Chapter 266 (Patreon)

Chapter 266

[Riven’s Quest #6 of The Altars of Despair and Hope: This is a minion-based quest.  Only Athela can complete this quest as a representative of you.  Assisting Athela will result in a loss of 20 points and no reward.

A Race to Steal the Orb: Other participants hailing from both Cultist and Non-Cultist groups in The Altars of Despair and Hope event have been tasked with killing the defending lord of a city in Universe 71, and then taking a particular glass orb he keeps in a safe at the center of his fortress.  The city is currently under siege from enemy forces, and they are set on destroying this orb at all costs.  With the city set to fall within coming days, it is a race between your minion Athela and the eleven other participants to see who can get to the orb first.  Once collected, bring it back to the portal and return to the Apocalypse Beast’s pocket realm to acquire an additional 100 points and an automatic unlocking for all the orb’s protected features.

Respawns for this quest have been set at a randomized location within 200 yards of the quest portal entering this realm, which only participants of the Apocalypse Beasts can see, and respawn timers for all 12 chosen participants have been set to 1 hour respawn timers while inside Universe 71 until this quest is done.

Total Event Points Already Accumulated: 124]

>>> This quest is currently active.]

Having left The Abyssal Descent was far easier with the system itself helping her out, and she’d even been granted a ‘Return to The Abyssal Descent’ button on her status page even despite being able to return to her master with her demonic summoning.

Perhaps there were normally restrictions on such things when concerning pocket realms?

Athela wasn’t quite sure.  But with Riven, Azmoth, Fay, and Genua all being cooped up in Lillith’s training regimens that were now picking up with intensity - Athela was the one who’d completed the last few quests for Riven in his stead.  It was one of the perks of having minions, she supposed, and it’d quickly stopped the stagnation of gaining event points.  When compared to Nora Lang, who was also getting training from Lillith here and there, Riven had fallen behind by almost 80 points before having Athela go back to the Apocalypse Beast’s pocket realm to keep the flow going.

During her quests: Athela had defeated a small portaled-in dungeon full of serpentine humanoids, had collected various herbs in a designated zone defended by goddamn dragons that could eat her whole of all things, went through a puzzle labyrinth full of lava pits, and had assassinated three other enemy cultists while running interference on their own quests.  The smug look she currently wore on her face while remembering how they’d died said it all, and she’d even received notifications letting her know they’d failed to collect the points due to her - netting her even more points for Riven in the process.

Still, after being transported through yet another portal in this odd mix-and-mash of pocket-realm portal networks, she hadn’t ever seen anything quite like this.  It was the scene out of a sci-fi novel so many of Riven’s people from Earth used to like.

F-grade and a few scattered E-grade signatures lit up her mana sense as two fleets of starships battled in a sky full of stars and nebulas - and the planet on one side of the backdrop made Athela realize she was now standing on a large, rocky moon of some kind.  Boxy metal craft with green light emanating from their engines were the offensive fleet supporting a ground force of what she could only assume to be some variant of earth golems that used siege weaponry to shoot magma based explosive devices at the defenders.

The defenders for their part were humans, but with rather tall and thin statures compared to the ones from Panu that she was so used to.  Their ships were fewer in number, sharper-looking, and appeared to be made of glass.  They were mostly bunkered up behind hundreds of layers of plasma shields that created a patchwork, pseudo-dome defensive array - and used similarly constructed plasma weapons such as rifles and swords to take on the tide of earth golems cased in molten rock.  The front lines of the fight were an absolute madhouse, and ramps lead up to different sets of battlements stacked one behind the other before coming to what appeared to be a small city - and then a palace of some kind in the very center.  The walls of both the battlements and the palace were created from white stone and engraved with purple runes all over that reinforced their defensive capabilities, as was evident by the way they often stood strong even when explosive detonations made it through the patchwork of independent plasma shields.  Many of the city’s smaller buildings were not so lucky, however, and numerous fires or craters now littered the landscape inbetween the surrounding battlements and the central palace.

As for Athela, she remained standing beside multiple blood spots on the lip of the moon’s crater she’d personally painted over the past few minutes.  Funnily enough the cultists would-

Ah, there was another one.  The portal began to shimmer and flux.

Athela rapidly condensed into a bloody pool underneath where the portal was located, waiting for the next target to arrive so she could set them on a cooldown too, and watched with an internal cackle as a familiar face came into view.

Splashing into the pool of blood that was Athela’s body, the drow woman death knight that Riven had fought on his very first quest here stepped onto the moon’s rocky terrain and blinked - looking up to stare at the battling fleets.

With her Total Silence ability still active, Athela immediately retook her arshakai form behind the death knight.  Her black, ruby studded tiara gleamed under the light of the nebulas and firefights overhead, and her bloodsilk black and red cloak flared about her while a malevolent wide smile took over her features.  Athela flicked her wrists and called the Twin Doves out of her heart space with practiced ease.  Two red katanas tore out of her chests, forming from spiraling ribbons of red liquid, and she then struck with two ‘Backstab’ martial arts just as ‘Mark of the Hunter’ activated.

[Mark of the Hunter (Blood): This martial art highlights potential threats in a large area around you and allows you to focus in on one of them.  Has a chance to reveal stealthed enemies depending on compared Perception, Willpower, and Luck.  All damage done to this target will include a 0.4% additional bleed damage that stacks with each strike, increases your chance of Critical Strikes against them by 7%, increases any attempts at stealth while stalking them by 5%, and allows you to pull on the mark just once - destroying the mark in their soul and giving a high chance to make your target freeze up in fear for 2 seconds.  Very High Cooldown.]

[Backstab (Shadow): Strike at the back of your enemy while remaining stealthed to your target.  If you are noticed by your target prior to the strike, this martial art will partially fail and only give the possibility of a minor bonus with critical damage.  If you successfully strike while remaining unnoticed, you will gain a much larger and guaranteed bonus to critical damage.  Critical strike damage ranged from 3x to 10x the normal damage done.  No cooldown.]

[The Twin Red Doves (Awakened Weapons, Dual-Wielding Set.  Blood Artifacts.  Twin Katanas.): 899 average damage on strike with each physical strike on flesh adding a guaranteed stack of the ‘Bleed’ debuff for damage over time.  Hidden strikes that land before an opponent is aware cause additional guaranteed damage of +5%.  If the strike is a critical hit, deal an additional x2 critical modifier.  These items, when bound to a wielder, may be stored in the heart of the wielder and withdrawn at will.  These items are nearly indestructible while the bound wielder is still alive.  Requires a Blood Affinity of over 51% to wield.

• Whispers of Agony: From time to time, these blades will whisper to you.  The stronger your bond, the louder they whisper, and the louder they whisper, the more pain your strikes inflict regardless of damage.

• The Red Tide: Unleash stamina, mana, or divinity into these blades via your Blood Sub-Pillar to charge ranged sweeping attacks in the form of a red crescent.  Damage and range depends on the amount of energy infused.]

Her red blades crashed into and through the bone armor of the death knight as spiraling ripples of kinetic critical energy tore it apart in a flash of bone and blood.  

[You have landed a critical hit.  Max Damage x6.]

[You have landed a critical hit.  Max Damage x9.]

[Additional x2 critical modifier applied.]

[Additional x2 critical modifier applied.]

[You have applied bleeding stacks.]

[You have applied bleeding stacks.]

[You have applied bleeding stacks.]

The death knight’s chest ripped open as Athela’s blades passed through with the force of her critical energies, and the surprised drow woman screamed in pained horror while activating some kind of ability.

Or at least she tried to.  But Athela sensed the pulse of mana before it fully manifested and pulled on Mark of the Hunter, shattering the mark inside the woman’s soul and causing her to freeze up.

The death knight fell to her knees with a gasp as Athela violently ripped her katanas out and unleashed her six arachnid legs from her back, the sharp black blades flaring out to either side of her before they slammed down into the warrior’s neck at different angles.

With a wrench, Athela decapitated the woman - flinging her head in a spinning, bloody spiral off to the side.

The death knight’s body went limp, hit the ground to begin dumping her fluids onto the rocky terrain, and she abruptly vanished as the system claimed her.

[You have defeated an enemy cultist.  She will respawn in 1 hour.  You have gained 4 Event Points.]

[You have charged your Tiara of Silent Killing by successfully killing a target without being noticed by anyone else.  100% chance to applying an additional 2x-8x critical strike damage from your next attack.]

Atheal looked down at the newest of her blood spots littering the ground and cackled viciously, shoved her katanas back into her heart, and began walking towards the battle in the distance.

Vanishing into the darkness, she became one with the shadows.

***

“Spider girl!  Spider girl, does whatever a spider girl does!”

Athela skittered over the heads of numerous warriors killing one another in the hallway below, humming softly to herself amidst the explosive barrage of skills and weapons only twelve feet underneath her current position.

Her Blood Weaver form was the smallest of her three forms and gave her the best chance of sneaking inside, and thus far it'd worked out pretty well.  

• +160% Bonus to Attempts at Stealth, +200 Perception, and altars Charisma points to Absolute Neutral while in Cute Wittle Blood Weaver form

• +400 Agility, +30% Bonus to Baseline Agility, Doubled Chance for Critical Strikes, and +20% Bonus to Attempts at Stealth while in Gluttonous Arshakai Form 

• +500 Strength, +1000 Sturdiness, Intelligence Matches Sturdiness, +20% to Strength and Sturdiness Baseline Stats while in Gluttonous Fae Drider Form

“What I need is a princess form.” Athela muttered to herself, turning a corner in the damaged hallway along the ceiling and coming to an abrupt halt when a turret spun her way.

“Shit!”

The turret fired, and she vanished in a puff of darkness as a clean edge of plasma annihilated the spot she’d been only a moment before.

Grumbling to herself, she watched the turret turn back around to settle on the hallway beneath in a ready position while she considered her next options.

Currently she was inside her ‘Limited Shroud Storage’.  It was a shadow ability that she’d originally been using in her Dryder form to store various trinkets, but more recently she’d figured out that - due to her small size in this blood weaver form - she could actually hide herself inside her own pocket of shadow as long as she didn’t change back into a dryder or arshakai.

It was a nifty trick, and she was proud of herself for figuring it out.

But despite her success at dodging that last attack, she still didn’t want to draw any attention by destroying that turret and was currently just waiting in what others would see as a cloudy dark patch of ceiling that more or less blended in with the surroundings.  It may even look like a scorch mark from the plasma that’d just been fired.  

The corner she’d just turned also let her see a large swath of humans setting up additional barricades and more turrets in anticipation of the firefight just around the bend coming their way - and they were right to do so as hundreds of molten earth golems continued to fight and die in an aggressive attempt to kill the humans guarding the passage.

A distraction was needed.

Or perhaps…

Her eyes flicked towards a dead female combatant in a white and gray engineer’s uniform - which was a stark contrast to the dark purple and silver uniforms of the warrior class these humans had.  She was human too, with a hole blown in her chest, and she’d been discarded as a corpse along with a couple of the men while the defenders desperately tried to hold the onslaught back.

“Leh sigh.”

***

It wasn't often that Athela got to use her shapeshifting abilities, but now was as good as any to try it.

Pulling herself out of the hallway’s corner where she’d been discretely changing her face and skin complexion in the dark, the skin felt stretched as she walked back into the light.  She had carved a shallow but bloody wound into her chest to match the hole in the uniform she’d stolen, and had tossed the corpse underneath other bodies in the ‘discard pile’ the defenders were currently using here.

Other dead were dragged by as humans of this moon base rapidly passed her by while she oriented herself, until one of them stopped and gestured to her with a gawking expression.  “You're mortally injured!  What by Drya’s name are you still doing here!!??  Get to the medical bay now!  And then come back to your post, that’s an order!”

“Yes cap!” Athela gave a salute, and she wasn’t sure whether or not it was the phrase - or the unfamiliar gesture - but the warrior blinked rapidly and shook his head before tossing another of the dead bodies onto the pile she’d just left before turning back to the front line.

Meanwhile, Athela was pretending to limp rapidly through the hallway full of other engineers setting up barricades and turrets.  Eyeing the one that’d fired at her earlier as it scanned a badge she’d picked up from the body, the turret let her go without issue.  She stuck her tongue out at it when she was all the way through, and then considered talking to another man who was quickly typing into a computer embedded into the side of the wall.

She was tempted to ask him where the commander’s quarters were, but then stopped herself.  She didn’t even know if they called their leaders ‘commanders’ here, and asking would be somewhat suspicious.  Not only that, but she was supposed to be headed to the medical bay and her sternum was still dripping blood down her chest with the self-inflicted wound.

Sighing again and ignoring the man’s strained expression when he turned her way, she continued down the hall and took a left when it came to a three-way fork.  Then she began exploring, and set off on what could only be described as a wild goose chase.

Hours passed, and the intricate nature of the base quickly became apparent as one room after another was scouted out while constantly brushing off concerned individuals who insisted on helping her to the medical bay.  She told them all to fuck off, in nicer words than that, insisting that she was fine - and she was also losing time being in this slow shape-shifted human form to boot.  But turrets were stationed all over the damn place in this underground bunker part of the defenses, and though she saw some war-hounds the size of horses outfitted in plasma-crafted armor - her shape shifting abilities were limited to arachnid and female-humanoid only.  She couldn’t change into a dog even if she wanted to, but it certainly would have made things faster in terms of getting around if she’d been able.

Intelligence hubs, ammo depots, armories and rushing groups of reinforcements were in high supply as the very base itself shook under the barrage from time to time.  It was inside one of these intelligence hubs on the outer rim of the base, in an attempt to skirt around the room towards another hallway that she thought would lead into the inner city, that she found herself in now.

Screens lit up with footage of the battle and troop movements from both enemies and allies alike.

“SQUADS 12 AND 78, REINFORCE SECTOR B11!  I REPEAT, REINFORCE SECTOR B11!”  The commanding officer in this part of the base screamed through the coms while his soldiers on the other side of the communications line died horrible, gruesome deaths.  “WE CANNOT ALLOW THEM TO TAKE THE SECTOR OR THIS ENTIRE WING OF THE BASE IS LOST!  YOU ARE THE LAST LINE BEFORE WE ARE FORCED TO RETREAT DEEPER INTO THE CITY!  THE CIVILIANS-”

BOOM

His voice was cut off as an explosion eradicated the wall to Athela’s left, sending a cloud of molten rock and metal inwards as a titanic figure of an earth golem barrelled through.  Screams of the humans rose up as they tried to flee, but there were too many of them and now there was only one way out - the small hallway Athela had been trying to get to before big-and-bad made an “OH YEAH” kool-aid appearance seconds beforehand.

The golem, for his part, was flanked by a few others that’d apparently dug a tunnel through the earth to get here before crashing through the metal wall.  Up close and personal, they were a lot more intimidating than they’d been far away.  Especially this one in the front, considering he was both bulkier and taller than any of the others Athela had seen so far.

Standing at nearly twenty feet tall - He had no eyes, but veins of magma pulsed at his joints and all along his featureless rock face.  A huge blood-stained axe was held in one hand, also covered in veins of magma, and in the other hand he what was akin to a bazooka - which was currently aimed at the mass of struggling people that were screaming in terror and attempting to all squeeze through the one hallway leading away.

For the few brave souls who were charging the golem, they were flattened by the other stone compatriots flanking him.  One of the golems fell to a rifle blast and a plasma sword to the midsection, crumbling into a pile in death, while the humans sustained a dozen casualties almost instantly as they were caught off guard.

“Jorgi the Destroyer…” One of the officers in purple uniform let out a horrified whisper, eyes wide and stepping back from the large foremost figure while ignoring the other soldiers who were quickly being killed in an attempt to fight the golems off.  The officer fell to his knees, slack jawed, as the bazooka began to light up with energy in a charged attack.  “We… We’re doomed…”

Athela, for her part, was caught between a rock and a hard place and figured she didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.  Especially because the bazooka was pointed just to the right of where she currently stood.  Despite the creature being in what she felt was likely low E-grade, she’d have to fight.

So much for the stealth approach.

The bazooka let off a discharge of molten energy, the crowd let out a desperate cry, and the room lit up with a flash.

A cloud of steam exploded between the crowd of humans and the earth golems, but there was no actual impact.  Surprised eyes turned back as a new figure loomed in the flickering lights of the underground bunker, and the sound of sharp, scythe-like legs smashed into the metal floor of the room between them.

Crystalline Maw Cannon activated, and a torrent of sin, glacial, and storm energies ripped open from Athela’s gluttonous vertical mouth across her front - tearing into the golems like a battering ram.  The explosion detonated and flung the cloud of steam away, revealing the huge archdemon as frost began to accumulate around the room and her body began to spark with currents of lightning.  Four red eyes over a grinning smile narrowed, and crystalline flowers began to bloom along her white skin as spiders began crawling out from the mouth that’d so recently obliterated so many of the earth golems inside the advance tunnel.

Jorgi the Destroyer picked himself out of the crater he’d been lodged in further down the tunnel and looked at the scattered remnants of his soldiers, before turning his gaze upon Athela’s form that was even larger than his own.  His voice came out as gravel upon cement, and seemed to come from somewhere with his face despite lacking a mouth.  “Archdemon… Legendary status.  I did not realize the humans here dabbled in dark magics and the art of summoning.  Perhaps… Perhaps this will allow for a good fight after all.  A diamond in the rough, found amongst the piles of organic shit your meatbag masters have otherwise thrown at me.”

He lifted his axe as it reformed in his hand from the shards Athela had blasted away, lowered his head, and gestured at her with his free hand - ignoring the still smoldering line gauged into his front that the blast had created not long ago.  “Come to me, demon.  Let us dance.”