Chapter 251 (Patreon)

Chapter 251

Riven watched with interest as the naga assassin took another one of his strikes, the earth shattering and erupting underneath them under the impact with the sin energy flowing out of his body.

The naga’s scream of pain was accompanied by another flash of power when he regenerated and vaulted away in a swirling river of water, only to be intercepted by Athela’s own blood-form as her river of red crashed into his river of clear-blue.

The two entangled figures slammed into the ground, Athela laughing madly while their blows sent loud shockwaves that eradicated nearby trees - while Riven continued to observe the dark fractals coming out from his skin to encase the Gluttony-based armor he now wore.

“Interesting.” Riven muttered under his breath, feeling the great maw itself leak out of his soul and into both Messenger and Jackal - empowering them both as dark black energies flared to life.

Without looking up, Riven stepped to the left in a blur of speed.

*BOOM*

The ground beside him erupted with a thin, sharp, solid wall of water that cut through the forest for a mile, creating a solid trench in the ground for the entirety of the mile-long attack that caused the ground underneath to explode with debris.

The naga flashed forward, empowered with another water-based martial art only for Riven to look up with a flick of his wrist.

A dozen spinning blades of black and red erupted around him and slammed into the naga - splitting him open in multiple spots and then exploding.  However the naga’s agility and regenerative properties let him off with only another pained scream - and he teleported back a few dozen feet breathing heavily with ragged breaths.

Riven went back to inspecting the runes traveling out from his body that were still embedding themselves into his weapon and armor, fusing with it, and giving him a more innate sense of control over the items as they responded in kind.  “Gluttony, what is it you’re doing?”

The great maw only laughed inside his soul, the third eye emerging from his forehead to stare out at the naga with terrorizing hunger pulsing out from it.  The very grass beneath their feet shriveled and died under the gaze of the sin, and the sky above them darkened with a malevolent laugh that echoed throughout the landscape.

That was when Riven realized this wasn’t a skill at all.  Rather, this was actually Gluttony’s aura - similar to how Riven’s aura of red frost was akin to Crimson Ice, but didn’t actually involve any skill activation.  It was just a pure flex of raw, semi-directed power.

The sight of the eye caused the naga to freeze mid-stride, true fear giving it pause right as Athela caught up to it and impaled the assassin with both of her red blades.

“It’s not fun when you stop moving!” Athela hissed over the screech of the cultist, tearing her blades out from his body - headbutting him mid scream - and with a blur, kicked the man in the chest to launch him like a cannonball across the canopy under the snap of bones.

She looked over her shoulder, to the dying plant life that was quickly drying up all around them at exponentially rapid speed, then up to the sky overhead - confused.  “What are you doing?”

Energy began ripping from all life around them, feeding into Messenger and Jackal alike.  The dark runes pulsed various shades of black, red and purple - sparking with power; shifting and churning.  The ground began to turn gray, and without warning - a pulse of sin vaporized all the forest around them for hundreds of meters.

The darkening sky overhead screamed as the figure of the maw appeared to open wide, and Riven reached out a hand as a bolt of sin crashed down onto his position.

Riven felt electrified in both a figurative and literal sense, coursing with power as his mana channels rearranged themselves and inserted themselves into the two sin-affiliated items.  The eyes of the horned, vampiric pauldrons burned bright and the flowing rivers of blood encompassing Jackal roared to life like an ocean - their volumes increasing.

He felt his pillars react, and the sin core orbiting his soul core reached out to form a pillar of its own.  Now, instead of being disconnected from one another, Gluttony had fused the sin core as a newly born pillar - placing it directly beside his Blood Sub-Pillar and enlarging his soul-core by three times the size as it pulsed and waned over and over again.

Riven let out a shudder, and as the sin pillar solidified - he felt a strong sense of one-ness when his mind linked with Gluttony, his Mythic tier upper body armor, and his Ascended Legendary tier weapon.  The spiked knuckles on his gauntlets crackled, the four plates on his back expanded with torrents of fire as ‘Launch’ began to activate, and the replica maw of Gluttony along his front began to open.

God he needed new pants, especially after his Lich-Kin Boots had been destroyed by the blast in Deepnest.

His three-eyes fixated on Athela, and he smiled.  “Gluttony, Messenger, Jackal and I were just having a bonding moment is all.  Now… Let him flee for a while.  Hopefully he’ll lead us to the others, so that we can finish this quest ahead of schedule.”

Athela blankly stared, then chuckled and turned - flashing forward as she morphed into a stream of blood that crossed the desolate landscape he’d created; further flowing inbetween the trees to advance out of sight.

With Mark of the Hunted still tracking her fleeing naga friend, Riven was sure she’d be on him soon enough.

Grinning and feeding Messenger a pulse of mana, he forced his armor to explode with power - shooting him skywards in an arc before disappearing into the clouds.

[Launch: The back of your suit can open up, creating a blast of sin energy that damages enemies and acts as a propulsion method to blast you in a given direction at speeds dependent on how much energy you drain from the stored reservoir of your pauldrons.]

***

The forest erupted all around him as the crazy she-demon unleashed swaths of red crescents from her blades, alongside storms of needles that showered the land.  It was like watching a hurricane of destruction running after him, and despite being a speed and agility based fighter in the Paragon tier - Grakzee was having a very hard time getting away from her.

The naga assassin cursed and swore, dodging more of those red needle threads while they rang out like the bullets of a gatling gun to mow down animals, plants, and even boulders alike  while the demoness gave chase.  He’d nearly died eight times by now, and that was considering the fact that Riven Thane hadn’t done more than half-heartedly attack him three times; twice with his spear-staff and once with a relatively small amount of magic at close range.

Time dragged on, and he gained more and more wounds - but none of them were lethal.  He felt like a rat being toyed with by a cat amidst sprays of bloody, painful hits that he took along his extremities every couple seconds.  It seemed like this Athela bitch was playing with him, as if she was intentionally letting him live just to cause him more pain and suffering, and the more he thought about it - he had a good idea why.

They were wanting him to lead them to the others in his flight.

Looking over his shoulder at the manic grin on Athela’s face only twenty yards away, he would be more than happy to oblige.

*CRACK*

The air thundered and he felt his knee explode as he screamed again, but yet again - the attack wasn’t aimed at his vital points.

He vaporized and then reappeared to heal himself, almost drained of a third of his energy now and cursing the ability that was allowing her to keep a perfect target on his back.  No matter whether he backpedaled, used stealth skills, or dashed far ahead - it was like she had a radar that honed in on his soul - and he had the odd sensation that the very heavens were watching him as he tried to avoid their unceasing gaze.

He thought about it, inwardly groaning when blood sprayed from his shoulder and he had to reform the limb amidst Athela’s cackling, howling laughter.  Truthfully there was no reason why he WOULDN’T lead these two into the fray of other hostile cultists.  Not only was their monster swarm there and just unable to leave a particular area at this time, but Riven would have received reinforcements from the town if they’d attacked like originally planned.  If the vampire was willing to fight without those reinforcements, then all the better.  Not only that, but that other unnamed non-cultists also wasn’t here… and his other minions aside from Athela were also absent.  The two elves, the succubus, and the hellscape brutalisk were all eerily gone.

This bade the question ‘Why’?  Were they setting up an ambush for the others by not showing themselves?  But Grakzee wasn’t in much of a situation to question things and would take what he could get.  He was also pretty sure that Riven could summon his demonic minions to him by using the unholy pentagrams on his chest that he’d seen in previous videos on the cortex, but he wasn’t absolutely sure about it.  Regardless, lacking the other non-cultist who was no doubt at bare minimum S-tier to get here, as well as forgo his reinforcements from the town and the two elves of unknown threat level - that was more than ok with him.

***

Riven watched Athela’s game of cat and mouse from high up in the clouds as his armor kept him aloft; though he was able to use his own mana to do so at a less viable level even if he didn’t have messenger on at this point.  It wasn’t as pure as air or storm based mana, but by fluctuating it and using it to propel him in certain directions - he was able to shift his body’s placement above ground without physically moving it.  Albeit poorly.  He still had a long way to go, so until he perfected the art he’d be sure to only utilize messenger unless absolutely necessity called for other plans.

“Do you feel it?” Gluttony whispered into his mind, focusing on the threads of light only he and Riven could see.  Threads that connected them to one another, that combined and meshed the shattered pieces of Riven’s soul with Gluttony’s own - making them almost inseparable even by the standards of what the system had intended for them to be.

It was more than just a symbiotic relationship, but the way it felt… Riven wasn’t just ok with it.  He LIKED it, and even better - he was still the one primarily in control.  Having Gluttony there and meshing his thoughts with the great maw on this level gave him an understanding of the creature he now shared a vessel with on a deeper level than any other being had ever been able to grasp, and it made him look at Gluttony in a new light.

Gluttony wasn’t necessarily evil at all, rather he was just a machine - a being bred for war, bred to kill, and bred to devour.

Gluttony was the very essence of genocide itself, put into spiritual and physical form alike.  There was no greater truth Gluttony strived for other than to become THE apex predator above all others, devouring his way to the top, and for the first time in a while - Riven felt a sense of meaning integrate and resonate with his own desires.

It was as if Riven had been lost in the ocean, adrift amidst the waves and not having true direction.  But now - he was given that direction.

He too wanted to become great.

He too wanted to reach the apex.

“I do feel it…” Riven replied, feeling Gluttony’s abilities mesh into his own status page while Gluttony pushed their intertwining souls together - the maw’s sigil radiating sin energy across the new pillar he’d acquired.  “I feel everything that you are, as you too feel me…”

Riven’s attention turned from the threads of their souls onto other such connections that were external, rather than internal.  He followed one to his lover, Athela - where it pulsed the brightest of all the other external threads he now had.  He could read her thoughts when focusing on it, and chuckled to himself at the mirth she felt while chasing the naga far below.

Poor guy.

The other threads varied in size and length, and crossed time and space to lengths that he could not physically see - but following them allowed Riven to peer beyond physical space.  He followed one to Fay, who was sitting on a couch - rather upset - in her mother’s nether realm while talking to her clan.  He felt her swirling emotions that bubbled up from deep inside her mind - thoughts of inadequacy, doubt, fear, and a longing for him.

He reached out through the thread, touching her consciousness with a feeling of warmth, and lovingly smiled as she received the message with a surprised jerk of her head.

The next thread led to Azmoth, who was in the town right at this very moment gorging himself on pastries back in town.  The large demon felt his presence immediately, and Riven couldn’t help but explode into laughter when he saw Azmoth give him the middle finger.  Only a deep sense of playful trust and admiration resonated from that bond, and it was directed solely at Riven.  It was the kind of trust one would have in their family, and it made Riven remember that Azmoth was still just a kid.  Despite his maturity and size, Azmoth was supposed to be an infant without any other blood-related family he kept in contact with - though truth be told he didn’t know what age range demon infants were considered to be.  He’d have to ask Azmoth sometime just how old he really was.  After all, Athela was over 200 years old - and she’d said that was very young for a demon.

Luke Blissfallen, the Stormrazor Battle Priest thrall, had a far weaker link than any of the others.  It was still there, and pulling on it found Riven’s sight to be…

Riven immediately withdrew his vision when he found the old man was visiting a brothel.  He’d touch up on that one later, and he couldn’t necessarily blame the guy - Luke didn’t have anyone special that Riven knew about and they had a good while until the monster wave actually hit.  Maybe it was even a method of stress relief.

Lastly, Genua’s thread between their souls was the one that fluctuated most.  One moment it was rather strong and firm, the next it was weak and wavering.  Fixating on it and following it out, Riven found himself viewing the inside of a temple.  High marble pillars held up an immaculately carved ceiling depicting creatures and artifacts he did not recognize, alongside vampires and a huge red moon carved from stone at the very back end of the-

His vision changed, and he found himself looking directly out of Genua’s eyes into the face of a very old but pretty priestess.  The woman had the same formal clergy robes Genua had on, as well as the glowing crimson tattoos littering her skin, and she tisked his way before the vision ended.

Riven let out a snort, coming back into his own body while scratching his neck.  “I guess they don’t want me looking into the Blood God’s realm just yet.  Gluttony, what’s your opinion on the Blood God?”

“Neutral.” Gluttony immediately replied with a hiss, his black soul clone visage appearing in the air beside Riven.  “I have never had many interactions with him in the past, from what memories I do retain.  I suggest you decide on how to proceed, and I will support you in whichever way you choose to go about it.”

Riven nodded, glancing at the slowly twisting maws that leaked the essence of the abyss itself.  “I see.  What about The Scythe?”

“I have had minimal interactions with that one.  They were overall positive, but we did fight two wars against one another in the past.”

“Two wars?  And your interactions were positive?”

“Wars breed conflict, conflict breeds ascension.  It is creation’s will, and we were competing for supreme treasures.  I needed to display my dominance.”

Riven smiled, then chuckled.  “Not so dominant now, eh?”

Gluttony hissed.  “If The Scythe had been as powerful as I and the other sins back then, he’d have been banished too.  My banishment and reincarnation are only testaments to the strength I once had, and to the strength that I will one day reclaim.  Do not goad me, child.”

Riven kept his smirk but didn’t push the matter.  He could tell by the way their souls were intertwined that Gluttony wasn’t actually mad, but he would be respectful to his new playmate nevertheless.

Meanwhile, the connections inside his soul apparatus were only condensing, growing thicker, and being tied together in odd formations and web-like patterns like a lattice.  Two more connections formed shortly after as he watched, one to Messenger - and one to Jackal, though these threads looked a little bit different than the other ones to his minions did.  They were semi translucent when focusing on them, and Riven could only guess that it was a change due to them actually being items rather than people?

He was about to ask Gluttony about it after briefly reviewing Athela’s progress in her chasing game below when a flash notification appeared ahead of him, and his mind briefly turned black.  His body went numb and he shuddered as the Mark of the Sinner lit up across his skin, messenger, and Jackal all at once - with a hungering, gnawing sensation carving itself into his gut.  A sensation of hunger that was bottomless, without end, that spurred him onwards to feed.

The markings on the black and deep-purple pillar of sin in his soul apparatus finally stopped moving, the new mana channels etching themselves into it and solidifying, and he gasped alongside Gluttony as they exchanged abilities and traits with one another.  Just as Gluttony gained access to many of Riven’s own inherited skills as their souls intertwined, so too did Riven gain access to Gluttony’s.

[Congratulations, Host and Reincarnation of Gluttony.  You have acquired the following abilities and traits from Gluttony now that your symbiosis has reached its height:

• Ravenous Beetle Swarm (Sin):  Open your mouth to summon a swarm of ravenous beetles.  The more biomass they eat, the more your health, mana, stamina, and divinity replenish; and the more beetles you can create.  Consuming targets with this ability applies towards your Gluttonous trait.
• Farsight Banishment (Sin): Send a pulse of sin that eradicates all ties to the area around you concerning scrying, remote tracking, spying, karmic ties, or long-range visualization abilities.  Very long cooldown.
• Soul Clone Projections (Sin): Create projections of your ravenous maw, allowing you to devour and attack enemies from your projections with tendrils of sin and sin-afflicted teeth.  Attacks with your primary soul clone body cause soul-damage, decreasing all mana, stamina, divinity, and health regeneration until the enemy soul has healed.  Replicas of your soul clone with additional projections only halve this effect.  Consuming targets with this ability applies towards your Gluttonous trait.
• Gluttony’s Aspect of Demonic Heritage (Sin)(Tier 3):  A martial art that enhances you through the power of your fully formed Mark of the Sinner.  Your body merges with your soul clone for 1 minute, allowing you to take on an ultimate demonic form as an aspect of the Great Maw.  Very long cooldown, which can be reduced by killing and eating others.
• Gluttonous (Trait): You are required to eat at least 1 enlightened being every week, or will suffer a 1% debuff that stacks on all stats.  Feeding on more than 10 enlightened beings in a day gives temporary bonus stats that decay over time, the amount of bonus stats depends on the power and number of consumed victims.  Feeding on more than 5000 enlightened beings in a day temporarily doubles your stats and all the stats of your gear.
• Reincarnation of Gluttony, Original Sin (Trait): You once were a being feared across the cosmos.  Reaching the SSS grade again after your reincarnation will unlock previously unattainable aspects for your Path of Gluttony, allowing you to ascend higher than ever before.  If your vessel and host dies, you will be forced to restart on this path once again.  You have been labeled as a ‘MYTHIC’ tier creature in comparison to others your level across the multiverse.]

Riven’s red and black eyes widened when focusing on the ‘Gluttonous’ trait in particular.  The abilities were nice to have, but needing to feed on at least 1 enlightened being every week… did that include monsters?  Sentient monsters, maybe?

Perhaps he needed to really take that vampiric heritage of his to the next level as he upped his game to feed on more people, though he’d have to find targets that weren’t so innocent.  He was sure there’d be more than enough to go around.

Beyond all of that though, was a sense of competence and assuredness in himself that flooded through his mind like a tidal wave.  It was Gluttony’s presence, one that had been around for eons, and even despite the loss of much of his knowledge and skills - Gluttony still had a lot of memories pertaining to combat.

Pertaining to the hunt.

Riven’s mouth twitched, and he gave an involuntary, malicious sneer that focused on the fleeing form of the naga far below.  Hunger built up inside him, and his stomach ached as he began to salivate.

He shuddered, and Gluttony’s voice rang clearly beside him to bring Riven back to the present.

“We will feed shortly, my friend…” Gluttony stated - disappearing from his soul clone form and re-entering Riven’s body with a flash of darkness.  “But these opponents of ours are some of the best your planet has to offer.  It would be a waste to merely eat them outright.  Instead, we should use this as an opportunity to find one-ness.”

Riven’s eyes narrowed, still following the naga through the trees before he disappeared into a shimmering wall of illusion in the forest below.  Athela followed the cultist through the illusory wall shortly after, and Riven’s grip around Jackal tightened as the weapon in his hand howled for blood.

“You want to use them as a whetstone, to test our skills now that we have joined.”

“You are correct.” Gluttony stated as a matter of fact.  “Such opportunities to truly struggle against and fight competent opponents, before leaving your world to travel into the greater multiverse, will not come often.  They will respawn here in this trial, it is true, but we can use every opportunity to push ourselves; even by self imposed restrictions if need be.  But for now, I do believe that there are multiple S-grade and Paragon-grade enemies beyond that shimmering wall.  Perhaps it is time to join Athela and to hone our skills, so that you may for the very first time truly pursue the Path of Gluttony, while I pursue the unfamiliar path of Red and Black you have so recently gifted me.  We will be two halves fighting as one, and we will need to know each other thoroughly before we perfect the dance of a dual soul in combat.  We will become a single predator, two parts of one beast.  Only then will we be able to start our next step into ascending towards the E-grade.”

Riven paused, his focus being skewed by the building hunger - a hunger that until now, he’d not even known was possible - even when he’d been starved of blood prior to getting Luke and Genua as thralls to feed on.  He let out a gasp, and his red eyes began to burn with power.  “Afterwards, we will eat them together.”

Gluttony seemed to internally grin.  “That, my dearest friend, is a certainty.  We will gorge on their bodies as they still take breaths, so that they remember what it means to oppose our will and might.”