[
Arcane Maelstrom has reached Level 316
Arcane Maelstrom has reached Level 317
…
Arcane Maelstrom has reached Level 338
Arcane Protection has reached 4th Level 9
Wrath of the Arcane has reached 4th Level 9
Superior Senses has reached 4th Level 9
Arcane Passage has reached 4th Level 7
Mage Conduit has reached 4th Level 8
Arcane Intuition has reached 2nd Level 3
Augmented Carving has reached 2nd Level 3
Augmented Carving has reached 2nd Level 4
Fracturing Wave has reached 2nd Level 7
Wanderer’s Repository has reached 2nd Level 6
]
That is… significantly more than expected. The class levels, that is.
Skill levels were bound to appear, though he could tell that breaking into the fifth rank was going to require a lot of effort. The sheer number of attribute points, however, was a huge surprise.
Netting two levels in a single battle as a Master easily implied a life and death situation. To earn twenty-three of them? Lev couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of fate awaited him if he and Drakys lost.
Speaking of, he turned towards the miniature ocean of flames in the distance. His eyes could peer through most of it, courtesy of Gaze of the Marksman. A large blackened mound signified Goliath’s corpse, though he couldn’t see the two Exalted anywhere.
Still, other than the crackling fire surrounding him, everything was calm. Lev could also feel Drakys’s presence somewhere amidst the fiery storm, so he turned his attention to his status.
It looked quite nice.
[
Name: Lev
Class: Arcane Maelstrom - Level 338
Titles: Reinforced Mind, Extraordinary Soul, Youngest Prodigy, Goliath Slayer III, Daunting Steps VII, Rift Explorer, Hunter, Seen, Survivor I, Titan Slayer, Master Pioneer, Siegebreaker I, Favored of Kassavin, Wisdom Specialist, Epic Crafter, Abhorrent Slayer I, Spiritual Harmony
Attributes:
Strength: 355
Dexterity: 355
Constitution: 800
Intelligence: 900
Wisdom: 1195
Perception: 790
Class Skills:
Arcane Barrier Authority - 4th Level 8
Unerring Volley - 4th Level 7
Wrath of the Arcane - 4th Level 9
Arcane Protection - 4th Level 9
Superior Senses - 4th Level 9
Expeditious Empowerment - 4th Level 8
Arcane Passage - 4th Level 7
Mage Conduit - 4th Level 8
General Skills:
Consistent Mana Channeling - 2nd Level 10
Identify
Aerial Maneuvers - 2nd Level 10
Arcane Intuition - 2nd Level 3
Gaze of the Marksman - 2nd Level 10
Augmented Carving - 2nd Level 4
Wanderer's Repository - 2nd Level 6
Fracturing Wave - 2nd Level 7
Dance of the Elements - 2nd Level 5
Trapping - 2nd Level 10
]
Only two of his skills were sort of lagging behind, something he was going to focus on next. His general skills were also coming along nicely. The repository even had a new addition.
Dissonance.
Lev’s feelings about the new rune were… mixed. It was an incredibly potent rune, no doubt a part of the Goliath’s disruption skill.
It was also painfully incompatible with his barriers. He didn’t even need to test that. Just looking into the rune’s surface workings was enough to tell him so. It would seek out all harmonized forms of mana, and barriers were quite literally one of the greatest applications of that.
He sure as hell wasn’t going to give up on it, though. There were plenty of ways to weaponize something so strong. The material restrictions would be dealt with one way or another.
Further musings were cut short when the air around him stilled. Lev turned towards the huge corpse in the distance, now seeing it better with the diminishing fires. Charred flesh still stayed strong, protecting the Goliath even in death. At no point was the damage intense enough to reveal bones.
Stranger than that, however, was the flow of mana rushing towards the corpse. Ambient mana only behaved that way when something huge was about to happen, and Lev prepared himself.
The armor’s enchantments were erased. His usual formations were carved steadily, completed in less than ten seconds. Controlled Enhancement Formation, Flameforged Constitution, Kinetic Absorption, Lightning Bolt, Fireball, and other supportive formations appeared layered over each other. He vividly remembered which runes and parts of the formations resisted disruption best and arranged them all accordingly.
No more than two seconds later, the flow of ambient mana cut off. A massive pulse originated from the Goliath— from its core, Lev realized.
This time, the pulse didn’t feel nearly as dangerous. It didn’t even interact with the ambient mana much, although the range was way higher. Despite the kilometers separating them, he still felt the weak wave of disruption reach him, ineffectually splashing against his armor.
Huh… why was there another wave, anyway?
Fifteen seconds and another suction of ambient mana later, a second pulse originated from the corpse. Lev remained where he was, not feeling any danger but still wary. Who knew what Chaos had done to the dead body?
There was something else he had to do first. Gathering his aura, he channeled a bit of his willpower and mana through it. Similar to the pulse, a wave shot out from him at the epicenter, looking for everything that would resonate with it.
It was a crude and inefficient application. The whole purpose was to detect anything made of his element by poking it and noting the feedback.
That turned out to be enough. Just outside the edge of his manipulation range, something buried a few meters underground pinged him back. Lev moved towards it and, after making sure it was completely safe, pulled Stargazer out.
She was still whole and pristine. Peering deeper, he frowned. The enchantments felt… tender, for the lack of a better term. Overtaxing a Superior weapon was something he thought would remain impossible for a long while, but reality begged to differ.
Just one overwhelming enemy, and even Stargazer’s limits were tested.
Exhaling deeply, he internalized the warning the Blessing had sent him. Too many things wanted him dead, and reaching Exalted was still decades away. Even then, as he had already seen, Drakys was not omnipotent, nor were the rest of humanity’s Exalted.
He seriously needed to step up his game. It wasn’t even like he was going slowly. Lev knew that his progress was astounding, bordering on impossible.
It just never felt enough.
Shaking his head, he kept Stargazer outside his storage ring to let her recover and regenerate mana. As for himself, he first created a new bubble. By sending out waves of mana empowered by willpower, he scouted and gathered all of the orbs and other constructs scattered around.
When everything was in place again, he waited. Even now, wave after wave came out of the Goliath’s core, making his mind wander.
Did the pulses get stronger the closer one got? How did they react to a person’s mana and ambient mana? How would his barriers fare now? Were there as many learning opportunities as he expected, or was the result going to be disappointing?
The longer he thought about it, the more excited he became. Even after the disastrous confrontation, another incredible opportunity had presented itself.
As if reading his thoughts, Drakys became visible on the horizon. He was merely a dot above the huge corpse, though the speed at which he moved towards Lev terrified him. The sheer gap between them was always an awe-inspiring sight to behold.
Barely a moment later, the man stopped a few dozen meters away. After making sure that nothing was out of place, he motioned for Lev to follow.
Lev didn’t dally and jumped into his bubble. Double-checking the enchantments, he fired up Lightning Surge and stopped a few hundred meters away from the Goliath’s body.
Another pulse rocked through the bubble, and this time, it was not easy to resist. Lev had to actively hold onto his construct and repair it. Just that was enough to show him what part of the barrier structure needed to be improved.
“Well,” he began, looking at the source of the pulses. “I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but this was definitely not it.”
In the Goliath’s abdomen, a huge carved tunnel revealed the core, and what a core it was. Like a sundered coin with a hole in the middle, two halves of it floated next to each other, as if confined by a magnetic field. Mana visibly gathered in a ball in the hole between them. Drakys had already created a smooth flow of absorption with incorporeal, etched runes on the core.
Within seconds, the ball of mana grew before it was caught by the enchantments. Uniformly, the power was released in every direction, birthing a pulse of disruption.
[
Equalizer - Epic
]
“Little wonder you didn’t,” Drakys said, appearing atop Lev’s bubble, unharmed but visibly tired. “Few things repel monsters on this planet, and the best method is in front of you. Goliath cores are naturally vanishingly rare, but each has its unique influence. Equalizers go a step beyond that due to their range. If nothing goes wrong, we can safely start the first step of securing these lands without worrying about monster waves for at least a year.”
“Oh yeah,” Lev hummed. “You did say this location is where you expect to start constructing a base. Are you sure the pulses won’t mess with the incoming workers?”
“We’re not going to do anything next to the corpse, of course,” Drakys waved away the concern. “When I say safe from monsters, I mean for dozens of kilometers around us. The pulse becomes negligible far before it truly becomes unnoticeable. That still leaves a lot of prime spots.”
“And monsters actually stay away?”
“I want to say the Goliath was weak,” Drakys said with an amused grin. “But it was not. It was probably the worst enemy I’ve ever faced. We’re only alive because of you. The point is, if you had ever faced a normal Goliath, you wouldn’t have asked that. Not even monsters would risk the ire of one.”
… I could’ve lived without that confirmation.
Drakys confirming that the Blessing had saved them left little to the imagination. Throughout the battle, their fate hung on a fraying thread, one that barely held. As much as Lev wanted to remain ignorant about that fact, some part of him was glad for the extra motivation.
After all, it was one thing to see the Exalted kill the Goliath in a titanic move. It was another thing entirely to learn that Lev was still the major contributor in the overall fight. That did not feel good at all.
Blessings will not magically descend to save me every time, Lev sighed silently, his mood worsening. To begin with, I had no clue my patron divinity was constantly watching me. How else would the Blessing come through at such an opportune moment?
Such revelations usually received a fixed treatment. Lev bundled up the dread before tossing it to the recesses of his mind. There would be time to go over the content there specifically, when he wasn’t less than an ant compared to the beings involved.
For now, he just had to get stronger.
“So, what now?”
“That should be obvious.”
Say no more.
Since he had free time, Lev immediately started observing the pulses. Forming a few shields in front of him, he started modifying them. The first remained completely untouched, whereas the final shield was downright drowning in enchantments.
Testing began with the next pulse. It interacted with each construct differently, revealing several things. First, the structure of barriers, while rigid, was also susceptible to disruption skills.
The feedback in his mind didn’t make sense at first. Why was his element both good and bad at resisting? Diving deeper, however, revealed more.
Barriers were solidified mana. As such, they didn’t have any way to slow down the approach of incoming disruption mana. The pulses hit each barrier in full force, though that’s when their structure became prominent. It resisted fiercely, only showing minor cracks at the point of impact instead of falling apart like a spell.
Spells, however, did actively resist disruption attempts the moment they came close. The mana types, especially lightning, did not take kindly to those and reacted accordingly.
Lev smoothly dodged that problem with enchanting. He already knew that runes had their own version of an aura, and when combined, could form a shield against outside influences. The little prior experience he had against the Goliath had already taught him a decent amount.
Using that knowledge, he observed the next twenty pulses. All unenchanted shields were discarded first. Next, Lev identified the weakest runes in his arsenal. Stone Hardening was, unfortunately, not a good fit anymore. Every single disruption destroyed the rune, requiring Lev to reform it by cycling his willpower in the pattern.
Thankfully, he only used that one for his platings due to the efficiency and low time of activation. He could live without using it. Finding replacements was going to be annoying— he even had one if he used the durability runes from the Controlled Enhancement Formation. Fitting them on small plates, however, was going to need a lot of practice.
Good thing he had a bit of time.
Hours passed in his testing. When he had observed all the surface-level effects of disruption on his runes, Lev instead turned to his element. He was reasonably certain that he could improve the baseline of his barriers, and not by a small degree, either.
He was also not at all sure about how to do that. Since the start, he had just solidified mana. There wasn’t really any technique to it, just a command.
“Say,” Lev called out when he couldn’t make any headway in improving his element. “How did you make my bubble’s structure better?”
“Mess around with its density,” came a reply from… somewhere. Drakys himself was nowhere to be seen.
Shrugging, Lev spent a moment admiring the three moons in the sky before returning to his task.
Reducing the density until his shields were comparable to his Classer barriers, he waited. A pulse came exactly on the fifteen-second mark, eviscerating the poor constructs. He didn’t even get any feedback.
Recreating them as Adept versions, he observed the result closely. High Perception allowed him to see the destruction from start to finish. The first thing Lev noticed was the obvious point of impact. Disruption possessed some mind of its own, as it targeted the weakest points. Somehow.
It also revealed a rather simple solution. By increasing the density of the solidified mana along the surface of a construct, he could prevent a lot of damage. Most of the disruption faltered there.
So, obviously, he ignored that for now. He needed to see more damage caused to learn from it.
The next part involved testing the varying levels of density in the barriers. Lev could tell from the start that it would take weeks of negligible improvements to see any tangible results. Bearing that in mind, he got comfortable in his bubble and prepared himself for long meditation sessions.
“By the way,” he spoke, knowing Drakys was listening in. “What can I expect in the upcoming weeks? Will I return to the fort?”
“No need,” the thin air replied. “You would’ve needed to if you hadn’t done enough to keep the core. As it stands, stay here while the first convoys arrive. The stronger Master teams will also start participating now, so try not to get in too many fights.”
“Why would I get into any, to begin with?”
“Do I really need to answer that?”
Lev stayed silent. Perhaps people would come to him looking for a fight instead. He wasn’t that oblivious.
“Anyways,” he changed the subject. “What’s the plan?”
“Construct a city.”
“A whole city?”
“Yep.”
“Well,” Lev chuckled, peering into Stargazer. Her runes were back to their peak condition, not showing any signs of the earlier strain. “That’s certainly more than I expected.”
“It is. I think you will also appreciate the name.”
Lev raised a brow to himself, remembering how he had finally found a lead about the ‘reward’ inside his glaive. “Do tell?”
“The Empyrean Capital.”
Stargazer almost slipped from his fingers. Lev flatly stared ahead without actually seeing anything.
There’s just no fucking way…
He couldn’t fathom it. Monsters had destroyed the whole Empyrean Empire and nearly caused an extinction-level event. Humanity had learned from that, and now, their combined might was almost stronger than ever. Only the sheer numbers in the past outshone the survivors on Monarch.
And yet, their continued existence was not guaranteed. In fact, it was bound to end. The System itself backed that claim, telling them in no uncertain terms that they needed to take drastic measures for something to change. And drastic measures they were about to take. Specifically by tempting fate like no one ever had before.
Lev couldn’t even begrudge them for it. Either humanity would break first, or they would prove the very System wrong.
Exactly how he would’ve done it.
[End of Book 5]