13-31. Might and Consequence
Rivers of vitality, dense and mighty, rushed through Elijah’s body as he clashed with Vhalor. Arrows tore into his scales even as reflections leaped free of the cloud of mirror shards floating above him. The unseen assassin knifed in, leaving only a ripple of air in their wake as they ripped through Elijah’s side. Spears of fire seared his wings, and his Mantle of Authority fluttered under an attack from the Stillborn.
Vhalor’s sword arced through the air, leaving a stream of afterimages before it slammed into Elijah’s side. It cut deep, hewing his scales and exposing his ribs. A front kick sent Elijah tumbling backward as thick drops of healing rain fell from the sky.
His flesh mended.
His scales grew back together.
And when he found his feet, he was once again whole.
That was the effect of Nature’s Bloom, combined with Blessing of the Grove and Wild Resurgence. All three spells were enhanced by his dragon form, pushing them to new heights of power.
But even as he planted his feet and threw himself back into the fray, Elijah knew that if he’d not recently advanced his body cultivation, that sword strike – simple though it might have been – would have cleaved him in two.
He didn’t have time to think about that, though.
Not with the weight of building multiple spells pressing down on his mind.
He didn’t target Vhalor, though. Instead, he threw Nature’s Claim at the backline fighters, assuming they were far more vulnerable than the heavily armored Emerald Tyrant. A second later, he was rewarded by the sight of mushrooms, thick and yellow, erupting from the surrounding soldiers’ backs.
That enraged Vhalor, who attacked him with simmering fury.
Elijah met his attacks with tooth and claw, hammering the demi-god with every ounce of strength he could muster. It did no good, though. The armor was impenetrable, and Vhalor – as a peak demi-god with a martial class – was stronger than Elijah.
Fortunately, Elijah wasn’t entirely reliant on his physical prowess.
As Nature’s Claim filled the air with yellow spores, which spread the fungal infection throughout the mostly-destroyed Arbor Crown, Elijah dialed up another spell. Glittering moths, each one pulsing with dense vitality and ethera, manifested all around him.
At first, none of the members of the Synod noticed them. That changed when the budding swarm attacked, adding their afflictions to the fungal infections already tearing through the small army.
Marith, known as the Bloomless Sovereign, stood in the center. She blazed with bright vitality, her power snaking out to cure her soldiers. So long as no one took care of the conjured moths, it was a waste of ethera.
It only took the Flame Warden, in his red armor, a moment to recognize that simple reality. He cast flames in every direction, turning the moths to ash. Somehow, the weaker soldiers were never touched, showing Lurien’s incredible control.
But Elijah had never intended for Eternal Plague to take anyone out.
It just hadn’t had time to build. And besides, he wasn’t that interested in killing anyone. He just wanted to escape.
That was why, throughout the entire fight, he’d been holding another spell in his chest. It continued to compound, even as he bodily fought the Emerald Tyrant. His ongoing healing abilities kept him alive, but he could feel his core rapidly emptying. Fighting as a dragon came with increased potency, but at the cost of similarly inflated ethera usage.
As the battle went on for a few more minutes, Elijah continued to use every ability at his disposal. But it was obvious that he couldn’t stand before the combined might of the Synod. That was when their personalities won through.
Elijah saw the grotesque joy on their faces each time one of their attacks landed. He could feel their building bloodlust, the anticipation of the kill evident in their every movement.
They didn’t just want to kill him. They wanted him to suffer. They wanted him to feel small. They wanted him defeated, body, mind, and soul. Crushed beneath their boots, just like the people who depended on them for safety.
Through it all, Elijah’s spell built upon itself, and to the point where he felt as if he was going to burst. However, he soon discovered a secondary advantage of cultivating his body to the silver tier – the ability to compound his spells had expanded alongside the strength of his physical form.
Finally, when he was running on fumes, he finally released it.
Lightning Domain was a spell he rarely used. Not because it was ineffective, but rather, because he usually had better options available. If he wanted to kill a group of enemies, Eternal Plague was far more effective and efficient.
But this was one of those few times when it became the appropriate option.
The Synod – or their underlings – never saw it coming.
The air ionized, and a peal of thunder echoed across the entire plateau. Elijah felt it in his bones, and for the briefest of seconds, the world went still. Then, energy exploded from Elijah’s body. Huge whips of electricity tore across the Arbor Crown while smaller tendrils of lightning arced between them, forming a web of destructive energy that could not be stopped. It hit Vhalor first, and the demi-god seized under the current. His sword dropped to the ground as smoke flowed free of his armor.
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But it didn’t stop there.
It swept across the already-destroyed plaza, slamming into the army, and it didn’t stop until well after it had passed outside Elijah’s sensory capabilities. Buildings burned. Men and women died. And the powerful demi-gods of the Synod fell.
Elijah could have continued the attack.
He probably should have.
But he was spent. His core had all but guttered out, and despite the potency of the compounded Lightning Domain, he’d not killed any members of the Synod. Already, the Bloomless Soveriegn was beginning to recover, and when she did, the others would be healed.
Elijah had never intended to kill them, though. Despite his disapproval of how they ran their city, they were not the enemy. He’d already achieved his goal, which was to access the Branch. Had he gotten what he wanted? Not at all. He still hadn’t evolved into a demi-god. But he could feel the tide of hope attached to the sliver of crystal he’d cleansed.
It was the key to everything.
He just needed to figure out how to use it.
More importantly, he couldn’t do that with a bunch of demi-gods trying to kill him. He needed to escape, which was why he’d chosen to use Lightning Domain. It was never meant to slay the Synod, but rather, to give him an opening to flee.
With lightning still arcing from his body, Elijah leaped, then flapped his wings to gain altitude. Just as he began his transformation into the Shape of the Sky, Vhalor recovered from the seizure imposed by Lightning Domain. With a growl, the emerald-clad demi-god threw himself after Elijah. His growl became a roar as his sword swept through the air.
Elijah banked.
But he couldn’t avoid the blade.
Not entirely.
It bit deep, slicing easily through the much less durable form. His guts spilled across the Arbor Crown as Vhalor reached for his wing.
Elijah used Lightning Rush just as the Emerald Tyrant made contact.
Pain soared through Elijah’s mind as he became a bolt of lightning tearing across the landscape.
He’d gained a passenger, though.
A few seconds later, when Elijah once again returned to solid form, he realized that Vhalor was still hanging on. The journey hadn’t been easy on him, either. His body was still smoking, and he’d fallen unconscious. But even as Elijah plummeted toward the ground, the Emerald Tyrant recovered.
Elijah panicked.
His entire plan hinged on using Lightning Rush to escape. But now, though he’d traveled hundreds of miles from Ithalon, he hadn’t done so alone. On top of that, his core was practically empty, and Vhalor clearly wasn’t ready to concede.
There was hope, though.
And it came in the form of a ribbon of corruption in the distance. With his guts spilling from him, Elijah made a bee-line toward the river he’d crossed what felt like a lifetime ago. As he drew closer, Vhalor continued to recover. He’d lost his sword, but that didn’t stop him from climbing Elijah’s legs and reaching for his wings.
Elijah shifted.
The Emerald Tyrant’s fingers found nothing but hard shell as Elijah took on the Shape of the Sea. With the momentum of his flight still driving him forward, he arced toward the Abyssal Serpent. His aim proved true, and he splashed down in the center of the twisting river.
Corruption, dense and corrosive, slammed into him. But after what he’d experienced at the top of that obelisk, he knew he could endure. Clearly, the demi-god’s body cultivation – or pain tolerance – was not so advanced.
He screamed, sending bubbles rising to the surface as Elijah felt the massive surge of attributes from Ocean Native kicking in. He paddled forward, moving with such velocity Vhalor was torn free.
Massive tentacles – attached to a crocodile monster – surged forward, wrapping around the man and dragging him to the depths of the river.
Elijah briefly considered following. If he could put Vhalor down, that would be one less enemy to oppose him. But his presence had attracted plenty of attention from other monsters that called the river home.
Some were small, and they tried to latch onto him and drain his vitality. Others were quite large, and their attacks were much more straightforward. However, with Elijah’s newly silver-tier body, combined with the innate power of the Shape of the Sea, he managed to tear through them.
It reminded him of the frenzy that followed his toppling of the massive, factory-turned-automaton he’d fought in the Chimeric Forge. Back then, he’d fallen into a lake, where he’d been forced to fight through hundreds of powerful monsters just to get back to shore.
Thankfully, in this case, the shore was much closer, and he reached it after only a few minutes. Even that was almost enough to kill him, and he dragged himself onto land, having incurred dozens of new wounds.
He didn’t stop there, though.
He couldn’t. Not with Vhalor still in the area. And Elijah didn’t fool himself into believing the powerful demi-god would succumb to the crocodile monster. He was injured. Probably drained, too. But one did not reach that level without significant willpower.
No – Vhalor would survive. Elijah was certain of it. And he didn’t want to be around when the Emerald Tyrant emerged from the depths. So, it was with no small degree of fatigue that Elijah used the last bits of his stored ethera to take on the Shape of the Scourge and use Guise of the Stalker.
His body shook with ethera deprivation as he sprinted across the terrain. He didn’t look back. He didn’t slow for any potential fights. In fact, he scarcely even noticed the terrain. Instead, he kept running for an entire day before he forced himself to take shelter beneath a jagged overhang.
There, he waited, still cloaked in stealth.
He watched for any sign of pursuit. In that single day, he’d covered hundreds of miles, but he had felt just how powerful the members of the Synod were. And he wouldn’t put it past them to continue hunting him.
So, he waited, and as he did so, his body and ethereal stores recovered. Throughout his recent journey, he’d been forced to clutch his stomach, just to keep his innards from spilling onto the terrain. But now, he had enough ethera to fuel a few casts of Wild Resurgence.
Still, he hesitated. Using any ability would run the risk of drawing attention – even when he was under the influence of Guise of the Stalker. Elijah wouldn’t risk that.
Instead, he waited a few hours before once again resuming his journey.
For two more days, he traveled. Often, he backtracked, laying false trails and using brief bursts of Shape of the Sky to break the tracks. And finally, he reached a ruined city – a little bigger than Dravkein – where he found his way into a building and deployed his tent.
After spending a few hours healing his wounds, he took a shower, then, at last, allowed himself to rest and recover.
He’d learned a lot from his encounter with the Synod, but the most important lesson was that, while he’d gained quite a bit of power, he couldn’t really contend with full-fledged, late-stage demi-gods. Not as he was.
He needed to get stronger, be it through cultivation or some other means.
As he lay back on his pillows, he realized that nothing had really changed.
But then he thought about the crystal. The sliver of the Branch he’d managed to cleanse. He retrieved it from his Arcane Loop, and when he looked upon that six-inch span of clear crystal, he acknowledged that at least one thing had changed.
Now, he had a little more hope. If he could cleanse that bit, maybe he could heal an entire Branch. And if he did that, perhaps he could evolve his class in a way that didn’t feel like anathema to his very existence.
Sighing, Elijah wondered if he’d made a mistake by not taking the offered evolution. It wasn’t perfect, but if that was the only way…
Those thoughts circled his mind as he finally allowed himself to slip into unconsciousness.