[You have defeated level 575 x1 Mistplane Formless (D). Bonus experience due to level difference.]
[You have defeated level 497 x7 Hollow Remnant (D). Bonus experience due to level difference.]
[You have defeated level 633 x1 Deepborn Stalker (D). Bonus experience due to level difference.]
[You have defeated level 701 x1 Boundary Hound (D). Bonus experience due to level difference.]
[You have defeated level 430 x4 Bloodmarsh Devourer (D). Bonus experience due to level difference.]
[You have defeated level 618 x2 Mireborn Aberrant (D). Bonus experience due to level difference.]
[You have defeated level 665 x1 Subsumed Colossus (D). Bonus experience due to level difference.]
[You have defeated level 732 x1 Severed Hierarch (D). Bonus experience due to level difference.]
[Bonus experience due to ‘Hero’ feat.]
[Level 206 > 227]
Strength +84, Dexterity +84, Intelligence +126, Unassigned stats +84]
Alex ran the numbers. Twenty-one levels. The calculations were straightforward. No surprises. The Mistplanes had contributed their share first.
Mistplane Strays. Fast, coordinated, multi-limbed predators that moved as one, their bodies shifting unnaturally to compensate for mana-thickened terrain. The packs had attacked with precision, but their coordination had been their flaw. The moment one fell, the rest staggered. A chain reaction. 0.2 experience per kill. Barely worth the time.
Deepborn Stalkers. More adaptive, built for pursuit. Their elongated forms were all acceleration and angles, tracking movement in a way that bypassed conventional vision. An issue for anyone who fought reactively. Not for him. The first few had moved unpredictably—then they hadn’t. 0.3 to 0.4 experience per kill. More useful than the Strays. Less interesting.
Alex had caught Osric watching the fight with a strange expression— one that said, ‘I’d like to pretend I understand what you’re doing, but I don’t.’ He supposed he could emphasise, the old man appeared to have some advanced high rarity ranger class and could likely sense mana to a high degree. Too bad Alex hadn’t been using any.
Alex then checked the gains from the Bloodmarshes. The Bloodmarshes had been different, towards the end, the difficulty in battles had spiked drastically.
The Bloodmarsh Devourers had been slow on land, monstrous in the water. Their layered jaws weren’t designed for a fight; they were designed to start digestion before the prey was dead. That was a problem for people who let themselves get caught. Liora had killed one before he could. She’d been smug about it for a full five minutes. Low experience. Not worth the effort.
Hollow Remnants. Four-legged ambushers that distorted visibility. Their mana-refracting scales had forced constant tracking, forcing him to rely on sensory input rather than sight. Irritating. Not difficult. He hadn’t needed to see them—he’d just needed to cut where they were going to be.
Alex’s advanced hearing had caught Osric muttering something about "cheating" when the last one collapsed mid-lunge. 0.2 experience per kill.
Aberrants. Bipedal stalkers with elongated forelimbs designed for piercing armor. Their attacks had been precise, their movements direct and unrelenting. They hadn’t wasted effort. That had been the problem. Every attack was fully committed. No ability to retreat, no adjustment. They died faster than they learned. The best of the lesser creatures. 0.3 to 0.4 experience per kill.
Then came the Apex kills.
The Boundary Hound. Six limbs. Adaptive exoskeletal plating that responded to spatial distortions before they happened. It had been intelligent enough to use the Mistplanes as a weapon, shifting angles of pursuit based on mana flow. A fight dictated by system mechanics. He adjusted. It didn’t.
And the bloodmarshes Subsumed Colossus. Not just big. Persistent. Every limb severed regrew. Every joint shifted its structural density. It had adapted to most things Alex threw at it and most wounds he’d inflicted—it had just kept existing.
And the bloodmarshes ‘Severed Hierarch’.
Even now, he could still feel where its presence had warped the battlefield. Space itself had bent beneath it—mana condensing, resisting movement, pulling at cognition. Not just distortion. Control. The battlefield had belonged to it. For a moment.
Then it hadn’t.
Osric had exhaled slow when it fell, bow still half-drawn. Liora had just stared at what was left, rolling her shoulders like she’d been holding tension for too long. it had taken longer than expected and the rewards had reflected that. A battle of attrition, if he let it be. He hadn’t.
It had been the strongest thing here. It had also died like everything else.
Over level 700. Its death alone accounted for multiple level-ups.
The system was predictable. The stronger the kill, the faster he progressed.
And the things worth the most experience weren’t even the strongest things here.
Liora had been surprised by the apparent struggle. "That was the slowest I’ve ever seen you kill something." She had said, and she wasn’t wrong, through the bloodmarshes, Alex had discovered an important limitation to his Qi techniques.
His lack of stats and burning pathways had made the battles eventually become difficult. He wasn’t truly stronger without his skills, just more versatile.
And his Qi reserves and pathway stamina suffered greatly due to being forced to use techniques beyond his capacity. Despite the versatility, his Qi techniques only worked best in short bursts and quick battles. He could use techniques that spanned multiple disciplines for as long as his Qi allowed. But considering he was still only in the first stage, it would not last long. The longer he fought, the more damaged his pathways would become until he would find himself without access to Qi and forced to fight with nothing but his base stats. If he were to be surrounded by hordes whilst on cool-down and limited to Qi techniques and burned out pathways, it would be possible for them to wear him down with sheer numbers. He would have no real way to heal his damaged pathways until his new class’s skills and mana reactivated.
All he would have would be his base stats, Kendo, Kenjutsu, Battoujutsu, Koryu war techniques, and striking.
It was something to keep in mind.
Without hesitation, Alex dumped all of his free stats into dexterity and intelligence with equal measure. Thanks to his skills, he already had the endurance and strength, and he had decided long past to go all in on the speed of his blade and what he could do with it.
So as long as I’m not facing a literal army while on cool-down, it should be no biggie, Alex decided, rubbing his chin in thought, I’ll have to come up with a contingency for that.
“Woah…” Lioras low voice caused Alex to follow her gaze.
Seratheis was a stronghold built to last, and it took that literally.
It was a distant yet massive stronghold, its structures reinforced, expanded, and reshaped beyond recognition, built to last but twisted by time into something both unnatural and unrecognisable.
[Dynamic Quest Updated!]
[Dynamic Quest - ‘Legacy of the God of Creation’:
The First God’s purpose was the pursuit of perfection through endless creation, and in his absence, Seratheis continues this process—its mana refines all within, its flora restructures for efficiency, and its fauna evolve without limit, ensuring only the most optimized forms remain. Without the First God’s guidance, Seratheis’ pursuit of perfection has gone unchecked—its mana now forcibly reshapes all within, its flora mutates endlessly for efficiency, and its fauna evolve without constraint, producing entities beyond mortal comprehension.
Region designation ‘Seratheis’ has remained abandoned for two millennia, but the city has never stagnated. The god of creation’s final legacy remains within, sealed behind constructs and beings refined by countless cycles of creation. The stronghold does not test intruders—it rewrites them. Since the temples abandonment, no known entity has returned twice.
The city’s mana does not decay. It adapts. It refines. It will perfect all who enter, willing or not. The First God’s last message, a record of his purpose and his final creation, remains locked within the stronghold’s depths, guarded by entities that surpass mortal evolution. The opportunity to claim the last will of a god has presented itself to all those who survive Seratheis.
Quest Objectives:
1: Bearer of the Will – Locate and retrieve the God of Creation’s final Legacy.
Reward: ????
2: Survivor of Perfection – Escape Seratheis without irreversible alteration.
Reward: Unique Trait: ‘Resisted Perfection’, A-Grade Equipment, ???
3: Heir of the First – Defeat a Near-Perfection Creation Guardian refined by 2,000 years of guided adaptive evolution.
Reward: ???, S-Grade Relic of the First, Insight of Creation.
4: Eraser of Imperfections – Slay an Unfinished, a Higher-Tier entity still reconstructing itself in pursuit of an unknown ideal.
Reward: Unique Skill: ‘Devourer of Forms’, High-Grade Mana Core, A-Grade Equipment.]
[Quest Rewards and reward volume dependent on contribution.]
Ah, so that’s why it looks so uncanny, Alex thought. Its towering structures were shaped by forces that had worked uninterrupted for millennia. More of a city than a mere temple or stronghold. Everything within it changed and evolved, responding to the unchecked divine energy that still lingered. Its influence reached beyond the city itself, shifting the nature of what lived within its borders. Power left to grow without restraint created something beyond artificial balance, something closer to true potential.
Thick, towering trees, tall as redwoods, littered the land like a forest of giants. The air was dense with mana, heavy and tangible, saturating the vibrant overgrowth that tangled across the ground in layered clusters. Colors shifted with the energy flowing through them, wild and unchecked. Beneath the towering trunks, they were ants in a world of titans.
Liora held a hand above her eyes to block the sunlight, inhaling sharply as she eyed the structures in the distance. “You ever seen anything like that before? How didn’t we notice that on our way here?”
“Doesn’t really matter, does it?” Osric grunted, standing tall to regard the distant stronghold and thick world-trees that littered the landscape. “But it’s something alright.”
Alex agreed. He studied the lines of the quest again, frowning faintly. “Unchecked perfection. That’s one way to put it.” His voice had a dry, almost casual edge to it, like someone reading the label on an unfamiliar bottle.
“I think it’s saying,” Osric began, running a hand through his hair, “that this place turns you into something you’re not. It doesn’t just sound like it’s mutating the creatures—it’ll reshape us, too.”
Liora leaned back against a large cracked boulder. “And we don’t know what that looks like until we’re knee-deep in it. Or, worse, until we’ve already changed.” She cast a glance at Alex. “But hey, at least there’s a chance at mythic-tier rewards..”
Alex let her remark hang in the air, considering it. There was a chance that once his skills returned, his domain and mana control could keep any alteration effect of the atmospheric mana at bay. But then again, he thought, we’re dealing with the mana of a god, there’s no telling how powerful they could have been or the magic they had in their arsenal. He looked at the structure ahead, wide and sprawling— it was definitely more of a city than a temple or fortress, its shadow sprawling across the earthy ground. Some of the structures even stretched to the sky. “This place doesn’t sound like a gamble. More like a trap that rewards whoever’s crazy enough to spring it.”
And the rewards certainly seemed tempting.
Alex scanned the quest details again. The rewards displayed a level of value the system rarely revealed outright. Insight into lost daos, S-ranked equipment, an unknown and unique skill labeled ‘Devourer of Forms’. Even the hidden rewards suggested significance, shifting based on factors the system had chosen not to define. The mana’s influence likely shaped them in real-time, adjusting their properties to reflect the nature of the region.
The dao alone changed everything. In the dragon world, a necromantic dragon had weaponized his dao against cultivators, turning it into a force that disregarded their structured growth. Off-world, the strongest of the Martial Empire had incorporated daos into their strength, merging insights with their techniques. The Martial Empire refined its methods through cultivation, but daos expanded beyond structured advancement and entered the system—power dictated by understanding and altering the laws of what was possible, if only one’s rate of progress was high enough.
Devourer of Forms held promise. The name suggested more than augmentation, implying absorption, restructuring, or the ability to integrate external elements into one’s own form. Alex was doing a lot of assuming based off just its name, but a skill like that could perhaps bypass rigid classifications, creating potential outside predefined paths. Especially if it devours, but what’s ‘forms?’ Skills? Classes? How Overpowered were the gods? He wondered. The quest panel’s reluctance to elaborate reinforced its significance.
The equipment carried its own appeal. Eclipse had quickly become a valuable asset, mostly due to his unique nature and creative application of skills. But it’s rank was still pretty low, even though it had inherited his glitched nature. Weapons and armor functioned as tools, but the right ones could remain relevant beyond a single advancement. If these adapted alongside him, adjusting to match his growth rather than becoming obsolete, they would provide an ongoing advantage rather than a temporary increase in power.
Maybe this is why Jin let me visit this world… How many gods were there? And how many Quests do they have? He wondered.
This quest aligned with what he had been searching for. Every listed reward contributed toward his long-term goals, offering advantages in ways that extended beyond immediate combat. It provided a path toward surpassing limitations, and a single step closer toward confronting the Martial Empire on more equal footing. Progress required more than power alone—it required understanding, tools, and a method to close the gap.
He was taking it.
Osric glanced toward the jagged spires in the distance. “If there’s a way through, I’d rather find it before the others catch wind. If we can claim the rewards before they get here, it could mean… well, more than just treasure.”
Liora snorted. “Sure. It’ll mean secrets, mysteries, power plays—the usual nonsense. Whatever we find here is going to paint a target on our backs.”
Alex finally turned to face her, his expression calm but deliberate. “That’s only a problem if someone survives long enough to aim at us. Let’s focus on getting inside first. We’ll worry about what comes after, once we’ve seen what this place is hiding.”
Osric gave a slight nod. “We go in, we see what’s there. And we take what we can handle. No more, no less.”
Liora shrugged, pushing off the boulder. “Fine, fine. But if we come out with extra heads or extra arms, I’m going to stab you.”
Osric scaled the nearest tree in seconds, racing high up its wide base until he was a mere dot amongst the bark before stabbing into its side with a borrowed knife. The thick bark barely shifted under his grip, each movement too smooth to be casual. By the time Liora had looked up, he was already standing on an errant branch high above them, one foot resting against the trunk like he had planned the whole thing in advance.
“Farsight,” he muttered. His eyes flickered, a faint glow barely visible before vanishing again. A pause. “Huh.”
Alex adjusted his gauntlet. “Good huh or bad huh?”
“Mixed. We’re not the first.” Osric tilted his head forward, peering andscanning again. “Survivors. Scattered groups. Some already ahead. Some still in the bloodmarshes.”
Liora kicked a loose rock. “So much for getting here first.”
Alex rolled his shoulder. “Doesn’t change anything.”
Osric exhaled, still watching. “One guy’s knee-deep in a corpse and hasn’t noticed yet.”
Liora groaned. “Well, that’s his problem.”
Osric kept going. “Sure is. One group’s arguing over whether to move forward. One guy’s waving a torch at something bigger than him. Another’s standing completely still, probably waiting to see who dies first before committing.”
Liora leaned against the tree, staring up at him. “Anything useful?”
Osric shrugged. “Other than the fact that we’re not alone?”
Alex sat down. “That’s unsurprising. Can you see the her— the new Assessors? Or House Dreymoore.”
Osric scanned further, “Sure can. They’re about an hour behind, some of the Assessors are already ahead and almost at the lost city.”
Osric dropped to the ground, sliding down the base of the tree as thick as buildings.
Liora sighed, rubbing her temple. “We should hurry, they might steal the better quest rewards.”
Osric settled against the tree trunk. “I agree. I’ll keep watching as we move. You two keep existing. At some point, we’ll probably have to kill something.”
No one disagreed.
Alex paused as a presence screamed at his senses. His Qi was all but depleted, and his skills would not return for another twenty minutes. Alex checked his status with a thought.
[Name: Alex Ironwood
Level: 227
C???????ultivation: Qi Gathering- First stage
Race: Human - Rank D
Primary Class: ??????????????Sys???????te??????mic SwO??????rd So????????ve???????reign
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Sub-class: Locked
Strength: 2761 (1781)
Dexterity: 3537 (2282)
Endurance: 1431 (923)
Intelligence: 3346 (2159)
Wisdom: 1257 (811)
Qi: 1570 (1013)
Feats: First Encounter, Pioneer, Pinnacle IV, Survivor, Warrior, Champion, Dungeon Insurgent, Innovator, Reborn, Shard of the Endless, S????????????layer of U?????????n???????k???????n????????o?????????w????????n?????s?????????, Hero (Temporary), Blood Summoned (Temporary),
Techniques: Bovine Foundation Techniques (Mastered), Divine Bovine Vessel, Azure Restoration Method, Nine Swords Destruction Technique, Sword Qi (Minor), Vibrational Silence… [Expand]
Active skills: Du???????l of C???????orruption, Sovereign Executioner, InfiniteBody, Sovereign Clone, Divine Fist, Pierce Reality, NetherForged, Allo??????cation, Thousands become one, Eternal Shroud of Disarray, All-knowing Cut, Unknowable Sovereign (Temporary), Dual Resonance, Qi: ??????????????Refining, Internal Energy Refinement, Pathway reconstruction, Adaptive Flow Engineering, Laceration Bloom… [Expand]
Passive skills: A???????l????????à???????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????Ω??????? ??????????????? ???????????????????????g???????e??????e???????E??????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????? ????????????????????M???????m????????????????????????????????????????? ??????? ???????????????????????O??????o??????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????? ??????????????? ??????? ???????????????????????, Inventory, InfiniteBody, Mana Vortex, Nascent Body (imperfect), Abyssal Body (Imperfect), Sword Soul, Eternal Disorder, Thà????????????????????????????natos’s Sovereign, Sword Sense, SwordSaints Domain, Bloodforged, Absolution,
Dao: True Immortality - 1.31% Progress
Unassigned stat points: 0]
Alex had just under 14,000 stats in total. Assuming that those at the D grade started with a maximum of 8,000 stats at level zero and a rare class that gained 12 total stats per level and those with common classes gained 10 total stats per level, without empowering himself with Qi or having access to his stat-boosting skills like Allocation and Mana Burn, he was physically the equivalent of one of this world’s level 490 rare classed warriors. Or a level 590 common classed warrior. Until his skills returned and he could repair his pathways, he’d be limited to having no Qi, no techniques, and no skills. For the next Twenty minutes, he’d have nothing but his stats and his passives, and his most powerful remaining weapon would be his access to the Dao.
Alex paused, eyeing the source of the disturbance, ready to summon a blade at a moments notice either way.
The mana came first—thick, tangible, a presence unto itself. Alex recognized it immediately. Osric paused. Not hesitation—calculation. His expression shifted, scanning the open space between the towering trees.
Liora frowned, catching the shift in attention. “Alright, what am I missing?”
Osric exhaled, rolling one shoulder. "Someone’s close. Strong, too."
The crunch of disturbed underbrush barely registered to Alex’s senses long before the figure of a man stepped into view. It was a hunter—battered and lost, but still standing.
“Finally, some familiar faces!” The voice was rough with exhaustion, but the relief in it was unmistakable. The man grinned, pushing damp hair back from his forehead as he approached. “I was starting to think I was the only one left.”
Osric tensed, already shifting his weight, but then his jaw clenched—not in suspicion, but calculation. His hand lingered near his summoned bow before dropping to his side, the weapon dissipating. “You got separated in the Mist Planes?”
The newcomer exhaled, nodding. “Like half of us, I assume. One second, formation held. The next, I was alone. Took a while to figure out where I was even going. The names Varian, by the way.” He gestured around, eyes flicking between them. “You three look intact, though. Guess you had better luck.”
Liora let out a breath, arms crossed. “Luck had nothing to do with it. Just fewer bad choices.”
Varian snorted. “Oh yeah? Tell that to the things that tried to rip me in half on the way here.” He rolled his shoulder, flexing fingers that had clearly spent too long gripping a weapon. “And since I’m not a pile of bones right now, I think that means I did alright.”
His eyes flicked to Alex, scanning him for a moment before he tilted his head. “You’re… carrying a lot of swords.”
Alex said nothing. So it—he has spatial skills… can he sense my inventory? I suspected that was possible with the right skill set, but it’s good to know for sure, he thought.
Osric, however, sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. “Don’t ask.”
Varian, of course, immediately asked. “I mean—like, a lot of swords. More than a human person should reasonably have. And those aren’t standard issue. Is that—” He stepped closer, squinting. “Is that an entire armory?”
“Define ‘entire,’” Alex said.
Liora rolled her eyes. “Just let him count. It was fun watching Osric try.”
Varian held up a hand, cracking his neck. “Alright, let’s see—one, two, three on the walls, twenty on the base, and… what is that?”
“Spatial compression,” Osric muttered.
“A giant flaming ego sword?!”
“No, we haven’t seen that one, I didn’t know there were more,” Liora commented idly. “I guess swords is just kinda his whole ‘thing.’” She air-quoted with her fingers as she spoke.
Varian slowly exhaled, running a hand over his face, and through his hair in frustration. “You’re telling me—he’s telling me—that’s just a small portion?”
Alex, utterly unfazed, adjusted a clasp on his enchanted full-body armour. “You never know when you might need another sword.”
Varian shook his head, muttering something about absurdity before glancing back at them. “I guess you don’t,” he said, before his eyes perked up. “You guys all saw the quest though, right? That was unexpected.”
Liora raised a brow. “Was it?”
Varian shrugged. “I mean, not the insanity of it. Just the sheer scale. It’s a kingmaking kind of thing, yeah? The rewards alone—S rank? Someone’s gonna get rich off this.”
Osric hummed. “That’s assuming we survive long enough to collect.”
Varian snorted. “I’m more worried about trying to get it. But since you three are clearly functional, I’ll take my chances.”
Liora smirked. “Welcome to the team, then. Just try to keep up.”
Osric shrugged. “Sure, why not. If you try to betray us you’ll die before you can blink. Painfully, too.”
Varian paused, confused and somewhat shocked at Osric’s bluntness.
“Don’t mind him,” Alex said, patting Varian on the back, though he secretly agreed. “If were are done with the introductions, we should move.”
Varian stared for a long second. “Yeah. Okay. Sure. Let’s go figure out which part of this campaign makes us rich first.”
They started walking.
***
As Alex, Liora, Osric, and Varian moved toward the looming structures of Seratheis, scattered groups of hunters navigated the uneven terrain, their voices lost in the thick, mana-rich air. “Someone’s already inside,” Liora muttered. “Saw movement near the outer spires.” Varian scoffed. “Figures. Half the damn campaign’s been scattered since the Mist Planes. Surprised it took this long to spot stragglers.” A third gestured toward the shifting architecture ahead. “Hope they’re not dead yet. Place breathes like it’s still growing.” Osric exhaled sharply.
Seratheis functioned as an endless refinement of creation, an ecosystem shaped by divine intent that pushed everything toward perfection through constant evolution. The God of Creation’s influence remained embedded in its foundation, driving its structures to expand, its materials to improve, and its creatures to advance beyond natural limits. The mana actively analyzed, restructured, and optimized everything it touched, forcing all within its reach to adapt toward an ever-changing ideal. Life here transformed with each cycle, shaping itself into more efficient forms. The city’s architecture expanded and strengthened on its own, its mechanisms still running with unknown purpose, carrying out the divine process long after its creator stopped guiding it.
Alex could feel the worlds mana pressing against his domain, trying desperately to reach him and change him. He kept it at bay, and tried his best to keep Liora and Osric under his protection, constantly forcing it out of his 15 foot range.
He didn’t want it to turn them into whatever that thing claiming to be the hunter, Varian, had become, or already was.
***
The first thing that stood out was the mana. Dense, powerful—too much for a simple hunter. Alex hadn’t acknowledged it immediately. He had felt it, cataloged it, and continued forward, letting the pieces fall into place. But now, walking alongside Varian, he knew.
Varian wasn’t human.
The Domain laid everything bare. Alex could sense the layers beneath his flesh—the way the vibrations traveled through him wrong, the sound of blood moving too smoothly, not bound by proper veins but something else entirely. The structure beneath his skin wasn’t skeletal. It was shifting, pulsing, adjusting with every movement. Even among high-level warriors, mana didn’t behave like that. The strongest had cores, structured pathways—but this was a body made entirely of adaptation.
An evolved Bloodslime.
Not just a mindless predator. Not just some failed mimicry of human life. Something perfected.
Alex had fought slimes before—base creatures, consuming their prey, taking in biomass, growing stronger. Some evolved enough to copy shapes, even voices, but this—this was a whole different scale. The outer form was just a shell. Inside, there was no flesh, no organs, no human structure—only fluid, shifting tissue wrapped around a single, dense core of crystallized mana. Slow-moving, hardened, adapting against damage. Not some accidental anomaly. A deliberate hunter.
Slimes couldn’t evolve like this on their own. That left two options—something in Seratheis made it this way, or it had been designed.
Alex walked, listening. Varian spoke easily, naturally, laughing at something Osric said. It was a good act—perfect, really. That was what set this apart from lesser imitators. Even the nobles, the best warriors, the strongest soldiers—none of them moved like him.
What did this mean?
The system of stats, levels, and skills—the foundation of this world’s power—had always presented limitations. People played within its rules, advanced through its structure. Alex had already broken those rules with Qi, but now he was staring at something that had done the same through evolution.
What else was possible?
And then, what was its goal?
His Domain pulsed. He focused, condensed—15 feet became 5, then 3. A single moment of stillness, then heightened clarity. He felt the shift before he saw it—inside Varian, the core moved.
A slow rotation. Not random. Tracking.
It wasn’t attacking yet. But it was aware. Aware that Alex had noticed.
Seratheis had produced monsters before. The city adapted, improved, created—but this? This was something else. The perfect hunter. And it was hunting them.
Chapter 53
The moment Varian stopped pretending, Alex’s domain erupted with foreign, thickened, raw, and living mana. Variant’s body collapsed inward, skin and bone liquefying into a mass of writhing, shifting flesh—something not human, but more than a monster—a perfected hunter that had mimicked humanity down to its smallest detail.
Osric took a sharp step back, summoning his warbow in a blink. Liora’s halberd bloomed with crystallized blood, its petals razor-edged and already drinking in mana.
"Ah… figured it out, did you?" The voice from the mass remained disturbingly human, even as the creature's form rippled and reshaped. "Good. I was getting bored pretending."
Alex didn’t hesitate. The second Varian’s core shifted, he moved without warning or theatrics—just a blade flicking toward the creature’s center of mass with enough force to bisect titanium. The air cracked as in the same instant, Osric loosed an arrow—an enchanted shot aimed straight at the core.
The Bloodslime responded instantly, flesh twisting into layered armor, harder than steel, his core already shifting deeper, dodging the blow from within. The feedback was immediate. Hardened. Dense. Engineered to withstand catastrophic force. An arm of flesh and metallic segments splitting open to form a whiplike tendril that lashed the arrow midair, sending it careening off into the distance.
Alex’s strike landed, cleaving away metallic mass, but not dealing true damage.
Then, it grew back.
Osric swore. “It’s adapted to ranged attacks.”
Liora swore. “That was a person five seconds ago.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Alex said, already moving.
Liora lunged, her halberd blooming outward, the petals sharpening mid-swing—she brought it down in an executioner’s arc.
The creature didn’t dodge. It let her strike.
Her weapon pierced deep— too deep. The Bloodslime’s mass absorbed it, liquefying around the blade, pulling her forward.
Liora ripped the weapon free just in time, but a chunk of crystallized blood was missing, consumed. The halberd was weaker.
"Good weapons," the creature mused, its voice layered, shifting, stealing theirs. "I'll take them."
Liora’s face twisted in disgust. "This thing’s still talking?"
"Of course I talk," Varian said. "I lived among you for hours."
Hours? How long does the invasive evolution take, it can’t be hours… if it would only take hours to be twisted by the lands mana, then Alex would have to work overtime keeping his companions protected and within his domain.
Osric loosed another arrow. The creature’s torso split open, forming a gaping mouth lined with jagged, bone-forged teeth. It swallowed the projectile whole.
Then it split.
Lesser slimes tore themselves free from its body, forming into hundreds of half-shapen humanoids, their stolen features grotesque in incompleteness.
Liora twisted her halberd, her blood magic blooming outward in crystalline veins. She took a breath. “Oh. That’s bad.”
“Okay,” Osric muttered, eyes wide. “You guys go first. I’m shooting arrows. Good luck.”
The battlefield shifted from a duel to a skirmish.
Alex did not slow.
His sword blurred, cutting through two, three, four lesser forms in a single motion. Liora moved without hesitation, her halberd spinning, petals scattering.
A rain of blades tore through the advancing horde.
Osric loosed a storm of projectiles. Thick arrows burst the lesser creatures apart, exposing their cores for Alex and Liora to slice into pieces.
Lesser ones fell easily. They weren’t the problem.
The real Bloodslime had already adapted.
It no longer dodged. Instead, it hardened, condensed, reinforced. A solid shell of crystallized flesh formed over its core, resisting every strike that wasn’t perfectly placed.
The Bloodslime’s form rippled, shifting, expanding outward. Limbs split apart—where once there were two arms, now there were four. Bones snapped, liquefied, and reformed in an instant. A smile stretched too wide on its stolen face.
"That was a good try," it said.
Alex clicked his tongue. He had already identified the core, but getting to it while it continued refining its defenses was another matter entirely.
The Evolved Bloodslime was strong. Its physical strength alone could have matched an elite noble, and its shifting ability made it nearly untouchable. It had adapted, survived, and evolved into something that mimicked perfection.
But Alex was not fighting fair.
He had long surpassed conventional combat limitations. He didn’t need to match it. Without his skills or techniques, it’s stats were higher than his, and without his passive domain and the support from his companions, it would have pierced him several times over—but that didn’t matter. None of it did. He didn’t need to fight fair and he didn’t need to wait for his cool-down to finish either.
He just needed to kill it with his Dao.
“Keep it busy,” Alex called to Liora and Osric.
Osric loosed three arrows in rapid succession, barely glancing at Alex. “Sure. And when you get back, do you want it stunned, dismembered, or existentially confused?”
Liora caught a strike on her halberd, twisting to drive a spike of crystallized blood through a lesser slime trying to flank her. “Keep it busy? What the hell do you think we’re doing, flirting with it?”
Osric exhaled. “You’re the only one talking to it.”
Liora carved through another, muttering, “I’m calling it names. That’s different.”
Osric sidestepped a lashing tendril, loosing another shot. “Debatable.”
Liora snarled, splitting another slime in half. “Shut up and shoot something, bow-boy.”
Osric tilted his head slightly. “That’s literally what I’m doing.”
Liora ducked as the massive creature swung at her. “Then do it harder.”
Osric sighed. “I don’t think arrows work that way.”
“I don’t care, just make them,” Liora snapped.
Alex twisted, raising his blade just as a metallic, serrated limb scythed toward him. Thanatos’s Sovereign flared—resilient souls absorbing the force as the impact rattled through steel and bone. The blade held. His arm held. He didn’t stop moving.
“I’d love to stay and moderate,” he called over his shoulder, shifting his stance, “but someone has to kill the big one.”
The Bloodslime let out something between a growl and a wet, gurgling laugh. “Kill me? How? With that brittle steel? That borrowed power?” It slithered forward, the shape of its limbs shifting between weapons and shields, metal and flesh. “I’ve consumed whole bloodlines, feasted on flesh stronger than yours. You’re just another body. Another weapon to break.”
It took another step, the ground beneath it writhing with metallic tendrils of hardened minerals, twisted from bone and flesh. “Seratheis made me perfect. You were made for dying.” It said.
The creature didn’t rush in. It studied him. It had seen what he did to the others, and unlike them, it didn’t intend to make the same mistakes.
Alex stepped toward the shifting mass of flesh and bone, its shape twisting without settling. Blood, bone, and metal snapped into jagged weapons, stabbing forward before melting back into the mass. He remembered past fights, how the Dao of True Immortality had carried him through, how it made him something more. Flux wrapped around him, pulling him out of sync with the world. The creature's attacks passed through nothing. The fake Varian lashed out, but Alex kept walking, untouched, his eyes locked on its core. Varian—or what had been Varian—lashed out again. A dozen bladed limbs, shifting, evolving mid-strike to counter his movement. A lesser swordsman would have seen a flurry of death. Alex saw openings. The creature jerked back, its shifting flesh vibrating, its false face twisting in something close to fear.
"Wrong. This is wrong. You should be dead." Its voice scraped and cracked, shifting between pitches. "Why aren’t you dying?"
Alex watched as its movement turned erratic. It wasn’t breathing and had never needed to. But now, it tried, like a man drowning in dry air. It tried to retreat, the flesh of its body folding and reforming in real-time, desperate to throw distance between itself and the swordsman.
He moved in, racing forward, domain shrinking to a foot, time stretching as the creature tried to lunge away. He remembered the Little Demon of Winding Bloods, how his blade had appeared inside the spirit beast core, shattering it from the inside out. This thing had a core too, but it wasn’t the same. It was layered mana and life force, dense, shifting deep inside its mass. The core probably held the creatures soul, if it had one. The bloodslime’s core was hardened, reinforced, resistant to destruction. Alex was standing inside the slimes mass, but flux kept him apart and untouched. If he released his Dao in that moment, he would be trapped within it, caught in a body of living flesh and swallowed like the rest of its prey, maybe. Thanatos Sovereign could likely take the impact, but this regions mana… this mana had turned something as crude as a slime into a predator that could challenge even the nobles. There was a chance his passive defensive skill wouldn’t recognise forced and unconstrained evolution as an attack. He wouldn’t allow it to touch him. The frontier’s changes were not spoken of as blessings for a reason.
Stood within the creature and with time moving at a crawl Alex faced a conundrum: while he was in flux he couldn’t be hit… but he couldn’t attack, either. He had to strike the creatures core without releasing his Dao’s effect.
But how?
He pushed his Dao further in search of an answer, he knew it was there, just beyond his reach. Isolating only his sword from flux, making it real while he stayed untouchable was an option, but not good enough. The creature was adaptable and evolving, and it’s core seemed resistant to basic destruction. Alex let decay and entropy wrap around his sword without touching it and struck— it was something he had used against the wolf general and Apex creatures he’d faced in his very first dungeon back on Pyra, the pure destructive energy formed the moment it passed through the creature’s defences.
Flux, Decay, and Entropy.
Three states of his Dao surged in one strike. Flux kept his body from harm but stopped at the wrist, and decay and entropy enveloped his blade, each element withering anything it touched. Alex pushed further, trying to merge decay and entropy into something more destructive.
[Dao: ‘True Immortality’ - Progress 3.01 > 3.4%]
His sword changed the instant it connected with the core, breaking through the thing’s last line of defense. The core didn’t crack or shatter— it exploded. Shards of mana and clouds of fine dust dust shot through its flesh. The creature was dead before it could even react.
Its lesser parts, the creatures that split from itself, surged toward the apex’s corpse, scrambling to rebuild, to reform—too slow. Liora and Osric wiped them out in an instant, cutting them down before they could pull themselves back together.
[You have defeated level 743 BloodSlime - Evolved Variant - Unfinished (D). Bonus experience due to ‘Hero’ feat.]
[Level 227 - 229]
[Strength +8, Dexterity+8, intelligence+12, unassigned stats +8]
[2 hour mana cooldown ended. Skills now available for use]
Liora exhaled sharply, rubbing her arms as if trying to shake off the lingering unease. "That was—No. Nope. That was unnatural. I don’t care what level it was, that thing wasn’t right. A slime pretending to be human? Talking like one? Walking around, talking about people shit? I—" She made a face, visibly unsettled. "That should’ve been something out of a myth, not reality. And it was just...out here. Like it belonged."
Osric remained still, staring past her, past Alex, past the broken remains of the creature. His voice was quiet, edged with something rarely heard from him. "This place isn’t meant for people." His fingers curled, knuckles tight. "It’s not meant for anything that follows rules. There’s no old texts telling us what lived, what died, what the natural order should be. It just is. And whatever survives? It survives because it’s worse than what came before it." He looked toward the city.
"Woah, that’s a lot of levels." She flexed her fingers, watching her stats adjust. Liora cracked her neck with a satisfied yet mentally drained sigh. "That was worth it." She flexed her fingers, her body still adjusting to the stat increases. "I feel—what’s the word? Unstoppable? Godlike? Reckless?"
Osric rolled his shoulders, barely reacting to the notification in front of him. "Huh."
Liora gave him a side glance. "What?"
Osric’s brows furrowed. "I levelled too."
Liora’s expression flattened. "Yeah, sure. That was a team kill. The system divides credit. We all levelled." She’s glanced at Alex’s armoured form. “I think.”
Osric lifted a hand, then let it fall, completely uninterested in her argument. "Still leveled."
Liora stretched with a satisfied groan, grinning as she checked her status again. “ The System really is generous with team kills.” She kicked at one of the fading cores left behind by the lesser slimes, rolling it toward Osric. “And here I thought Alex was gonna hog all the credit.”
Osric caught it with his boot, glancing at his own interface. He grunted, mildly surprised. “Didn’t even land the final blow.” He knelt, collecting a few more cores, their surfaces humming with residual energy.
Alex pocketed a fragment of the apex slime’s shattered core. The weight in his spatial inventory was negligible, but he could still feel the mana radiating from it. Even dead, its energy fought against dissolution, as if resisting its own destruction.
Alex’s fingers grazing his sword’s hilt, still summoned in his palm. The apex’s core had been dense, layered with unnatural defenses. But the Dao had bypassed that entirely. He had shattered it with the right strike, the right application of conceptual force. But what if he hadn’t?
Power wasn’t about brute force alone. It was about application, layering effects in ways others hadn’t even begun to consider. His Dao wasn’t an element or a force—it was an intersection of concepts, a structure he could refine and manipulate. If his will could shape it, then what was the limit? He’d already tested the idea of existing in flux while his blade remained real, striking across different states of existence. That worked. But what if he expanded on that? Could he fold more concepts into it? Could he create an attack that ignored reality entirely? Something that transcended the gap between this world and others?
Alex barely registered Liora and Osric’s back and forth, fingers running over the preserved fragment of the apex-evolved slime in his storage in deep thought. His body felt steady, his Dao pressing against the edges of his awareness, a dull ache threading through his skull as payment for stretching its limits. But he felt good. This was progress. He had explored his skills, his techniques and his Dao, and a path forward was beginning to form. Despite this, there was still one thing that caused his brows to furrow with concern. The fight had been short, decisive, and Liora and Osric had taken more of a beating, but they were all still standing. That wasn’t what bothered him.
That thing had been strong. More than just some wandering anomaly. Strong enough that, had it not been for his domain and Dao, it could have posed a real problem. It had refined itself, perfected its body, pushed its core into something that persisted against even him, weakened as he was by the cool-down and damaged pathways. But it still felt designed, like something shaping itself deliberately with every second it remained alive. Had it been hunting others? Feeding off prey? Evolving with every kill?
A core so crystallized it had resisted even his strikes. A body formed from countless iterations of its own evolution, pushing its limits every second it remained alive. Even before its death, it had begun pulling its lesser forms toward it, as if gathering itself, unifying into something else entirely. Resurrecting, perhaps. But it hadn’t been a ruler, hadn’t been some dominant predator of this land.
It had existed at the edges. Why was that? Could it have been at the lower end of the food chain?
They walked toward the lost city, Seratheis rising in the distance. No movement, no figures in sight—just the structures that had continued to change, alter, and expand over centuries, reshaping themselves according to the influence of dead gods and unyielding to time. The city had not decayed. It had not been abandoned in the way ruins should be. It had changed. Refined. Shifted into something other.
And if creatures like Varian were merely lingering outside of its walls on the outskirts—then what awaited inside?
The is up and running. So if you like, you can read ahead there!