Chapter 309

Ascendance (X)

Vines tangled with tall trees and remnants of buildings like lovers, wrapping around them, seemingly trying to drag them into their embrace. The group of five lurched through the steep descent, going even deeper than the gaping pit with a lake. And yet, despite that, their surroundings remained alighted with the gems embedded in the walls.

Furthermore, there appeared to be a whole city buried in the darkness even further below, with them hanging on the roads plastered against the sides of the cliffs. To the side, every so often, they’d see a rotted, cracked building arise, swallowed in vines and trees and greenery.

A distant, yet magnified and echoing roar stopped the group for a moment. Cain’s eyes drove past the darkness and looked toward the source--but he was unable to see. The entire place was coated in a remarkably thick layer of Mana that even he was unable to see through.

“A dangerous thing,” he mumbled.

“It noticed us,” one of the two still coated in mist replied. “It’s a warning.”

“... well, it’s only fair we shoot back, no?”

“What do you--” Cain drew his palm up and summoned a blistering sphere of light before chucking it out into darkness.

The sphere expanded into a quasi-sun, illuminating the entire world around them. Cain’s eyes shone in starlight for a moment as he looked about; it was a city buried beneath the mounds of time. Buildings not unlike skyscrapers dominated in a ring-like fashion, growing smaller and smaller as they moved toward the center. What awed him the most was that the tallest of the buildings easily breached five thousand feet in height. They were like spears pointing in defiance at the sky.

“What the hell are you doing?!!” Quinn grabbed him aggressively and asked.

“It’s beautiful,” Cain mumbled. “Humbling, really.”

“What if it attacks?!”

“Isn’t that why we’re here?” Cain shrugged, glancing at her. “Besides, why are we even walking? Let’s go.”

He yanked himself free and jumped, leaping off the road and over the ruined buildings, using brief bursts of Mana to make himself glide diagonally toward the center. The ‘sun’ above continued to burn, alighting the world around that stretched on for miles. It was truly a city buried beneath the ground--or, at least, a part of a massive city.

The wind whipped against his cheeks and his clothes, but his eyes were focused at the distant bottom where a creature resided. Though Cain had no clue what ‘Byort’ was, the reason why he leapt was the Mana signature--it wasn’t something that he’d struggle against supremely.

He finally caught a glimpse of it, two thousand feet from the ground. It sprawled around the buildings, most keeled to the side or toppled over entirely. Extensions in the shape of tentacles and branches grew from the central mass--which was entirely covered in the ever-shifting and blinking eyes--encompassing entire blocks around.

The roads seemed to be made from an asphalt-like material, though grandly degraded and ruined by time, with countless sinkholes breaching even further into the ground.

The creature’s central mass alone encompassed some two hundred feet across, roughly a third of that in height. It pulsated, almost like a beating heart, and straddled about--though very slowly. Its limbs, or at least the extensions that seemed like the limbs, stretched out for miles, most attached to the parts of the greenery, seemingly sucking the life out of it all.

Cain slowed down and maintained the distance between the two, a pair of fiery wings at his back. Just then, Quinn and others appeared at his side, similarly stopping and staring at the creature.

“What the hell were you thinking?!” Quinn asked, visible regret showing up on her expression.

“What’s that thing, anyway?” Cain asked, turning toward what he began to mentally call ‘twins’.

“A mutation,” he got a swift response. “Byort’s an agglomeration of mass, not a species. Non-mutated Byorts all die young and in pain as their bodies are incapable of supporting the weight of the additional mass. The mutations, however, survive--like this one. They are akin to parasites, latching onto anything living and making it its food source.”

“... it looks like something out of an Eldritch horror,” Cain mumbled.

“The eyes tell me it was a klert,” Quinn said. “But I’ve never seen mutations like this before.”

“... how do they even mutate to begin with?” Cain quizzed innocently. “What?” he asked when he saw others looking at him oddly.

“Seriously?”

“I’m clever--but not a library.”

“Huuh,” Quinn sighed before responding. “Excess energy or overwhelming purity of it. This case’s clearly the one of excess. What happens is that Mana creates rapidly accelerating mutation of cells. That’s why most Byorts die, and only mutations of the mutations survive. Excess usually creates behemoths that rapidly expand their physical body to act as a storage. They can’t replenish Mana the way we can--it is literally stored within their bodies, so when they use it, you can see parts of their bodies rot away.”

“... wow. What a horrific existence,” Cain mumbled, glancing back down at the mass. The eyes blinked and swirled around the mucus-like, brown-black surface. It was too akin to a pimple with eyes. Not a pretty sight.

“Do not get too sympathetic,” one of the twins said. “We still need to kill it. The excess Mana will expire and some parts can be absorbed. If we are lucky, we might obtain the creature’s innate skill.”

“...” Cain, however, was hardly interested in obtaining new skills. He could have any skill he wanted simply by creating it. Instead, he was more interested in the transformation itself. From the sounds of it, it was exactly like cancer--rapid growth of all-consuming dead cells. However, the creature’s ingenuity used the excess growths as Mana ‘warehouses’ of sorts, delaying its death. There was, naturally, a limit--the creature was likely unable to even move from this place and, eventually, the rate at which it absorbs will outpace the rate at which the very thing it absorbs grows.

“You shall be the front,” the twins said, looking at Quinn. “We shall flank in the melee. You--provide us with cover fire.” they looked at Cain who woke himself up from stupor.

“Sure thing,” he nodded. I should probably look to see whether there are more like this here... “Lear, you should take a step back.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.”

“Alright, ready whenever you are,” Cain said, summoning back the ‘sun’. The light of the world vanished and the darkness returned. The massive, harrowingly beautiful cityscape was swallowed once more, disappearing. Only darkness existed.

“Off I go,” Quinn said, a spear and a shield appearing in her hands--both were beautiful bejeweled in silver gems, with the spear extending some seven-eight feet in length, its spearhead lined in runic gold. The shield, on the other hand, sported a massive, amnesty-like gem at the center from which lines like veins erupted, reaching every inch of the shield’s surface.

The duet shone resplendently as she charged it with Mana, descending swiftly and drawing the creature’s ire. The twins, not waiting much longer, dispersed into mist and dew, likely stealthing to approach the creature from the side.

Cain remained rooted, unmoving. He had a good overview of the battlefield from this far up, and he wasn’t too far away for the effects of his spells to diminish.

“Stupid human, what is that?” Te’gha suddenly crawled out of the inventory, settling himself inside Cain’s inner pocket, looking at the creature. “It is... sad.”

“... it’s something that must die,” Cain said. “For both its sake and ours.”

“It is not a treasure.” Te’gha said.

“It’s not. Did you sense any?”

“I’m still adjusting to Mana. This place is strange, stupid human. Different. Unlike any other I’ve been to.”

“... huh, tell me about it,” Cain shrugged, noticing that Quinn had engaged with the creature--the latter lashed out immediately with its numerous ‘limbs’, hundreds of them at the time, while Quinn began chopping them down as quickly as she could. “You should go back to the inventory. Let me know if you sense anything.”

“... fine,” Te’gha said as Cain raised his right arm--he knew that the best way to help was to use a far-reaching and wide-arrayed skills that covered a lot of ground. It would distract the creature the most, forcing it to believe it was being assailed from numerous opponents--especially if it lacked major intellect--which would afford the twins an opportunity to strike.

As such, he summoned over a hundred cyclic vortexes that began spitting out fireballs the size and length of Quinn’s spear. Individually, they were actually remarkably weak--but, there were hundreds, slowly thousands of them descending, quickly alighting the world again.

Quinn parried a straight pierce of one of the ‘limbs’, yet still was forced back due to the sheer force of impact. It was then that she noticed the world alight, forcing her to glance up and freeze in place at the sight--it was raining fire.

“T-this...” she mumbled lowly. She thought she was even overestimating Cain as he always liked to be on the side of caution, but she was wrong. She also didn’t know why she was wrong--why was she unable to assert just how strong he was. He was like a hazy dream, wherein a faint recollection exists, but it is too blurry, too distant to recall perfectly.

The ‘twins’ felt largely the same emotions, but were quick to understand his intent. As soon as they saw the creature heave many of its limbs into the sky to meet the burning rain, they understood that they were being given an opening that they could only dream of, immediately lurching forward and striking directly at the largely undefended, central mass. If only, they mused, they were afforded this much freedom in every other battle they fought before. Perchance, their glory might have been even grander.