Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO STUBBING AUGUST 15)

Elijah stepped into the arena, blinking into the sunlight. The crowd was even more boisterous than normal, which was expected. With every passing round, the field narrowed, and the stakes rose. The audience responded in kind, filling the Praesidium with an electric atmosphere that made the importance of the event obvious.

He needed no reminders.

Elijah knew the stakes as well as anyone, which was why he’d cut the previous night short, returning to the jungle to get a good night’s rest. As he’d laid in his pallet, he found sleep slow to come. Not just because of pre-fight nerves, but also due to his mind’s insistence on going over every single detail of his opponent’s fighting style.

Now, that foe stood across the arena, his stance loose and unbothered by the pomp and circumstance surrounding the upcoming fight.

The Curator began his spiel, though Elijah tuned it out. Instead, he focused on Voris es Jasol. He wore a loose-fitting outfit that reminded Elijah of a gi, though the cut differed in enough ways to mark it as a wholly different style of garment. In any case, there was no ostentatious armor. No bulky weapons. Just a dragon in human form.

Unlike Elijah, Voris’s thick, grey scales were concentrated in his hands and feet, terminating at mid-calf and at his elbows. The ones on his hands looked almost like spiked gauntlets. He also sported a pair of horns that swept back from his temples and came to a point a couple of inches behind the back of his head.

Beyond that, he was unremarkable.

By contrast, Elijah wore his Wild Revenant set and carried Thorn, cutting an entirely different sort of figure. He twirled the spear a couple of times, idly preparing for the moment when the Curator would finish his introductions.

After that, the fight would begin.

Elijah shifted his weight from one foot to the other, bouncing back and forth in anticipation.

Then, finally, the Curator finished his introductions and shouted for the fight to begin. Elijah moved instantly.

But even then, he barely managed to defend himself from Voris’s first attack. It was a simple punch, but it reminded Elijah of fighting Birk. It came at him like an unavoidable and unstoppable force. He tried to dodge, but the punch was inevitable. It tunneled in on him like an undeniable truth of the world.

Up was up.

Down was down.

And that punch was going to connect.

It landed with the sound of an exploding volcano, immediately dislocating Elijah’s jaw. A blistering combination followed, rocking him back and forth before a front kick sent him skipping backward across the arena. He hit the wall a second later, and with enough force that he felt bones break.

Even as Elijah collapsed to the ground, he shook his head to clear the cobwebs. When his thoughts cleared, Voris was almost upon him.

He cast Wild Resurgence, but when he attempted to use Nature’s Bloom, he was horrified to find his spell interrupted by a quick jab. Voris’s soul stabbed out – not a full-fledged Mantle of Authority, but more like a spear of intent – disrupting the flow of ethera through Elijah’s channel.

It went wild, disrupting the spell before it ever really had a chance to get started.

Was that an ability that harnessed his soul? Or was it just raw cultivation?

Elijah had no way of knowing.

He rolled to the side before he took a vicious stomp to the head. Then, he turned that into a leap that took him high into the air. Before he could use Cloud Step to gain more altitude, he looked down to see that Voris had disappeared. His Soul of the Wild alerted him of a danger from above, and he glanced up just in time to see a descending axe kick that sent him blistering back toward the ground.

He used another Cloud Step, this time to throw himself sideways. He managed to right himself, then turn the skid into a zig-zagging sprint.

When he looked back, he saw Voris in pursuit. He betrayed no emotions. No anticipation. Just dogged and emotionless determination.

Elijah made a choice.

He cast Shape of Spores. And when Voris reached him, he received the following attacks as a fungal guardian. Elijah cast Nature’s Claim, but the spores failed to take root. He could only assume that came from some sort of ability, though he couldn’t be certain. All he knew was that his spell proved only mildly useful. The spores were still there, but they couldn’t find purchase within Voris’s flesh.

He faced off against the pugilist, but the following exchange showed him precisely how outmatched he was. For one, he felt like a boxer facing a mixed martial artist. Voris used every part of his body like a weapon, while Elijah’s tools were fairly limited by his lack of experience in that kind of fight.

He could rip apart monsters by the hundreds, but when it came to something more sophisticated, he was woefully overmatched.

Especially when his opponent was both stronger and faster than him.

It should not have been surprising. Doubtless, Voris’s class focused his gains on physical attributes. He was also near the peak of the demi-god stage, and he’d obviously concentrated on body cultivation. The result was a sizable gap between his effective physical attributes and Elijah’s.

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Which was something of a first.

Elijah activated Throne of Spores, but Voris was barely inconvenienced by the rush of fungal tendrils. He dodged them like he had eyes in the back of his head, all the while continuing his ongoing assault on Elijah’s person.

It was a display of fighting prowess that established Voris as a true elite.

And Elijah had to admit the dragon was better than him in almost every respect.

But almost wasn’t good enough. Not to beat Elijah, who’d survived things that would make most demi-gods blanch. He wasn’t like Alrhok. He didn’t fear pain or death. And he wouldn’t shy away from a desperate battle of attrition.

So, when Voris pummeled him, Elijah just took it, all the while relying on Wild Resurgence and his outsized regeneration to see him through. Each landed punch sent a puff of yellow spores into the air, and though their effect only slowed Voris by a tiny degree, it was enough to give Elijah hope.

Every now and again, he managed to land a blow of his own, but Voris’s defenses were just as potent as his strength. It was all Elijah could do to hold on.

And that was what he did.

The battle went on. The first minute turned into two, which in turn, became half an hour. Elijah continued to ignore the crowd, but they remained on the edges of their seats. Even after an hour, they held their collective breath in rapt attention.

But Voris didn’t crack.

He kept coming, inexhaustible and inevitable. Like a machine purpose-built to pummel Elijah into submission. It was his bad luck that Elijah didn’t have it in him to submit or surrender. Not when his bones broke, nor when his flesh was smashed into jelly. Instead, he just endured.

However, he knew he couldn’t win like that.

At best, he would fight to a stalemate. At worst, the damage and fatigue would force him into making a mistake, and Voris would reveal a hidden ability to finish him off. That danger haunted Elijah until, at last, he decided to change tactics.

Which meant he would have to reveal yet another one of his cards, and it was arguably his most powerful option, given the setting.

He needed an opening, though. And those were hard to come by when it came to fighting Voris es Jasol.

For the next few minutes, Elijah played defense – which meant that he became a punching bag. His fungal flesh absorbed each attack, but not without consequence. Before long, the arena floor was coated in spongey flesh and blood, while the air became suffused with an ochre mist that barely slowed Voris down.

Fortunately, the Shape of Spores was built for that kind of fight. So, even if Elijah was outmatched, he could still last a long, long time.

Then, after about fifteen minutes of that, he saw his opportunity.

It was just a twitch that gave Voris away, but that warning of an imminent attack was enough to give Elijah the opening he needed. He shifted backward, avoiding the sweeping hook by less than an inch, then used Thunder Clap. A burst of lightning erupted from his feet, hitting a surprised Voris and sending his body into a single convulsion.

Elijah hit him a second later.

Voris rolled with it, but the punch carried with it every ounce of momentum Elijah could muster. The humanoid dragon went flying backward, and Elijah used Shape of Embers.

He heard the crowd gasp as, over the next second-and-a-half, he reverted back to his human form, then became the much smaller emberkin saint. His mantle of ashes flowed from his shoulders, and Thorn shimmered in his hand.

By the time the transformation completed, Voris had already recovered. However, he hesitated when he saw Elijah’s new shape. For the first time since the beginning of the fight, his resolve seemed to crack. Just a little, but a flicker of doubt crossed his face. He quickly suppressed it.

For someone like him, there was no room for second-guessing.

He approached cautiously, rightly suspicious. After all, he had no idea what new abilities the Shape of Embers might impart.

His caution was well-warranted.

With the improved reaction time that came with the shape, Elijah managed to dodge the first attack. Then the second. And the third after that. The fourth, he was forced to block with a hasty sweep of his spear, and he dodged the fifth.

Over the next few seconds, Voris blistered out a few dozen attacks, but he didn’t manage to connect with a single one. For his part, Elijah didn’t bother attacking. He focused every leaf within his mind on the singular task of avoiding Voris’s attacks.

That served to embolden the pugilist.

After all, it probably seemed to him that Elijah couldn’t do anything but dodge. He did it well, but it likely appeared to be a last-ditch effort to elongate the battle. Meaning that Elijah couldn’t spare a counterattack, which in turn told Voris that there would be no reprisal for all-out offense.

He was wrong, of course.

The buffs that came with Shape of Embers were just enough to even the playing field, which only told Elijah just how ridiculously accomplished Voris really was. Without it, the battle of attrition would have slowly petered out. Maybe Elijah would have managed to get off a few heals to prolong the fight, but Voris was just too much for him.

It was a good thing that Shape of Embers changed the paradigm.

Elijah didn’t need to attack. All he needed to do was dodge, and with each avoided offensive, he added a charge to Seed of Ashes. Soon enough, it passed the fifty mark. Then, it exceeded a hundred charges. The fire burned within Elijah’s chest, feeling as if it was going to consume him and everything else in the world. But he kept it contained. He wouldn’t release it until the proper time.

One-fifty.

One-seventy-five.

And then, finally, two hundred. Elijah felt like he was going to burst, the fire raged so brightly within him. He was almost surprised it wasn’t visible through his ash-white chest.

Voris’s eyes flickered with realization, with the knowledge that something terrible was approaching. Elijah had seen it enough to recognize it for what it was.

The pugilist reacted the only way he knew how – by increasing the pace of his attacks. The punches and kicks came in with renewed fury, but by that point, Elijah had entered a flow state. He was untouchable.

At least for the few seconds it took for him to activate Flames of Renewal.

The fire in his chest exploded out of it, sweeping across the Praesidium with enough heat to glass the entire arena. Vaguely, Elijah was aware of shields activating to keep it from engulfing the audience, but he was well past the point of caring about that kind of thing.

A second later, another wave of fire tore across the arena. Then, another, hotter than the previous two. Six more came in pulsing waves of flame that burned even the now-glassy surface to ash.

It swirled around Elijah, creating a tornado of burning cinders that swirled into an all-encompassing hurricane. Elijah wasn’t spared, either. He burned just like everything else, soon joining the churn of ash. His awareness floated in the ashen cloud, disconnected but somehow a part of everything else around him.

Life flowed through and around him, mixing with the ashes as they settled into a dense carpet upon the arena floor.

From those ashes, a single plant took root. Then another. And another after that. In moments, a forest sprouted amidst the smell of fire and ozone. Thick-trunked trees with spreading branches covered the entire arena, and in the center of it all, Elijah reformed.

He let out a breath suffused with vitality and burning embers.

Voris was gone.

His ashes had helped to fuel the growth of the forest.

And in doing so, he’d lost the battle to Elijah.

But in that moment, Elijah didn’t care that he’d won. Instead, he lost himself in the feeling of dense vitality – of nature – that blanketed the arena.

He let out another sigh before returning to his human form.

The Curator finally remembered himself and announced Elijah’s victory, but for once, the crowd did not respond. They remained entirely silent until Elijah had left the arena.

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