So fierce it seemed to destabilize the state of matter of whatever it touched—the ground softened under its glare; the steels of those Monsters warbled, as though about to melt.

And Zane’s new powers roared down his Chains.

A triumph of searing heat and brilliant gold, coursing rivers of Flare blanketing the steel, streaming down the lengths of the Chains—and already the realm began to warble. Like the world itself might melt.

Zane struck.

Skill evolved!

Heavenly Stormfire Slash [Rare (H)] -> Heavenly Solar Flare Slash [Mythic+ (H)]

One chain split the skies in two.

The other swept the lands—and everything it touched perished on the spot.

Those Monsters hardly even had time to shriek—Zane saw the colors of his powers reflected in their wide eyes—then they were struck by an obscene force.

It could not be compared to the explosions of his Stormfire. It was like a nuclear blast to a common bomb.

In the skies, the Storm Serpents were unmade, melted, vaporized on the spot—there wasn’t even smoke to mark their remains.

The clouds were simply wiped from existence in a flare of gold, revealing blue sky.

And still that slash raged on—that beast was not sated. Striking deep into the sky itself, burning a gaping void into the blue. A river of black slashing through this realm, steeped in Solar Flare Law, so that even as new Serpents tried to spawn they melted—wrecked before they even had a chance to fight.

Zane’s second Slash swept over the ground. Blasting those hyper-golems skyward, and Destruction did its nasty work, melting through, eating through that steel with ease.

Zane shook his head.

Too weak.

That was only the first wave.

The second followed fast. There were a few Ascendants this time—but still, they did not interest Zane.

He showed them a mere glimpse of his power… and just like before, it wiped them from existence.

Another wave was coming, it seemed.

The only creature here that interested him even a little was that God Golem, hidden in the bowels of the planet. The one that had crushed him once. It felt like a lifetime ago.

He’d beaten it once. But it would still give him some satisfaction to destroy it again. They had history.

Zane waited. Wiped out another wave, and by then the sky was criss-crossed with voids, split open. The Monsters weren’t spawning anymore. Rather—they were seared alive in a sea of Solar Flare Law the moment they came into being, and fell in a molten steel-rain…

He frowned. Waited some more.

What was going on?

The Final Boss should’ve come for him by now.

He sent his soul seeking deep into the depths of the planet, turned up his senses with Great Sage Mind—and found it. The Monster Lord had come halfway up to the surface, and stopped.

He felt it had sensed the kinds of power waiting for him. Felt the way it had annihilated its minions. Felt the light of Destruction… 

To his surprise, Zane sensed a glut of fear down there. 

Then he snorted. And set his Chains ablaze once more.

If it didn’t want to come to him, that was fine.

He would just have to go to it.

He raised his Chains—gave a bellow—marshalling physical strength and Law in one big strike…

And slashed right into the ground.