The internal Mana suffusing his body surged out in an explosion as Axl barely managed to will the Mana of lightning itself to form the opposing coil of the skill. [Mana Shroud] was almost deactivated by the aggressive force of the foreign Mana, every stitch of Axl's will trying to guide the unstoppable force to his skill.
It cut into his skin and muscles, cracked his bones, surged down his arm to bite at his shuddering soul's protection and into the ground. But some made it to the Skill, and as the fist approached his target, the coiling force of stark white lightning twisted with the neutrality of his inner Mana.
Axl dipped deeper and deeper into his internal stores to keep the lightning from snaking away, every facet of his body, mind, and soul under attack.
Then the spire hit the base of where the lunar fulger's branch connected to its main trunk, barely four fingers thick and leading into a fan-like of stabbing branches over a meter long. The burst of [Attuned Drill Strike] filled Axl's sight with a blinding light as he was thrown back, his every sense flailing. His eardrums and tongue ruptured, and he could smell burnt flesh, his arm numb, as if his skin was simultaneously frozen and burnt.
But then the real attack came, as Axl expected. Cas Kaltan's armor was stained in her blood and shattered open, revealing the undersuit within, eggshell-white. Axl's teeth grew large and sharp into a dog's maw as he lunged forward to devour her fresh meat.
He roared instead, upwards at the lunar sky filled with uncaring stars and Vikam ships, at the true enemy that deserved his wrath and hunger. His soul regaining its footing, his howl turned against the foreign influence upon him, shattering his fake teeth. Then he turned to the lightning in his soul, his will taking it as his own, beyond the motions of activating [Mana Shroud], he consumed what was his to take.
The illusion that was greater than reality shattered, placing him back in the undead smith’s courtyard. You’re slitting right, you won’t take me like that. The thought was directed to the Vikam invaders, to every obstacle he has to overcome just to survive, to the very Dao itself.
He then turned to his body, knowing he needed to heal. Axl's potion was already working to restore his wounds, which were drastic as they felt a moment ago, but somehow they seemed to be healing far better than he expected. It was as if his Vitality was surging through his body unopposed, and he barely needed half another dose before he was fully stable.
In fact, as Axl slowly got up, expecting his body to be battered and sore, he felt better than before. Even his soul's wound was greatly relieved, the [Mind-Soul Bulwark] shielding around it shattered, yet again.
His eyes took a moment to focus, and he smiled as he saw a large chunk of lunar fulger sitting on the ground within the ore's protection. The array's translucent dome was shattered at the far end, leaking out the ore's Mana, but it was already closing up, and looked like it would be fully restored in just a few seconds.
Quickly scanning his status, he noticed quite a few surprising gains.
Lineage: Purified Poison-seeped Water Elf, poison-consuming (leaf G)
Skills: Mana Shroud (Rare, Proficiency G.6), Mind-Soul Bulwark (Rare, Proficiency G.3), Attuned Drill Strike (Rare, Proficiency G.2)
[Mana Shroud] went up two proficiency steps, and [Mind-Soul Bulwark] went up one, quite the jump. But more unexpectedly, his Lineage itself changed, gaining the "purified" tag to his increasingly convoluted elven nature, and the trunk stage jumped up two steps, past branch entirely and into the leaf. Apparently, the more foundational aspects didn’t have numbered steps like Skills, but these qualitative steps, as if from the bottom of a tree to the top, usually root, trunk, branch, leaf, and fruit before reaching their peak. From the info he managed to piece together from the few cultivator elves around, at least.
Axl wasn't even very surprised about his gains, getting that damn chunk of ore very much felt like a round of body tempering, including that rather brutal attack on his soul.
Somebody pointedly cleared their throat to the side, and Axl turned his head, his blood going cold as he saw the smith, Suliana, Soffal, and Ramsen to the side, all looking incredibly pissed off. The first three would be bad enough, but the head shaman being here was very bad news. The guy rarely left his office, and certainly never dealt with any of the camp's problems directly himself.
Without a word, Suliana angrily pointed up, at the terrifying storm circling right above him.
It was a vortex of dark, roiling clouds, breaking the early twilight with a furious maelstrom, its baleful eye unambiguously pointed right at Axl. Streaks of lightning coursed between the clouds with building momentum, each thunderclap ordering the world to be silent. Even the unyielding metallic Mana of the courtyard stilled, the clashing attunements of the vale's ambient air drifting close to the ground, as if escaping from the tyranny above.
Seconds passed as Axl desperately hurried his body to heal, hastily setting up a simple protection around his soul, expecting the divine punishment. But then the building force paused in its frightening growth and slowly receded, the clouds not dispersing as much as fading away. Left behind was a clear morning sky, the skyward lines drifting idly in their usual course.
The threat remained, somehow. Axl could feel it, as if an enraged predator was hiding just behind the treeline.
"By every bone in my body, how did a G-Grade twerp like you call down tribulation lightning!" The smith's hysterical laughter cut through the air, and Ramsen flinched, the look of fear strange in the composed orc's face.
"Indeed," Ramsen said. "I will have to ask that you not do that again without clearing it with the longhouse. Even a minor tribulation can devastate the area."
Axl stared back up at the empty sky. "That didn't feel very minor."
"I'm sure it wouldn't," Ramsen continued, "standing at the principality of its rage. I think I need not explain further why pursuing a path involving lightning is ill-advised."
"But why," Axl asked. "How is it any different than something like water or intent?"
"Lightning is the firmament's wrath, how the Dao imposes its order upon the fabric of reality. To pursue it in one's own cultivation is to most openly defy the will of the heavens."
Axl frowned. "But I saw elementals use lightning for their most basic attacks. I even used it for alchemy, and this felt like something altogether different."
"Elementals are finely attuned to the Dao, their very existence a manifestation of the natural order, and even so, I doubt it was pure lightning, most likely a lesser branching variant. As for your alchemy, it probably does not draw as much wrath, but it will only increase as your craft requires more potency."
Axl slowly got up, his body feeling frankly amazing, but he was still troubled by this latest problem. But the nock was out of the tube, so he approached the lunar fulger and took out a large box from his dimensional pouch.
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"Really?" Soffal asked with a chuckle. "After all that, you're still keeping it?"
Axl reached into the array and touched the fallen chunk, relieved it didn't cause more than a small shock, and quickly put it into the box. It was what he used the last of his orcish currency to buy, a rift reward that allowed for extreme levels of Mana isolation and preservation.
"Might as well," he replied, examining the closed box for leaking Mana or lightning. "Spent all my money on a fancy box for it, after all."
"Should I ask your party to delay their departure?" Suliana asked, her voice bordering on uncertainty. "This is an... Extenuating complication, after all."
"No need," Axl pushed the large box into his dimensional pouch. "I'm heading to meet them now."
The four looked at each other, each waiting for the other to speak. For a moment, they didn't look like the elite of the longhouse forces, but apprentice miners getting their first look at a disassembled drill. I guess they're all about as clueless as I am about this. Even Ramsen's little lecture sounded like something he read from a book, likely pure speculation.
Making use of the group's hesitation, Axl took the chance to leave. At the very least, Axl wanted to be gone before the smith noticed a chunk of the upper lip in his compound's wall was blasted away by his [Attuned Drill Strike], neatly carved out without leaving any debris behind, as if filed smooth. Hopefully, it would grow back like the lunar fulger's array shielding.
Looking up at the now clear sky, something about all this felt confusing. This sense of wrongness was rather at odds with how it felt like the Deep System was very invested in getting him to meddle with lightning. After all, it was a key part of his Dao Vision, and Quelling mentioned that she had to offer him something related to the apparently forbidden element. And it likely wasn't just something aimed at him, with Gildear's metal garden having lunar fulger growing on it well before he ever got sent to Roken's body. The ore seemed like an expensive addition, too, not to mention the formidable array protecting it, and all for a metal nobody seemed to have even tried to collect before him.
After a quick stop at his artisan's hut, Axl was at the main gate barely a few minutes later, his small group waiting for him, all pointedly not asking about the mounting tribulation that had just filled the sky. But from the looks they gave him, apparently, they had already, somehow, heard about his involvement with it, much to Axl's chagrin.
Their first battle was only a few hours later, when they crept up on a battle between green toads and tuskful boars. As much as Axl wanted to see how he stacked up against the boars that earlier nearly killed him, this battle was decidedly in favor of the toads. Their party had to wait a minute before the four boars were dead and three toads remained, two injured.
The lead orc, a sword-wielder called Nalpol, led the charge, a spear-user to his right and a mace user to the left, brothers Gulk and Gumul. All three were partially hidden behind large rectangular shields that formed a tight defensive wall. Alifren followed close behind them, peppering the frogs with her arrows. The elven scout used a Skill to turn half-translucent and climbed up a tree to look out for any additions to the battle and contribute some choice shots of opportunity. This was Brillhit, the only party member that Axl didn't get to spar with, the wind-elf preferring to watch their training with detached indifference.
Nalpol indicated for a simple charge at the closest frog, and since they didn't have time to incorporate Axl into their tightly drilled formations, he was to peel off and strike as he saw fit, so Axl charged at the uninjured frog next to the party's target.
The frog’s bulbous heft of wrinkly, warty skin looked positively indignant at being attacked, and opened its meter-long mouth a sliver, a cutting brace of wind emanating from within. Axl ducked under the attack, then dodged the next two croak-induced blasts.
Not easily able to close the distance further, he reached down to his dimensional pouch and threw a [Venombite Fang] at the frog. The frog jumped away on two spindly legs, showing surprising agility for a large mouth on a ball of flab, the dagger only cutting a line on its side. The kunai was already loaded with centipede poison, however, and the small serrations on the blade deposited some of its contents on the shallow wound.
Axl's target jumped further back, as the rest of the party engaged the other two targets. The frog turned, as if to consider joining its brethren, but Axl didn't give it a chance. He had already retracted the thrown kunai with a thread of spidersilk attached to the ringed base, courtesy of Moxlin, and it was back in his hand as he gained on the frog again.
The frog resumed its sound-based attacks, and this time Axl waited for the onslaught of strikes to finish before approaching again. The creature's closed mouth now filled its cheeks, certainly preparing for a stronger attack, but Axl closed the distance with a burst of speed, using his Agility to its fullest now, and slashed at the creature with [Webcutter], a burst of green blood covering his body, and with a downward swing, stabbed the kunai into the creature's eye.
The second strike proved unnecessary, as halfway there, he felt Karmic Energy enter his soul. Without hesitation, he turned to the two remaining frogs, one in a bad way as the spear-wielding orc stabbed it heavily on the side. The other frog jumped around, trying to avoid arrows from Alifren and the elf scout, unable to even muster a counter-attack.
Axl carefully approached the less skittish target and slashed at its leg, further reducing its mobility, allowing Gulk and Gumul to jointly deliver a killing blow.
Shortly after, the final frog fell dead from multiple arrow wounds. Axl noticed as the elf's arrows seemed to dissipate, leaving wisps of smoke behind that seemed to burrow into the wounds.
"Well done," Nalpol nodded, examining Axl's kill. "One clean strike, as expected from our prodigal scion."
Axl grimaced, still not entirely pleased with the nickname they'd given him during their sparring matches. As far as these things went, it was at least some sort of begrudging respect, a way for the large, muscular F-Grade orcs to deal with being thoroughly trounced by a G-Grade lightweight a head and a half shorter than them.
"Thanks," he replied." I'll help with the dressing."
He twitched at a simple communication talisman under [Filial Shroud] wrapped around his left arm, and Moxlin came scuttling in from the underbrush, where she was hiding from the battle.
"Hello again, everybody!" Moxlin waved at the party, getting a wave back from the brothers and Alifren, the elf scout returning a perfunctory bow.
"Welcome back, little sister!" Nalpol beamed, the jovial look comical on his scarred, orcish face.
The party was surprised by Moxlin's unannounced joining, but they immediately saw the benefit of having a dedicated glyphic artisan around. Axl simply wanted the two of them to leave the longhouse without letting anybody know, just in case somebody had plans to get to her while he was gone, and to prevent any last-ditch ambushes if he telegraphed too thoroughly that both of them would leave.
They proceeded to remove the laryngeal muscles and tongue of the frogs, the only parts worth collecting, and were on their way soon after.
"Very well," Brillhit said, the entire party stopping. "Let's take our true heading."
"What do you mean?" asked Axl.
"Sorry," Alifren said, looking somewhat embarrassed. "But we lied to you. We're not going to the western mountains. We couldn't risk our plans being stopped since the longhouse knows where we're going."
"And this alternate is a sure exit," added Brilhit. "Not a mere hopeless search for one."
"Okay," said Axl. "So what's the plan? Bear in mind that I'm not going if it takes longer than our previous deal."
"Here's the brilliance," Nalpol guffawed, "this one is also likely to be quicker!"
Axl frowned, not sure he understood. The western mountains were literally the closest border to the valley. Even the slight detour to the abandoned well he came in from would take longer.
"I know of a transit rift," Brilhit said. "Barely two day's hike east. It can lead us straight to the far east, right at Coffin's doorstep."
"I've not heard of a rift like that," Axl frowned. "The information I got at the longhouse on local rift types didn't mention that one."
"It's a subset of a challenge rift," said Brilhit. "We need to clear a challenge to use it, so why I'm taking all of you with me. We clear the challenge, you all get out, and I can take my own heading. I'm having a hard time finding wind-attuned treasures in this area, so I want to try the far North without the month's journey."
Axl grunted, still not fully convinced. A rift that convenient and so close to the longhouse certainly would've been documented.
"It's the Greenhouse Crossroads," Alifren added. "The rift missive doesn't list the travelling component of it precisely to keep people like us from realizing it's a way out."
Thinking back to the file, indeed, he ruled out that rift as an especially unprofitable one, in retrospect, a suspiciously unprofitable one. As if to discourage any party trying it out.
This could actually end up being far more useful to him, Axl realized, since maybe being able to cut through large chunks of the vale could let him find the metal dryad sooner. Not to mention that nobody at the longhouse would know where they were going, so if the big boss orc came back early and wanted to hunt him down, he'd leave on a wild goose chase to the west. All upside, as far as he could see.
"Alright," Axl nodded. "Sounds good to me."