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Chapter 165- The Vitality of Earth
🕑 Added 2024-09-09 22:59:01 +0000 UTCFollowing the discovery of what his domain would possibly one day be able to accomplish, Arthur engaged in a number of follow-up experiments. The vast majority of them ended in failure and he never again attempted something so drastic as taking control of the hivemind’s energy pools, but Arthur was left with a significantly improved understanding of his domain and aura.
It wasn’t like he’d magically learned to use it, but he’d graduated from operating it as the metaphorical hammer he’d been bashing on his enemy's head. Arthur had even received a level-up for his troubles, which made his pinnacle skill the second ability he’d managed to improve after his healing.
A Homunculi Hunts (Legendary+) (class pinnacle skill) has reached Level 2
Half an hour had passed since he’d begun this fight, and he’d long since exhausted the duration of his Augmented Recovery. The once serene lake now looked like the site of a meteor shower's landing zone, courtesy of the dimensional breach and the subsequent fight. Wovan was down to a tenth of its health and Arthur felt he had nothing more to learn here. The hivemind had been a devastating monster- he was certain it would come out the victor had it ever fought the ascended blood beast- its mastery over special magic was an advantage the blood beast simply wasn’t equipped to deal with.
Against Arthur, however. The monster had simply lacked the firepower to truly hurt him. He’d come to a decision, though. The hivemind was the perfect monster to become his first soul splinter, it was strong in all the places Arthur was weak and had access to one of the rarest magics in the universe. Arthur had certain criteria he’d wanted his first familiar to fill- though I guess I can’t call it a familiar since it's literally going to be made out of my soul. What is it... A part of me? My inner beast? No, that sounds too edgy.
Arthur wanted a creature with access to a branch of magic he didn’t, preferably a Rare one. The spider fit the bill. Secondly, a monster that could deal with foes fifty percent as strong as he was in an efficient manner and against massive hordes of such enemies, basically an army of some kind. It would make up for one of the bigger weaknesses, his lack of AOE spells that didn't follow a scorched earth policy. Once again, Wovan fit the bill. Sure, Arthur could try to go for some kind of apocalypse beast as a familiar, but Wovan was just so much more versatile. With its puppeteering skill, it literally gave him access to an army.
Besides, it feels like it's just one step below an apocalypse beast on the monster scale in terms of its aura, at least going by how I'd expect the Shadow Panther to have felt at the same level. Arthur had no idea how the hivemind would manifest if he made it a soul splinter. Would it retain its current strength, still have access to all its skills… Would its body be made of flesh and bone or some kind of magical material like his armaments? Most importantly, would it be able to get stronger or would it be stuck as it was the moment he'd killed it? These were all important questions and he wanted to answer as many as possible before he committed to his first summon. Can I call it that? It’s definitely better than familiar. Yes, I’ll refer to them as summons from now on.
Wovan’s greatest weakness was its lack of durability. Once you got past its spacial defence, it was a glass cannon. Arthur had a way to rectify that, at least if it worked as he hoped. If he could select it as an ally for his Source of Vitality title, and share his health and durability with the hivemind, he would quite literally make it a broken monster. It would push the monster well into the apocalypse tier and make it a nightmare to deal with.
One thing Arthur had learned since the system’s arrival was that all creatures were balanced. If a monster was extremely strong, then it probably lacked in speed or constitution, master mages tended to be squishy. Even apocalypse beasts followed this rule, though far more loosely than regular monsters, with the Hydra's inability to deal with a single durable foe that could tank its poison. If Arthur could remove the hivemind's one weakness and make it an advantage instead, well… he didn’t envy his future enemies. Let's not count our chickens before the eggs hatch. This was all conjecture for now. For all he knew, it would be impossible, or nerfed in some kind of way. Arthur doubted such an exploit would hold up in reality. Still, he could hope.
Arthur took in the massive spider one final time, at least during its lifetime if things went well with his plan, and admired once again how truly massive it was. Even with ninety percent of the bugs making it up dead, drenched as it was in silver-grey blood, the monster made for an impressive sight. Arthur opted for a well-placed use of Poisoned Fang of the Hydra to finish off the fight, using no more than 5000 ether to completely disintegrate its head. Unfortunately, that didn’t kill off the creature, and he was forced to spend the next forty minutes locating and killing every single mini-spider that made it up.
Only then did he receive the influx of energy that told him the hivemind was dead.
You have defeated Wovan, the Hivemind construct…
You have reached level 103…
You have received 36 Draconic Vitality…
You have gained 90 unallocated stat points…
Arthur dumped everything into Draconic Vitality, almost groaning in pleasure as he felt new strength suffuse his body. He hoped that sensation never grew old. Arthur was pulled back to the present when a purple distortion in space appeared over the final mini spider he’d killed. He almost dismissed it as the remnants of the deceased creature's magic but quickly changed his mind when it revealed a monster core the size of a football. It was the biggest one he’d seen to date and absolutely beautiful, a massive purple gem that glittered and reflected light.
It looked like Wovan hadn’t kept its monster core within its body, instead utilising some kind of spacial storage to protect it. Arthur was practically salivating at the thought of having a magical storage space of his own. As useful as the bag of holding Alyssia had given him was, it didn’t quite live up to his expectations of a fantasy item. He was surprised that killing the monster had netted him a level, but he chalked it up to being extremely close to one after his previous battle. Looking around at the hivemind's corpse, Arthur couldn’t help but chuckle. What would the rest of humanity think when one of the greatest looming threats the nation faced suddenly died?
~~~~~
Azure, The Vitality of Earth, swam through the oceans as she pondered her fate, something she’d found herself doing far too often since she’d been chosen and selected as one of Earth’s Primes, one of only two beasts who had been granted the duty of the planet's protection. She’d always been a large creature, the largest beast on the planet, in fact, as the system had anointed her upon its arrival.
Now the blue whale had grown threefold and her dominion over the oceans went uncontested. There were few creatures on the planet, perhaps save her fellow Primes, who could even hurt her and the regulations in place prevented them from battling. All that power, the strength to reshape the very oceans and a vitality that would keep her heart beating long after everything she’d known would end, and she wanted none of it.
She was just so, so lonely.
The great change had granted her intelligence, yes, but it had also taken everything from her.
Azure’s mate, with whom she’d wandered the oceans for the last decade hadn’t adapted well to the new world. Where she had gained intelligence and successfully evolved for the first time at level 5, her mate had failed, becoming some twisted perversion of the being she’d loved and adored for so long, a mindless beast that had been granted the stats of a demented monster, no longer a creature of Earth but actively rejected by it. She’d run from him then, unable to bear his ferocity and strength as he butchered their children, his failed evolution granting him a monstrous power her natural one lacked at the time.
Time had passed since then and she was as different from the evolved whale now as she had once been from a common fish. It was ironic then that the first task given to her as prime was the extermination of the mate she had formerly lacked the power to put down. Apparently, he was growing far too fast and represented a threat to Earth’s natural progression. As both his former mate and Prime, Earth had seen fit to bless her with the task of cleaning up. Perhaps it was the whole reason she'd been chosen as Prime.
Azure had procrastinated, delaying the task so much that nature had taken its natural course and her mate had been felled by a stronger monster. She’d failed her first task as Prime spectacularly. Which was why she was taking her second one so seriously. Azure hardly needed a world message to tell her the planet was in danger this time. Every creature with a modicum of intelligence had felt it when 'she' breached the planet.
A lich-queen.
Her very presence was polluting the ether in the world, altering the natural composition of energies required for the planet to grow. Azure had no idea how that would look if allowed to continue unimpeded, but she knew that procrastination now spelt disaster that even she might not be capable of surviving. She shivered uncomfortably the second she entered the monster's territory. The water here was well below freezing point but strange magics held it in the liquid state. Already, she could feel the monster’s attention honing in on her, taste the madness in that horrifying gaze. For the first time in her long life, Azure felt small.
Steeling herself, she continued onwards, her domain extending outwards. It travelled a metre, two, before meeting a wall of force that felt like the world itself had turned against her, freezing her magic in its inception stage. The vitality fuelling her magic felt sluggish, her near infinite levels of health regeneration brought down to a level that could hardly support her existence.
Coming here was a mistake. How did the world expect her to face such a monster, it was tantamount to suicide. Unless that’s what it wants from me, she thought grimly as she felt another presence homing in on her location. It had the flavour of Prime written all over it but the laws of non-conflict between them hardly put her at ease. After all, this was the man responsible for all their troubles, with his organisation of fellow madmen, named the silver rose, acting out his poisonous will. Not for the first time, she wondered what Earth was thinking, selecting such a man to protect its interests.
Azure didn’t know his name, only his title.
The chaos of Earth, the proverbial stone God threw at his creation when they became complacent. Except the man coming was an asteroid with the tact of a bull in a china shop. Betrayal or help? Azure didn’t know. The only thing she was certain of, was that today was going to be a long day.
Author Note:
Thank you everyone for all the support during my stories launch. Things turned out better than I expected but worse than I had hoped. Self-publishing means my story is only as successful as I am capable in marketing it, and I have never before in my life marketed anything. It's been an interesting learning experience to say the least.
That is to say, that releases will hopefully be going back to a normal two chapters a week baring any unforeseen circumstances that may blindside me. This will be getting old very soon, but once again, I make an appeal to everyone to please go and check out my books release. Leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads, posting it on anywhere you think people might be interested, telling friends and family. Every little bit helps so much more than you could know.
On a side note, if hypothetically, all my readers went and got a KU trial for free for one month (RR says its around 5,000), and read my story Etherious: Fresh Beginnings, entirely for free, all within 24 hours of reading this, a LitRPG story, could hypothetically break into the top ten ranks on Amazon Books. It's impossible, but one can hope.
Day dreaming aside, my book has currently passed 100 sales so far, calculated via copies sold and KU pages read. If by the end of September, my novel passes 1,000 sales, I will start releasing 3 chapters a week. I've been devoting far more time to writing then I used to, and am enjoying it a lot more too since my novels release. So long as I don't get burned out, things are looking up for my writing. Thank you everyone for sticking with me.
