Unbound

Void Sanctuary is level 125!

…

Void Sanctuary is level 133!

Grandmaster Tier!

You Gain:

+400 RES

+375 FEL

+...

Divine Essence Detected During Formation!

ERROR!

Essence Has Been Altered!

Do You Wish To Restore Its True Nature?

Y/N

Yeah, yeah.Do it.

As before, the Essence resisted its change, but it stood no chance against Unite the Lost. Felix couldn’t see the [Essence of Fettered Carapace]—instead he could feel it, like a bundle of silver roots wrapped tight into a rough orb.

Not roots. Threads. Felix frowned. Oaths.

Unite the Lost burned it away, the calcified layers of the root ball splitting away from a gleaming center. Restoring it to what it once was, before Siva’s hands touched upon it. Potency thundered through him, moment by moment scouring the Essence within him.

Break away the influence of the gods, and it’s all Primordial.

Smoke and power pulled from the black around him, the heavy weight of significance closing onto his chest like a vice as the [Essence of Fettered Carapace] spun faster by the moment. As it did, the dark around him flickered.

Whoa, wait. Unite the Lost is pulling power from this monstrous shell. What happens if I use it up? Will it go away?

The dark around him thinned, and Unite the Lost stilled.

Emperor’s Vigilance is level 122!

…

Emperor’s Vigilance is level 123!

Divinity Has Been Shed!

True Nature Restored!

Primordial Essence Detected During Formation!

[Essence of Inviolate Hide]

Broken Path and Fatebreaker Titles Found!

Grandmaster Tier Bonus Added!

Primordial Nature Resonates With [Essence of Inviolate Hide]!

Unbound Nature Resonates With [Essence of Inviolate Hide]!

Calculating Effects…

Choose A Feature:

Sound - Ring The Bell

Stone - Hold Fast

Scale - Venture Forth

Felix reached out, grabbing at the Features before they could roll over him. He was done waiting for the System. The dark rippled, and he was somewhere else. ŗÃ₦ọ𝐁Ës̩

“I’m on a wall,” he said, lifting his booted foot. It was metal and very familiar. “An orichalcum wall. Haarwatch?”

It wasn’t, though the wall felt exceedingly similar. He stood at the crenelated top, overlooking a landscape of tall, wind-sculpted rocks and deep chasms. Verdant forests filled those chasms, the shortest of trees easily hundreds of feet high and yet they didn’t come to a third of the wall’s height.

“Ready thyselves!”

The shout came from a figure down the wall. Felix blinked, suddenly aware that the wall was filled with robed mages. They were a variety of Races, but so many bore the horns and antlers of Minotaurs and Kobolds. Others, however, were dusky-skinned, bright eyed, and bearing ornate staffs made from twisting materials Felix couldn’t identify.

Nymean magi…

Sound - Ring The Bell, came that sourceless voice.

A white-haired Nym lifted a staff that looked to be made of dark blood. “The Twinslaves rise!”

Felix snapped his head back toward the green chasms. The canopy shook, trees bent and parted before a pack of rising monstrosities. Enormous, five hundred foot tall, ambulatory flower-things lifted fleshy stems and hurled boulders at the walls. They flew fast and hard, but they burst against sizzling wards, fifty feet before the red-gold orichalcum wall. Felix didn’t even feel the impact, but that was only the opening salvo.

Bells rang out, a clear warning as dozens of the strange flower monsters crawled out of the chasms. Malformed arms swiped through trees, the thorny vines that comprised them acting like wrecking balls as they stomped closer. They had no eyes, but their flycatcher style maws drooled and snapped as metallic blue vines shot outward and slammed into the wards.

Felix felt it that time. Everyone did, if the stumbling mages were any indication.

The white-haired magi rotated his staff into several small circles, and a trail of crimson light followed. “System! Sing the Song of Bastion!”

The wall and mages both lit with a wash of liquid power. It hummed into the air, each figure forming a tone that sang out into a complex melody.

Their Chanting, he realized, gazing out into the floating sigaldry that doubled in the thin air. And they’re using it to reinforce the Authority of the white-haired guy. You can do that?

Yet it wasn’t reinforcing the entire ward across the miles-long wall. That thickness increased in some places and decreased in others, altering on the fly as the melodies rose and fell among the mages. Metallic blue vines crashed into the wards again and again, faster with each strike—but there, right at the point of impact, was where the mages were focused. Each and every time the defensive wards shifted, deflecting the worst attacks with incredible precision.

They’re adjusting the output of the wall’s enchantments on the fly. Those sounds…they’re resonating in explicit patterns. Like spoken sigaldry.

Magus of the Grand Design is level 126!

…

Magus of the Grand Design is level 131!

The mages’ defenses were immaculate, but the attacks never stopped. Every time they modified their angles of deflection, another blow came from the forests. The metallic blue tendrils were among the most powerful, but hurled boulders came close. Those rattled the wards at first, but soon they began to explode. Great gouts of green algae poured from them, splattering against the wards and growing sudden roots into the magic itself. Explosive charges of life Mana erupted from their centers, setting off a cascade of growths across the flaring sigaldry, as if the plants were searching for weaknesses.

In turn, the mages incinerated them with balls of fire.

This Feature…it’s about being ready at all times.Vigilant against any and all incoming dangers. Felix swallowed. At one point in his life, he would have considered that a very useful trait to have—now, however… To be eternally alert would drive him insane.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

The bells rang twice more.

Beyond the tangled, obfuscating growths that still burned, Felix saw movement in the chasms. At first he took it for another plant monster, but its movement was strange. Where the giant plants stomped, this prowled. Instead of clustered thorns and overgrown rinds, this was sleek, scaled, and shadowed.

He flared his Perception, but even his crazy high stat couldn’t penetrate the chaos of the battlefield. Whatever it was stayed low, weaving among the trees and rocks, all but invisible.

Emperor’s Vigilance is level 124!

Their eyes met. A flash of blue-white and red-gold met his own, and Felix’s world teetered around him. A new understanding swept through him, and it had nothing to do with the Feature he stood within.

It’s hunting me.

The bells rang again.

“A second wave!” cried a Minotaur, spells leaping to her fingertips. “Steady the line!”

More enemies emerged from the forests, each stranger than the last. Scale and flesh slammed into the wards, sending red streaking up across the magic’s surface, as if the twisted things were too much for the sigaldry.

“Primordial spawn!”

The mages moved like well-greased clockwork, their every spell and step coordinated into a greater defense than they or the wall could achieve alone. Even as he scanned the chasms for signs of the Beast that stalked him, he wasn’t worried for them. They were well-trained and battle-hardened. They would survive.

Plant and Primordial surged forward, and the mages met them with song and spell.

None of them, however, saw the dark creature that rose in their wake—or the vast, tooth-filled maw that rushed for him.

Felix jerked back, arms lifted in defense, as lightning crackled across his hands.

“Ho there! None of that, now!” Felix blinked as thin, brown hands laid over his own. The owner of the thin hands smiled at him. “No need for that yet. Or ever, if our luck holds out.”

He let the magic vanish, and only then did he recognize that he was no longer on the wall. “Where—where are we?”

The Nymean woman’s smile faltered slightly.

“Battle fatigue,” someone said, off to the side.

“Quiet, Cyllane,” said a small, furry figure. A Geist. “You all right, son?”

“I’m…fine.” Felix loosened his clenched jaw and stood up from the battle-ready crouched he’d fallen into. “I, uh, thought I was somewhere else for a second there.”

A whispered call slithered through his hearing. Stone - Hold Fast.

“You’re new to us,” said the Geist. “Transferred in from another front?”

“Something like that.”

“Shame,” said the Nymean woman. She had bright hazel eyes that glowed from within, even when they were creased with concern. “Still, you’ll find it a bit easier here on the eastern border.”

“So long as you do not desire to leave,” said an antlered Theron from a nearby table. They held up a length of metal that heated up red hot between their fingers and with a single stroke, shaped it into a sword blade. “This stalemate won’t end until the Continent sinks into the sea.”

“Such a joy you are, Thressil,” the Geist said between bites into some sort of pastry.

Felix gave himself a moment to take in his surroundings. They were in a very large room, made of some sort of shimmering wood he’d never seen before and filled with long, ornately carved tables where mages sat eating a meal or working on various crafts. Though the ceiling was at least thirty feet high and vaulted there were no windows at all, though a number of the walls were decorated with detailed tile mosaics featuring charming landscapes and majestic creatures.

I’m in a bunker, he realized, just as the entire place shook. Dull thunder sounded, as if from miles away, and a System notification popped up.

Warning!

A Threat Approaches!

“Tch, every time we mute these notifications they come right back,” the Geist complained. He poked at the air in front of him before swiping angrily. “Of course a Threat is approaching!”

Felix glanced at the wall behind him. “What’s the Threat?”

The Nymean woman handed him a pastry, still hot from the oven. “The Enemy, of course.”

The Enemy? The gods? Felix had never really interacted with people in his Tempering visions, but he was getting the impression that Grandmaster Tier was a lot different than usual. “Do we have to fight?”

“Do not be afraid. The walls cannot be climbed nor broken.” She patted the shimmering wood, and a ripple of Mana rolled from the contact. “Henaari-sung and Geist inscribed. These will last until the heavens themselves fall.”

“They’ll have to,” the Geist said from the side. “We cannot afford to lose more ground to the Weaver.”

Weaver. Felix licked his lips. “We’re fighting Siva?”

The woman looked up from a projected display on a handheld Belais crystal. It showed a windswept coast filled with immense, floating islands above a storm-tossed sea. Creatures swarmed across the waves, so many that Felix could barely see the water. “Who else? The Twins are occupied on the southern front thanks to the Hyrellian Accord, and Yyero is caught against Khalheim’s might.”n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“The giants and the cold will keep him from coming this far east,” the Geist said.

“May the Shield remain Unbroken.”

Twins in the south? Felix looked between the chatting mages. Was that where I was in the last vision?

“I heard Vellus was defeated,” said a wide-set Dwarf. “The waveline said her moon’s gone.”

The Geist scoffed. “Moon’s can’t just be gone.”

“Are you suggesting that the Empyrean Halls lied to us, Vvar? There have been reports of tidal surges across every coastline. You know blood Mana, magus. Feel it for yourself.”

“I—” Vvar frowned and his whiskers twitched uncomfortably. “That could be caused by a number of phenomena, Lohar.”

The Dwarf rolled his eyes. “Can’t ever admit you’re wrong.”

“You—”

“None but the Divine,” the Nymean woman interrupted, “could destroy their own moons. Blood magic hasn’t failed altogether, and the tides still function outside these walls. That means Vellus cannot be dead.”

“Wait. What happens if they really do die?” Felix asked.

“An end to magic,” Lohar said, grimly. “Some say an end to the System itself.”

What.

“Don’t scare the boy,” Vvar snapped. “First Thressil and now you.”

“I only speak the truth. We choose to fight this war, and we must accept its consequences.”

A reverential silence unfolded across all who heard the Dwarf’s words. The Nymean woman held a hand to her heart. “We fight this war so that our descendants may live free of it—for us that have only ever seen war, I imagine losing magic will be far less alien than a world of peace. Yet it is a price I would gladly pay, a thousandfold, to see this all end.”

“Well said.” Thressil set down another sword, still glowing cherry red. “But you forget that there is another force that could eradicate the moons.”

Vvar groaned. “Not this again—”

“The Cardinal Beasts.”

“And you forget that the Supreme Primordials were destroyed before this war was even a twinkle in the eyes of the Divine. The Cardinals are dead.”

Primordials Do Not Die.

Felix started.

“Are you sure you’re alright… Apologies, but I did not get your name.”

“Felix,” he offered. Felix scanned the woman’s face and the others. None of them seemed to have heard the voice. He wasn’t even sure if it had been Hunger or the new presence inside of him. “And yeah. I’m good.”

“I’m Rinella. Make sure you eat that—our cook isn’t from Elysium, but quite skilled. You’ll feel better after.”

Felix took a cautious nibble and the flaky pastry crumbled into his mouth like melting butter. “Holy crap.”

It was beyond delicious. The meat inside was tender, seasoned with something that tasted like the first warm day after the spring rains had passed, plus some sort of caramelized onion. He ate all of it in two large bites.

Sevenna Pastry Consumed!

+85 VIT

Duration: 1 Hour

Felix almost choked. I can get food buffs in a Tempering vision? Nevermind full conversations with people long since dead and gone. It all felt like the Memories he’d infiltrated before. But who’s Memory? Not Siva’s, surely.

He scowled. Right?

The walls shook again, but far harder this time. Vapor poured off the wooden planks like sparkling dust, cutting off every conversation in the hall. Felix glanced between the walls and those around him. “Was that supposed to happen?”

“...No,” Rinella said slowly. “It is not. Vvar, Thressil. Check the northwestern relays. Check for strain on the tertiary orbitals.”

“As you wish, Grand Magus.”

Others stood along with the Geist and Theron, activity returning to the many occupants of the strange bunker. They gathered gear, weapons, and a few extra pastries for the trip as other groups started to break off and pass through hidden doorways.

Rinella smiled at Felix, as if to soothe him again. “A common enough event. The foe is monstrous and legion, but they are no match for our fortifications.”

“Even if they require some maintenance, time to time,” Lohar added.

“True enough, my friend.”

None of them noticed the crack that had formed overhead, nor the clawed hands that uncoiled from within…and struck like serpents.

Vvar, Thressil, and three others went down, their blood pouring onto the shimmering wooden floors in thick gouts as they stared, uncomprehending at the dozens of malformed appendages emerging from their broken chests.

Pale, white, and twisted.

“Siva,” Felix hissed, before hell broke loose.