He leaped from tree to tree, twisting mid-air to aim more [Aura Blades] in their direction to keep his [Lingering Aura] in them. Aerial combat was a must in that constantly flooded area of the Brightnight, and Nar once again thanked his past self for all the hardship he’d endured to earn all of his [Speed], [Agility], [Reflex], and [NPC].
The lead male, who stood a good dinosaur head taller than its nest mates, twisted its long, sinuous body mid-stride and smacked one of Nar’s [Aura Blade]s out of the air.
Holy—Did you just…
Nar could only stare in disbelief as his skill was sent hurtling to the left, exploding uselessly against the tree trunks.
You are definitely not uncommon, Nar thought. I’m not sure about the smaller two, but that guy is giving boss vibes. As to be a lower rare… Damn our luck it spawned like that!
He grit his teeth as he propelled himself further away from Eum and Viy.
What do I do now? He wondered, as the giant creatures closed in on him, their enormous footfalls unimpeded by the rising tide. Do I try to solo them? I’ve got plenty of aura in the tank, and I think I can at least hold on until someone else comes. But what do I do about those two crazies? Someone needs to keep an eye on them.
He scanned the glimpses of aura and aether that lit up the disjointed battlefield through the mangrove trunks. It seemed that the fighting had been at least concentrated on several other similar dinosaur nests, so hopefully, everyone had gotten out of the rising tide. The obvious difficulty of fighting with water up to their waists aside, while the aether concentrations in the water were low they were enough to hurt auramancers with lower [Constitution], and large amounts of aura, such as Cen’s [Aura Projectiles], were prone to react violently on contact with it.
However, he had no idea what kind of state he was going to find the others in, so there was no telling whether or not he could offload the males to any of the other tanks, or if he was bound to complicate things further for them. If anything, given that the battlefield’s chaos seemed to rival the raging fury of the skies above their heads, everyone was just barely hanging on as it was, swamped by hundreds, if not thousands of beasts from common to upper-uncommon ranks.
I can’t risk it. Which makes this my job, Nar decided, glancing back at his pursuers. Alright, let’s get this done before those two get themselves eaten. [Aura Quickening].
He flipped mid-air and landed against a tree trunk feet first, bending his knees to absorb the momentum of his mad dash as reality slowed down around him. His body and mind were flooded by a sudden rush of hundreds of extra attribute points. Then he uncoiled in reverse, and went hurtling through the rain towards the charging males.
Even the lead male, which seemed stronger than the other two, couldn’t react fast enough to Nar’s change of tactic, and Nar’s sword, now almost fully crimson, flashed through the rain drops, burning bright with [Sword Aura]. One of the “smaller” males roared in surprise and pain as Nar buried the tip of his blade into its eyeball. He left little more than a shallow cut across the creature’s skull, but as they taught them in Slaying class, at their levels, there was no HP that could protect anything against that kind of critical hit.
The beast tumbled across the flooded ground, raising a huge wave as it collapsed against the bigger male. The third dinosaur was already pivoting, and Nar barely touched another tree trunk before jumping away, a split-second later, a tail turning the wood into shrapnel.
Hmm, Nar thought, as some of it embedded itself onto his back and right side, pushing invasive aether into his body. Look at that! Another fantastic chance to continue earning my passive healing skill. Yay me!
It didn’t seem as though the shrapnel went too deeply, and his [Enduring Stand] helped keep his mind on task as pain flared within from the clash of aether and aura.
He landed and jumped off another tree, and that one also turned to shrapnel, but the dinosaur didn’t react on time to avoid the nearly 1000 aura bright, thick, searing solid line of aura aimed straight at his spine. The beast’s roar climbed to an unexpected high pitch at the touch of that concentrated, 3-feet line of aura, and for a moment, Nar felt a twinge of regret for the beast. Then, of course, he drove the fully under control, screeching [Aura Blade] down into the beast’s back with all his will, melting through what had to be a pretty onerous HP.
Every time they crossed to another area, they had to face a period of acclimatization where they were significantly under leveled compared to the new, stronger beasts they now faced. It happened when they’d first entered the Jungle Tops, then during their stay in the Hungry Jungle, and even in the dark quiet fights of the Jungle of Silence. They had hoped to skip that troublesome transition since the Gloom’s level range of 55-65 was the same as the Den’s and they had entered at around level 58, but going around fighting the strongest herds in the Den in order to fulfill Eum’s [Trophies of the Den] quest had smashed any and all hopes of having a smooth time of it.
Therefore, Nar really shouldn’t have been left stunned when, while the other smaller dinosaur lunged for him, the bigger one smacked his tail against the male that Nar was attacking, knocking the beast out of the way of its aura. With the sudden lack of resistance, the skill plunged straight into the rising water below, and the jungle went searing white.
Pile! These things are getting smarter and smarter, Nar thought, blinking and shaking his head against the sudden tinnitus. Are we sure these aren’t monsters instead of beasts?
He dangled from the canopy of one of the trees, pulling on his [Awareness] and [Insintcit] for his next few blind and deaf moments, but none of the males attacked him.
Instead, his hearing filled with the desperate, agonizing cries of the beast he had just injured, and his jaw nearly dropped when he found it thrashing in the waters below. Half its side was now a burned wreckage of exposed, darkened bones, with oozing blood darkening the glowing water and innards floating out from its gutted insides.
Oh! Nar realized, his eyes going wide. The [Aura Blade] explosion was amplified by the clash with the aether!
Meanwhile, the taller of the dinosaurs was sporting a slight charring on his left side as well, albeit his injuries were already healing before Nar’s still stunned expression.
So the small ones are definitely just uncommon, Nar thought, while the other smaller beast backed away from Nar, its steps slow and uncertain, but still ponderous enough to shake the tree he was sheltering up in. But the big guy has to be a lower-rare with that kind of HP protection. He was right besides the blast and nothing happened to him.
Nar shifted his gaze towards the other male, the smaller one, who was shifting his amber predator’s stare between the waters flowing around his feet and Nar.
Smart enough to realize that there will be a clash? Nar thought. Crystal, are they really that smart? Or is it from some passive skill like Eum’s [Bestial Instincts]?
Regardless, the stand-off wasn’t likely to drag for much longer… His senses and [Instinct] picked up on the approaching larger male, its jaw unhinged to reveal a maw of serrated teeth capable of swallowing Nar and the half the tree he was dangling from in one gulp. Nar flicked a weaker [Aura Blade] in the beast’s direction, not at the creature itself, but at the water at its feet, and leaped away, hoping the explosion would at least distract the creature for a few moments.
I need to deal with the smaller one first, Nar thought, sending a proper [Aura Blade] to explode against its snout to blind it.
As huge as it was, the dinosaur was still just an uncommon beast, even if in the upper bracket of uncommon, and his strength and damage dealing capabilities had grown to a point where he could say he was above the level of an uncommon beast. So, jumping widely around the helpless creature, he unleashed a flurry of [Aura Blades] at the beast below, watching with grim satisfaction at its HP melted before the aura onslaught and wounds split open at the touch of his aura.
He prepared the finishing blow, but a loud crack filled the air in the gap between thunder, and his feet sailed right through a storm of shrapnel.
Crystal dammit… Nar thought. [Aura Quickening]! [Aura Blade]!
He just about twisted mid-air and hurled the glowing death sentence at the smaller of the dinosaurs. He caught a glimpse of its snout parting to let the skill slice clean through its body, before he plummeted into the rising tide.
Nar hit the ground a split-second after the water embraced him, and bounced hard from it, collapsing in a heap of legs and arms, and sputtering burning salty and aether laced water as he at least tried to keep his head above the water.
[Aura Quickening]! He called again, pulling on the skill just as it was about to run out. It had been a good while since he’d been forced to use [Aura Quickening] in such mind-melting bursts. His gains had picked up and piled on the deeper into the Brightnight they progressed, and he hadn’t found himself in such desperate need to be fast quite as much as that one time, against the ripper. But he had used it on occasion, as a way to further train his self-healing and to be prepared to keep himself alive and healing for the next time he needed to rely on such a tactic, knowing the occasion would come… And now, it was here.
A giant, clawed paw slammed down where he had just been, and he half-tripped, half-rolled around those monstrous, crushing claws, his eyes nearly blind from the water and his insides screaming as swallowed some of it. His [Instinct] erupted in a deafening scream and Nar threw himself away from the beast.
The monster slammed down with its own stomach, rising a tidal wave with the impact.
“Agh!” Nar half-screamed, his discipline slipping for but a moment before he swallowed the pain.
His arm was pinned under the beast!
Blind with pain, he raised the sword with his left arm and pushed the tip against the creature’s stomach.
[Sword Aura]!
It was a damned shame that he was still working to understand Tuk’s suggested [Aura Edge] skill, and this was the beast he could do. He cycled as much aura as he could grab a hold of into the skill and his blade, and the water boiled and sizzled around him as the usual tendrils of uncontrolled aura snarled and snapped from the blade.
The beast, at last, roared in dull pain, and the crushing weight lifted. Freed, Nar leaped to his feet and put some distance between him and the towering creature.
Broken, Nar knew, as his arm hung uselessly at his side. And it had to be the right one…
He inhaled sharply, then growled with pain through his clenched jaw. Between the shrapnel still embedded in his side, the broken arm, and the water burning inside him and across his injuries, plus the pain of maintaining his [Aura Quickening], his sight was starting to go a little blurry.
Come on, Nar! Come on! Those two idiots are depending on you! He chidded himself, pushing against the pain.
The beast stomped forward, staring down at its tiny, but troublesome prey, and Nar looked back up to return a dark stare to its amber-slit eyes.
[Aura Quickening]! Nar called again as the beast surged forward. The arm wasn’t going to heal right away, and without it, he couldn’t hang onto the canopy. With the water here being just above his knees, he was moving as though he had half the attributes he possessed, and he desperately needed the bonuses from his [Aura Quickening].
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The beast slammed down with its tail, spun, and slammed down again. Nar dodged, rolled and jumped as best as he could, flinging [Aura Blade]s at the dinosaur whenever he could, focusing on its right knee to burn through that thick HP.
Come on, come on! Nar thought, seeing the first dribbles of blood running down the creature’s leg. Come on!
The beast jumped and with a strangled yelp, Nar just about avoided getting crushed again. The wave from the impact picked him up and sent him hurtling, smashing against the roots of one of the mangroves.
He shook his head, a low snarl rumbling from his chest as he once again picked himself back up.
Nar flung more aura at the beast, not waiting for it to stand up, and held an [Aura Blade] against the side of its neck, aiming at burning through that huge HP by any means necessary. Out of the corner of his eyes, he watched his also enormous aura bar emptying in between his fighting and self-healing efforts. He was burning through too much and too quickly to solo a low-rare boss, but there was no one coming to save him. If Viy could, she would’ve been there already, which meant she must’ve met something worse than that gathering of little reptiles…
Nar grit his teeth, pushing the blade against the beast even as it sought to pull away from the bar of searing aura cooking its flesh.
You take it now! Nar thought relinquishing control of the blade. While he still held onto the skill itself, keeping the blade of aura from exploding, something else, which he still couldn’t fully explain, took over, and kept the blade pressed against the neck of the dinosaur.
The giant beast spasmed on the water, thrashing in wild panic, its eyes wide, but his [Ego] gains and training was bearing fruit, and his other self shifted the blade in tandem with the beast’s movements.
Free, Nar ran towards the beast, eyeing its wounded knee.
With his blade screeching with overflowing [Sword Aura], and his mind screaming of the absolute abuse it was under, Nar brought down his searing sword upon that bleeding knee. Once, twice, dodge, dodge, thrice, dodge, a fourth time!
The male roared in agony as Nar’s sword sliced through, cooking flesh and blackening bone, and it rolled over its back, trying to swipe at Nar with its much shorter upper limbs. But without its leg, the beast was finished, and cycling off his aura from the blade, Nar stabbed it into the cauterized wound of the male’s stump, forcing the blood to flow freely into a devastatingly effective [Bleeding] status effect.
Not wasting time to ponder the brutality of his kill, he ignited the blade again and stabbed indiscriminately, forcing his [Lingering Aura] status effect to take root and ravage through the beast. Meanwhile, his other self had kept the blade against the beast’s neck, and that monstrous HP finally broke before Nar’s fury.
Die, dammit! Nar thought, as heavy, thick and burning blood covered him.
His [Aura Blade] finally cut through the last vestiges of the beast’s HP, and sliced clean through its neck, exploding in another searing blast of aura and aether. Nar had been prepared for it, and he was already far enough when a pillar of blinding energy swallowed the dinosaur, blowing apart the mangroves surrounding it.
Did I just solo a boss?
He lowered the almost fully crimson blade to the flooded mud and leaned on it. The water hissed at the touch of the burning metal.
I did, didn’t I?
He hadn’t just dragged that 45-feet tall monstrosity away from Viy and Eum… He had done that, and then slaughtered it. All by himself.
I can kill bosses now? His mind rattled, his thoughts jelly-like as he at last let go of his [Aura Quickening]s.
The storm rumbled, still raging in its undiluted fury, which showed no signs of easing up.
I still have a lot to learn though… I missed it when that beast targeted the tree instead of me. I should’ve picked up on it with my [Awareness], Nar thought through the haze seeking to claim his mind. Gad wouldn’t have missed it.
The sounds of distant battle reached his ears, and Nar forced himself to straighten his back again.
We’re not done, he told himself, lifting the crimson blade from the sizzling water, the piece of cloth that had belonged to his dad wrapping around his wrist, stuck there by saltwater and blood.
Commanding his legs to take his orders, Nar splashed through the glowing water, leaving the giant, bleeding corpse highlighted in aether behind him.
Crashes and roars shook the Matriarch Tyrannus’ nest, and in moments, he was back.
“Nar!” Viy shouted. She dodged around the combined attacks of an adult male and its much taller female mate.
Her [The Weight of Guilt] surrounded her and the beasts in a dark mass of blue-purple aura, slowing their movements, but it was a lot harder to swing her halberd effectively in that now thigh high water than it was for him to swing his sword. Her skill bubbled against the water, so she was safe from a clash, but she was also likely not using the skill at full strength.
Nar didn’t stop. He merely adjusted his course.
With his right arm still healing, he flung an [Aura Blade] at the female, to taunt it away from Viy, and left the skill to that other someone to handle. He kept on running straight for the already bleeding lower limbs of the male dinosaur while the female tried to run from the [Aura Blade].
Shame I can’t do two [Aura Blade]s at once yet, he thought, right before he plunged straight into Viy’s guilt.
“Nar!” she cried. Her eyes went wide with horror despite the stinging water pouring down her face.
Nar’s foot came down on the muddy bottom within her guilt… and he kept going, his mind screaming not with accusations, but with the overuse of [Aura Quickening] as he had called upon it once again to close the distance between him and Viy’s assailants.
These two beasts seemed to be regular uncommon, and Nar’s blade sliced clean through the male’s left knee, sending it tumbling into the water and ending its threat in that fight.
“Kill that!” Nar shouted, briefly out of his [Aura Quickening], before spinning and changing course to deal with the female beast. “And keep your guilt up! It’s helping slow them down!”
“O-Okay!” the halberdier said.
Nar splashed around the female, targeting its left knee. The [Aura Blade] he had set against it finished the job before he could topple the giant beast, and we turned to check on Viy, he found her running towards him, the male dinosaur glowing in the water behind her. Unmoving.
“Are you okay?” she shouted, collapsing into him and trying to prop him up.
“I’m fine, don’t worry!” Nar said, gently stepping back and looking up to where Eum and the matriarch were still going at each other in the waters behind her nest. “Crystal, how much HP does that fucking thing have?”
“A lot,” Viy said, still eyeing him.
“Damn,” Nar breathed, panting.
It was hard to tell whether they should join the tygaris in the fight or not, given the battle-crazed way he was flinging his aether skills around.
“Eum!” Nar shouted, trying to get his attention.
“Almost!” Eum shouted back, surprising Nar. “I can do it!”
Did he fight for so long that he grew weary of it? Nar thought.
His blade vibrated in his left hand, and Nar plunged it into the corpse of the female dinosaur without a thought. The sword had… well, grown more considered in their time in the Den, and now it waited until the end of their fights before it demanded its sustenance. Nar was more than happy to satisfy the blade’s hunger in such a manner.
“Nar?” Viy asked, her tone almost drowned out by the storm and the surging waters.
“Yeah? Are you alright?” he asked, cycling some aura into the blade, to help it with ingesting the aether riddled meal.
“I-I am, thank you!” she said, looking down.
“Ah, you would’ve finished them off,” Nar said. “I just sped it up.”
“Right… But, Nar? You’re standing inside my [The Weight of Guilt],” she breathed. “And you’re not… affected by it?”
Nar blinked at her words, and peeled his eyes from Eum’s fight.
“Oh,” he said, noticing the dark blue-purple aether around him. “I guess I’m not.”
She nodded. Slowly. Carefully. As if scared that by a stray sentence she could send Nar tumbling off into the depthless dark.
“Does that mean that you haven’t given up yet?” she whispered.
Nar’s eyes met her own. Dark eyes that matched his.
“I… haven’t?”
There was an explosion of crimson light, and Nar turned back in time to see the matriarch of the herd crash into the glowing water, rivulets of dark blood staining and blocking its neon blue.
“YES!” Eum shouted, as he raised one of the long, thick canines he’d ripped from the beast’s mouth! “I GOT IT!”
Nar sighed. “Let’s go deal with that.”
“But…”
Nar was already on the move, drowning his thoughts behind the ringing pain clamoring within his battered mind, and pulling out his protesting blade from its meal.
Soon, he said. Pile, I don’t even know if I’m going to have enough aura left to fully heal.
He sighed; it was going to be a long night.
“Nar! Look, we did it!” Eum said, splashing around in the bloody water. “With this we—Oh, shit.”
Nar smiled brightly at him, making no effort to hide his ravaged state.
“Uhm,” Eum mumbled. “Are-Are you alright?”
Nar stabbed the sword into the mud at his feet, then ripped out the largest chunk of wood shrapnel from his back. Somehow, it had stayed there, held fast into Nar’s flesh, just inches from his spine. Still smiling he dropped it into the water in front of Eum’s quickly fading joy.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed.
“What for?” Nar asked, as he shook his right shoulder, sending his broken arm to flop around.
“Oh, my Crystal,” Viy whispered, covering her mouth. “Your arm!”
Nar reached over for another shard of wood, still smiling.
“Stop! Stop! I’m sorry, man! I really am!” Eum begged.
At last, Nar dropped the smile, and frowned at the tygaris as he ripped out the shard.
“DPS,” he said, pointing at the man, noticing how his eyes were quickly losing the red and turning back to glowing green. Then he pointed at Viy.
“Also DPS,” she mumbled. The halberdier closed a hand over Nar’s before he could reach for another shard of wood. “We’re sorry.”
“I’m not mad,” Nar said, closing his hand around hers. “Just worried.”
“I lost control…” Eum said, swallowing hard. “Thanks, man. I saw you dragging those three away, but I just couldn’t stop…”
Nar sighed. “You have it tough, Eum. But you’ll get there. And you will too, Viy. Just don’t run after a boss without a tank covering for you, okay?”
“Yeah,” Viy whispered, tightening his hand further.
“Anyways, it looks like things have calmed down,” Nar said, noticing the absence of fighting. “Why don’t you finish your quest? The nest is right there.”
“Will do,” Eum said, looking down.
Nar snorted. “Enough with the long face. This helps me with unlocking my healing skill anyways. Just be more careful next time, alright? And if you really feel that bad, you can skip on the meat tonight?”
The tygaris recoiled at Nar’s suggestion.
“I’m all good now!” he said, rushing over to climb the mud and branches nest. “Glad I can help you with your path!”
“Radiants,” Viy snorted.
“It’s all good,” Nar said, squeezing her hand one last time before gently pulling it free. “Are you okay?”
Viy nodded, looking down at herself. “I’m sure there will be a few of those salt-marsh leeches in there, but I don’t think anything managed to hit me.”
“Nice,” Nar said.
Before he could say more, a crimson flare lit up the night.
“Great One! Lord of the Hunt!” Eum called, his bestial form dripping with red aether. “Great Fighter and Devourer!”
In his joined hands, he held the canine from the matriarch they had just downed, the long, wicked claw from the alpha raptor they’d killed a couple days prior, and one of the tail-thorns from the giant, armored beast they had killed the previous week. Together, these three served as the tokens that Eum needed to fulfill his [Trophies of the Den] quest given to him by his patron spirit.
“You, who grants fang and claw! You, whose silent approach inspires fear in all those whom You prey upon!” Eum continued, as the tokens in his hands began to glow and ooze crimson aether as well. “I kill in Your name! I slaughter in Your honor! I hunt to yield You worship!”
“That’s intense,” Viy whispered.
Nar could only nod, trying and failing to keep his expression neutral as a glob of crimson blood formed above Eum’s raised arms.
“Come, Greatest One! I offer You the spoils of the Sacred Hunt!” Eum shouted, his very eyes a blaze of crimson. “May this blood satisfy You! May my loyalty please You!”
There was a burst of red light, and suddenly, the storm quieted above them, the lightning dripping, languorous, across a red sky. The canopies of the mangroves turned neon red instead, and peering down to the still rising tide, Nar gasped as he found what seemed to be blood.
Viy held onto him as a crushing presence roared from the orb of bleeding crimson and darkness hovering above Eum, gales of red vapor howling from within what seemed to be an opening void.
Holy shit… Is that a spirit? Nar thought, as that crushing sought to bring down his battered body to his knees. You’d think he’s summoning the damned God Tygaris Himself! What in the Pile?
He held onto Viy, and together the two of them fought against the crushing presence.
“Nar!” Viy called against his ear. “My head! I-I—So much blood! So hot—So—”
“Hang on!” Nar told her, hugging her tightly with his good arm.
That is some fucking spirit you’ve got there, Nar thought, eyeing the bleeding void.
Eum, unmoving and unbothered under that storm of blood, opened his fanged mouth wide, and drank from the blood that poured from the void and dripped down the tokens above his head.
Damn, Nar thought, his eyes wide.
The tokens melted down Eum’s arms, and he drank greedily from the blood mix of the void and tokens. And as he drank, he began to change…
His bestial fists enlarged, the claws growing. His forearms began to dilate, the fur growing coarser, his elbows snapping at the joints and expanding, and his biceps too, grew to a monstrous muscularity. Then, Eum began to rise, and it took Nar a stunned moment to realize that Eum’s legs were also growing thicker and more muscular.
Where before, only Eum’s hands and below the knee transformed, now only his torso remained untouched, his arms and legs thick and beefy muscle, his dark, thickened and elongated claws promising to shred through rock and metal.
The next stage of his [Bestial Transformation]. Just as promised, Nar thought, as his friend unleashed a roar that seemed to intensify the blood storm. Pile. He’s going to be insanely strong now, isn’t he?
It was still crazy to him how aethermancers could be rewarded like this, as this was Eum’s spirit, and not the System, handling both the quest and the attribution of the gains and the rewards coming with it. All the aethermancer delvers had to do was fulfill the quest, or pray, or beg, and something would instantly be granted to them.
But, why does this feel so wrong? Nar wondered, as Eum shook his head under that pouring of blood, as though he was showering in it. Is it just because its blood? I didn’t feel this when Leon used his vow…
He didn’t know why, but his very core reacted in rejection to that bloody vortex of darkness. As if revolting at the very thought of that dark, crimson, coiling, and suffocating aether.
Nar blinked, and the storm returned to normal, leaving Eum in its new transformed state, drenched in blood under the pounding rain.
“Is it… over?” Viy whispered.
“Yes,” Nar whispered, his eyes still wide at what he’d witnessed.
Up on the mud and branches that had been the matriarch’s nest, Eum raised his head and roared at the storm above him, crimson aether coating his clawed fists.
Nar wanted to be happy for his battle brother. He truly did. But his aura churned with unease within him, and he couldn’t dispel that twisting in his chest…
