Savage Awakening 567. Leagues (VII)

“You’re certain you’re not missing anything,” said the Ghoul Doctor. He gave Hreinn a flat look. “Hadn’t you mentioned that a local noticed your trap?”

“Noticed, yes,” hummed Hreinn. “A local who thinks he’s much cleverer than he is… yet there’s a heaven-and-earth difference between noticing something and stopping it, I’m afraid. The poor man’s clueless! He hadn’t even noticed me watching his every move, every time he’s tried to tamper. Tried, and failed, over and over… it’s been quite entertaining,  actually, watching his flailing. The magics he’s witnessing are so far beyond him he can’t even begin to comprehend them, much less break them. You should’ve seen him puzzling at it… the man’s as helpless as Noughtfire!”

Hreinn giggled. “By the time he comes close to figuring out what I’ve been planning, the deed will have long been done. Don’t you worry, dear Doctor.”

As for the Mistress… hissed Malzareth, and it was the first time anger seeped into his tone. His good mood seemed suddenly ruined. I will see to her fate personally.

The Doctor had seen Malzareth in all manner of moods in his long tenure as the Master’s advisor. But it’d been some time since he’d seen the Master this furious. Not since Zane had survived his Slayer.

When the Master had attacked her during her ritual, the Mistress had exposed him to the System. It had resulted in her landing a single blow with it, a blow that should’ve been of absolutely no consequence. Something that, the Ghoul Doctor thought, should’ve been easy to let go.

“She attacked you simply in an attempt to infuriate you,” he said. 

And you think I did not know that? hissed Malzareth. A human whelp, not even alive a century, thinking herself capable of competing with the likes of Lord Malzareth… She thinks her little wards have put her beyond the grasp of Lord Malzareth. She thinks herself safe!

The Doctor considered his Master’s great strength to be his incredibly vast reserves, the breadth of his Law knowledge—knowledge that allowed him to create like no other—and his Heavenly Demon signature attacks. His eye alone could down the head of a Great Faction. That, coupled with skills derived from having one of the most pure Heavenly Demon bloodlines in the universe, made him an existential threat to Dragonspire merely by himself. Even without his Primes.

It was to the Doctor’s great chagrin that Malzareth did not see it the same way.

The Master always felt his greatest strength was his scheming and his wit, which made what the Mistress had done all the more intolerable.

Reality began to crack around those six crimson eyes.

Lord Malzareth has plans for her, make no mistake… he snarled. First, the death of Zane Walker. Her attachment to him shall be her weakness. His fate will raise a heart demon from which she’ll never recover. She’ll fail to awaken the World Tree, and with that, fail in rallying her elves to her cause… her spirit shall shatter like poor crystal. Then the day of final reckoning will come, and her precious World Tree shall be snapped in half by a single claw-swipe! And Lord Malzareth will break that woman in every way a human can be broken… design tortures for her the mind of puny man could never fathom! Resurrect her man again and again, simply to break him in front of her. And make her know, all the while, it was that smug little act that brought about it all!

“…Indeed you shall, Master!” said Hreinn, blinking. “Indeed you shall.”

It seemed even Hreinn was caught a little off guard. Not at the thought of the tortures the Master would inflict, but simply that a creature of his Master’s stature would rant like this over a mere Minor Goddess… it seemed a little unbecoming, even to Hreinn. But that was the Master.

The Ghoul Doctor simply inclined his head. “As I see it, Master,” he said, a tad resigned, “if Zane Walker truly is finished, all that you’ve planned seems to me by far the likeliest outcome.”

***

The end of Zane’s final shard season was coming fast. It was shaping up to be a pretty humdrum ending, all told.

None of the new Yang League guys really measured up in his eyes. There was some fresh blood—new, talented Young Masters on the human and phoenix side especially. One lightning-javelin fellow in particular caught his eye. But he still felt that none of them really measured up to the heroes of seasons past.

It even made him miss Jaxarys a little. It grew clearer to him as the season went on that he simply hadn’t appreciated sporting greatness when it’d been there. Now he felt a little bummed she was gone.

He still didn’t like her much, but if there was a Yang League Hall of Fame, the Iron Princess definitely deserved to be there.

He kept on grinding his Law. Just weeks before the end of the season, mere hours before sunset in the Pure Yang Lands, he sat meditating, cross-legged, in front of the biggest chunk of Starfire Crystal in all the starfield.

And a final piece, a final impression of that explosive quality, simply clicked.

It felt more intuitive than conscious. In the way that practicing a skill over and over let the body more fully understand it. There were times, especially early in his Law journey, when ‘eureka’ moments in Law comprehension were guided by sudden insights of the conscious mind. But for long grinds like this, squeezing out every last percent of knowledge, it really did feel like the breakthroughs were in the subtleties.

He just showed up every day, set his mind to the explosiveness of starfire—the explosiveness at the heart of stars—layering in insight by insight, until one day…it just happened.

He stood, clenched his fists, and summoned Starfire for the umpteenth time this Law cycle.

Only this time his fists shone like comets. Burning so bright they were nearly white, flickering and raging in the waning Pure Yang light…

He grinned, his whole body relaxing. He knew he’d gotten it even before the notification popped up.

Concept comprehended!

The Concept of Starfire

And with it—

Skill evolved!

H. Red Giant [Mythic+ (D) -> Mythic+ (D)]

He blinked.

That was… interesting. No rarity upgrade.

The last rarity upgrade he’d gotten was going from Rare Divine Profound straight into Mythic+ Divine Profound—courtesy of spamming 11 Destruction Shards in a row right before his Haxorax fight. But it had topped out at Mythic+ rarity and stopped there.

It seemed like it’d happened again, even with a new Concept in hand. 

His Red Giant was significantly stronger than it had been when he stepped in here. There was no doubt about that. He saw it when he tested his Skills and cross-checked them with the stats trick. He definitely moved about three times faster and struck about four-and-a-half times more explosively. There was a clear change, and no small one either.

He wondered if the ‘Origin’ grade was just gated by some other factor. Maybe the System simply wouldn’t recognize Laws as Origin unless they hit a certain Tier?

Sometimes he did get the sense the System didn’t quite know how best to categorize his specific situation. He got the feeling he was a bit of a unique case. He wasn’t sure a Tier 6 Law had been this high-grade before.  

He was still proud of the achievement. And he could see its effects whenever he punched something, which were what mattered in the end.

Kain raised a brow. “You’ve finished?”

“Yeah, just now, actually.” 

“Very well,” said Kain. “Then I suppose that marks the end of your journey in the Pure Yang.”

“I’ll still finish out this season. Might as well, since we’re so close to the end already.”

Kain nodded. “There’s a week until the shower hits.”

“I think I’ll just relax for now,” Zane told him. He hadn’t thought too much about it—having a sudden stretch of free time felt downright strange, after all those years grinding. “Maybe do some last-minute end-of-season prep, that kind of thing?” 

Kain nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, then.” That was their usual Yang league time.

“Sure thing.”

“We’re reprising our usual agreement for the end-of-season shower, I assume? Taking the usual halves of the mountain?”

Zane nodded. “Sounds good to me.” They’d stopped signing actual contracts a few years back. There wasn’t really any need for them anymore.

Then he remembered—there was one more thing he’d always wanted to take care of before he left.

“So,” he said. “Any thoughts on the end-of-season final battle?”

“This again?” said Kain. He had a wry smile.

“There’s no dragons to contend with anymore,” Zane pointed out. “And the thing does drop a ton of shards.”

“…”

“…”

“Alright,” sighed Kain. “Just this once. Let’s make it fast.”

“Awesome.”

***

The end-of-season shower that year was on the heavier side. Seven-and-a-half hours in, Zane had gained an extra 11 shards of Destruction, bringing his total to 82.

Then the flow of shad meteors began to wane, as usual. Like the Pure Yang itself was saving up for that final massive push… 

This year, he was quite looking forward to it. 

***

It had been a long, rewarding, quite grueling night for most of the fighters in the valley below. By the end of it, only a few young masters, the most promising of the crop, were still in shape to contest the final wave. A wave that would be quite brutal if the rest of the shower were anything to go by.

The young masters assembled there were all peak T0 and half-step T1 talents, mostly princes of human Great Kingdoms, though there was a Roc Princess and a few young dragon-lords too.

This era of the Pure Yang followed directly after the era of the First Ones, around twenty thousand years after they’d been wiped out in the Silver Rain and their lands made a Ruin. The inheritances of the Founders had not yet been rediscovered; the Great Factions not yet re-founded… the dominant powers in Dragonspire were now the Great Kingdoms.

These young men and women were their best talents. Each was a once-in-generations talent in their own homelands. They just had the misfortune to be suppressed by Jaxarys in the Pure Yang testing ground. This year, they all finally felt empowered to step out of Jaxarys’ shadow and, hopefully, to make their own legends.

But as the final wave neared the heart of the valley, the prime space, still lay conspicuously empty. The fighters were all camped on the valley’s fringes, staking small plots in the distant hills.

No one wanted to fight the Boss that was destined to fall there.

There was no better way to make one’s name than to take down the true final Boss of the Pure Yang lands, the infamous Astrolith King. A Boss that was known to drop up to 20 Shards of Destruction, but it claimed nearly as many Empyrean lives every shower night as the rest of the Shard Bosses combined. Entire Great Kingdoms had fallen outside the Pure Yang because so many of their top fighters had been killed, battling its time-stopping roar or its annihilation star.

It still seemed that this year, no one would take up the gauntlet. They’d simply allow the time to elapse, for the event to be over and the King to despawn, its many Shards unclaimed.

But then, just minutes before that wave was set to strike, they noticed two men entering the valley. One was short and thin, the other quite tall and beefy.

“…Is that…?!”

“It’s the Mount X crew!”

They never came down into the valley. They’d gained an almost mythical reputation in the Pure Yang lands. There was Kain, the fearsome rune-master backed by who knew how much Destruction… but the man by his side, Jack, was held in even more awe, especially by the more starry-eyed young men in the crowd.

Jack, after all, was the one they’d all see at the end of every season bursting through entire hordes of Astroliths at once. They got the sense he was trying to fight a whole mountain’s worth of Empyreans simply because he could, simply because he wanted to push himself to his limit.

It was a mentality that quite a few of them found inspiring… but others, especially their elders and masters, thought it plain reckless. There were countless predictions that this was the year his massive charges would get the better of him. They’d been proven wrong so far.

But that mentality was about to be put to the ultimate test.

The skies, leading up to that final wave, were nearly empty. 

And then, in a blink, they weren’t.

More and more massive shard meteors filled up the sky…

Then, the one.

A mountain of a meteor blotted out the heart of the sky.

It shuddered the whole valley as it struck the ground. 

And the creature within groaned to life.

King Astrolith [Monster Emperor]

Essence Level 748

A mountain range of a golem. Fissures ran down its whole being, just like the Pure Yang itself; they were molten, constantly pulsing starfire… and on its head there lay a mighty prow much like the ones the Shard Bosses bore. Only even darker, more mysterious, reminding one of the unexplored reaches of space.

Destruction cracked down Kain’s fingers.

Jack’s axes, his physique, flared to life.

And the final battle went down.