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

For a moment, silence reigned over the square. Elijah stood at the bottom of the inverted pyramid, looking up at the enemies surrounding him. The automatons were all but identical to the ones he’d fought in the maze, but they differed in a couple of key ways. The first was that they were slightly larger, measuring closer to twenty feet tall than fifteen. With that additional height came breadth, and to carry the extra weight, they sported a third leg similar to the giant automaton that had rampaged through the first incarnation of Eden.

And as was usually the case, size correlated with power. Elijah wasn’t certain how strong the artificial creatures were, but he knew that, with so many, he would be sorely tested.

But there was one other major difference between his previous encounters and his current situation.

He was no longer constrained.

Not by a narrow maze. Not by a need to protect his companions. And after spending months adapting to his new power, not by his own inexperience. For the first time since the last stages of the Broken Crown, he felt free to completely let loose.

If his enemies were more than just glorified machines, he might’ve taken the chance to utter a pithy warning. But as it was, they were ill-equipped to comprehend his wit. So, he forewent conversation, and went straight to business.

He led with Blessing of the Grove, the radius of which he could push to more than two-hundred yards. At the same time, he cast Grove Conduit, enveloping himself in an atmosphere of dense and familiar ethera coupled with equally thick vitality. Some of that mingled with the sterile atmosphere characteristic of the Aureum, but mostly, it pushed that unattributed ethera out.

Finally, Elijah transformed, taking on his draconic shape as he vaulted into the air. Even as his body elongated and shifted form, he bounded off a summoned cushion of air, narrowly avoiding an ethereal beam. It kept going, slicing into the building on the other side of the square and cutting a massive wound into its side.

That was confirmation of the power within those automatons. After all, Elijah had felt just how strong the walls within the city were, and that beam had cut through them like they were nothing, leaving only molten stone behind.

Elijah’s transformation completed, and after a quick beat of his wings, he gained a few hundred feet of altitude. He could have easily kept going, climbing another thousand feet to escape into the open sky. But that would not have been nearly as satisfying as what he had planned.

Once he reached the apex of his climb, he tucked his branch-like wings and dove. The leaves rustled as the wind of his passage whipped past him. A trio of beams ascended, cutting through the air with blistering heat and potent energy. He used his tail to shift his descent just enough to avoid them.

And then, he hit one of the automatons with all the force of a twenty-ton mass of muscle and scales. The sound of wrenching metal and sizzling ethera filled the air as Elijah followed his dive-bomb with a savage attack meant to eviscerate the creature’s artificial body.

Even as Elijah applied his massive and unadulterated strength to the task at hand, the other automatons responded with predictable and cold fury. More than a dozen beams of ethera tore across the intervening distance, slamming into Elijah’s scales with enough force to send him tumbling away. More troublingly, all that power, concentrated as it was, melted his scales and set his wings aflame. The smell of charred meat filled the air, unnoticed by Elijah, who was doing everything he could to hold onto his foe.

He managed it, and by the time he came to a skidding stop, he had ripped the automaton’s chestplate from its body. It didn’t remain idle, though. Instead, it fought back, raking its claw-like hands across Elijah’s body even as it erupted with short bursts of pure ethera that added to Elijah’s agony.

He ignored it, snapping out like a striking snake and wrapping his jaws around the creature’s core. Flaring Heart of the Tempest, he swung his neck like a whip, releasing the core. It flew away like a supersonic bullet, but even then, it only traveled a hundred yards before exploding.

The eruption added to the cacophony of ongoing battle outside the square, but Elijah was more concerned with the massive shockwave tearing across the intervening distance. He rolled, taking shelter beneath the now-inert automaton, but the protection it provided was meager indeed.

Thankfully, his healing spells – augmented by his dragon form – flooded his body with vitality. It wasn’t as powerful as the regeneration from Shape of Spores’ Mycelial Regrowth, but it was enough to allow him to weather the storm of ethera. When the effects of the explosion faded, the true healing began.

His charred flesh sloughed off, replaced by new muscle, and his scales regrew. The fires raging across his branch-like wings extinguished beneath the torrent of rain that came from Blessing of the Grove, and the leaves sprouted anew. In only a few seconds, he was back to full health.

But that didn’t come without downsides.

The dragon form augmented his spells by a significant degree, but not without inflated cost. That bout of healing had taken a full third of his accumulated ethera, and while the eighty-one apertures of his mind were steadily drawing in more to replace what had been lost, there was no way his regeneration could keep pace with such a massive expenditure.

Thankfully, the remaining automatons hadn’t escaped the effects of the blast, either. At the epicenter were two piles of twisted and twitching metal. Not dead, but with their limbs broken, they couldn’t move more than a few inches. That meant they were out of the fight for the moment, though Elijah knew from previous experience that the things could affect some degree of repairs. Not enough to regain full potency, but enough to get them back on their feet and into the fight.

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The rest of the automatons had experienced varying degrees of damage. Those closest to the blast were the worst off, with those furthest away having barely been affected at all. Still, even those had been knocked from their feet, giving Elijah a chance to flip the battle on its head and gain an advantage.

After his recovery was complete, he pounced on the next closest creature. As he did so, he twin-cast Nature’s Claim and Eternal Plague, filling the air with glittering blue locusts and yellow spores. Mushrooms erupted from the automaton’s metallic back, weakening its body so that Elijah found it much easier to rip it apart.

That was not to say that it was a simple task.

It was not. But Elijah’s might felt boundless as he tore through the thing. Then, without hesitation, he repeated his actions from the first clash. The cubic core sailed through the air, hitting only a few feet from the first. The already injured automatons at the epicenter had survived the first explosion, but the second finished them off.

For his part, Elijah weathered the explosion the same way as he’d endured the first – through the sheer vitality of his healing spells. However, he could not ignore the fact that it was slightly weaker than the initial eruption – probably due to the energy the automaton had been forced to expend during the abbreviated fight.

Nearly a dozen beams of ethera descending upon him jerked Elijah from those thoughts, and he slithered out of the way. A few of those destructive rays clipped him, searing through his scales and flesh, but he ignored them. Instead, he tucked his wings close and raced across the plaza to leap upon his next victim.

He was satisfied to see that his locusts – and the yellow spores of Nature’s Claim – had survived the explosion, and through the afflictions they caused, the next automaton was much easier to tear apart than the last. So too was the explosion weaker.

But by that point, the others had reached Elijah.

What followed was a brutal melee of metal and claws, with the smell of blistering ethera – like ozone and ash – enveloping the square. Elijah took more wounds than he could count, and the resultant pain occupied more than a third of the eighty-one leaves of his mind.

Meanwhile, the battle outside the plaza continued. The distant sound of explosions echoed through the city even as the ground shook with their impact. That spurred Elijah on, and he pushed himself ever harder until, at last, the final core sailed to the other side of the plaza.

It exploded, pushing Elijah backward. A flare of his wings kept him from tumbling away, evidence of just how much energy that final automaton had been forced to expend.

He took a few breaths, elation, pain, and worry filling his thoughts.

The pain was the easiest to explain. In those few minutes, he’d endured more damage than at any time since the string of deaths that had plagued the first phase of the Primal Realm. But as he examined it, he realized something important. It was pain, certainly, and he didn’t enjoy it. However, the feeling of charred scales and melted flesh was a familiar one. Almost comforting in its normality, especially when weighed against the existential agony of trekking through the vacuum.

He shook his head at that realization, but he chose to ignore it for the time being.

Instead, he focused on the other two emotions soaring through him. The worry was similarly easy to explain. While Benedict and Hu Shui were both capable enough, they weren’t as strong as him. On top of that, neither seemed in their right minds since they’d come to the new version of Eden. Doubtless, they needed his help.

A surety that was tied to the final emotion. Elation filled his every cell, and he almost vibrated with anticipation. It wasn’t like when he killed vespirans. Rather, it was the sheer joy that came from fighting without constraints. Of letting loose with his real strength.

It was freedom.

In the past, Elijah had found fear in just how much he enjoyed fighting. Recently, he’d begun to accept it as an inescapable part of his new existence. And in a lot of ways, he’d embraced the call of adventure. But this – this was different. It was purer. It was the joy of might and the freedom to use it.

It made him feel like a true dragon.

All those feelings slithered through his thoughts, but for only a few seconds before he forced himself to address the situation brewing within and without. The latter could wait, because the battle had pushed him past a very important milestone that felt like he’d been waiting an eternity to reach.

Level two-fifty.

He stared at that notification, both relief and anticipation clutching his heart. He’d known he was close, but with the First Wall slowing his progression, he’d chosen to simply ignore his experience. But now it was there, staring him in the face.

And what’s more, it came with a surprise: