Chapter 348 - Endless (Patreon)

Zeke’s steps thundered against the frozen ground, his increased size rendering the deep snow into a trivial inconvenience. Each stride covered almost a dozen feet, so he quickly outpaced his allies.  He summoned his hammer, its immense weight comforting in his earthen grip.

“Most people would consider leaving your army behind as you charge into battle to be incredibly stupid,” Eveline remarked, her unspoken words cutting through his impending battle frenzy.

“I’m not most people,” he said. In truth, he’d been on the verge of sinking deep into the battle lust, and he appreciated Eveline dragging him out. Was that a result of his demonic attunement? Even without that corruption flowing through his body and mind, he knew it had already left its mark. Being out of Mal’canus helped, but it couldn’t undo the damage to his psyche he’d already endured.

“It’s not damage, per se,” Eveline said. “Think of it more like you’re discovering part of your nature.”

That was frightening, but given that he was half-demon, Zeke knew her assessment was probably accurate. There was no escaping his demonic side, and yet, he was also aware of the dangers inherent in embracing it too fully.

“It is a tool. Nothing more, and nothing less,” Eveline stated. “Use it accordingly.”

It was a comforting statement, but ultimately, it didn’t ring true. The corruption wasn’t just a weapon to be used. It was part of who he was, just like his humanity. Or the earth mana coursing through him. And if he didn’t learn to control those three disparate pieces, they would eventually rip him to shreds.

Running from or ignoring the problem would not solve it. Instead, he needed to confront it head-on. However, with the shard wolves bearing down on him, he knew it was not the time to do so.

“Case in point – those things look dangerous,” Eveline said, mentally pointing at the oncoming creatures.

And she wasn’t wrong. The shard wolves looked like they’d been carved – inexpertly – from ice. With jagged shards protruding at all angles, their icy forms resembled wolves only at the most basic level. But one thing they had in common with their flesh-and-blood counterparts was that they were equipped with sharp claws and a mouth full of even sharper teeth. More, the shard wolves carried with them an aura of frigid cold that cut right through Zeke’s resistances as well as his vaunted pain tolerance to send an ache deep into his bones.

Fortunately, he didn’t have long to think about that, because the two charging forces met with a horrendous clash as Zeke swung his hammer with all the considerable force he could bring to bear.

The result was woefully disappointing.

Voromir’s head bit into the lead shard wolf’s shoulder, tearing a sizable chunk from its icy flesh and sending a spiderweb of cracks spreading from the wound. The horizontal swing even sent the monster skidding to the side a few feet. However, it was far from the outcome Zeke had expected.

In fact, he’d fully intended to send the thing flying through the air – not unlike what he’d done to a few dwarves during the most recent battle. That he hadn’t was a rude awakening that put him briefly off-balance.

That’s when the other shard wolves pounced on their seemingly vulnerable opponent. Zeke roared as a monster dashed in, nipping at his hamstring while another crashed into him with the full weight of its rhino-sized body.

But if Zeke was surprised by the ineffectiveness of his attack, the wolves were doubly so. Their sharp teeth could scarcely pierce the earth-infused and metallic skin of [Triune Colossus].

“I’d be more worried about the cold than a few – oh, that’s interesting…”

“What?” Zeke growled aloud.

But Eveline never got the chance to answer because, even as Zeke aimed a vicious uppercut at one of the icy wolves, the ground began to rumble. Then, he felt what she had only a moment before.

“Technically, I’m using your senses, so you felt it too. I just pay attention,” she said with prim satisfaction.

Zeke couldn’t spare the attention to argue as another hundred shard wolves sprang forth from the icy ground, sending shards of frosty shrapnel tearing through the air with enough velocity that a few managed to pierce his skin. And then, as one, the creatures fell upon him, clearly aiming to overwhelm him with the sheer weight of numbers. The onslaught drove him to one knee, but he caught himself before being thrown fully to the ground.

“This would be a perfect time to tell you I told you so,” Eveline remarked even as Zeke was driven to the ground. Hundreds of sharp teeth cut through his skill-armored body, clearly trying to cure the ineffectiveness of their individual attacks with base volume. And it was working. After all, the earth is not entirely invulnerable. The wind can eventually wear it down. So can water. And ice can seep into the smallest of cracks, shattering even the hardest stone.

Clearly, the wolves’ nature drove them to emulate that aspect of their natural element.

Zeke was just about to embrace [Weight of Two Worlds] when the battle shifted. Heat – and corruption – suddenly bloomed behind him, and the sound of yelping wolves filled his ears. More importantly, the monumental weight of hundreds of shard wolves diminished ever so slightly, allowing Zeke to shift and regain enough leverage to spring to his feet.

With an explosion of strength, he thrust himself upward, throwing his arms out wide, and he was rewarded with the sight of flying wolves. It was as if a bomb had gone off, and though it wasn’t powerful enough to destroy the creatures, it was more than enough to briefly clear the area.

That brief respite gave Zeke the opportunity to see the battlefield.

All around him, kobolds – with Silik leading the way – fell upon the stunned shard wolves. Beams of molten light sliced through the shard wolves’ bodies even as a swarm of smaller kobolds leaped upon the enemies’ backs, using their scything claws to cut through the icy forms. After all, the original purpose of those claws to carve tunnels through solid stone, so ice was no real barrier to their sharpness.

However, that attack didn’t come without a significant cost. Dozens of juvenile kobolds died with every passing second, their small bodies crushed under fallen shard wolves or between the icy canines’ strong jaws.

Zeke’s heart broke for the little creatures. He had so many ideas for how to develop them, and yet, if he allowed them to continue as they were, they would never get the opportunity to grow into their full potential.

Meanwhile, Pudge had finally joined the battle as well, and it was clear that he was responsible for the sudden spike in both the level of corruption as well as the temperature. He charged in, his fists wreathed in black flame as he launched one ball of [Hellfire] after another at the fallen shard wolves. Wherever those destructive flames landed, ice melted.

But it wasn’t enough.

Almost as quickly as the various skills ripped them apart, the shard wolves began to rebuild themselves. Swirls of ice and frigid cold tore through the area, gathering bits of shattered shard wolves and reforming the creatures at full strength. The initial salvo of Zeke’s makeshift army had given them an opening, but it was a long way from winning the battle.

Zeke wheeled around, backhanding a pouncing shard wolf before kicking out and sending another skidding away. Then, gripping his hammer with both hands, he utilized a series of heavy, sweeping strikes to give himself some room – both to swing his weapon and to think. But even as he wracked his brain, he could think of nothing.

Thankfully, he had allies who were better at that sort of thing.

The ambient mana surged, vibrating uncomfortably as it swirled through the air like an arcane wind. Even as Zeke desperately defended against the ever-rebuilding wolves, Pudge and the kobolds lashed out with their full might. A huge, black claw swiped through the air, rending a half-dozen wolves all at once, but even though it shattered them into a thousand pieces, the overall effect was nil.

Because the wolves continued to piece themselves back together.

“This must be what it’s like to fight you,” Eveline remarked during a brief moment of respite.

As usual, the statement had some truth to it. Zeke’s own fighting style was built around his ability to regenerate while bringing his immense strength to bear. The wolves, it seemed, were similarly equipped to endure and recover from most wounds. In fact, despite all their efforts, their numbers hadn’t decreased appreciably. It seemed as if they hadn’t managed to kill a single wolf.

“You haven’t.”

“What?” Zeke asked in his own mind as he lashed out with a vicious, overhand strike that shattered a wolf’s head. It fell limp, but Zeke knew it wouldn’t last.

“You have to destroy their cores,” she said. “These aren’t living creatures, per se. They’re more like elementals.”

“Would’ve been nice to know that from the very beginning,” he growled.

Eveline huffed. “I tried to give you advice. You ignored it,” she said. “A girl can only take so much abuse before she stops trying.”

Was she really offended? Or was it all just an act? That was the problem with dealing with Eveline. Zeke never really knew if she was trying to manipulate him – a task to which she was perfectly suited, given her ability to read his memories and sense his emotions – or if he was seeing her real personality. For all he knew, she was just as sadistic as any other demon he’d met, and she was just showing him what he needed to see in order to engender trust between them.

“Quite the conundrum. Oh. She’s almost done. This should be interesting,” said Eveline.

At that moment, the tempo of the swirling mana quickened. Over the space of a second or two, the intensity climbed until it felt as if he was in the middle of a tornado of pure power. Then, suddenly, it froze. Electric anticipation filled the air, but only for a moment before the world imploded. Zeke felt something – an ephemeral force he couldn’t identify – pulling at his own mana, but he clamped down with a combination of Will and pure stubbornness.

The wolves were not so tenacious.

Ice – in tiny bits as well as great chunks – cracked off of their bodies and flew to some point in the center of the battle. It was as if someone had conjured a black hole in the middle of the tundra, though instead of pulling with the force of gravity, it instead pulled with some other, unidentifiable force that attracted mana instead of matter.

“Technically, black holes devour everything. Matter. Light. Even –”

“Not helping,” Zeke groaned, trying to keep a grip on his own mana. He saw a couple of juvenile kobolds drop to the ground, withered and completely devoid of mana. Meanwhile, great beams of light tore across the battlefield to coalesce at the center of the storm. Kobold legionnaires and centurions screamed in pain, but still, they fought on, jabbing their spears into the rapidly dissipating bodies of the shard wolves.

“I mean, it’s your memory. My people never even explored space. So, you already know all this. It’s just buried beneath a mound of –”

The tempest built to a crescendo, and Zeke finally caught sight of a shard wolf’s core. Marshalling his willpower, he forced himself to move. It felt like fighting underwater, but he managed to swing his hammer with enough force to destroy the core. It shattered with anticlimactic ease, but as soon as it broke, the blob of mana within raced to the center of the storm to join all the rest.

Somewhere nearby, a feminine scream tore through the air, but Zeke couldn’t pay it any attention. Instead, he needed to use the storm’s distraction to destroy as many of the cores as possible.

He couldn’t use [Weight of Two Worlds] – not with so many vulnerable kobolds around – and [Unleash Momentum] was ill-suited to the task. However, he did have one skill that would help him immensely. With a flick of thought, Zeke activated [Center of Gravity], targeting the nearest shard wolf core. It tore free of the remnants of the icy wolf’s body and sped in his direction. He met it with a horizontal swing that destroyed the vulnerable globe with contemptuous ease.

It was like hitting a baseball.

Zeke might not have been the most skilled combatant, usually leaning on his various advantages to see him through to the end of any battle. However, his skill in his chosen sport had yet to abandon him, and he utilized that hard-won ability to, over the next few minutes, destroy hundreds of cores.

Even as he did so, a few of the stronger kobolds took their cue from his actions and commenced in shattering a few of their own cores. They didn’t do so as easily as Zeke – considering they had to physically approach the degenerating wolves – but what they lacked in ability, they more than made up for in sheer tenacity.

At some point, Zeke saw that Jasper and a few other former slaves – Eta among them – had joined the battle. But he couldn’t afford to pay much attention to them. Not and maintain his pace.

He was like a mountain in the middle of a storm being pelted by crystalline cores bristling with ice mana. But Zeke kept going, using [Cambion’s Awakening] to yank ever larger currents of earth mana into his body. Most of it joined the flow of mana racing toward the core of the storm, but the ground was an inexhaustible source. So, even the bits that made it into his body were enough to stave off fatigue and heal the wounds in his body.

“You should probably brace yourself,” Eveline said. “This is going to be…unpleasant.”

“What –”

Just then, the pace of the implosion doubled. Then tripled. Zeke felt like every ounce of mana in his body – even as he tried to gather more from the earth – was being torn free of his channels to join the mana-dense center of the storm. He screamed. Others did the same, creating a chorus of agony. The few juvenile kobolds who’d managed to remain upright through the first stage of the storm finally succumb, joined by more than a few of their superiors and most of the former slaves. The pull continued to intensify, but Zeke stoically endured. Only a couple of others – Pudge, Silik, and Jasper among them – did the same.

With most of the combatants having fallen to the ground, Zeke finally saw the center of the storm. A spike, almost a foot long and made of metal. That was it. No embellishments. No carvings or runes. Just a mundane length of steel. Above it was a ball of energy that blazed like the sun – at least metaphysically speaking. From a visual perspective, it was bright, mostly blue but with swirls of other colors, and only about two feet in diameter.

“Don’t.”

“What?” asked Zeke.

Eveline said, “This is what she intended. Just wait.”

“She?”

Eveline indicated that Zeke should look in another direction. And when he did, he saw Sasha – the porcine mage – with her hands stretched to the sky as she channeled some skill. She was only about forty yards from the battlefield, but she was far enough away that it was clear she hadn’t seen combat. However, to Zeke’s senses, she seemed just as affected as any of the other combatants.

More importantly, Zeke could trace a line of mana from her outstretched hands all the way to the spike at the center of the battlefield, indicating that she was the ultimate cause. He gulped.

“Behold, the power of a dedicated sorcerer,” Eveline said with smug satisfaction. As soon as the words left her mouth, the ongoing implosion ceased – or rather, it reversed course. However, instead of sending a wave of mana outward, it had converted all that power into a wall of force that tore across the battlefield. In a radius of ten yards around that spike, everything was crushed. For ten or fifteen yards after that, the effect was far less dramatic, but it still sent kobolds and other combatants flying away. By the time it reached Zeke, the force was little more than a billowing wind, easily endured.

Finally, the world settled. The density of the ambient mana in the area had dipped to a shockingly low level, but it wasn’t nearly as large a shift as when Zeke had first discovered the martial effect of his fledgling worldbreaker braid. But it was definitely uncomfortable.

A few of the crystalline cores that drove the shard wolves were still intact, and they tried to gather the ice to reform the wolves’ bodies. But the effect was sluggish enough that Zeke – and a few of the kobolds who’d managed to recover – could easily destroy the remaining cores. Finally, at long last, Zeke crushed the final globe.

“That was harder than I expected,” Zeke said in his own mind. “They were only a few levels higher than me.”

“But there were hundreds of them, and they were on their own turf,” Eveline responded. “You have to understand that you’ve been fighting in environments perfectly suited for you. That won’t be the case going forward. So, you need to adjust your expectations a little. You’re strong, but you have enough weaknesses that you’re far from invincible.”

“Noted,” he muttered to himself.

“Now, let’s go see what that little girl cooked up,” Eveline said with obvious anticipation.

That’s when Zeke realized that the center of the storm had solidified into what looked like a core of its own. It pulsed with barely contained power, giving off a mana signature similar to a moderately powerful elemental.