Rise of the Devourer

"He did say these materials are valuable, right?" Noah asked, looking down at the trio of blood-drained shimmerwolves. "Not sure what we’d use money for where we're going, but it can't hurt." He tapped each one and chucked it into his Cosmic Vault for later dissection, glad to find they didn't resist the ability.

Bun Bun was busily devouring his kill, but Noah did get the back plates and teeth to add to the collection. Cores, crystals, hides, bones, everything had value to someone.

When he returned to the site of his own combat, he discovered with some consternation that the Alpha had disappeared rather than dying. He stored the other shimmerwolf corpses his copies and the Chains of Binding had finished off, then concentrated on Predator's Mark to narrow in the location.

"Wow, these things are fast." In the few minutes they'd been otherwise occupied, the Shimmerwolf Alpha had crossed a staggering distance, probably close to three or four miles if Noah were to guess. "Shall we follow it home, or leave it be?"

"Let's hunt it down." Aurelia's eyes turned mischievous. "Care to make things more interesting?"

"What do you have in mind?"

"I bet you can't take it down without relying on your fancy new wings." She grinned smugly. "All your other abilities are fritzing around."

"That's an exaggeration," Noah protested.

"Then prove it."

"I will. But don't blame me when you don't get any experience." "Tony can help, too."

"As if. You couldn't even kill it all the way without me."

Noah snorted. "If I weren't saving your life, I wouldn't have gotten distracted in the first place."

"Maybe I don't need saving."

"You definitely did."

She narrowed her eyes at him, then shrugged. "Either way, here's a chance to prove yourself. One way or the other."

"Heh. You're on. Prepare to eat your words."

They set off through the dense undergrowth, Noah leading with Predator's Mark as his compass. The arena's interior only grew stranger the deeper they went.

The plants seemed to breathe, flowers tracked their movement, vines recoiled when touched. Branches swayed toward them against the wind, straining to reach them. Everything here had evolved to survive alongside mutated predators, which meant everything here was dangerous in its own right.

They traveled in comfortable silence for a while, the ambient sounds of the oversized arena filling the space between them. Distant roars, the rustle of massive things moving through the canopy far above, the ever-present flow of concentrated mana.

Bun Bun bounded ahead, occasionally pausing to bite at one of the living vines before dismissing it as unworthy prey. His standards had risen after the shimmerwolf kill and he displayed only disdain for the aggression of the local plantlife.

Noah used the time as a chance to practice moving while Tony augmented various stats, trying to internalize the differences. Between standard movement, general overall metamorphosis, and the focused boosts to one stat or another, he had a lot of varieties to get used to.

"You alright back there?" Aurelia turned to check on him, bemused.

"Just practicing."

"It sounds as though you're about to fall over. I'd swear you keep catching yourself mid-step."

Noah grimaced. "Everything's off. My body moves faster than I expect. Hits harder than I intend. It's going to get me killed if I can't calibrate properly."

"You were moving pretty smoothly before, when we were fighting."

"I was in dragon form then. The instincts take over, it all feels natural. This, I have to figure out through trial and error."

"Ah. Hence the training."

"Hence the training." Noah tried to Arcane Step a single foot to the side, and somehow ended up in midair instead. He yelped and reflexively shifted, wings flaring to catch him, then landed in a patch of carnivorous bramble.

Aurelia laughed. "Dragons are immune to fire, right? Here, I'll get you out."

Before Noah could protest, she immolated the whole patch in a sudden burst of flame. While it did do away with the thorny brambles that had been trying to subtly wrap around his limbs, it also released a cloud of caustic smoke that made him choke and beat his wings aggressively to clear the air.

"I'm resistant, but that doesn't mean immune."

"Oops." She didn't sound at all repentant.

***

"Straight line. It's been a straight line since we started following. No doubling back, no evasion."

"How far?" Aurelia asked, ducking under a low-hanging branch covered in thorns that glistened with viscous orange goo. The branch flexed as it tried to reach her, but its rigidity only gave it a few inches of wiggle room and she was too far below. "Hah, nice try."

"You could always set it on fire." Noah grinned. "See how you handle it."

"You know I can control wind currents now with my heat, yeah? I'll blow the smoke right in your face regardless."

"Too bad you can't bottle it up for later."

She shook her head. "Alpha?"

"Still moving. Slower now, though. Probably found somewhere to lick its wounds. Another mile, maybe less."

The undergrowth thinned as they entered a section where massive trees had created a canopy so dense that nothing grew beneath them. The ground was carpeted in fallen leaves that crunched underfoot, each step loud in the sudden quiet. The distant cries of the local birds sounded oddly muted.

Noah held up a fist, signaling a halt.

Aurelia moved closer, voice hushed. "What is it?"

"It's stopped moving. We're close."

They crept forward, weapons ready. The Alpha's presence grew stronger in Noah's awareness, a pulsing beacon of wounded fury. Then the trees parted, and they saw it.

The crystal grove stretched ahead of them for a hundred yards in every direction, and it was, objectively, one of the most striking things Noah had seen since arriving in Erandir.

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Thousands of crystal plates shed over what had to be years or decades by generations of shimmerwolves littered the ground at every angle, driven into the trees or embedded in rocks, all of which drove home just how sharp these things were. They ranged from finger-length shards to slabs taller than a man, and the ambient light filtering through the canopy struck them and scattered into cascading rainbow sheets that overlapped and shifted with every stray breeze.

The crystals were dense enough that once he went down into the valley, he'd be stuck on the ground. Any attempt at flight would mean shredded wings within seconds.

The minor mana drain each shimmerwolf had around themselves was amplified a hundredfold here. He hesitated on the edge of the grove, watching ambient power funnel down into the crystal field in a steady vortex.

"What's wrong?" Aurelia asked. "Why've we stopped?"

"It's a mana siphon, the whole valley. Every shard is a conduit, even after being shed." Or were they placed deliberately? He couldn't guess. Either way… "I get the feeling it wasn't running to find a place to die in peace. It was trying to lure us into its home turf."

"Long way from home, if they were out hunting all the way by the entrance."

"Either way, looks as though you'll get your wish."

"Hm? Which wish was that?"

He gestured down at the dense crystals. "No room for wings, even if I wanted to."

She hesitated, glancing at him with concern. "But didn't you say your human form is still all uncoordinated?"

"Yep!" He summoned his spear in one hand and his chains in the other. "So let's go hunting."

***

The Alpha sat at the heart of the grove, visible through the shifting sheets of refracted light. It had positioned itself in a natural clearing at the grove's center, clean and open, with clear sightlines in every direction. Its fur caught the light and threw it back tenfold.

If he lacked Truth Sight, this might have been dazzling or confusing, but Noah's augmented vision cut right through any attempt at illusion.

None of his afflictions remained. Either the distance, time, or the region's mana drain had done away with them in the meantime.

Around it, at the edges of that clearing, Noah counted nine more shimmerwolves. Three above level 450, and another two around 480. Those last two had distinctive changes to them, much the way the alpha had its silver-mirror shard crown. One had bright orange light flickering within its plates, heat shimmer radiating from its crystalline fur. The other almost disappeared into the shadow, its fur a dark iridescence that contrasted dramatically with its whiter kin. Where it stood, the air itself seemed to bend and twist, space warping in subtle spirals.

[Embercrest Shimmerwolf (Rare) - lvl 478]

[Voidtouched Shimmerwolf (Rare) - lvl 482]

"It's been watching us," Aurelia said softly, studying the grove. "During the first fight. It was already planning this."

"Or it's just good at taking advantage of opportunity." Noah shook his head. "Either way, I think Bun Bun stays on cleanup. Keep the lower-level pack off our backs while we focus."

The familiar's ears came partway back up. Acceptable.

"Those two." Noah pointed to the abnormal shimmerwolves. "We need to deal with those two first."

"The fire one's mine."

Noah paused. "You sure? It outlevels you by a lot. Maybe we should cross-target? From the way they're mana-siphoners by default, I'd assume they'll mess up our abilities if we let them close."

Aurelia studied the Embercrest wolf, flames already gathering around her fingertips. "Fire's my element. If it can handle heat, I want to know."

"Fair enough. I'll take the shadow one. But if either of us gets in trouble—"

"We call for backup. Got it." She cracked her neck. "Ready?"

Noah tested his chains, feeling the familiar weight.

"Try to keep up." Aurelia hurled a lance of concentrated fire at the Embercrest wolf. The flames struck its molten crystals and simply... vanished. Absorbed.

The wolf's eyes flared bright orange, and it opened its jaws wide. Aurelia's own fire came roaring back at her, amplified threefold.

She barely got her guard up in time. The redirected blast sent her skidding backward, her forearms scorched despite her natural resistance. "It eats fire," she gasped. "It eats my fire and spits it back."

"I did notice that." Noah threw himself toward the Voidtouched wolf, chains whipping out. "Try hitting it with something it can't—"

His chains passed through a pocket of warped space and came out half a clearing away from their target, binding around a tree trunk instead of the wolf's throat. The creature watched with hollow, lightless eyes, almost amused.

"Okay, that's annoying."

The Voidtouched wolf padded closer, and Noah felt his connection to his dimensional abilities grow hazier with every step it took. When he tried to Arcane Step backward, he appeared six feet to the left of his intended destination, stumbling into a cluster of razor-sharp crystals.

Master, Tony warned. That creature is generating localized spatial interference. Tony's calculations are... unreliable.

Noah yanked his arm free of the crystals, blood welling from a dozen shallow cuts. "Can you compensate?"

Tony is trying. The interference shifts. Unpredictable.

The wolf lunged. Noah barely twisted aside, and its teeth snapped shut inches from his throat. He lashed out with his spear, but his thrust went wide. His arm moved faster than he expected, overcorrecting, the tip passing harmlessly over the wolf's shoulder.

"Come on, come on..."

He concentrated on Bloodwyrm Swarm, drawing power from the cuts on his arm. The blood rose, coiling, beginning to take shape—

And collapsed into inert droplets the moment they left contact with his skin.

[Bloodwyrm Swarm] failed - insufficient ambient mana

The field was draining everything. His Bloodwyrms needed ambient mana to sustain themselves once manifested, and this place offered none.

"Aurelia! The siphon's killing my summons!"

"Kind of busy!" Across the clearing, Aurelia had changed tactics. Instead of throwing fire at the Embercrest wolf, she'd drawn her sword and was fighting defensively, using her flames only for mobility, brief bursts to dodge attacks or heat the ground beneath the wolf's paws. It worked, barely, but she couldn't land any significant hits.

The lower-level wolves had begun circling, emboldened by their packmates' success.

Bun Bun launched himself at the nearest one, all teeth and fury, but even he was struggling. The mana drain weakened his augmentation, made his movements sluggish.

Master needs to eliminate the source, Tony said. The Alpha. It controls the siphon.

"The Alpha's in the center. These two are blocking the path."

Then Master must go through them.

“Yeah, thanks. Wouldn’t have guessed.” Noah dodged another lunge from the Voidtouched wolf, rolled through a patch of shattered crystals, and came up bleeding from a dozen new cuts. His blood spattered across the crystal-studded ground—

And gave him an idea.

"Tony. The crystals conduct mana, right? That's how the siphon works."

Correct.

"So if I give them something to conduct..."

He didn't wait to finish the thought. Noah pressed his bleeding palm against the nearest crystal shard and pushed his power into it, riding along the siphon's own pathways but reversing the flow.

The crystal turned crimson. Then the one next to it. Then the next.

[Wyrm's Curse] spreading through [Crystal Siphon Network]

You've applied [Wyrm's Curse] to [Voidtouched Shimmerwolf]

You've applied [Wyrm's Curse] to [Shardback Shimmerwolf]

…

You've applied [Wyrm's Curse] to [Shardback Shimmerwolf]

You've applied [Wyrm's Curse] to [Shardback Shimmerwolf Alpha]

You've applied [Wyrm's Curse] to [Embercrest Shimmerwolf]

The Voidtouched wolf's eyes widened as the curse reached the crystals embedded in the ground around it. The spatial distortion field flickered, destabilized by the foreign energy suddenly flooding its mana supply.

Now, Master!

Noah Arcane Stepped and appeared exactly where he intended, directly behind the Voidtouched wolf. His chains were already moving, wrapping around its throat, its legs, binding it in loops of Arcane-strengthened metal before it could twist away.

The wolf thrashed, its spatial distortion trying to warp the chains away, but the Chains of Binding were bound into his Path and reinforced directly through his body. They held.

[Chains of Binding] have overcome [Spatial Distortion Field]

Noah drove his spear into the wolf's side.

Spear of Crimson End has inflicted [Crimson Rot-IV] on [Voidtouched Shimmerwolf]

Spear of Crimson End has applied [Bleed-III] to [Voidtouched Shimmerwolf]

The creature screamed, a sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere as the spatial distortion finally collapsed. Its dark iridescent fur dulled, crimson veins spreading across its crystalline plates.

"Spatial one's down,” Noah called out. “I'm coming to you!"

"Please do!"

He left his chains to finish off the Voidtouched wolf and sprinted across the clearing.