Savage Awakening 563. Leagues (III)

“Get a load of this,” said the Barbarian Sage proudly. He swept out an arm, gesturing at a vast swathe of space. 

“Presenting: Boot Camp!”

At the very center of the space, there lay a hunk of dark-gray steel the size of a planet. Its only distinguishing feature was the craters peppered all over it. Those craters looked like massive knuckles, as if some giant had punched it many, many times.

Chains suspended it mid-air, anchoring it to several points in space. There also appeared to be runic arrays inscribed on space itself, wrapping that hunk of steel snugly. 

“That’s ol’ faithful right there,” said the Barbarian Sage with clear fondness. “The very first punching bag I ever made, forged from a neutron star. I’ve got gravity runes locking that thing in place, so you’ll be able to wail on it to your heart’s content! The thing even rebuilds itself if you manage to explode it—you can thank my friend Summersteel for that. Though it’ll take a hell of a lot of force to do that.”

Zane was always up for punching planets, but the size of those knuckles was what really caught his attention. He was pretty sure they weren’t from some giant, but rather from the Barbarian Sage himself. They brought up a memory—this image of the Barbarian Sage shattering some Boss’s attack way back in the Ruins of the First Ones.

When the Sage had punched, some Concept had lit up. And the impact his fist made seemed far greater than it had any right to be. Zane hadn’t been sure exactly what it had done back then. But looking at this now… he was quite intrigued.

The Sage was already moving on, though. “See that there, way off to the left?”

There lay another stellar object that was no less intriguing. A spherical void made of the blackest black he’d ever seen, with space bending incomprehensibly around it. If reality was a tablecloth, this was a heavy object sinking deep into it.

“That’s one of base camp’s two black holes,” said the Sage.

At the far right of the space, there was another black hole, just as big.

All around those black holes lay sections of space marked out by white dotted lines. The Sage pointed to them.

“Those are the stations right there! Outlined in space-chalk. I’ve got to polish off most of the equipment and haul in a load of new planets to spruce up the Demolition Zone. But everything else’s held up surprisingly well, I’ve got to say.” The Sage scratched his head. “It’s… 70% done, maybe?”

The Sage frowned at some of the messier stations.

There was also a great deal of random debris, debris the size of continents, floating around everywhere, now that Zane got a closer look. There were also several great big slashes in space here and there.

“Don’t you worry about that,” said the Sage hastily, like he knew what Zane was thinking. “Still got some rough edges to sand down—never claimed to be finished, did I? Right! Let’s get to some highlights.” 

The Sage stomped, and space curved. They arrived at a station that stood right over the leftmost black hole. It was a square steel platform a few dozen feet across, a platform whose edges were scribed heavily with runes.

There was a single rack on the platform which took Zane a moment to identify—it looked more like some kind of industrial forklift than a rack. And on that forklift-rack sat this bar of origin-grade steel, scribed all over with runes, which looked kind of like a deadlifting bar—likely the most expensive deadlifting bar ever constructed, judging by the quality of the make.

The ends of that bar were tied to chains. Chains that sank straight into the outer edge of the black hole. They stopped halfway down. An anchor lay somewhere in the far distance.

“If you want to reach the peak of power in this Galaxy, there’s no getting around it. You’ve got to seek out the finest stuff this Galaxy’s got to offer,” said the Barbarian Sage cheerfully. “Nothing else can push you to that top-end level! The Steelheart Conclave—they’ve got good training material, sure. But no runes can make effects like this.” 

He nodded down at the black hole. “See those Gravity laws?”

Zane did. Twisting wasn’t even the right word for what they were doing. They crushed space utterly, making space a torn blur.

“Some of the finest Tier 7 Laws there are! Powered by the Destruction cache at the heart of a black hole—that’s one hell of a Destruction cache, I tell you. Even I’d be hard-pressed to go in and retrieve those shards. Some of the Laws down there…”

The Sage shook his head. “What black holes give you is great resistance. For my money the best you’ll find in nature. You see that mark?”

He pointed. There was a dashed line deep down—a slash in shining chalk. A low benchmark right at the edge of the blackness.

“I made that mark back when I first built this place. Back when I was training to fight Greater Endbringer-level threats—that’s Endbringers right below the Primes themselves. I made it my mission to achieve an Event Horizon-level pull,” said the Sage. “That is, sinking one of those anchors past the point where the Laws of the damned Galaxy say you shouldn’t be able to pull anything out! Then, pulling it out anyway.”

The Sage grinned. “Didn’t manage to achieve it. That training cycle, at least. But you manage that, and you’ll be damned elite in pure physical strength… I’m talking Peak T1-level on physical strength alone, I’d say. Maybe a bit more, even! If you can get your physique to that level before you even make True God… that damned snake will be in for a hell of a reckoning.”

There were other chalk marks on reality too, each marking a few dozen miles lower. Just looking at them made Zane quite eager to test them out. He still had fond memories of his time training on the Barbarian Sage’s home planet. This just seemed like that taken to the galactic level.

The Sage showed off a few more stations. One with a bunch of javelins which were meant to be thrown at a field of planet-sized chunks of rock. There was also a ‘machines’ area, where the Sage had brought in some Steelheart Elders to construct these pipe-filled, steam-pumping, runed-up colossuses of gnarly steel, each meant to train a different muscle. They were still hard at work on them, hammering away.

“It’ll all be ready when you get here, don’t you worry about that,” said the Sage. “Just when will that be, by the way?”

Zane wrote back letting the old guy know he’d be done with this Concept a few years ahead of schedule. 

The impending boost from all his Shards of Destruction, by raw power, was likely to surpass any gains he made before then. But that didn’t dampen his eagerness at all. As he worked through Starfire he’d come to understand exactly how Destruction worked. It acted as a massive amplifier. It had grown quite clear that the stronger his physical and Law base, the stronger Destruction’s effects would be. And when it came to building a physical base, he doubted you could do much better than what the Barbarian Sage offered here. 

First Zane had to finish up his Concept of Starfire, though. He was well on his way.

The firepower boost he got from it, nine years in, now crossed +200%—a respectable sum. He guessed there was only another +100-150% to go before he finished up Starfire for good.

His progress on his sixth Star-Crushing Slash had slowed quite a bit. It was looking like the sixth slash would take another few years to master. It would be nice to add another notch to his combat strength. But at the size that sixth slash would be, it’d primarily be useful against truly massive opponents. Maybe that King Astrolith that spawned down in the valley once a year. He couldn’t see it being useful against anything else, at least in the near future; it’d just be overkill. Five slashes sufficed just fine for every other purpose. Even when he was up against hordes of T0s at the end-of-season shower, he rarely needed to go past four.

He figured he’d return to the slashes in the future, just to keep in his arsenal for the End. There he really could see an enormous, miles-long sixth slash making a difference. Especially if it worked like the last War, where he got System Store rewards based on kill count.

For now, though, he decided he’d take a little time to work on something else, just for a change of pace.

He settled on the Skill he’d picked up back in the Ruins that he’d never really gotten around to. Daybreak Horn, one of the prized skills of the ancient Titan Rhinos. He liked the way it worked. Rather than striking at the enemy directly, it struck reality itself. It’d hurt enemies, but it did its best work on spells.

He rolled open Daybreak Horn’s tome, which contained only six pictures.

The first few pictures, simply done, were clearly drawn by a diligent Titan Rhino which Zane imagined holding a tiny brush in its mouth. The images depicted a Titan Rhino head-butting reality, sending cracks rippling through it in a wide arc. The last few images showed some use cases—a Rhino charging various beasts and armies. The images moved as he inspected them.

He scrolled down and saw a Rhino going up against an army of sixty or seventy Empyrean soldiers armored in regal white steel. A hail of golden arrows fell on the Rhino, but it slammed a Daybreak horn. Reality ruptured right into the arrows’ path. The arrows went flying, their energies and Laws collapsing on the spot.

He watched it again, curious. After another few playthroughs he felt he had a solid grasp of it. He got the feeling the mechanism was that once the very reality on which those spells sat was disrupted, their structures simply couldn’t hold anymore. Kind of similar to how an earthquake Skill might cause a man to fall over.

He could see it being quite useful against force-field skills in particular, like what he’d faced when he’d fought the Nine Founders. 

He figured a few months were enough to finish this thing up.

***

Right in the middle of year nine’s offseason, down in the valley, a lightly toasted Zane could be seen blasting around a horde of Astroliths. Starfire beams kept chasing him, and he kept slashing out in response—only to be sent sprawling for his efforts.

He set his feet, a determined look on his face, and stared down a burgeoning assault. A half-dozen Astroliths charged up their beams. He took a deep breath and met their fire with a slash. He was pretty sure this next try was the one.

That time, unfortunately, he was wrong. Their beams flattened him quite effectively.

He got back up, spat some rocks, and groaned.

Then he faced them again. Waited for the beams to load up, waited until he could feel the heat of that starfire on his face.

He slashed one more time.

This time, reality ruptured like in an earthquake. The ruptures widened as they went. All the beams they met simply ruptured—splitting off in a dozen different directions, several losing all cohesion as they did. He even managed to upend an Astrolith with it, flipping the beast on its head.

And with that—

Skill learned!

Daybreak Horn [Mythic+ (D)]