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

The world became a furnace as Elijah spilled out of the portal and tumbled toward the cracked earth of the Painted Wastes. He barely felt it, and not just because his body’s durability had taken a massive step forward since he’d first set foot in the Broken Crown. That was part of it, but even more impactful was the bone-deep fatigue that held him in its tight grip.

He hit the ground a few moments later, only to be assaulted by a swarm of wasps. Without even moving, he shoved some ethera into his ragged Mantle of Authority, enforcing his will upon his surroundings. Their wings stopped moving, and they plummeted to the ground, impacting in a cloud of dust. Some died before they hit the ground. Others took a few moments, almost as if they were suffocating. In that time, they tried to crawl away, but their limbs couldn’t quite motivate them.

Elijah felt it all.

But even then, he took a long few minutes – during which the wasps all died – to gather his wits. As he did, he summoned Grove Conduit, Blessing of the Grove, and Wild Resurgence to fill him full of vitality. His body drank greedily from that stream of healing, and slowly, it spread throughout his parched form.

His previous supposition that dragons took far more healing to accomplish the same goal proved entirely accurate, and he used more than half the contents of his core to push him to a point where he could stand. Once he did, he finally looked around to take stock of his situation.

He’d appeared half a mile away from the dragon’s skeleton and the floating keep that served as its crown. As such, the vespirans and wasps barely paid him any mind – largely because it was night, and most of them had retired to their nests.

Lucky.

Elijah had no desire to fight another battle. Not after what he’d experienced during his last stretch in the Primal Realm. From the moment he’d absorbed the Worldseed, he’d been forced into a running battle without end. It had culminated in his fight against the blue dragon – whose name Elijah had never discovered – but his current condition was the combination of all the events that had come before.

He could heal from all sorts of injuries. Even more now that he had access to Mycelial Regrowth. However, there was a hidden cost to doing so. A level of fatigue that could, in a pinch, be ignored, but still stuck with him long after his body had reached perfect condition.

Elijah felt that now, and more keenly than ever before.

His first instinct was to simply use Roots of the World Tree and return to his grove. Once there, he could spend as long as he needed in recovery, safe and sound. He could inspect his gains, collect his reward, and plan his next moves.

He chose not to do that, though. He a couple of tasks to accomplish before he teleported home. To that end, he stretched his wings out wide, blocking the multi-colored aurora caused by the wasp pheromones. Not for the first time, he marveled at their appearance. They functioned much like any other set of wings, though with an added bit of magic to take care of some of the more physically impossible aspects. However, they looked like nothing so much as a pair of thick branches, from which grew a host of green leaves.

He also felt the mossy mane that ran from the crown of his head down his spine and to his tail. When he looked at his claws, he saw that the keratin resembled thorns, and he suspected that his teeth had a similar composition. He had become a blend of tree and dragon, and it fit in ways he couldn’t really explain.

The bottom line was that he just felt comfortable.

So, despite his fatigue, he took off with no small degree of confidence. Soon enough, he reached his top speed, which was very nearly as fast as he could have flown in Shape of the Sky before entering the Broken Crown. It was also much stronger, far more durable, and a good deal more imposing.

Nobody wanted to pick a fight with a dragon.

Still, when the sun started to rise over the horizon, he retreated into one of the entrances to the Hollow Depths, where he took shelter from the pheromone-laced air. Doing so required him to shift into a smaller form, so he returned to his human shape.

Oddly, it didn’t quite fit him as well as being a dragon, but it felt almost as appropriate. So, was he a true dragon? Or was he a man? Both, perhaps? He’d have to ask Kirlissa next time they met, which could very well be when he finally went to the Empire of Scale.

After everything he’d experienced in the Broken Crown, he was more interested in that than ever. But he still had a lot of work to do on Earth before he could make that particular trip.

Once he found a large hollow a few miles deep, he deployed his tent and finally stripped down and took a shower. Using his soap was cathartic, and not just because he could rid himself of the accumulated grime that came from his recent experiences. Swimming around in spider hemolymph had left him coated in a greasy film that hadn’t dissipated even when he left Shape of the Sea behind.

But mostly, Elijah reveled in a deeper cleaning. His soap was powerful because it drew impurities out of the body and enhanced what was already there. So, it cleaned him inside as well as outside.

Once he’d scrubbed himself properly, he entered his tent and took four meals from within his Arcane Loop. As it turned out, that was not enough to satiate his hunger, so he ended up eating two more before he finally groaned and lay back on his bear fur blanket.

He didn’t allow himself to sleep, though. There were a couple of major notifications screaming for his attention. Oddly enough, the least of them was the one informing him that he had conquered the Primal Realm.