Low-Fantasy Occultist

Nick took a breath, and this time, air filled his lungs, carrying the scent of blood. For a moment, it felt thin and insubstantial, as if he were breathing at the peak of a freezing mountain. Within his chest, his soul roared. His mana channels, once easily manageable streams, were now an abyssal ocean caught in a hurricane. The sheer volume of raw, unfiltered mana surging through him threatened to spill from his pores and ignite the World.

It took some effort to prevent that. He had more than enough to waste, but given how dire the situation still was, he didn’t want to risk it, especially since his body felt raw.

It would take some time to adjust to his new condition.

He stepped toward Gaelen, calling upon the wind to aid his passage, and crossed thirty feet in a fraction of a second.

He overshot his target, his boots skidding sharply across the stone, sending a spray of pulverized rock into the air. His new physical stats were high enough to make him a formidable warrior if he wanted, and after a lifetime and a half spent augmenting his body, he was now in the enviable position of not needing to do so any longer.

Still, he managed to correct and, within a moment, dropped to one knee beside the siblings. Rhea flinched violently, her eyes wide, shrinking back from the cloud of power rolling off his skin.

Nick ignored the reaction, focusing on the dark power eating into Gaelen's shoulder. He raised his hand and summoned a spark of holy fire.

A pillar of blinding white heat erupted from his palm, threatening to melt the grating beneath them and incinerate Gaelen. Nick gritted his teeth, wrestling with the torrential output. His new mana was eager, violently enthusiastic, and completely devoid of nuance.

His evolved Trait flared to life. The System had restructured his old one into [Sovereign’s Parsimony], allowing Nick to clamp down on the raging inferno and assert control over its output. The pillar of fire shuddered, condensing rapidly into a scalpel of white light hovering inches from his palm.

With the cosmological mirror shattered, the dark magic no longer had an infinite reservoir. It was a dying ember clinging to Gaelen’s flesh.

Nick pressed the condensed light directly over the wound, producing a high-pitched hiss. He cut and cauterized, careful not to let the fire get out of control, and slowly, the black veins receded from the torn flesh and dissolved into nothing.

Gaelen sucked in a breath, his back arching off the stone, but within seconds he slumped in relief, finally freed from the agony that had gripped him.

Nick withdrew his hand, letting the white light dissipate into the ether. “You can heal the rest now," he told Rhea.

He would have done it himself, but he didn’t trust his control for such fiddly work. His new Trait might have given him greater control, but every Prestige class had to spend time acclimating to their new condition, and he wasn’t an exception.

His friend stared at him for a long moment, swallowed hard, then pressed her glowing green hands back against her brother's cauterized shoulder.

That taken care of, Nick stood and turned his attention to the center of the room.

Alexander still stood amid the ruined blood circle, staring at the ceiling where the wound in reality had been sealed. His life's work, a year of meticulous planning, sacrifice, and zealotry, had been undone.

He slowly lowered his gaze and found Nick standing near the grating.

The quiet wistfulness in his expression evaporated, replaced by cold fury. His eyes blazed with a dark light, stripped of the calm superiority he had maintained throughout the ritual.

Well now. Here you are. I was starting to worry you weren’t human anymore, old friend.

It took him several moments to regain control of himself, and Nick waited patiently. He could afford him this much mercy, especially since he was still coming to know himself. Every passing second let him regain a little more control.

“You have no idea what you’ve done," Alexander whispered. “The injustice you did to humanity.”

That seemed to be the extent of his desire to talk, as he reached into his robes and crushed a small obsidian crystal in his fist. Black smoke poured from between his fingers, coalescing into a dozen dark chains that lashed out across the room.

At the same time, he activated a spatial-displacement artifact on his belt, his form blurring as he stepped through the ether to flank Nick.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

A ragged cackle echoed across the Forge. Still strapped to the altar, Ephor Ultimer threw his head back and laughed. "Look at him! An ant standing before a mountain, unable to grasp its fate! Kill him, kid!”

Nick didn’t exactly like agreeing with the man he’d come all this way to kill, but as he tracked Alexander’s spatial steps, he realized the truth in them. The [Eidolon of the Formless] class granted him an innate understanding of the ether's structure that went far beyond what he’d grasped before. When the space folded as Alexander prepared to strike, he simply reached out and grabbed the seam.

He poured a fraction of his raw mana into his fingertips, not even bothering to cast a spell. That much was enough to impose his will on the ether, and with a sharp gesture, he ripped the spatial fold open.

Alexander stumbled out, appearing directly in front of Nick rather than behind him.

To his credit, he recovered quickly. The abyssal chains struck Nick’s chest, aiming to bind his limbs and rot his heart, but whereas before he’d been wholly mortal and such a strike would have rent his flesh, his body was now merely a representation of his soul, so the chains hit him and shattered like brittle glass.

Alexander’s eyes widened in genuine shock, his momentum brought to a jarring halt. He raised his dark blade, attempting a desperate strike.

Nick raised a single finger.

He struggled to gauge the appropriate force as the vast ocean of his mana churned restlessly, so he focused on the concept of a blade, weaving wind and kinetic mana together. Only then did he release the nameless spell.

A glowing crescent of howling air erupted from his fingertip, and he knew at once it was far too much power.

The wind blade sheared through Alexander’s cursed dagger, cut cleanly through his defensive wards, passed through his torso, and continued across the room, carving a ten-foot-deep trench in the stone wall.

Alexander froze. A thin red line split his chest, bisecting his simple gray robes.

His upper body slid backward, falling to the stone with a wet thud, followed a second later by his legs.

CONGRATULATIONS!

You have defeated [Alexander the God-Grief - Level 89]

+815,000 Exp

The notification chimed softly in Nick's mind, and the massive sum of experience barely registered against the vast, empty expanse of his new soul.

May you find peace in your next life. You had to be stopped, but I do not think you were ever a bad man. Just one forged into madness by circumstances beyond your ken.

As he lowered his hand, his brow furrowed. He needed to practice. The collateral damage from his new spells was unacceptable.

Still, it wasn’t over yet. He’d have time afterward to complete all the training he needed. Now it was time to end it once and for all.

Rosmaria slowly stomped forward, her augmented legs clicking against the stone tiles. Her face was pale, etched with the exhaustion of unbinding her soul, yet her amber eyes burned with triumph.

She stopped at the edge of the blood circle, looking up at the Patriarch of House Ultimer.

Ephor had stopped bleeding, but dark streaks still ran from his eyes, nose, and ears. The veins on his arms were still black, and his skin was translucent. He looked like a corpse, and if what Nick was sensing from the old woman was any indication, it wouldn’t be long before he was one in truth.

"Your pet is dead," Rosmaria said, her voice echoing through the vast chamber. "And you are out of time, Ephor. For ten years, I lived in the shadows, waiting for this moment. For ten years, I watched you bleed my city dry to feed your vanity.”

Ephor turned his head slowly. He looked at the severed pieces of Alexander, then at Nick’s silent form, and finally at the old woman.

I could probably kill him, but something tells me that interfering now would be a very bad idea. She’s been waiting for this too long to let it be snatched away from her, and if I were an Elpen, I’d be furious if someone else took away my chance at vengeance.

"Vanity?" he wheezed, a bloody smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "I elevated this city. I built a military powerhouse from the rusted, stagnant scrap you left behind. You Elpens were cowards, hoarding your Artifice while the world moved forward.”

"We were never its Lords and gave our work to all who paid,” Rosmaria corrected coldly. “You, on the other hand, are a thief. And this Forge will be your tomb.”

She placed her hands flat on the floor, flooding the Forge with her mana. The massive tesseracts around the altar began to shift, and blocks of enchanted metal descended from the ceiling, aligning over the old man.

“It is time,” she whispered in glee.

The stones slammed downward, driving toward Ephor with enough kinetic force to flatten a Behemoth.

Just an inch from his skin, the machinery stopped.

The grinding of the gears escalated into a high-pitched, agonizing shriek as metal fought against its own programming. Sparks rained down from the ceiling as the blocks violently arrested their own momentum.

Rosmaria frowned, following threads of mana with her eyes. "What are you doing?”

Ephor’s bloodstained smile widened, revealing teeth stained crimson.

"Did you truly think I was merely screaming as the vicar siphoned my soul?" He rasped, his voice gaining strength with each word. "Did you think the taint I pushed into the mirror was simply meant to clog his spell and help you?”

Nick’s senses flared as he registered a sudden shift in the ether. The tainted mana Ephor had forced into the ritual earlier had not dissipated when the mirror broke. It had burrowed downward.

"I am the Patriarch of House Ultimer," Ephor said, his voice dropping to a low rumble that made the floor shake. “I was never the one in danger.”

The clamps binding his arms and legs snapped open at once, and the green-black mana pulsing beneath his skin erupted outward, flooding the central core of the Elpen Forge.

The console panels peeled back, revealing the rune matrices at the heart of the ancient machinery.

“YOU!” Rosmaria roared. “From the start, was it all for this?!”

Ephor’s only response was another cackle, and then the altar swallowed him.

Thick lines of metal, dotted with runic script, whipped out from the floor and plunged into Ephor’s back, spine, and shoulders. He roared in agony as the power merged with his flesh, fusing bone and Artifice. His frail, drained body was violently hoisted into the air, suspended by a network of mechanical tentacles.

His eyes, once bloodshot and tired, now burned with the blinding, terrible light from the Forge’s primary battery.

Rosmaria unbound more of her power, attempting to force an override. "Sever the central line! Purge the core!”

The Forge ignored her.

Ephor raised a hand and pointed a finger at the old woman.

“You have no power here. Your authority is revoked," he declared.

One of the suspended blocks hovering above the altar shifted sideways, sweeping across the room in a flash, smashing into Rosmaria.

With a massive bang, she was hurled thirty feet through the air, crashing hard into the far wall of the cavern, where she collapsed in a heap of tangled robes and broken metal, unmoving.

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