PreCursive

  Before I left Sylvia behind and marched to my likely death, I took a moment to examine my Status. I’d been involved in quite a bit of bat i twenty-four hours, and killed…more than a few people. Normal people wouldn’t have gained anything from that, but…

  I wasly normal, now was I?

  I pulled up my Status using Hidden Amidst the Spheres.

  You have gained 7 levels!You are now Lvl. 91. Ag has reached Lvl. 7 (Max)!Dual Wielding has reached Lvl. 5!Short Bow Proficy has reached Lvl. 3!You have 70 u Virtue points. Level 90 Css ability ied. Would you like to review your Status?Y/ out a silent sigh as I shuhe task of managing my level up to my remaining c. My outer ring took the task of standing up off of the sb that Sylvia was resting on, and approag my gathered rades.

  I wasn’t surprised to see so many levels at once. I… had no idea hoeople I had actually killed, during the assault on the warehouse. It had to be well over a dozen, and from my experience, people were…just worth more Aether than monsters, when it came to leveling up.

  God, what a revolting thought.

  sidering my advantages, I never wao bee the kind of person who boiled down my oppos to what they were worth to me. Sapient beings were more than just grist for the mill that was my adva.

  My c tiredly selected yes, and then allocated my Virtues. ing from my established allocations today, like I had by getting some points in Strength. I didn’t feel like I could take the risk, and preferred the tried and true method of more Intelligence, Wisdom, aerity.

  My remaining ring reviewed my ges briefly, before firming the allotment.

  haniel Eugene HartTitlesUnbound LiberatorLevel 91Age 24 SolRace Human (Precursor)Affinity TerrestrialCsses Thornbde Acolyte (Unon)Professioherial Meldih 697/740Stamina 46/100Vitality74Strength50Spirit10Dexterity134Perception74Intelligence199Wisdom199Free Points0Options[Talent Page], [Skill Page], [Profession Page]I was unsurprised to see my Status refleg how worn down I felt. I sure as hell didn't feel one hundred pert.

  As I reached Liora and Baldric, leaving Sylvia and Isolde behind, my cot around to seeing what the st ability I would get before reag level one hundred would be.

  I nearly ughed aloud at what I got.

  This…would have beey useful, only hours previous.

  Level 90 Css ability (Thornbde Acolyte)Bloodroot Resiliealent): Body and Soul are bolstered by the strength of the unseeh.Talents were typically easier for me to uand what they did than Skills, siheir effects were immediate.

  And I sure felt this.

  All at once I felt…firmer, more solid somehow. My body and soul were, like the description said, almost being shored up by something. It seemed to me like my Vitality was being reinforced, if I had to pce this new feeling.

  Actually, that…might be exactly what was happening.

  This sensation, in a weird way, felt almost like how the multiplicative effect of Sylvan Vigor did, just bolstering a different Virtue. But it wasn’t a Skill, and thus wasn’t something I could turn off or tune up and down. No, now that I thought about it more and examihe feeling, I retty sure I knew what was going on with Bloodroot Resilience.

  This assive increase to my Vitality, it had to be. Either I was drawing strength from the earth around me, like the description said, or I was getting an addition or multiplication to the Virtue.

  But…it was odd.

  Moments after the Talent started w, I swear I heard an inaudible whisper, from somewhere just out of earshot. But when I looked around to try and find the source, I saw nothing.

  Baldric saw my rubberneg and raised a tired eyebrow at me. “Something wrong?”

  “Ah…” I paused, before shaking my head. “No…nothing. I think it was just…an odd Talent iion or something. Don’t worry about it.”

  The dwarf ied me for a moment before nodding. “If you say so. Anyway, listen up. We’re all ready to move out now, including Tzo,” He o the Lich that was standing off in front of us, direg his ‘assistants’. He had finally started getting them underway and was direg them towards and out of the door that I knew led out to the surface. The odd sound of a bination of marg and shuffling from the undead filled the cavernous b. “We’ll follow behind them, and try to assess the situation when we reach the surface. We…all know the stakes here, so…don’t fuck this up, I suppose.”

  Liora turned her head to look at me from the er of her remaining eye. “The Lidicated to us that you were meant to sy the Godbound?” She asked shortly. Still, I detected a mote of doubt in her voice.

  I didn’t bme her for it.

  I the two of them. Even though I had gotten Ringed Mind only a few months ago, I was uo managing my emotions without it. I’m sure they could both see the apprehension on my face at the prospect of killing a Camity. “Yes…Elys told me I had everything I o kill it. I…don’t know how, but I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

  Baldric closed his eyes. “Then the goal is to get you close to the bastard,” He said shortly, before nodding ahead of us, to where most of the undead had cleared out. Tzo was already floating after his minions even as more tio stream into the cavernous b, without even a gnce behind him to see if we were following. “Let’s go.”

  The three of us set out after the departing undead army.

  Behind us, just on the edge of my hearing, I heard a young, whispered voice.

  “Good luck,” Isolde said quietly, voice trailing after us.

  We probably .

  …………………………………………………..

  In a mirror to how we had first entered into Elderwyd Tteot so long ago, we marched through the tuhat ected Tzo’s b to Ttec above, trailing behind said Lich’s army. Before long, we had reached the stairs that led upwards, and by that time, the tremors I had been feeling earlier were starting to beore intense.

  And wheually started our journey upwards, sound began to filter down towards those of us that were still alive and coherent enough to uand it.

  The sounds of battle.

  hter.

  It only grew more and more obvious that something was going on up there beyond what we had thought. It souo me like Tzo’s forces were already engaging something, which was odd. The exit point of his b led out into Tteot Elderwyck. But…with Camity out there…

  Maybe the fight had spilled into the Orcish twin city.

  Fighting what, though?

  My small group eventually reached the exit point to Ttec.

  Dread pooled in my stomach, and my mouth fell open at how the world seemed to have deteriorated, in the st few hours we must have spent underground.

  We had exited out into a veritable hell.

  The sky above was shrouded in an artificial darkhat resembled the smoke of a forest fire more than it did night. In the distahe normally warm light of Tarus above had been almost…corrupted. It gred down at the world with a blood-red hue that cast menag shadows upoy around me.

  And that city was under siege.

  Screams and the csh of bdes on scale filled the air, as the Orcish Imperials desperately tried to fight back the waves of mohat seemed to have filled their streets. I had never seen anything like the beasts, and there must have been thousands of them in Ttec alone by my guess, much less Elderwyck.

  To my eyes, they looked to be a strange cross between a lizard and a bat. The creatures were scaled, and had the basic body pn of something like a loinct bipedal dinosaur from bae, almost raptor-like. But instead of a lizard’s snout, they had the head of some kind of monstrous scaled, ft-faced bat, gnashing and gnawing at the world. A long, sinuous tail ran behind them, while near-foot-long cws stood out on each of their powerful-looking limbs, much longer on their legs than their smaller arms. If that wasn’t bad enough, each of them had what seemed to be long, vestigial wings on their back. The actual wing part of it appeared to have been reduced to the barest of useless membranes, and in lieu of flight, they were intended fhting. Instead of having cws at the end of the limbs, they had what seemed to be out-and-out razor-sharp bdes.

  They were engaged with both the Orcish guards of Tted with Tzo’s undead. It was a good thing too, because it didn’t seem the living had been doing so well against these things. The lizards were so dangerous to get close to that it took at least a full squad of the Or order to deal with just ohe problem was, there were a metric fuck ton of the things iing Ttec’s streets. But with the introdu of the undead, those numbers were being evened out. It seemed like the battle lines ireets had been pushed back by the lizards, but not anymore.

  Instead, Tzo’s ‘assistants’ were stemming the tide with their own numbers.

  Bes of fighting alongside a Neancer, I guess.

  Though…these things didn’t seem to be jokes. Where the hell were they ing from? I had never seen anything like them before.

  I got my answer.

  I watched as one Orcish guardsman eared through the chest by one of the lizard's back bdes, his high-quality armor uo stop the monstrous limbs. He was flung off to the side carelessly by the beast, and by the time he hit the floor, his corpse was already ging. It bulged oddly, rapidly growing new flesh, scales, and limbs, until in moments, a new lizard creature had taken the pce of the deceased Orc. It loosed a disturbing, warbly screeto the air before bounding into the fight.

  I…almost instinctually threw out an Observe at the new birthed monster, before it exited my sight. I wasn’t expeg much, sidering how strong these things seemed to be.

  I was surprised when I got something back.

  Name Rhazalian RevenantLevel 156Age 2 minutesSpecies RevenantAbilities UnknownI wish I had time to take in all the oddities of that Status, such as the fact I was even seeing it if the monster was over fifty levels above me. Also that the System itself couldn’t even tell me what Abilities they had, but I didn’t have that luxury.

  I had to dodge out of the way, as one of these ‘Revenants’ fell out of the fug sky, jaws opened wide in an attempt to remove my head. It looked to have somehow materialized in mid-fug-air, formed from a wisp of the dread-indug smoke blog out the sky.

  It looked like these things had more than one way to spawn.

  Wonderful.

  Luckily, Tzo was right in front of us. Faster than I could track, the skeletal right hand of the Lich shed out and grabbed the Revenant right out of the air, while he held his gaff in his left. He exami, floating in pce, as the thing trashed and s the powerful undead uselessly. His glowing greey sockets regarded the thing almost ptuously.

  “It’s already spawning Revenants, I see. Never a wele sight to see the spawn of Camities,” Tzo said sideringly, before letting his gaze drift down to us. “You o hurry. I’ll find your leed deal with her, but I’ll not stick around to be overrun by a tide of these things if you fail. Not even I withstand a horde like that. In the meanwhile, my assistants will work to clear these streets as best they .” Without another word, the Lich floated into the smoky sky, before seeming to accelerate in the dire of Elderwyck, glowing a menag green in the process.

  In the meantime, I was on guard now that I khese Revenants could fall out of the damn sky at any moment. In fact, I was trag anroup of them, as they fell towards the melee of undead and Orcs.

  These, too, never reached their target. But instead of being grabbed out of the sky by a Lich, they were shot out of it instead.

  By what looked like a bright red, burnihicker around than my torso.

  The Revenants were instantly ied with a sizzle before they could even screech.

  I blinked, and looked to where the bst had e from. I was almost hoping in vain that Honoka had showed up out of the blue, but no.

  Instead, the sers were inating from the odd guard towers set up along the wall that surrouec. I had seen them and the massive ruby crystals at their apex before when we had inally ehe city, but I’d had no idea as to their purpose. It looked like they were turrets.

  Laser turrets.

  I watched as the guard towers fired their burning payloads in short bursts inwards at the air above the city, targeting falling Revenants. They lit up the smoky sky in brief fshes of crimson light, but weren’t able to pierce it entirely. And they weren’t able to hit all of the mohat were falling out of the sky, either. Some were successfully dodging the near-fk shot of the towers.

  The entire sequence of events that had occurred since we’d exited out into Ttec may have only taken moments, but I had still frozen slightly. I was knocked out of it by Baldric pointing to a nearby rooftop. “The Orcs have this covered,” He said grimly, to an apanying nod from Liora. “We o get some air to see where the Camity is. It shouldn’t be hard. Fug things are meant to be massive.” Without another word, both he and Liora took running leaps onto the roof of what seemed to be an Orcish butcher’s shop.

  I didn’t have their strength, so I cast out a Thrapple and trailed behind them in the air. Once I had settled down on the rooftop and cast my eyes over in the dire of Elderwyck, my breath left me once more.

  There was a monster sitting in the ruins of Fort Duality, using it almost like a makeshift throne.

  It was…beyond enormous.