Chapter 14 #3
“Impossible!” the furious Mongoose roared, snarling and glaring like the demonic cultivator he was increasingly looking like, as flawless features that moments before could have been called beautiful warped and twisted with nodules of hate and corrupted Qi.
His once pristine physique knotted with powerful cords of muscle that gave him a hunched appearance but didn’t detract from his beastly Quickness in the least.
“Where are you, you mongrel wretch? I will find you! I will kill you!”
A desperately panting Alex allowed himself a single grimace of a smile as he choked back the pain of reconnecting tendons and sinews severed by bitter black steel and darkest curses that it still took him long moments to cleanse with Biochemical Mastery and Prismatic Fox Restoration.
Painful, agonizing seconds that his foe put to dark, methodical use. “You summoned this forest, did you not, worm? Well, I will chop it down and burn it all down with you in it!”
The air filled with tainted steel tormenting wood Alex had given so much of himself to gift with life anew.
Yet the outrage he felt was a trap, he knew, biting his lip as he glared at his wrist and FORCED it to heal, choking back a sob when his mastery over his own life currents forced the last of the tainted steel shards to spurt free of his wound, and then he was whole once more.
Exhausted, overwhelmed, on the cusp of a Fool’s Folly, but whole once more.
Yet it was all he could do to keep his focus, his balance, to close his eyes even as the tree he now crouched upon began to vibrate with the furious chops of the madman below.
Forest Sense was now fully active in a warehouse that was now as much living canopy as ancient wooden slats, and that was all Alex needed to know.
Bullrush!
Bullrush!
The forest heeds your cry.
You are one with the storm!
Alex wasted no time on gloats or declarations as he ported behind his foe in the blink of an eye, his fangtian ji whipping through the air.
And there was no denying its presence, crescent axe heads howling with the storm as he embraced that attack that had forged and defined him on so many battlefields.
Of course his foe with monstrous half-step Gold quickness could sense it, twisting around with impossible speed, glaring at Alex with what were now lined and wrinkled features filled with furious hate and shimmering power, making it clear that both of them had been holding back as the man’s blood-red blade blasted into Alex’s chest in the same instant that he leaped away.
Before stumbling with surprise, failing to do more than jerk a few stumbling inches back, only then seeing all the roots that had wrapped about his feet.
And that was all the time he had before Alex’s weapon tore through a suddenly panicked Mongoose in an explosion of flesh and bone, ruptured curses, and blackened steel.
BLACK SWAN!
You have critically struck your foe!
You have been struck in turn by HeartSeeker!
Tainted Steel FAILS to pierce Prismatic Bones!
Fatal HeartSeeker Blow reduced to Light Wound and temporary –1 to Strength checks (damaged muscle).
Alex was struck by such monstrous force that he was sent flying back by a blow that should have shattered his solar plexus and pierced his heart…
but was stopped cold by one crucial gift that his foes hadn’t been able to take away with his rebirth.
The very gift that ensured that the next time he slipped into those eternal waters completely, he was doomed to sink all the way to Shui Jun’s coils once more.
Yet the look on Mongoose’s warped, hideous features made clear the benefits of accepting that particular doom.
“You should be dead. I should have cleaved your heart in twain!” the doomed cultivator snarled, discarding the hilt of his shattered dao and doing all he could to stand up once more… and failing utterly.
Alex forced himself back to his feet, the storms now howling in his soul so discordantly that he felt like he would topple over at any moment. Then he did topple over as Mongoose chortled and wheezed with laughter.
“My poisons have affected you at last. You are doomed, fool. Doomed!”
Alex snarled, forcing himself upright once more.
Knowing damn well that his brilliant stream of insight, becoming absolutely one with the storm for so long and pushing himself hard enough to take on, at least for a time, an elite Silver-tier killer who had come so close to spelling his doom, had pushed him over the edge.
He was no longer in equilibrium, having pushed his Sage’s Insight far harder and longer than he otherwise would have dared.
Forced to take on the man sneering his hate even now, features visibly warping and crumbling as he pushed ever more of his essence into trying to heal the massive rent Alex had torn into his abdomen.
A blow that would have cleanly bisected any less nimble foe.
As it was, the snarling Mongoose was desperately scrabbling inside a hip pouch for what Alex guessed was a bottle he was intimately familiar with, only for his eyes to widen when he removed nothing but leaves and bitter thorns.
“No… no!”
Alex forced a cold smile as he focused on controlling the ever-wilder storm, in desperate need of rest, yet there was no time.
No matter the consequences, he had to see this through.
Mongoose’s eyes grew wild with animal terror as he now frantically chopped with his one remaining dao at the roots that had entwined so rapidly about his legs, before switching focus with a whimper to hack at the viny-like roots now probing the man’s very entrails as Alex’s lurching walk became a stumble, fangtian ji raised high.
“NO!” the desperate man screamed, raising one limb now infused with so much of his essence blazing away to nothing in a furious bid for survival…
only to lose both limb and head as Alex lashed out with an attack so in tune to his soul that even upon the cusp of a Fool’s Folly, his swing was perfect.
Slicing through flesh, bone, and a retributive collar in a flash of lightning that tore through them both as Alex stumbled to the ground, the storms within his soul now so violent that he could no longer stand on his own two feet.
His foe’s soul managed one final shriek before toppling right into the River of Souls as his body was consumed by an absolute storm of vines.
Alex then found himself hurtling into tumultuous currents of his own as he was flooded with all the locked potency of his latest kill.
Congratulations! You have successfully decapitated your opponent!
Spell Cleave successfully ruptures Retributive Ward.
Experience earned!
A flood of additional messages washed over him then, but all he could pay attention to was the sense of himself being hurtled at impossible speeds through the endless reaches of space, eyes blinded with the reflected glare of a singularity that sucked all light and heat at its core, even as its accretion disk flared so brightly that it was blinding.
Now spinning so fast that it rang with an eerie endless note as countless filaments were drawn into an accretion disk that was, in fact, an impossibly potent super cable now shrieking with potency locked in the form of momentum as it continued spinning around what would one day be a core like no other.
Alex had pushed himself so hard, racing along the Path of Peril with such furious intensity, that he found himself once more gazing down at all the endless potential of his soul.
And all the horrors that lay within.
Yet he sensed the terrible, glorious potential before him, as well.
His Sage’s Insight had been sufficient to allow for the evolution of multiple skills, replaying battles so recently won and endured countless times as his body rested after his insights and epiphanies, a whole new art springing from one of his greatest masterworks.
Storm Swan and Silver Swan differing only in that wind and water now twisted together in a glorious helix all their own…
Yet he sensed the potential for more.
So much more.
A hundred million pathways forward, fuel to ignite and catalyze even a deity’s dimmed core.
Which, of course, he was the furthest thing from.
Yet those insights, the transcendent communion between mind and body as he became one with the elements, his elements, forging himself into his own pristine ideal along the Path of Peril over and over again, was enough—more than enough to fuel a second evolution within his super cable.
For it was mastery as much as power that would propel him forward from this point on.
And he would do it, one tiny Silver step at a time.
It was all his soul could endure. And only after pushing himself to master his skills, to master himself, to grow in ways sublime and profound, as he did every time he managed to survive odds that should have seen him dead.
He was forever chasing a Sage’s Ascension before oblivion consumed him once more.
And he was finally wise enough to appreciate, in that terrible moment, just how dreadful and glorious a path to power it truly was.
Risking himself in the crucible of conflict in ways that no other member of his pantheon could possibly conceive.
Turning his greatest weakness into a furious strength.
His was a path that would either see him dead in a shockingly short period of time… or roaring to Gold at an inconceivable pace.
Either way, his choice was made.
Countless insights, epiphanies, and breakthroughs all channeled into greater mastery of himself.
Greater mastery over the impossibly vast singularity-spanning accretion disk of a super cable that, simultaneously, was no wider than his soul.
But there was a price to be paid for daring to ascend so quickly, no matter how unorthodox his origins.