Savage Awakening 512. Castle Crashers (I)

They were less than half a day out from human land.

“Heads up!” roared the Sage, but Zane was already on it.

Three dozen Emberboar came charging out of the treeline.

Emberboar (Monster King)

Essence Level 699

Emberboar (Monster King)

Essence Level 699

Emberboar (Monster King)

Essence Level 699

He charged them right back.

Two hammer blows wiped out the bulk of them. The rest of the boars bounced right off him.

Their fires exploded uselessly against his muscles. Three of them were half-step Empyreans, and they were the only ones that managed to wound him. They skewered his chest with obsidian tusks.

They managed three bloody gashes that looked impressive for all of half a second.

Then silver wiped them away, and there was nothing but muscle and flesh, hale with life.

He rounded on the beasts and finished them.

It was enough to make him wonder how he stacked up against an Empyrean. For the first time… he felt close.

“Just a few hundred more miles, right?” he said.

“You’re sure eager!”

“They broke too easily,” Zane explained. “I still don’t know what I can really do.”

He felt like he’d barely scratched the surface of his new body.

Hopefully he’d find out soon, though.

“It won’t be long.” The Sage crossed his hands behind his head. “We’ll have to get through these Drearwoods first. Then I’ll let you run hog wild, don’t you worry.”

Zane grinned.

“Speaking of—you can feel it from here, can’t you?”

“Yeah.”

He felt it in the astral plane, like the outline of a distant dark mountain, shrouded in fog…

It dwarfed the Corruption he’d felt in the dwarf kingdom. It had more Corruption than the rest of the Ruins put together.

Just the kind of challenge he needed right now.

“Don’t burn yourself out now, lad! That heart of yours is going like a damn racehorse! I get it, though. I used to be the same way. Been ages since I made a real upgrade. But back then… hells. Every time it was like Gromm all over again!”

“What’s Gromm?”

Gromm, apparently, was an annual Rhino tradition where Rhinos made hoof-crafted gifts and gave them to each other. There was also a significant head-butting component, Zane understood. The more you knew.

They kept forging through the forest, wrecking boars as they went.

“That gravity’s really coming along. You’re using those muscles a lot more now, eh?”

“It feels more natural,” Zane explained. He thought about it. “Muscles aren’t really supposed to help with Law, right?”

“You’d be surprised! Soul and body… the higher you go, the more you start to think they’re just about the same damned thing. Can’t really take ‘em apart,” said the Sage cheerfully. “All my comprehension nowadays feels about as physical as a hard workout.”

That did make sense to him, at least intuitively. The part of him that put effort into his body and his Law was the same. That striving came from the heart.

“‘Specially when you get that Fourth Form and start hammering Concepts into that physique o’yours,” said the Sage. “That’s when things really start coming together… how’s that going, by the way?”

“I’m almost at the eighth tier.” He was pretty happy with his progress these last few days.

“Mm. Now’s a good time to load up on those steels, I figure. Get that stuff burning strong when shit starts hitting the fan.”

He was already on that, too.

Zane took another bite of his Dreamer’s Core.

Friend of the System Tier II 74% -> 78%

Some of those locked System Store treasures were starting to feel within reach. He felt a little itchy thinking about them. With how many Credits he was stacking up… the moment he broke that barrier, he felt he could splurge on something big.

It felt like he’d put in the prep work. He was starting down an avalanche of power-ups… he had the feeling things were just being set into motion.

Skill up!

Asura Titan’s Body, Fourth Form VII -> VIII

He’d gone through a good quarter of his Sunsteel reserves in the past few days, too. That, along with his Dreamer’s Core, had boosted his Destruction a great deal.

Shard of Destruction 48% -> 66%

Another two hours of hiking and smashing, and the sky started changing color. Witching colors, a host of eerie purples. A full moon loomed overhead. A moon that seemed to have a face, grinning down on them as they went. It was cracked all the way through, riddled with Corruption.

“Something’s wrong with this land, alright,” muttered Sage. “You can feel it in the air… that Corruption’s like a damned fog out here! It’ll take some serious firepower to clear it out.”

Zane just took out his hammers in answer.

The Sage whacked him over the head, a gesture of Sagely approval.

He hefted his spear, too. “Alright… don’t know about you, lad. I, for one, have got my hopes up!”

***

They’d just gotten within fifty miles when a deathly aura broke over them. It had the signature of all the other undead they’d fought, only far denser. Two hollows for eyes stared like dreadful stars.

Zane saw the pressure descending. Its very presence destabilized reality. Then its soul pressed down. A shockwave of chaotic energy rushed to crush them.

He braced himself for impact.

Then the Sage raised a fist and clenched it.

A sphere of absolute black blotted out a dome. The Sage’s Inner Universe, making a shield.

The pressure broke off against it like rogue waves hitting a seawall.

The eyes blinked. Then there was a sound like—

The Sage’s grin took on an animal edge.

“Finally,” he breathed. “A godsdamned challenge!”

Zane was just thinking the same thing.

“Right. Same plan, you think? I take the big one.”

“I’ll take all that.” He nodded to the kingdom ahead.

They bumped fists and made their way onto open ground.

***

The human kingdom was so overrun that there was more Corruption stain than solid ground. A restless breeding ground of undead.

A land of broken castles, each with an evil purple eye overhead, glowering. Serfs tilling the fields, and smiths, and leatherworkers too—all twisted and armed with twisted tools.

The moment they broke the treeline, they found themselves in a serfs’ field.

Zombies with pitchforks and sickles, tips red as though plunged in a hearth, dripping molten magma. Seventy or eighty of them. Then, from beyond, a cluster of smiths, leaping toward him, hammers stacked with earthquake Law.

More poured out of the castles. Knights now, with squires at their sides, riding skeleton horses, charging with lances hefted. Those lances had piercing Grand Circle Tier 7 Laws concentrated at the tip. And when they charged, the horses’ momentum charged up the riders, granting them deadly force… halfway through their charges, Destruction lit up those points.

Half-step Empyrean Knights bore down on him with worlds of hollow silver.

And behind them came Wraith-witches.

Raising scepters topped with skulls, they tried to saddle him with curses, calling down wraiths from the skies to sap at his soul and scream soul-strikes at him—trying to stun him and wear down his resolve.

Hundreds poured out of every single castle. He’d already faced five half-step Empyreans. There were more still up ahead…

He waded straight into that crush.

The serfs rained down their molten sickles.

They crumpled against his muscles.

The smiths whacked him with their hammers—hammers strong enough to disintegrate their comrades in friendly fire. But against the new flesh of Zane’s body, tempered with all that Dreamer’s Core iron, they might as well have been wastepaper.

He took three hammers right to the temple as he charged. But it was the hammers that went flying away, crumpling.

He felt the blows, but they couldn’t stun him anymore. His Bone Marrow was proving its worth too.

The Knights were the only ones who had any success against him. He smashed away a horde of smiths on one side and made a crater of the serfs on the other before a lance skewered him in the chest, backed by the full force of that charge Skill. That much momentum from a half-step Empyrean still meant something. It cut him to the bone, almost to the heart. The raw force alone shattered several bones.

Zane staggered, gritting his teeth. He felt blood in his mouth.

His fist caught that lance as it tried to rear back. The Knight yanked. Its skeleton horse neighed and bucked against the grip. But it couldn’t break his hold.

Silver seared out of the wound in his chest. He felt Prime Blood burn at the wounds, healing new muscle, new flesh…

All that momentum to wound him. And in a blink, it was nothing.

All that Knight had done was put itself in striking range.

Then Zane dropped gravity and pulled.

Wrestling that Knight straight out of the saddle and sending it crashing into its fellow knights. The nearest was still mid-charge. It skewered its brethren before going over. They crashed into one another, armor looking like tin cans falling over, crumpling, crushed by the force of the throw.

It only took four more hammers to get the job done. Another to turn the witches to dust.

Level up!

Level up!

Essence Level 583 -> 585

“How’s it going!” said the Sage.

Zane spat out some blood. “Think I’m feeling warmed up.”

“Looks like things are just getting started…”

There were four castles in front of them, and each began trembling. Then they burst all at once, flooding the landscape with undead. There had to be a dozen half-step Empyreans in all…

Two Empyrean Auras raged out.

Two skeleton beasts stomped out. One was a dragon with bones like coal, dragging along a universe of deep Earth. It had a chunky form and tiny stubbly wings, but its tail dragged against the ground, making constant earthquakes.

The other was a pterodactyl-like creature with six tornadoes whistling under its wings, bearing it aloft, ready to launch at any moment. Each was laced thick with Destruction.

Endbringer Earth Dragon (Monster King)

Essence Level 766

Endbringer Stonescreecher (Monster King)

Essence Level 758

Both bore pillar-like spears of sheer Corruption through their chests. Million-year Corrupted Bones.

Each felt significantly stronger than the last.

The Sage gave him a salute—“I’ll see you on the other side, lad.”

Zane saluted back.

Master and student began fighting their hearts out.

And the next hour was beautiful carnage.

The Sage threw himself at those Empyreans like a wildman. It felt like every blow struck at a critical weak point. Every blow struck to kill, ruthless. The pterodactyl had to dive hard to get out of the way.

“No you don’t!”

The Sage hunted it down, cut it off, and crushed it, while that Earth Dragon couldn’t come close to keeping up. Then he turned and went blow-for-blow with the beast, grounding it into nothing. Every spear deleted a chunk of it. It was an obscene level of Destruction—like the Sage was taking an eraser paint tool and blotting out a chunk of the dragon with each thrust.

Zane, meanwhile, was fighting an ocean. And he was winning.

Powering straight through it, breaking up all that Corruption with a relentless string of Red Giant Smashes.

Peak True Gods were mere cannon fodder to him. Half-step Empyreans could get his attention, and at one point, six of them got on him at once, binding him with leeching ghostly chains. But they still couldn’t take him down. He broke free and wrecked them like all the rest.

They just couldn’t slow him down anymore.

Gravity welled, drawing in hundreds of Monsters at once. Then he obliterated them. In the skies, the Sage battled Empyrean after Empyrean, and his laugh kept getting fiercer.

In the end, he’d destroyed sixty-two half-step Empyreans over the course of two hours.

In that time, he’d taken enough damage to kill him nine times over.

That should’ve been enough to exhaust him. It should’ve run his essence dry, and his body should’ve been a broken mess by now.

If the Zane that had walked into these Ruins took this challenge, he would’ve keeled over around the thirtieth half-step Empyrean. It was more brutal than even the war. These weren’t waves.

He had no rest that entire time.

But now the Prime Blood was strong in him, and he just kept recovering. Just kept fighting.

That whole time, he’d never dipped below 50% health. Not until the very end, when he fought a force of four Sentinel Knights at once, each armed with Corrupted Bones. The ones guarding the gates of Ancestor Castle.