Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO STUBBING AUGUST 15)

The heat enveloped him, clinging to his skin and burning his lungs. The Temperate trait of Elijah’s Cloak of the Iron Bear helped mitigate all but the worst of it, but what made it through was still enough to send sweat pouring off of him in buckets. The second he’d stepped into the massive smithy, Guise of the Unseen had been stripped away, so, he’d abandoned the Shape of Venom for his human form.

He knew he was being watched, and by multiple sets of eyes. He’d caught sight of a few golems – huge, hulking creatures of metal and rock – but they’d ignored him as they went about their business tending to the forge.

Elijah couldn’t figure out what they were doing, but he wasn’t terribly fussy about it, either. He didn’t need to know what was going on. He just needed to kill the person in charge. And he was more than prepared to make it happen. He’d spent months in the Primal Realm. Outside, the world had continued spinning. No one really knew where he was, either.

It wasn’t the first time he’d felt some urgency concerning the completion of the Primal Realm, but with what felt like the end drawing so close, that sense flared until it was the only thing he could think about. He took steps to limit that as he tried to focus on his environment, but it was not easy.

To help in that endeavor, Elijah catalogued the features of the smithy. It looked like a giant-size version of what Carmen was building back in Ironshore. Sure, there were differences – like the prevalence of magma fueling the forge, the use of golems, and the absence of ringing hammer blows echoing through the space – but it was similar enough that he couldn’t fail to make the connection.

Elijah continued on for more than a mile until, at last, he reached the center of the space. It was characterized by an enormous anvil densely covered in fanciful runes. They pulsed with energy, glowing and dimming with every passing second.

But Elijah was more interested in the thing standing before it.

At least forty feet tall and shaped like a man, it looked like a bronze statue. If it wasn’t for the fact that it was moving, Elijah might have mistaken it for one. However, that would have only lasted as long as it took him to sense the dense ethera gathered in its chest.

It looked at him with a featureless face of smooth and silvery metal, and from somewhere within, a voice emanated. “You killed the abomination,” it intoned in a surprisingly human voice. The inflection was right, but there was something missing. Something important. “For that, I should thank you. The Failed Iteration was always a black mark on my otherwise pristine record.”

“You aren’t a Vey’thaalian.”

It chuckled – an odd sound, coming from an entirely stationary form – then said, “I am not. They are a primitive race, ripe for improvement. They have failed to live up to their potential, but I am optimistic that they will prove a potent material with which to continue the Great Work.”

It shifted, and Elijah saw that it carried a huge blacksmith’s hammer in one hand and a wrench in the other. Both were stylized and densely inscribed with glyphs. Elijah could feel their power even from almost fifty feet away. What’s more, he felt incredibly small in the presence of such a creature.

Weak, too.

It was obviously a higher level than him. Perhaps it had reached the peak of the ascended grade, but Elijah very much doubted it. It was close to level two-hundred though. Of that, he was absolutely certain. It was not an insurmountable deficit of power – especially given his exceptional cultivation – but Elijah knew better than to underestimate the thing.

“The Engineer has given me a quest, you know,” it said, stepping out from behind the anvil to reveal that it had four legs. “Would you like to see?”

Before Elijah could answer, the thing waved a metal hand, and a system notification appeared floating above the anvil.