Dei ducked under the Trosks arm, trying to reason out why it would attack him in the first place as he brought his fists up to guard his head. He was positive that it would count as an “Intangible Enemy,” meaning that his [Void Walker] Achievement would let him punch it, but he genuinely didn’t know why it was attacking him in the first place.

  “Something odd is going on with its emotions” Fang quickly sent in a packet of information. “It switched from panicked to enraged. I think the curse in your Identify spread to the Trosk.”

  ‘Ah’ he thought, feeling apprehensive to kill it.

  If it was attacking him, then he thought it would be okay to defend himself, but now he’d basically forced it to attack. It wasn’t even a high level, so there was no real reason to do so for EXP.

  He’d wait a while and see if the Trosks soul managed to heal itself and fight off the curse. In that time, he would let it hit him in order to find a way to resist whatever it did. While this monster was low-leveled, that didn’t mean the other Geometric enemies would be, so he had to try and form a defense against them now.

  When it tried to hit him a second time, he didn’t fully dodge, allowing it to glancingly strike his arm. It was honestly not very fast, so it was relatively easy to plan how it would hit him.

  The limb bounced off of the arm he used to block, and he felt the Geometric mana enter him.

  The strangest sensation spread throughout his arm. He didn’t necessarily move it, but it felt like the entire world moved around his arm. He watched his arm extend from his body, but the muscles still felt tense.

  He realized that the Trost had extended the space between his forearm and biceps

  Letting his arm relax, he saw that it curled backwards unnaturally, which looked weird but didn’t actually hurt. After a few seconds, the space returned back to normal, and his arm was completely unharmed.

  He raised his eyebrow at the Trosk, but it didn’t show any indication of understanding his skepticism. Dei wondered what the Trosk was even trying to do when it did that.

  Rather than strike him again, he saw it reach into the ground beneath his foot, and felt it expand quickly.

  Not that quickly though, so he just took a step to the side, off the expanding ball of earth. ‘Is it going to explode?’ he wondered, immediately backing up a lot further.

  While walking backwards, he accidentally stepped back over the threshold into the previous cave, and his Tremor Sense was rescrambled, disorienting him hard. Again, he almost fell, but this time Fendrascora caught him and lifted him off the ground. Without his feet on the ground, it was much easier to focus on the Trosk.

  Despite what he thought though, the ground the Trosk was expanding didn’t actually explode. It just distended a bit, then returned back to its original shape.

  He was flabbergasted. What was its goal? Why did it even try to do that?

  Did it literally just try to trip him, and nothing else? How did this thing deal damage?

  It was actually Clever that figured out what was going on. “It has an odd affinity, unique and unusual. Like Time. It can do unique things, but not necessarily harmful, so now it does not know how to hurt something. Like if I tried using Time to hurt something… Don't know how.”

  Dei could see that happening. Time could certainly do some interesting things at higher levels, but Clever stated frequently that the Time affinity was horribly intensive on his soul and not actually good outside of niche situations. It was an esoteric affinity, and hard to really understand. Geometry most likely struggled from a similar issue, where it could definitely do some things in the right situation, but it wasn’t particularly good on its own.

  More than that though, it was probably very intensive on the Trosk, proven immediately when the poor thing's body fell flat against the floor after displacing the space beneath Dei’s foot.

  He genuinely felt bad for subjecting it to such intense emotions then exhausting it.

  “The rage is going away, and it’s too weary to move anymore,” Fang said, reinforcing what he already thought.

  Despite it being the weakest monster relative to his power at the time, the Trosk had actually put up a much better fight than some of the others. Even though it wasn’t even remotely dangerous, it did manage to make him fall over at least, which had to count for something.

  Passing by it, he bent down and patted the invisible monster, hoping it would be okay, then continued to just walk past it further down the cave system.

  From what he found, Geometric monsters seemed to struggle in manipulating his actual body, but they could change the environment around him.

  Deeper he went, and Fang sensed multiple other Trosks in the walls, which they decided to ignore. Dei repeatedly almost lost his balance, every single time they’d travel into a new section or cave. It felt like he was teleporting around, walking in and out of what he thought before were walls, but now knew were points connected through the geometric patterns that the convergence abided by. He thought there might be a design to the entire thing, but if there was, it was far too complicated for him to figure out in any reasonable time frame.

  Around halfway to the center, there was a new creature, and Fang told him to be on guard just in case it was more violent than the Trosks. Still, he couldn’t sense it, so he just had to take her word.

  Walking far from the wall that Fang sensed it in, he watched for the movement of any souls, and sensed the moment it shot outward.

  Although shooting outwards wasn’t quite what it did, it was more that everything else moved towards it.

  The walls closed in on Dei, shrinking the gap between him and this new creature. Now that he confirmed it was violent, as it was clearly attacking him, he hit it with an Identify, trying to evade any of its attacks but sensing several land, despite him not seeing anything hit him. His attention faltered, and he was only able to glean the bare-minimum.

  [Accelerating Bolrun - Level 131

  Made of mana. Aggressive. Geometry affinity based.]

  More than that, the spiritual defenses of the Bolrun were disrupted, giving him a clearer view of it using his Soul Sight.

  It was vaguely humanoid, but its arms were replaced with hundreds of thin tendrils whipping around in various directions. Without its defenses being destroyed, his Soul Sight was unable to see the fine details. Now though, he was able to tell he was surrounded in them.

  Where its legs would be, there was a cone which he could tell was spinning, with the wider part closer to the ground. As the cone accelerated in its rotation, the Bolrun floated upwards, showing it could fly.

  He quickly assessed the environment, and saw that the walls were closer to each other, but they’d stopped shrinking when it hit Fendrascora’s peripheral body, meaning that the Bolrun was able to compress inanimate space, but not anything with life in it. Its strategy must be to usually pack the walls tight enough to ensure its prey couldn’t move, before killing it.

  Speaking of killing, Dei still had a lot of tendrils slapping him. Vigilance had kicked in though, giving him time to think. He didn’t know what the tendrils would do, but it was too late to dodge now. Instead, he’d go all in.

  Completely ignoring the tendrils, the ground exploded under him as he lept upwards towards the Bolrun.

  As his feet left the ground, the entire world reshaped itself, spinning this way and that. He was headed straight for the Bolrun, but gravity quickly reshaped itself to pull him upwards as the floor became the ceiling.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  He felt the pull of gravity increase manifold, and suddenly the distance to the floor was twenty feet up as it rapidly sank downwards.

  Rather than fall though, Fendrascora held him up, refacing him towards the Bolrun as she clung to the walls before throwing him at it.

  The Bolrun retracted all of its tendrils and the environment returned to normal, but Fendrascora simply turned him in the correct direction again.

  Fang came down upon the Bolrun, but it's tricks were not done yet. Dei felt like his hand continued down at just the same speed, but he could visibly see it slow down as the distance between Fang and the Bolrun increased.

  He had two hands though. He hadn’t pulled Jasmine from his hip, but he wouldn’t need her. He’d been storing Convection mana in his body since the start of the fight, and he now used Snap mana, channeling it through his fist as he punched towards the Bolruns body.

  He felt Fang accelerate slightly as the Bolrun attempted to increase the distance between Dei’s fist and itself, before the rush of Convection and Snap came forth from his fist. The heat stored was next to nothing, but he wasn’t trying to use the explosion to hurt the Bolrun, he was using it to disrupt the Bolruns spell that it channeled to increase the distance between Dei’s strikes and its body. There was an audible shattering as he felt the resistance give, and his fist rapidly accelerated towards the Bolrun. He felt his fist make contact, and a hole was punched clean through it. The moment he did, the Bolruns hold on Fang came loose, and she came the rest of the way down.

  Careful to avoid cutting his own arm, the mass of tendrils the Bolrun surrounded itself with were cut apart, before he felt its main body give as well.

  Dei fell towards the ground as gravity finally seemed to catch up with their battle. Landing in a roll to try and reduce the force of impact, he glanced behind him to see the soul of the Bolrun fade away.

  [EXP gained for killing the Accelerating Bolrun (Level 131). EXP gain raised due to level disparity]

  Standing up straight once more, he checked with Fang to make sure there were no threats around, as it seemed he was still terrible at recognizing that.

  He sensed a few notifications, but ignored them for now. There’d be time later, when he was not actively in monster-saturated territory. He made it so that he was only notified for kills, that way he could verify when something was dead.

  He doubted this would be the only critter to attack him before he reached Amaya in the center. Dei just hoped there wasn’t a guardian of the Convergence like there was for the Convection Convergence, otherwise he’d have to retreat and come back later, potentially even leaving it to Aloran to rescue Amaya. Lani and Moren could work together to get her free.

  * * *

  [EXP gained for killing the Accelerating Bolrun (Level 138). EXP gain raised due to level disparity]

  [EXP gained for killing the Ephemeral Bolrun (Level 145). EXP gain raised due to level disparity]

  [EXP gained for killing the Accelerating Bolrun (Level 159). EXP gain raised due to level disparity]

  Dei was right that there would be more monsters, it just seemed to be a bit of a limited selection for some reason. Still, he wasn’t complaining, because it helped him get a feel for the Geometry affinity. Each fight was easier than the last, despite their ascending levels.

  The Geometry affinity meant that creatures could shape space and objects, but not living organisms. They could manipulate the distance between two things, but only if those two objects were not touching. If Dei stood on the ground, it was impossible for them to move the ground away. He knew, of course, that there was a miniscule gap between atoms that they might be able to take advantage of, but it seemed like it would just be too hard. The more space between an object and living tissue, the more space they had to work with.

  The Bolruns liked to “trick” Dei into jumping into the air in order to get them, then stretching the space between him and the ground. Once they did this, they would cast something on him, maybe gravity magic, that made him fall a lot faster. If this had worked even a single time, Dei might have actually been severely injured. As it was though, Fendrascora would just suspend him mid-air with her peripheral body, and he was completely fine.

  He noticed several things about the species. First was that “Accelerating” was the most common variant of Bolrun, and they could make him fall faster, so he believed the adjective gave them a Skill which facilitated this. Ephemeral on the other hand, was not able to make him fall faster. It was, however, much harder to pin down. His Convection mana would simply phase right through it when he attacked, and Fang could only deal a small percentage of her usual Soul damage to it.

  He was left relying on his [Void Walker] Achievement, good ol’ punching it that never seemed to fail. Even though that one was the hardest to put down though, it was definitely the least dangerous. Since there was no downwards pull whenever the ground disappeared from under him, Dei would almost definitely have been able to just tank the fall, since he was pretty sure that natural acceleration and terminal velocity weren’t fast enough to hurt him anymore.

  Deeper his group went, yet the selection of monsters was never really different. Fang sensed a few Trosks in the walls, the occasional Bolrun which Dei would have to fight, and really that was it.

  Each battle against Geometry-based creatures disoriented him less and less as Homeostasis continued to improve. His Tremor Sense would randomly change the layout of the world outside the convergence as Dei entered a new manipulated section of Geometry caves.

  Multiple times, Dei asked fang to scan the center of the Convergence for any magical signatures, but she always returned with nothing other than Amaya herself. Dei reasoned that Amaya might actually be the guardian of this Convergence, stopping any other creatures from getting particularly strong by feeding off of the more powerful Geometry magic closer to the center.

  Still, that didn’t explain the total lack of monster diversity. In the Convection Convergence, there were tons of different monsters, but all of them were based on Heat or Heat-Adjacent affinities. It made absolutely no sense for there to be all of two types of monsters.

  He didn’t assume to know everything though, so he simply stayed on guard, tense, and waiting for an explanation to make itself clear.

  He didn’t want another [Mud-Murker] incident though, where he ran away from a completely harmless situation because he got in his own head.

  * * *

  Dei and his group had finally reached it. The center of the Convergence was just around the corner, and Dei was getting Fendrascora ready.

  While it was true that he didn’t know what to expect, and didn’t want to feel silly by running, there were other things he was able to do.

  He gave up his Homeostasis Skill to Fendrascora again so that she could better withstand her own weight, and made her stretch as far back up the cave and towards the exit as she could. Not only that, but he went through the effort of giving her five hundred more Soul mana from one of his [Astral Projection]’s, making her much stronger after all the levels to accompany it.

  At the drop of a hat, she could encase him in a ball of liquid, and rapidly pull him backwards, where they would shoot out of the cave as quickly as they could.

  Clever was tense as well, for the same reason Dei was. They didn’t think it was natural for this little biodiversity anywhere.

  Dei was forced to recognize that the two monsters that were here, constantly hid in the walls. Neither Trosks nor Bolrun did any wandering.

  He actually tried Identifying a Bolrun to figure out why that was, but only got the response that the Bolrun was an ambush predator that naturally hid in the walls, so it wasn’t a “learned” response.

  He was about as ready as he could be, so he finally took the final few steps, coming out and into the opening that Amaya was in.

  It was a large, circular cavern. He was pretty sure that this was larger than it should be, based on the area the Convergence took up from the outside world.

  There were four large stacks of rubble in the four corners of the room, each the exact same size. In the center of the room was Amaya, the chest piece, lying halfway buried under some stones. Clever said that he sensed strong waves of Geometry magic from inside her chest, confirming that the Anchor was stored inside her.

  The entire room looked off, so Dei didn’t take a single step further into it. Instead, he sent out his Kindness Identify to open up a communication channel with Amaya as he studied what bothered him.

  Unlike his Wrath version, the Kindness version was not instant. It took a while, expanding forth like a rolling fog of Kindness mana, so it would take a moment to reach her.

  When he looked around, he saw that aside from the four big piles of rocks, the room was actually… very clean. There weren’t any pebbles on the ground and it was all flatter than he’d ever seen any other cave. There were only a few crystals that grew in the roof allowing for a very low light, meaning that his sensitive eyes weren’t overwhelmed at all, but he could still see.

  Still, as he looked closer at the ceiling, he saw small indents where crystals should have been.

  Looking at the floor, he saw that it wasn’t only pebbles missing, there was no dust either.

  Finally, he peered closely at the closest mound of rocks. The low light levels meant that he couldn’t properly see between them, forming gentle shadows between each stone. He was able to glimpse a small white coloration though, just at the edge of the shadows, and that tipped him off to something.

  Channeling some mana into his eyes in order to cast infrared light over the rocks, he was finally able to see past the first layer.

  While the top layer was a generic grey of rocks and stones, the insides of the piles were a bleached white color, and they weren’t the disorganized random shape of rocks either.

  They were bone.

  The five mounds were filled with bones, and the top layer covered that fact up with rocks.

  Horror crept onto his face in the same instant that his Kindness Identify reached Amaya, forming a link between his soul and hers. She took advantage of that connection immediately.

  “RUN YOU FUCKING MORON! THERE IS AN ACCIPERE!”

  Dei had already sent the message to Fendrascora though, to pull them out as fast as she possibly could. He felt the beginning of her tugging on his back, right as something exploded out from the neck of Amaya’s body.