Chapter 61 (Patreon)

Chapter 61

She’d gained a new silencing ability or trait concerning the movements of her body, in addition to the elongating razor-sharp tongue she could now use as a weapon.

As he silently admired her new look.  She dropped from the ceiling and sputtered a cough of irritation.

“Ugh!  I can’t seem to get this shape shifting thing under control!”

Riven watched as she furrowed her brows in concentration, saw her nose began to shift slightly - but then it quickly reverted back to the normal, symmetrical features she originally had a second later.  “I’m sure you’ll get it under control soon enough.  How do you like the changes?”

Athela brushed the silky black hair out of her eyes, hissing in irritation at the failure of her shape shifting, and stood to her full height while looking her new body up and down with her glowing red eyes.  She turned around, looked at her backside, felt up her bare muscles and wiggled her eyebrows Riven’s way seductively.  “How do YOU like them!?”

“Oh shut up!” Riven laughed and threw his cloak to nail Athela in the face, knocking her over as she screeched in protest and toppled over.  It was obvious she was going to have a lot of coordination training to do before she got ahold of her new body, as a simple act like that would have never knocked her over while she’d still been a full-blown spider.  “Put that on and stop playing around.  We have to get out of the dungeon and I’m truly tired of being here.”

“Indeed!” Athela spluttered as she spun a cord of blood-webbing from her fingertips and launched them at Azmoth with a splat.  “YUS!  I STILL GOT IT BABY!!!  You can keep the robe too, I don’t want it.  I’M A FREE SPIRIT!  Your mortal clothes can’t hold me down!  Oh, and Azmoth - I like the tail!”

“Thanks Athela.  You look pretty.”

“How sweet of you to think so, Azmoth!  I wish I got compliments like that from our master, but he’s too busy eating people to realize perfection when he sees it!”

Riven stared blankly back at them, then sighed and shook his head.  Despite her shenanigans, he was really glad to have her back.  Same with Azmoth.  He’d missed them both, and he was looking forward to introducing them to his sister.  He hadn’t told Azmoth or Athela about Allie just yet, but he was sure that they’d get along.

***

“Exit Dungeon.”

Light bloomed overhead and directly in front of him as he spoke the words aloud.

The portal erupted before them in the form of a set of translucent stairs leading up to a spinning vortex a couple yards above them.

This was it.  He was finally getting out of here.

Meanwhile Athela cackled with delight and playfully nudged Azmoth before whispering something into his ear.  Riven stared up at the spinning lights, pondering what was awaiting him in the next step of this strange adventure his life had become, before the two demons abruptly picked Riven up and flung him into the portal headfirst even despite the profanities he threw their way before he was tossed unceremoniously upwards.

[Pre-Tutorial and Tutorial trials have been completed.  Dao advancement is now possible.]

[You have exited Dungeon Negrada.  You have completed your modified Tutorial and are now embarking on the beginnings of your new life on a newly created planet.  Earth has been merged with worlds Zazir and Elhisterii to form the new world of Panu.  Of the 53 billion original participants from these 3 worlds, 32 billion participants still remain.  Of the 32 billion remaining participants, 28 billion have finished their tutorials while 4 billion are still finishing up.  Do not be concerned, as this is within normal parameters for early integration death rates for tutorials.]

[All identification information prior to this point was previously enhanced by the system due to the Tutorial parameters, resulting in low tier identifier-class level information on all items.  Identification information parameters returning to normal.  To acquire more information on your surroundings: obtain the identifier class, obtain an equivalent class, or utilize someone who has such a class.]

[New Quest: Finding Your Friends - As promised by the Administrator, your completion of Chalgathi’s Trials and the Tutorial Trials have brought you together in close proximity with your family and friends.  Allie has survived her trials and continues to live on.  Once per day, you will receive a ping on Allie’s general location to let you know which way to go.  Finding her and completing this quest will grant you XP.]

The portal created by the system erupted into the new world, violently expelling Riven and his two demonic minions from a height of six feet into the air and landing them on a wet, grassy hilltop.

Landing with a thud, Riven scowled and rubbed his head.  He was still covered in blood, completely disoriented after the transition with a mix of warring emotions.  On one hand he was delighted to hear that his sister and friend were alive!  By god did that make him happy to hear!  But on the other hand, the system had told him he’d be reunited after the trials were done… In his opinion he’d been cheated, as they were just ‘nearby’ and he still had to find them.

Frankly, the bastard system had lied to him.  Or at the very least it’d only given him a half-truth.  And why had it only talked about Allie?  It didn’t mention Jose at all.

Sitting up and letting his eyes adjust to the dim light, he noticed how much more comfortable his vision was when staring into the darker places across the landscape surrounding them – as opposed to when he looked up to the patches and rays of sunlight streaming down from the gray, cloud-covered heavens.  It wasn’t that he couldn’t look that way, but it definitely wasn’t comfortable.

A light drizzle of raindrops was pouring down onto a temperate forest along the base of the mountain they stood on, and a valley was a little further down from their position.  In that valley was what looked like a small city or large town depending on personal definition, but it was at least a couple miles away and hard to make out due to the rain.

Cranking his neck left and feeling it crack, he sighed with relief and watched as the rainwater cleansed his bloodstained, dirty skin.  The blood began to fall off in coagulated clumps, and soon it revealed the ivory complexion underneath.

Startled at the change, he looked closer.  His skin had always been mildly olive – still white, but he’d definitely had a touch of olive complexion.  Now it wasn’t even close, he was very pale white, and the skin was devoid of any blemishes.  Hadn’t he only been just slightly pale the last time he saw his reflection in Negrada’s sacrificial chamber?  He’d changed even more over the past day. His jaw dropped slightly, and he stood up to walk over to a pool of water collecting in a divot along the hillside.  There, in the dim reflection of the puddle, was his face staring right back.

Even despite the ripples that the drizzle poured on, he could still easily make out his features – and just as Athela had said, he looked startlingly good.  His cheekbones had come up slightly, his chin smoothed out, and it had the same ivory look to his skin as his hands.  His brown hair was the same, but he looked like a model… and his eyes were now a bright red that  gave off a very faint glow.  Touching his face and feeling out his new features, he just shook his head as the rainwater washed off the majority of the blood.

“Told you!  You look pretty!” Athela stated happily as she joined him to look down at Riven’s reflection.  Her dark hair drifted over her own red eyes as her long black tongue snaked out and latched onto a nearby cricket before tearing it back into her mouth to chomp down on.  “Er – Handsome.  I can still tell it’s you though.  Azmoth, you ok over there?”

Riven and Athela both turned to look back at the huge fire-attuned demon who was picking himself up off the ground and looking absolutely miserable in the downpour.  He looked SO miserable in fact, that Riven though he was going to have a mental breakdown at any second.  With the way Azmoth’s large armored body shook with disgust as he spat repetitively, Riven couldn’t help but loudly snicker.

“You’ll be fine.” Riven said with a laugh as he waved a hand at Azmoth as if to tell the huge brute to get over it.  “It’s just rainwater.”

“AZMOTH DOES NOT LIKE RAIN WATER!”

The flustered infant demon bellowed a roar to the heavens with all four obsidian sets of claws stretched out, and a blast of flame tore skywards off his armored body.  His immense muscles, completely devoid of skin between fused metal plates, tensed and rippled in the exertion as he screamed an angry tantrum upwards into the shimmering sky of rain and stormclouds.

“Oh don’t be so dramatic!” Athela crowed with amusement, extending her four long spider legs to prop her up and hoist her over the ground with stunning speed to tower over even the more brutish demon for just a minute.  “Just flare up or something, it’ll evaporate.  You’re hotheaded as it is already and no doubt you shan't have a problem purging some tiny, itty bitty droplets!”

Athela cackled and avoided a swipe from one of Azmoth’s claws, and she glanced over her shoulder to catch Riven staring.  She raised an eyebrow teasingly.  “What are you staring at?  Did I do something wrong?”

Riven shook his head, unblinkingly, and he slowly stood up with his black, gnarled black staff in his hand.  “I’m not staring at you… I’m staring at that.”

Athela and Azmoth both turned to where Riven had nodded, and a moment later they wore the same expression as Riven.  There, only a dozen yards off, was an overgrown gas station.

The structure looked like it’d been torn out of the earth along with half of the connected parking lot, then had been transplanted to land smack dab in the middle of nowhere while leaning crookedly at a slant along the hill’s side.  The glass door was ripped off its hinges and had been thrown to the left, and a couple of the windows were shattered – showing a dark interior that Riven’s eyes could now easily penetrate.

There were shelves that’d once held food, now all empty.  A cashier’s station had been hammered with a club or baseball bat, leaving dents and bent metal along the counter.  The lights along the ceiling all lacked power, and as Riven came closer he saw there were two half-eaten human bodies on the floor.

The sight was gruesome, and the remains were starting to decay with a swarm of flies circling the corpses.  Riven bent down a few feet from the bodies, evaluating the shredded T-shirt on one and the half-torn jeans on the other.  Both were young men, and had obviously had some very violent last moments before passing.  Whatever had eaten them was very big given the size of the bite marks on what remained.

“Brutal.” Riven stated glumly.  “I’m really hoping this place isn’t as bad as the dungeon we…”

His voice trailed off as an unfamiliar scent hit his nostrils like a tidal wave.  It smelled like wet dog, and came in conjunction with the sound of a beating heart that was growing faster and faster in pace.  Riven’s new vampiric senses also picked up the crunching of leaves  from the tree line a little ways away, and his red eyes slowly rose to peer into the forest from over the border of his runic mask.

It likely didn’t know he could see it at this distance and kept to the shadows, hulking down between two bushes and reading itself to spring forward.  It was something like a cross between a gigantic wolf and a bear – but was neither.  It was covered in brown fur: too large to be a wolf, too elongated to be a bear, and had small tufts of darker black fur coursing down its back.

[Mountain Warg]

*Picture of town/city below them from their viewpoint on the mountain is attached*