Chapter 500 - Crossroads (Patreon)

Zeke punched the rocky surface, creating a handhold upon impact that he used to drag himself up the cliff.  As he did, wind whipped against him, threatening to dislodge him from his perch.  He had no context, but he expected that the wind gusts far exceeded that of the most powerful hurricane in Earth’s history, and it had scoured the cliff face into a smooth plane.  The worst part of it was that the wind carried with it plenty of debris, and it felt like his body was being sandblasted. 

Still, the path had ended at the cliff, making it clear that if he wanted to continue, he needed to reach the top.  The problem was that he most assuredly did not want to keep going.  After his past few days, which had been filled with one possible version of his future after another, he wanted nothing more than to just sit down, zone out, and try to forget the horrible things he’d seen.

But he couldn’t.  What he wanted had very little to do with what he needed.  To survive, he had to keep going.  His feelings were irrelevant.  The trauma he’d been forced to do endure couldn’t be allowed to matter.  He could only continue forward, lest he break down and let the dungeon win.

That was not going to happen.

So, he pulled himself higher, unheeding how far he had yet to go.  When he’d stood at the bottom, the top of the cliff had been so far above him that he couldn’t see it.  And given his enhanced senses, that meant that to reach it, he’d need to climb tens of thousands of feet. 

Perhaps he’d already reached that distance.  Zeke had no way to know for sure, and he didn’t dare look down.  He only knew that he’d been at it for hours.  Perhaps days.  And when he looked up, he still had yet to see the top. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Eveline asked for what felt like the thousandth time.  For the first few glimpses into alternate futures, she’d been quick to comment.  However, as the days had gone on, she’d fallen silent more often than not.  And it wasn’t difficult to understand why, either.  In three-quarters of those futures, she’d attempted to enslave him in some way.  The dungeon seemed to consider that eventuality a nearly unavoidable result of her basic nature. 

She was a succubus who, in her physical life, had specialized in manipulation and control.  So, it didn’t take a leap of logic to understand the danger of letting her live inside his mind.  If Zeke hadn’t already been aware of the risks, he certainly would have been after seeing it all so thoroughly spelled out for him. 

Yet, for some reason, he still trusted her.  None of it was real.  And even with the cynical viewpoint of the dungeon – it obviously focused on the worst possible futures – even it had recognized that betrayal wasn’t entirely inevitable.  There were a few futures where Eveline had worked with Zeke.

Those were the most difficult to overcome, too.

It had told Zeke that, while there was a risk in working with Eveline, the rewards of success were obvious.  They were strongest when they worked together. 

“That is an optimistic way of looking at it,” Eveline remarked, responding to his thoughts.  “Most people wouldn’t focus on the one-in-ten chance that we’d figure it all out.”

“Most people are pessimists by nature,” Zeke responded.  “When it comes to other people, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.  Even if I’m not always successful, I can at least say I’m trying not to see the worst in people.”

“But you’re not worried that some of these might come true?”

“Of course I am.  You’re a powerful mind spirit who lives in my head.  I’d be stupid not to worry about it,” he stated.  Zeke knew she could read his mind – she always claimed that that was a bad characterization of what she did, but it amounted to the same thing – so Eveline was more than aware of how he felt about her.  “But I choose to trust you.”

“Many people would call you stupid for that decision.”

He pulled himself further up the cliff.  “Wouldn’t be the first time I was called stupid,” he acknowledged.  “It’s kind of my thing these days.”

Indeed, when most people saw him, they couldn’t get past the caveman aesthetic.  And Zeke couldn’t really blame them, either.  With his often-long hair, usually unkempt beard, and general demeanor, it was very easy to see him as a brute who solved every problem by hitting it really hard with a club.  Which was often true to his personality.  But that didn’t mean he was incapable of anything else.  He was more than that, though.  He just found that direct confrontation was usually the best way forward. 

 Those thoughts danced in Zeke’s mind as he continuously climbed.  Because of the cutting wind, he was forced to increase his weight, lest he be carried away.  So, the climb was much more taxing than it should have been.  Even with his incredible strength, climbing a miles-high sheer cliff was tiring, and while it didn’t push him to his limits, the ceaseless repetition was mentally fatiguing. 

But if nothing else, Zeke was enduring.  So, he pushed his exhaustion to the back of his mind and focused on the task at hand.  With every hundred yards, the wind grew even more brutal to the point where it was blowing at a velocity of hundreds of miles an hour.  In addition, the cliff face started to slope backwards.  At first, Zeke didn’t even notice the increased strain, but when the angle reached an acute forty-five degrees, he was forced to acknowledge the mounting difficulty.

Yet, he couldn’t just turn around.  He needed to keep moving upward.  So, that was what he did.  The hours stretched on, becoming more than a day as he continued his climb.  And eventually, the angle leveled out until the cliff was entirely horizontal. 

Which didn’t make a bit of sense.

Though sense or not, Zeke could only continue on, hanging from the horizontal cliff like an insect.  It probably wouldn’t have been so difficult if he didn’t have to deal with the ever-increasing wind.  As it was, though, it was all Zeke could handle to maintain his grip. 

Perhaps he could survive if he fell.  But he expected that the plummet wouldn’t follow normal rules, and it was entirely possible that it would be never-ending.  So, failure was not an option. 

On and on Zeke went.  Without rest, the physical strain continued to mount right alongside the psychological burden. 

Finally, though, and after countless hours spent hanging from that horizontal cliff, the slope started to revert back to the original angle.  It still took most of a day before it was once again vertical, but when it did, Zeke felt more relieved than he’d felt in some time.  When he finally looked down, he saw only open air.  There was no green expanse of the forest canopy.  Just nothingness.

A shudder went up his spine as he resolved not to look down again.  Instead, he turned his attention back to the cliff face and continued his climb.  The strength of the wind continued to increase until it threatened to throw even his heavy, titanic body from the cliff.  Yet, Zeke held on, inching forward with all the resolve he could muster.

It still wasn’t easy, especially because of the wind that felt like it was shaving pieces of his body away with each gust.  But comparatively, climbing a vertical cliff was much less difficult than hanging onto a horizontal one. 

As he went, Zeke lost context for how much time had passed.  There was only him, the cliff, and the wind.  In a lot of ways, it was almost meditative.  While it was anything but peaceful, and he was forced to fight for every inch, there was something to be said for losing himself in the task itself.  There was little room for stray thoughts.  No space for questions of morality or the future.  Just the wall of rock and the wind that wanted to rip him free.  It was cathartic, after a fashion.  Almost cleansing, akin to washing his mouth out after tasting something terrible. 

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Zeke reached up and found nothing.  He glanced upward, and he saw the lip of the cliff.  He’d been so entranced by the task that he’d not even noticed that he had, at last, reached the top.  With stiff muscles, he heaved himself over the lip and rolled away.  Then, lying on his back, he let out a deep breath. 

The wind still howled all around him, but it felt less dangerous than when he was hanging from the face of the cliff.  For a long while, he just lay there, his arms and legs numb from the exertion.  How long had he been on that cliff?  Days, at least.  Maybe weeks.  There was no context for the passage of time.  No day and night cycle.  His entire world had been the cliff, the wind, and the indeterminate drop into nothingness that awaited if he somehow lost his grip.

For almost an hour, Zeke rested, all the while flaring [Hand of Divinity].  It was superior to [Cambion’s Awakening] in every way, but for his current situation, the most useful way was that it wasn’t entirely dependent on one source of mana.  Instead, it used all three – corruption, earth, and unattuned – and as a result, he was never without the ability to self-heal.  Without that, he never would have managed the climb.  Not only would he have grown far too tired to maintain his grip, but the cutting winds would have eroded his body down to nothing.  However, with [Hand of Divinity], he was capable of counteracting the damage and keeping himself functional.

Finally, once he felt up to it, Zeke pushed himself to his feet and looked around.  Before him was a huge expanse of flat and featureless rock.  Because of the wind, the surface had taken on a smooth, glassy texture that reflected the blindingly blue sky above.  The result was a surreal atmosphere that didn’t feel altogether solid. 

The only feature marring that surface stood on the edge of the horizon, far in the distance.  To Zeke, it only looked like a black dot.  Barely visible even to his increased perception.  It reminded him of the Spear of Desolation where he’d encountered the imprisoned dwarf prince, Dáinn.  Not in shape or function – he was still too far away to determine either – but rather, in size and distance. 

Or perhaps he was mistaken.  There was every possibility that it wasn’t a tower at all, though Zeke suspected otherwise.  Perhaps he was just picking some unconscious clues. 

“You might just be seeing patterns that aren’t there,” Eveline said.  She’d kept him company throughout his climb, though for the most part, he’d tuned her out in favor of focusing on the ascent.  “We won’t know until we reach it.”

“So, you think that’s the way?”

“I believe it’s too obvious a goal to ignore,” she answered, and Zeke agreed. 

With that, Zeke pulled some food from his storage space.  He’d eaten a few times during his ascent, but doing so was complicated by the situation.  So, he’d not eaten as much as he should have.  Now that he was on solid ground, he gorged himself until his hunger was sated. 

Then, with no other reason to delay, he took one last look at the cliff that had been his weeks-long nemesis, then set off across the glassy surface of the plain.  The wind was still an issue, so he was forced to hunch his back and force his way through.  However, if he could climb in such conditions, he could walk as well.

Like that, he continued along with each of his steps covering almost ten feet.  Because of that, even at a walk, he was capable of covering ground incredibly quickly.  Still, as he traversed the plain, he didn’t seem to come any closer to the tower. 

“That’s not true,” Eveline pointed out.  “It’s just incredibly far away.”

Zeke couldn’t dispute her claim, so, for the next few days, he kept going.  And by the fifth, he could see it for himself.  The structure had gone from a black speck on the horizon to a bump.  That was progress, and it served to spur him along.  With increased vigor, Zeke continued his trek. 

In most ways, it was much easier than his climb.  Certainly, the strain on his body was far less taxing.  Yet, it was also more psychologically demanding.  Without the mechanics of climbing a cliff to occupy his mind, he had no choice but to let his thoughts wander where they would. 

And inevitably, they went back to all the future versions of himself that he’d encountered before the cliff.  Many were obvious continuations of his current path, but a few others had deviated so thoroughly that he could barely recognize them.  A couple had fully committed to demonhood, growing horns and replacing his titanic body with a demonic one.  Some had gone the other way, embracing his human side so thoroughly that they refused to use the titanic body.  It hadn’t made them any weaker, though.  Quite the opposite. 

“It’s because the power is in you, not your skills,” Eveline said as Zeke trudged forward.  “It doesn’t matter what form you take.  You’ll still be strong.”

“But maximizing my potential is important,” Zeke stated.

“Maybe.  My take on what we’ve seen is that skills are just tools,” she said.  “True power is what fuels those skills.  Human, demon, or cambion, you will never be weak.”

Zeke pondered that, and after he went back through his history, he could see the truth in her statement.  Even going back to when he had first been reborn into the Mortal Realm, he’d found the strength to do what was necessary.  He’d fought through that pseudo-dungeon, coming out as a true powerhouse.  And his every action since that moment had only grown his power.

That wasn’t due to his attunements, his path, or his skills.  It was strength of character that had allowed him to endure and overcome.

“Willpower.  Not Will,” Zeke muttered, his voice lost amidst the howling wind.  The difference between the two was an important distinction.  The first referred to his refusal to give in, the power to stay the course he set for himself, regardless of the obstacles in his way.  The second was just a word given to how he used his path.  And as powerful as the latter was, the former was responsible for everything Zeke had gained since his rebirth. 

Maybe that was the lesson he was meant to learn.

“Don’t be silly.  Dungeons aren’t here to teach you lessons,” Eveline stated.  “They’re here to torment you in exchange for progression.  Don’t read too much into it.”

Zeke wasn’t so sure.  Perhaps both could be true.  Regardless, he pushed  himself on, inching ever closer to his goal.