Ellake
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Chapter 103 - Living and Dying
🕑 Added 2024-07-09 20:00:04 +0000 UTCNate was forced to teleport again to avoid a hail of bloody spears that annihilated a tenth of the valley. The nine demons continued to harass him as he sensed at least two soul attacks against his barrier. Every teleport was designed to keep him as far away from the Temporal Executioner as humanly possible, the blood leaking down his torn robe from his ruined shoulder a reminder of what letting that monster close with him could do.
As he moved, his mind processed his skill options. He instantly ruled out Enhanced Intellect. Increasing his Stats a little more wasn’t going to save him here. He needed something new. Something out of the box. Something powerful. Runic Sizing could be interesting. But the percentages were so low. He couldn’t take it and instantly create a rune the size of the valley or something. It was the kind of skill he would’ve needed to spend time levelling to truly get the most use out of it. It likely needed an evolution or two as well. Runic Automation was a skill he’d long been intending to take. But again, he had nothing to work with. No time to prepare. Creating a golem was a laborious process. Though perhaps if he coupled it with Material Shaping he could spin up something quick and dirty. But that wasn’t going to get him out of this mess.
That thought led him to glancing where the Demon Lord and Arikanvil watched. In that moment he realised he hated Arikanvil for not getting him out of this mess. He would’ve paid whatever price the God set. Instead, these Demons were allowed to flaunt the Law of Reciprocity, slipping through loopholes where so long as the reward was equal to the risk, they were allowed to force him into their trials. What a farce. This was an execution with a thin veneer to satisfy what he was beginning to suspect was an unfeeling System.
Dodging a fiery explosion as the Greedy Flamebearer landed where he’d just occupied he took in the battlefield and felt a moment of thanks for Frick, who was keeping the Shadowwalker busy, and for his True Teleportation evolution. Without it he’d likely have expended far more mana.
Going back to his skills he considered the only other option. Conceptual Expression was an excellent skill for an artist, but not for a combatant. His heart sank for a moment. None of these skills were enough to save him. Not on their own at least. He needed something more. It didn’t help that they were all Epic and not a single one was even Legendary. The Fleshshaper managed to alter its legs, increasing their musculature and launching itself into his sphere of awareness so fast he couldn’t react, the strike of three mammoth fists launching him across the valley. He sailed straight towards the Temporal Executioner and grit his teeth, using True Teleportation to teleport and alter his vector, coming down on the Corruptor of Desires with enough force to bury them in the stone of the valley.
Unfortunately, the creature was far from dead, but it was definitely injured. Black blood leaked from multiple cuts as the purple demon tried to claw its way out of the rock Nate had buried it in. It was too late for that though as he flicked his Legendary Acid wand at it and melted away its entire upper body. One of the soul attacks against his barrier vanished. He followed a moment later, teleporting again as the Blademaster cut another deep furrow through the valley, slicing in half the remains of the Corruptor of Desires as the flaming blade left a wound in the earth over twenty metres long.
He seethed as he appeared back by the Mistress of Dreams, flicking another glob of acid at the demon as she simply vanished like a mirage when acid passed through her. Another stealth predator. Fuck.
The constant drain of teleportation meant he was going to run out of mana if he didn’t do something drastic. He looked at the skills again as he tried to put his Creativity stat to use. If he was about to blow out his stomach again, he better make sure the two skills he was going to try and combine had something that could be useful when combined. Else he was just further injuring himself for nothing. Though if he was hastening his own death, what was the difference between five minutes and ten minutes?
Material Shaping and Runic Automation…he supposed the combination might let him instantly shape runic golems. But that still left him with nothing but the Common and maybe some Uncommon materials throughout the valley. Would they really stand up to Legendary classers who still had a slight level advantage? Sure, he could try and use Improve Material. With the processed mana as the energy powering the skill, it was sure to happen faster. But fast enough to turn the stone of the valley into a Legendary material before he succumbed? Not a chance.
Material Shaping and Conceptual Expression would do what? Maybe help him make three-dimensional runes? He had no idea. And he wasn’t willing to take a blind bet. Material Shaping and Runic Sizing would probably let him resize material. A useful skill, but again, he was fucked on time. Runic Automation and Conceptual Expression…now maybe that had something. He wasn’t certain, but the way his Skills had synergised in the past indicated they tended to keep much of their baseline bonuses, while adding a new tilt on it. When he’d combined Eyes of the Runic Artist and Spatial Awareness he’d given up the range Eyes of the Runic Artist had but he’d gained a sphere of absolute awareness. He could even sense voids within his space that people like Null created. The only thing to ever somehow be ignored by the skill was Arikanvil, a freaking god! Could it work? He wasn’t sure but if he could make golems of Concepts…that had to be worth something.
Quickly selecting Runic Automation and Conceptual Expression, he felt the changes on the outer surface of his Class Core as the new skills were ‘written’ onto it. He threw processed mana at the outer edge of his Class Core, guided and reinforced by his Imbue Intent. The fact that the skills responded told him something he’d long suspected. The Class Core skills were written in runic. That was likely the only reason they would respond to his intent. The two skills were further apart than the last pair, perhaps because they were meant to do vastly different things. Perhaps his two sensory skills were just more related than these two. Either way, the resulting explosion of blood was larger than last time, and he almost passed out, saved by a wave of life energy as he felt Frick using Life Drain on the Fleshcrafter. Thank fuck for endless sources of healing, even if the best it could manage for now was to prevent him bleeding out or passing out from blood loss. Glancing at the notification he grinned in triumph.
Skill Synergy discovered between your Runic Automation (Epic) Skill and your Conceptual Expression (Epic) Skill. Combine these Skills to gain Conceptual Automation (Legendary) Skill.
Proceed?
Walk your Path. Reach your Goal. Become One with Mana.
He teleported away from the Temporal Executioner before the demon could get in range to devour his sense of time, also avoiding an accompanying hail of blood, even as he accepted the new skill.
Conceptual Automation (Legendary)
Concepts, the underpinning laws of reality, given power through the belief of sentient life throughout the multiverse. You have proven time and again that your understanding of these Concepts far exceeds the norm. This skill takes that understanding a step further, allowing you to grant temporary ‘life’ to multiversal Concepts. Using objects that resonate with a Concept, you are able to create living representations of these multiversal Concepts. Mana Cost decreases by 1% per Skill Level. Percentage increase in Power equal to 20% of Intellect & Magic Power. Additionally increased by the volume of mana used. Duration and Power based on Tier of materials used. Duration increases by 20% of Creativity plus 1% per Skill Level.
Knowledge flowed into him about his new skill and he instantly understood what he had to do. Putting all sixty of his free Stats into Intellect he quickly planned how he was going to use this skill to survive. The skill required a substrate to act upon, and that substrate was any material with an affinity imbued into it. Taking his Legendary Acid wand he emptied one entire gem of processed mana into it as he guided it through his Conceptual Automation skill. If he’d just done that, the Concept would have acted according to its own nature. Acid broke things down, separated things into their base building blocks. That was how it would function, it would simply break down everything it came into contact with. Mindless and without direction. So he added his own Imbue Intent, to the runes embedded within the material, adding a single addendum. What to break. Demons.
Within a second, a formless liquid blob had appeared around his Legendary wand, shifting through multiple colours. A moment later it was moving. The resulting splatter covered two of the demons instantly. Their mouths were open wide and screaming, even though no sound made it through the goop as their skin sloughed off their bodies like paint running down a canvas.
Even as the demons goggled as both the Master of Despair and Flamebearer melted away, Frick was appearing at his side, dropping off a full mana gem and the Shadow Prison rune before vanishing again to tackle the attacking Blademaster. His Familiar lost a leg in the process but kept going, driving the Blademaster away, buying him time to activate his second golem built upon a Concept. The four Legendary scales that made up the Shadow Prison runic array were built purely on shadow. He’d added the Subconcept of Preservation to counter Xalvoloth’s Devouring Light using his Imbue Intent, but none of his opponents wielded such. Expending another full processed mana gem, he birthed forth the Concept of Shadow with the added Subconcept of Devouring, having become intimately familiar with how it felt. With Imbue Intent and over thirty intents to work with, he empowered the Concept of Shadow with the intent to devour the demons.
The amorphous shadow vanished and he felt a moment of elation as he heard the Shadowwalker scream as its own shadows turned against it, the demon coming apart as flakes of it simply vanished as the shadows slowly crawled over the demon.
That left one last item he had available. Slipping off his bracer he drained his last mana gem into it even as he flexed Conceptual Automation one last time alongside his Imbue Intent. The bracer had the affinity for Barrier imbued into its Legendary material. Barriers could be interpreted in many ways, but the one he focused on was the idea that a barrier separated something, keeping one half away from the other. And the only thing he wanted it to separate was demons. The form the Concept of Barrier took on was more like a golem, but all hard and sharp angles. Weirdly it seemed as though the runes within the material were having an effect, as the Conceptual representation of Barrier kept flickering through the different elements. The speed it exhibited when it moved blew his hair back and he felt a number of strands float free as the intent for the barrier to separate cut his hair with the blowback.
The Master of Blood was cut in half a moment later, but the demon was already pulling itself back together on strands of blood even as his Barrier Golem moved on, now targeting the Blademaster. His Acid Golem had finished consuming the Flamebearer and Master of Despair and was locked in deadly combat with the Fleshshaper, who was slowly losing size as the towering demon was constantly forced to sacrifice pieces of itself whenever it ripped and tore at the Acid Golem. Of the Shadowwalker, nothing remained and he wouldn’t have been able to find his Shadow Golem if it wasn’t for the screams emanating from over behind him where it grappled with something unseen. He suspected it had found the Mistress of Dreams. A quick flex of True Teleportation took him away from the Temporal Executioner again, even as the demon had crossed half the valley in under a second. It was clearly not holding back any more. He just had to evade it long enough for his Concept Golems to finish their tasks.
He was running on his own mana now, all the processed mana he had collected expended in the creation of his three Golems. The Temporal Executioner tried to cross towards him as Nate played a game of cat and mouse, where he was unfortunately the mouse. His blood loss had stopped, but his stomach wound still ached and he added his own Life Drain rune to the mix, targeting the Fleshshaper as he experienced the itch of parts of his intestines slowly regrowing. Still, it wasn’t happening fast enough and if he took another wound, he was liable to faint from blood loss. Death was sure to swiftly follow.
On the upside, as the demons were dying, the processed mana was flowing to his mana gathering array, slowly giving him more power to work with. With four demons dead already the processed energy was being forced to chase him around the valley, gathering in his mana gems piecemeal as he was forced to use True Teleportation again and again to avoid an increasingly frustrated Temporal Executioner. Another flash of mana started to flow towards him as the Mistress of Dreams died and a moment later the guttural screams of the Master of Blood filled the valley as the Shadow Golem found new prey. It was followed a moment later by another burst of mana as the Fleshshaper finally succumbed to his Acid Golem.
Frick was fading fast, his soul energy almost expended as the blue goblin spirit held back the Blademasters sword arm with his only remaining arm. The Barrier Golem unthinkingly used that advantage to carve through the demon, separating it into two perfect halves. Black blood pooled in the dirt as the remains of the Blademaster fell back to the stone. With yet another demon fallen and only the Master of Blood remaining as he was slowly devoured by living shadows, Nate could finally turn his attention to his supposed executioner.
He used True Teleportation again as he began taking the time to form his three-dimensional gravity runic array. He almost lost control when he felt his connection with Frick vanish as his Familiar was banished, finally succumbing to his grievous wounds. But his Familiar would be back, so long as Nate could survive the end of this fight, and he was going to make sure that happened. The mana cost was extreme, as he was both creating the rune itself from mana, then powering it with mana, while also maintaining three Skills. Runic Creation, Empowered Runic Artistry and Imbue Intent all coming together to create a Legendary Gravity Control rune powered by processed mana. The rune was slowly coming to life in front of him. Too slowly he realised.
The Temporal Executioner finally managed to get close to him and he felt as the demon clamped down, locking Nate in time with him. The gravity rune wasn’t finished forming and he grit his teeth as the demon smiled at him and lunged, axe held high to cleave him in half. The weapon never reached him as his Barrier Golem appeared between them, eating the strike without visible harm. A moment later globs of acid flew at the Temporal Executioner who launched himself backwards to avoid being hit, the acid's movement seeming to slow down as he sensed demonic energy and Time intermingled. The evasion was in vain though, as the Executioner’s shadow reached up and ensnared him. The stuttered fast shifting movements of the Executioner as it tried to employ some other skill did nothing as the shadows slowly began to devour it. The demon screamed in defiance, only for the Acid Golem to wrap itself around its face. Finally, his Gravity rune completed forming and Nate seized control of the demon, lifting it into the air. With a thought Gravity was reversed and the demon was launched at the ground with such force that the resulting explosion covered the entire valley in dust. When it had finally cleared, a crater thirty metres wide filled the centre of the valley and the remains of the Temporal Executioner was nothing but a smear of paste indented in the very middle.
Holding his stomach in pain, with nothing left to Life Drain, he turned to glare at Lord Sag’thoz, Xalvoloth and Arikanvil as the three watched silently. A moment later, three Conceptual Golems threw themselves at Lord Sag’thoz following their intents to target all demons. Nate’s laughter had a tinge of madness to it as he watched on in morbid amusement.
Comments
Fortunis
That's fucking ridiculous. Straight up. With a Legendary Gravity Rune and the ability to make animated concept Golems he could absolutely make a flying fortress 😆 🤣
Ellake
Yes. Same time on those days as well. If you want to do the timezone conversion I set the release times to Mon-Wed-Fri 6am (GMT+10).
Davi(d)
Just so I can confirm since I'm new, is the posting schedule Tue-Thu-Sat? I looked back a week and it seemed that way, but I wanted to make sure
Davi(d)
This was SO GOOD like damnnn! Can't wait to see what else is gonna happen before he can go back home
Wainator
Love how he as what in layman's terms are God's for golems (living manifestations of a concept)
