Savage Awakening 520. Final Gains (II)

A/N: housekeeping note—Haxorax will be spelled with one X going forward! There were two chapters where it was spelled with two X’s by mistake, that has been changed

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It was a technique that once belonged to a gaoler of the Superdungeon, an ancient elite Empyrean named the Faceless One. The Sage told him the legend.

The Faceless One was known for his death mask: this hulk of grotesque black steel, skull-shaped. It was said he’d once been the prince of a great tribe, and a rival tribe had captured him. They’d welded it to his head ages ago, when he was in his teens.

Somehow it got welded into his being too. They said it changed him forever. He had a giant slumping body and a tiny head, and no one had ever heard him speak. He only ever made a low growling sound. He was known by that, and by his chains, which shivered the floors of the Superdungeon in the twilight hours.

“Even Prime Endbringers steered clear when they heard that!” said the Sage. “The man even the baddest of the Monsters feared. So the legends say, anyway. Real crazy bastard, supposedly… never got to meet him. Neither’s anyone else, far as I can tell. But I’ve heard a hell of a lot of stories going around. Some say he’s got four arms and eats only baby Monster eggs. But none of the tellers of ‘em’s ever got that deep in the Superdungeon. Don’t know where they’d get all that.”

“Sounds kind of unlikely,” Zane agreed. “He sounds like a pretty easy fellow to make fun of, anyway.”

He rather sympathized, actually.

“Yeah… might be he was as cracked as they said. But might be you could’ve had a beer with him if you just got to know him. I always wanted to fight him.”

The Sage scratched his chin. “One thing I’m pretty damned sure isn’t made up. In terms of control... put it this way. He held down that ol’ rat Hreinn with it. I never knew a slimier bastard than that. You transmigrate him into an elephant, and he could still slip through a keyhole!”

The Sage paused. “You don’t know who that is.”

“No.” Zane shook his head.

“Malzareth’s right-hand man. And I do mean man. Slippery as an eel in tar, that one. The Faceless One threw out Chainstorm Cage and he tried every damned trick in the book, including a few that should’ve tunneled him out of time and space! But none of it could break that grip.” The Sage chuckled. “The big snake had to come in person to get him free.”

There was another famous incident involving the Chainstorm Cage. The Sage told him about the Incident of 101E—this one far more substantiated than the legends. There had once been a jailbreak that’d sundered six whole floors of the Superdungeon. Twenty-six Empyreans had managed to break free, among them three “big shots,” according to the Sage. “Real nasty bastards” was the term he used. “We’re talking Monster Emperors, one and all. Grand Endbringers—that’s just a step below Prime.”

By how the Sage used that term, Zane gathered ‘Prime Endbringer’ meant something like ‘Malzareth’s top-tier lieutenants.’

The moment the Faceless One clocked the jailbreak, he’d unleashed Chainstorm Cage. In less than the time it took to blink, these giant runed chains wrapped half the length of a Galaxy.

Then he’d reeled them all in.

By now, Zane was pretty sold on this technique. He went through the tome, trying to get a sense of it. It had an explosive start: blasting the chains a great distance, making a spinning net. But it wasn’t like Solar Storm. Instead, it looked like a gyroscope or like a planet’s rings—if a planet had several sets of rings, all spinning on different axes. All around the same point: himself.

It would look like a hollow sphere, its edges sketched in three dimensions by rings of Chains.

That alone might not be enough to catch a slippery Empyrean. There’d be too much space between the Chains. But there was a catch.

All those interlocking Chains made a base for Magnetism and Gravity. Each Chain exerted its own field, overlapping heavily. Making a solid, invisible wall of sheer force. Filling every gap of that cage with Law.

All crushing in toward the center as it all constricted.

With the way the cage was set up, breaking through all that Law would be a fiendish task.

The only feasible way to break free would be to disrupt the Cage itself, somehow.

You’d have to contend with Zane’s grip to do that. Or break through Zane himself…

“You sure look happy,” said the Sage. “You find something?”

“Nothing new,” he told the Sage. “Just working through what the mechanisms mean.”

He showed the Sage a tome diagram, grinning. “It’ll make catching someone a test of strength, not speed.”

“Ahhh,” said the Sage, nodding wisely. “That’s nice.”

Zane happily put it away. He was always on the lookout for new, interesting anti-bird measures.

It took another hour or so to clean out the place. The Sage had simple criteria. If it looked high-grade and edible, he nabbed it. If it was a very odd Skill tome, he nabbed it too. He stole a tome that claimed to make one’s gaze a blade, for instance, and some kind of sound-storm technique. It seemed made for wyverns or other creatures with a real set of lungs on them. Zane wasn’t sure what use it could be for a spear-wielder, but he figured the Sage knew what he was doing.

“Most of these conventional Skills, I’ve seen already,” the Sage explained, stuffing it in. “The only thing that could help me get better now is something damned strange. Don’t you throw out a Skill just ’cause it doesn’t look right at first glance! I’ve made some of my best gains from Skills no one thought were of any use.”

He patted his spear, Skypiercer, fondly. “Flurry of the Mad God’s just one example. Folks don’t see its blows coming ’cause the spear bends like mad when it strikes. Took that one from a damned Storm Eel! Now, I don’t mean to get all head-in-the-clouds on you, lad. But you can learn from the damndest places.”

Zane got the feeling it was better advice for the Sage than for himself.

It’d help Zane on occasion, sure. But the Sage’s whole style seemed built on it—a bunch of wild, brutal, unlikely stuff mashed together. His style was a little different.

He quite appreciated the intent, though.

With Noughtfire, he tended to learn most when thought hard on what every word meant.

With the Barbarian Sage, it was more fifty-fifty. Sometimes the Sage dropped a nugget in his rambles, like his hint about Gravity. Sometimes the Sage just rambled to ramble. But often Zane learned just by watching the old fellow fight.

Besides Gravity, that was his main takeaway. The Sage fought with a kind of pace, a kind of relentlessness, that took your breath away just watching. Not in an awed way, though there was that. It felt like every strike came straight for the throat, or the eyes, or some other vital point, and they always curved there from some unlikely angle at the very last minute.

His enemies were so busy defending it felt like they had no time to breathe.

It did seem like quite the challenge…

Zane considered the old fellow.

“Eh?” The Sage frowned. “Oh, no you don’t, lad. I know that look! You think you can take me, eh? I always knew this damned day would come… hells, if it isn’t faster than I thought!”

The Sage didn’t look upset, though. He actually looked quite pleased.

“I’m not there yet,” said Zane, and he couldn’t help cracking a grin. “I’m working on it, though.”

The Sage laughed and cuffed him again. “You damned brat! Alright, I see how it is. You work hard, lad. You make it up here, I’ll be waiting. Waiting to beat you into the damned ground, that is! Lads these days. No respect, I tell you.”

They made it out of the treasury in good spirits.

Then it was one long Eldritch horror ride back to the void. Back to that superhighway of the Galaxy.

***

The journey back was pretty peaceful. It mostly consisted of Zane digesting steel and fighting off any Monsters that came close to threatening their path.

None of these peak True Gods could take even a fifth of his power anymore, though.

He did make a few more breakthroughs in that time.

Skill up!

Skill up!

Asura Titan’s Body, Third Form VIII -> X

He leveled Friend of the System Tier II from 76% to 89%.

His Shard of Destruction went from 78% to 96%.

The journey back went faster than the journey there. Something about going with the void currents, rather than against, the Sage said. But it still took about a month and a half. He had some time to think about the path ahead.

First up was a point of unfinished business. A duel he hadn’t thought about in a while.

It was the last item on that incentive list Noughtfire had given him all those decades ago.

The First Prince of Dragons was next up on his crushing list.

He still wasn’t sure why that Haxorax had a bone to pick with him. Sometimes men challenged him when they felt he threatened their standing. Haxorax had never seemed the type. Then again, he didn’t know the First Prince of Dragons all that well, he supposed.

Last he heard, the fellow was breaking through to Empyrean, and in intense fashion. Lots of ancient dragon blood involved, from what Noughtfire had said… he had to imagine it was the equivalent of his Prime Blood. Ten Million-Year bones too. And if Noughtfire’s estimates were right, the Prince would be done by now.

Haxorax would be the strongest new Empyrean the Galaxy had produced since Thalia of Mount Thundercrest, back in the early aughts of the Chaos Cycle.

That would mean that, far and away, the First Prince of Dragons was the greatest prodigy of this age.

Until Zane came along, that was, and upended things quite a bit.

By the time he got back, he was expecting a challenge.

He didn’t mind that.

He was on the verge of his Fourth Form. With some grinding, his Shard of Destruction would be done soon too. He was already on the verge of matching Empyrean, as it was. Then there was Chainstorm Cage, which he’d been playing around with a bit. It was one of the hardest Skills he’d ever had to learn, and he hadn’t gotten the hang of it yet. But he’d test it a few hours each day on Fluffy’s back, with the Sage giving him pointers here and there. He could feel it coming along.

It might be the case Zane was fighting no ordinary new Empyrean. But by the time the fight came, he’d be armed with new weaponry too.