About twelve tons of earth crash into my chest all at once, followed by the massive body of an ivory snake. Its white skin was wreathed in yellow veins underneath the graceful scales, plants growing out of those blood vessels as though they were roots. Mainly flytraps, I note, as my bones creak from the weight.
Then, all at once, the earth turns liquid, and I feel myself pushing to the surface, rocketing out of it as if thrown by some giant. I fly high, the mouth of an enormous flytrap closing just beneath my feet. Dispassionately, I [Observe], the snake’s eyes meeting mine for a moment.
It flicks its tongue, tasting my mood on the air. And then, there is a blink of fear.
Instantly, I know it has some emotional resonance skill. It’s seen my nature. It knows what I truly am. The same way that Dar did. The same way that Inu does.
My hand flicks forward, and mana gathers. My entire vessel, suddenly emptied in a torrent of power. All my usual care disappears as I gather my power.
The snake spits something at me from its mouth, a row of poison darts, but the coalescing mass of mana twists and writhes into a short sword. It’s imbued, too, with [Suppression] and [Deconstruction].
[Job up! Imbuer 4 > 6]
My total vessel hits 150. More power pours into my weapon. A dull, grey sword, wreathed from stable, solidified mana. It’s the largest construct I’ve ever made, and I make it as solid as I can. Streaks of runes glide along its ethereal surface, and harden it.
Poison darts crash against the blade and shatter.
[Solidification 9 > 10]
My blade lasts. No, more than that. The combination of an imbuement of [Deconstruction] fuels my Abiding Apathy. As I carve apart the venomous mana of the snake, I can feel even more power flood the weapon. It grows longer, just a tiny bit, eating at the world.
I stare at the snake. I see the fear in its eyes. I fall, and I swing my sword.
My epitaph sings a hymn.
The snake dies.
[You have killed a lv. 38 Snyder]
[Level up! 33 > 34]
More points go into vessel. My sword is already starting to dissipate, even as the fight goes on. There is no dryad, specifically, but the nearby plants writhe in fury at the snyder’s death.
Roots roil and wrap around my feet, until Syvles whispers to them. Then, all at once, they unravel and retreat. Opal carves some apart with their blade, and Thatch simply looks at them and they wilt.
The plants around us are angry, but they keep at bay. Coiled and waiting to strike, but knowledgeable of what might happen if they do. I jab my sword into a tree, letting it drink the plant’s mana while we take the time to think.
“We have to move,” Bile says. He’s raised us all out of the earth, but his dark fur is now mottled with dirt. He trains his dim, yellow eyes on me. “That was a quick kill, but we will need even more distance now.”
“That’s fine. We can go back up,” I say.
Bile shakes his head. “You cannot. Not now.”
[The Earthmother witnesses your crime. For a day, you may not leave her forest. Repent, or prove yourself worthy.]
I see. So that’s how it is. “A day,” I say out loud. “A day until we can ascend again.”
How would she stop us, I wonder? Maybe any tree we attempt to climb would simply have all its branches wither and die, making us fall back down to the floor? Or, maybe, it’s something sanctioned by the Tower. I sigh, softly.
Fine then.
Pulling my degrading sword from the tree, I nod. The others have already gotten the picture. All at once, we move.
- - -
With willpower, and a steady trickle of regenerating mana, I shape my sword into something of a machete, hacking at vines. Every time I cut through one, a bit of power is lost, and a bit of power is stolen right back from whatever I cut.
Imbuement seems to be a powerful synergy with my epitaph. Moving with an empty vessel for once is also rather nice. Unlike most of the time, I don’t feel the pressure, or the stinging pain, that comes from my vessel. That sensation of heartburn is entirely gone, and in its place, I simply feel relief.
It’s nice.
Not nice enough to consider putting less points in vessel, but nice nonetheless. My epitaph sings as I cut through another vine, earning a notification.
[You have killed a lv. 14 Thornspring Ivy]
That’s how most of the plants go. I wonder how the tower handles notifications, because it clearly deems some creatures so far below me that it doesn’t even announce their deaths, like bacteria. I wonder about its filter criteria for a moment, then move on with my life.
More plants fall and we move faster than ever. My mana regenerates, even as I take damage. Sometimes, a few of the plants will land sneaky attacks on me. But my torn skin quickly mends itself again. Tiny thorns dig into my shins, only to be expelled as my flesh knits itself back together.
I look at my machete, grasped tightly in my left arm. The only arm I have left, really. I smirk at the thought, then hack aside another vine. The temporary inscriptions flare, and I feel a trickle of blood underneath my nose as I try to analyse them.
It’s funny. With the essence I have, I can imbue things by instinct, a bit, but understanding the way those runes work as inscriptions is difficult. Imbuement is, after all, turning skills into inscriptions. I have done that before, on Norman’s cloak, but it took me multiple weeks to emulate partial effects.
Now? The machete works like [Deconstruction] with every swing. The runes on it shift, as if to accommodate different scenarios. It’s beautiful, and I can intuitively feel its effects, but trying to analyse them leaves them just a sliver out of reach.
That’s okay. I try my best to remember them, carving tiny crystal formations into the budding skill I’m building. It only takes a tiny trickle of mana, since they’re so small, and it records a chunk of runes, alongsides the effects that an item exhibits. My personal, miniature library.
It’s not finished yet, but it’s getting close. That, and another skill…
Pins and needles on my skin warn me, just a moment before it happens. I duck, throwing myself at the ground.
The enormous snake, the snyder I’d killed, blasts through the trees above me, its corpse, already being dissolved into mana and reclaimed by the tower, crashing through multiple trees, snapping their branches and chipping their trunks.
Behind me, there is a roar, and I turn to see a hulking amalgamate.
A wulven, joints covered with mushrooms, orange veins of spores wreathing along its body. It stands twice as tall as me, and far stronger, with a feral grimace. Flowers jut from its eyes, wreathing its weeping face in a snarling grimace. They feel entrancing, and for a moment, they draw me in.
Then I raise my sword, and the compulsion shatters. Instead, I step back as the massive pseudo-biological scythe that the fungus grafted onto its left arm sweeps through where I’d just stood.
The avatar of the jungle snarls at me, barking its challenge. I breathe in, calmly, the spores shattering in the air before reaching my nose. I nod, accepting. “Fine then. Let me prove myself, Earthmother,” I say, leveraging my blade at the thing.
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