Wild Era 2, Ch 33: Wildfire

As Kelin ran across the plains toward the dungeon entrance, he considered what he’d learned while talking to Sandren.

Among other things, she had told him the trade plan against Verasun was being delayed. The guild council had decided to study the potential impact for longer before authorizing it. 

Based on the rumors, it was due to Whitestar’s interference.

Normally, he would have considered leveraging his authority as a Knight to shift the votes on the council or come up with a different plan to take down Verasun, but with the duel in two days, it no longer mattered.

He would do it personally.

Since Verasun had dared to challenge him, the time for more complicated things had passed.

He would deal with Whitestar as well, eventually.

Even if the man wasn’t a traitor, he was a type of cockroach that didn’t belong in the guild, not when its main purpose was to improve the valor and strength of humanity.

Closer to home, there was something else he needed to deal with soon.

Sandren was getting upset with him. 

He could tell that she thought he was being overconfident and reckless. She didn’t see the outcome of the duel the same way as he did and her patience would run out soon.

That meant he had a choice.

It was probably best to tell her who he really was.

Now that he’d met the Sovereign and knew his main enemy was, most of his worries about being betrayed had fallen away. 

He didn’t need to worry too much about the higher levels of the guild or old allies that might try to kill him before he could return to power.

He also had the Sovereign’s promise to block Seventh Evolution enemies.

He still had to look out for other people who served Undeath, as long as they were at the Sixth Evolution or lower, but there was no shortage of those opponents either way.

In this life or his last.

That was why the Sovereign hadn’t offered to deal with them all. It was the same as saying he’d block everything for him. If that happened, there would be no real conflict in his life and nothing that drove him to become stronger.

He would deal with challenges as they came, and if he died along the way, he’d just have to hope that one day he would reincarnate again.

As low as that chance might be.

It wouldn’t be wise to shout who he was from the rooftops, since jealousy and competition existed and he couldn’t be sure everyone was on his side, but telling a few people in secret should be fine.

He would tell her when he got back.

With the decision made, his thoughts felt lighter and he enjoyed the rest of the run across the plains with the wind streaming past his face.

A few hours later, he closed in on his destination.

The dungeon he’d chosen was a Level 150 one that was known for its swarms of monsters. It was located about a hundred miles northeast of Highmist, in the direction of Stormhill, another of the city states.

It had taken him a while to get here, but it was the best option. The number of dungeons in Celadon with the correct level was limited, especially when he was looking for ones that hadn’t been cleared in a while.

On the way back, he would either use a teleportation scroll or his cloak.

The city of Stormhill itself was a few hundred miles farther to the north, on the edge of the Ocean of Storms at the border of the kingdom. It was somewhere he planned to visit soon, since the dungeons there were renowned for their ferocity.

More importantly, he was feeling an urge to travel and truly see this world. 

Lareth was a wild place, full of the elements and wonder, and soon there would be no reason to stay in Highmist any longer.

From here to the Drakewall in the northwest and the Vale of Dragons, to the Cloudmont Marches to the west across the Solace Wood, and Grimspire in the southwest...there were many things he planned to see.

And that was just near Celadon.

Life was all about the journey.

Once he got a few more levels, perhaps he could talk Sandren into coming with him. The kids would be fine at the guild until they finished their training.

He caught sight of the dungeon entrance from afar and scanned the area, making sure that it was undisturbed, and then he sped across the distance.

It was marked by a spire of stone that rose into the air above the plains. It wasn’t a mountain as much as a pillar of bedrock that stood alone and the peak glimmered with crackling lightning.

Some dungeon entrances were subtle and hidden things. 

This one was not.

It looked small from a distance, but as he closed in on the pillar, it was apparent that the base was over a hundred feet wide. It stretched upward like a massive sword that had been stabbed down into the earth.

As he approached the entrance, the Path’s voice rang in his mind.

Congratulations, Lord of Wildfire.

You have discovered the Storm Spire Chaos Remnant.

Average Level: 151.

Elemental Affinities: Stone, Metal, Lightning, Wind.

Mana Density: High.

Relative Danger: High.

Rewards: Variable (High).

Last Clear: 172 days ago. 

This dungeon is approaching mana saturation. If it is not cleared within the next month, it is likely to break.

Your rank entitles you to accept this mission directly for a reward of guild credits and other benefits.

Do you wish to accept this quest?

This was one of the privileges of a Knight. He no longer needed to go through the guild to register missions. The Path granted him the authority directly.

“I accept,” he agreed, speaking aloud, and he felt it appear in his mind.

You Have Accepted the Quest: Clear the Storm Spire.

You must eliminate at least 90% of the monsters inside.

Rewards will be based on the level of completion.

The dungeon portal shimmered as he stepped inside, and the Void passed over skin with its ancient and familiar silvered blackness.

When he appeared on the other side, it was on a high plateau in the mountains. 

To his left, the world fell away into open air and the ground was so far below that it couldn’t even be seen except as a distant brown and yellow blur. 

The horizon stretched out endlessly into the distance, blending with the crackling lightning of a storm. The same storm gathered in the other directions, including ahead of him on the plateau, hanging ominously in the sky.

He could feel the dimensional barriers of the dungeon where they began in the open sky a mile away, and that detail combined with the information he’d already gathered.

The entire dungeon was encapsulated on this plateau, while the surrounding air and storm were one of the vectors for enemies to arrive. 

It was like a section of the highest mountains had been separated. The air here was thin, but thanks to his constitution, he had no difficulty breathing.

Even as he arrived, he felt the elements in the dungeon shift and the storm that was building in the distance began to rush toward him.

He watched it with a slight smile.

One of the reasons he’d come all this way was for the affinities here. He wanted a bit of practice against lightning before he faced Verasun and this dungeon was one of the best places to get it.

Along with the storm, he could see silver-feathered eagles, lightning serpents, and other monsters heading for him. Their forms blended into the clouds and the crackling electricity.

He analyzed them at a distance.

Silver-Feathered Eagle. Level 151.

Storm Serpent. Level 148.

Lightning Spirit. Level 150.

Each of them was a worthy opponent and they would be here in short order, but there were only about ten, which wasn’t enough.

He drew a ward circle, tossed his sigil into the air, and layered a series of talisman shields over himself as a backup in case things went wrong.

Then he called on Wildfire. 

A sphere of crackling rainbow flames appeared in his right hand and strands separated from it, spinning around him as they formed into a trailing cloak and a crown.

He raised the sphere like he was holding a ruler’s orb, and then he channeled mana into his staff, raising it in his left hand, intensifying it with Blaze. 

When the mana reached the peak, he slammed the butt of the staff into the ground. 

A massive pulse of mana that crackled with soul energy surged out, thundering across the sky and plateau.

As the echoes spread, the dungeon fell silent and even the approaching monsters seemed to hesitate. 

Then the dungeon’s attention fell on Kelin’s shoulders, locking onto him like a mountain of pressure.

Tendrils of winds began to form, whipping around his robe and limbs, their edges sharp and heavy, and thunder crackled across the sky, making the storms swell with power.

The clouds turned darker as they expanded, sweeping more swiftly across the distance. 

His smile expanded as he saw it and he tilted back his head as he let out a roaring shout.

“Come!”

More eagles and serpents appeared in the distance, launching themselves upward from their nests as they flew to join the others in the sky, and new spirits took shape from the clouds, their talons outstretched like branches of lightning.

Dozens of new ones joined the first group, all of them heading straight for him.

“That’s better,” he said as a slightly mad grin appeared. “Know your place.”

There was a hint of wildfire in his eyes as he spoke, making his gaze burn with chaotic energy, and his spirit felt like it was aflame.

It had been a long time since he went all out with Wildfire. With its flames curling around his body, the energy was a blazing force that swept out in every direction.

As the monsters flew toward him, he waited until they were a few hundred feet away and then he hurled the sphere of Wildfire into their path.

At the speed they were moving, they reached the spell at the same time as it exploded.

A wave of Wildfire swept across the sky, passing over half a dozen of the leading monsters. 

The eagles let out an angry shriek as they swept their wings through the air, trying to dive through the flames and the serpents hissed in fury, but they had already touched it. 

Sparks of flame ignited in their souls as they closed in on Kelin.

They slammed into his ward like falling thunder, making the plateau shake with the impact. 

Dark cracks splintered through the ward and lightning crawled across the surface in a nightmarish web of blue and white.

With the level difference and the number facing him, his mana drained swiftly, but it didn’t matter, even as the monsters swept around for a second strike.

As the impacts struck his ward again, the leading serpent exploded into a storm of Wildfire. The flames swept across the area, covering all of the nearby monsters and towering into the sky.

A second later, the next one erupted, sending the flames even higher.

More explosions followed, covering the sky in wild colors that raged against the storm.

Kelin focused on intensifying the spell and gathering it, letting it swell into an inferno that spiraled around him.

The other monsters nearby exploded one by one, their souls fueling the flames, and the burden of the spell grew, but he channeled the backlash through the wards on his soul as he sent the flames higher.

Moments later, the dozens of monsters he’d stirred up from other parts of the dungeon arrived. They tried to circle him from a distance, sending in bolts of lightning and wind blades, but he sent the storm outward to engulf them.

It was a surging fury of destruction.

One by one, the monsters exploded into flames, and with each death, the Wildfire grew.

His endurance was greater than before his Evolution, but he still had to fight to contain the spell and to keep it from spreading too far.

The second wave of monsters added about thirty to the total, and more monsters were already flying toward him. 

At the same time, he felt a rumble in the earth as Gaius’s warning echoed in his mind, telling him that burrowing serpents and beetles made of earth and metal were heading in his direction.

He gathered the flames and tested his control as he waited, letting the Wildfire continue to spiral around him.

The golden wards on his soul blazed with force as flames crashed against them, like cliffs standing firm against a raging ocean. 

One by one, droplets of pure soul energy condensed and fused into his soul.

He was in a trance-like state, merged almost fully with the flames, and he barely noticed as the monsters leapt up from the ground near his feet. Their impacts struck his ward, making it shake with force.

They lasted only seconds before they exploded.

Rainbow smoke drifted through the battlefield around him, twisting and howling with chaotic soul energy. Sometimes it formed faces or tried to animate a corpse, but it was torn apart again an instant later, its essence pulled back into the inferno.

More monsters arrived, howling with fury as they attacked the storm, but they joined the others within seconds as the flames raged higher.

Within minutes, corpses lay scattered in every direction, their eyes lifeless and trailing lines of ethereal smoke.

Above them, Wildfire covered the plateau, roaring with fury as it spun in a massive hurricane five hundred feet wide. 

Kelin stood at the center, his body wrapped with arcs of flame like the king of hell, and his eyes blazed with the same colors as the storm. 

His senses and Gaius’s covered the area, but there was nothing left in range and no more monsters were flying toward them. 

He growled a word that echoed across the area.

“Enough.” 

The storm of Wildfire condensed, its colors flaring into brighter life as it condensed in on itself and shrank. Kelin warred against it, gathering the loose soul energy to himself as he forced the flames to obey.

Sweat ran down his body, leaving trails that fell like liquid fury and burned pits into the stone below his feet.

The backlash raged against his soul, crashing against the wards again and again, but his work was sound. The flames broke against his defenses, condensed into pure energy, and evaporated into a wave of power that spread out around him.

Loose soul energy and mana formed into whirlwinds that twisted away from him on the plateau, carving their way across the stone until they dissipated into the air.

Eventually, everything was still.

The storm still raged on the horizon and thunder rumbled above, but the area around Kelin was silent.

Only the scattered bodies of monsters and some damage to the plateau from their attacks was left as a sign of what had happened here.

Kelin staggered as he leaned on his staff, drawing in a great breath of air. His lungs felt scorched and his meridians ached, but he was intact.

The spell had strained him, but it had done its job.

None of the monster attacks had managed to break through his ward. They hadn’t had enough time.
There were close to a hundred bodies scattered across the area and his soul hummed with force, like the flames had condensed and were still burning through it. 

In his mind’s eye, the rainbow flames of Wildfire had been condensed to pure energy that was everywhere. It was surging through his soul in golden waves as it slowly calmed down.

Notifications rang in his mind as he looked around.

Congratulations, Lord of Wildfire!

You have gained eight Levels.

You are now Level 118.

You gain 72 Intelligence, 24 Wisdom, 24 Aura, and have 48 free attribute points to distribute.

There was a pause as the Path evaluated the changes to his soul and then it spoke again.

You have refined soul energy from the battlefield and gained 47 Aura. 

He tossed the free points into Constitution, since it would be critical if the duel went wrong, and then he sat down where he was.

Constitution also helped with his overall stamina, including maintaining the exertion of Wildfire, so it was no loss. 

The addition brought it up to 347, but he had decided to get it to at least 400, which was the lowest standard for a Level 200 mage.

That should be enough that if Verasun’s strikes hit him, he wouldn’t die.

At least not too quickly.

He breathed slowly as he adjusted to the changes and worked on stabilizing his soul. That had been pushing his limit, but it hadn’t quite reached it, so it didn’t take him too long. 

By the time his energy had recovered, he was done.

He dusted himself off as he stood up and then he looked around the plateau, scanning it for the next closest presence.

He could feel another group of monsters off to the west, so he oriented himself toward them and began to walk, with his staff tapping beside him.

That had probably been half of the loose monsters in this dungeon, but it was just the beginning.

Once he dealt with the wandering ones, he’d take care of the challenges.

And then the dungeon boss. 

That should be worth a few more levels.