Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO ON KINDLE SEPT. 2)

Elijah could only get to within a few hundred feet before his healing could no longer keep up with the damage being done to his body. To counter that, he shifted into the Shape of Spores, and oddly enough, in that bestial form, he felt as if he better belonged with the rabid creatures clawing at the Worldseed’s outer shell.

But he knew he was on the clock.

He descended among them, his body remaking itself with every passing moment as his massive regeneration outpaced the devastating damage that came from being next to the planetary core. He couldn’t reach the shell itself – not right away. There were dozens of layers of wasps, dragons, and abyssals blocking his path.

So he dug.

His claws raked against chitin, scales, and abyssal flesh alike. Normally, he couldn’t have done so. Every creature there was either on the edge of the demi-god stage or had long since passed it. However, they were just as subject to the damage inflicted by the Worldseed as Elijah himself, and even if they could endure it a little more easily, the potent ethera and roiling heat weakened their bodies. And just enough to allow Elijah to rip through them.

And gradually, he felt the pull – that inexorable desire to take the Worldseed for himself – snaking its way through the defenses wrought by the Antlers of the Wild Revenant. Those thoughts promised him power. Incalculable strength. Wealth beyond measure.

He pushed his Mantle of Authority out, never letting it leave his mind, and suddenly, the pull ceased. It was only then that Elijah realized something that should have been obvious. His Antlers of the Wild Revenant had been important, but most of the heavy lifting – when it came to protecting his mind – had been done by his new specialization. Not only did it give him more control over his Mantle of Authority, but he could also push more ethera through it.

It seemed that, when he’d made the choice of Dominion at level two-twenty-five, it was the right one.

With his mind clear, Elijah continued to claw his way through the mass of bodies. With every foot he cleared – no small feat, considering the durability of the creatures’ bodies – he felt the pace of his regeneration lag behind the damage. Eventually, he was forced to use Mycelial Regrowth just to keep up.

But he knew that wouldn’t last long.

Furiously, he dug, knowing full well that he would not reach his destination in time. Complicating matters was the occasional attack from wasp, dragon, or abyssal. Normally, they were far too distracted to even notice him, but every now and again, one overcame the pull and took issue with his presence.

That just added to the burden on Elijah’s boosted regeneration.

And then, just as he reached the shell, Mycelial Regrowth ran its course.

Elijah reached out to touch the now-exposed shell and very nearly lost his hand. The heat was unbearable, sending blisters up his arm all the way to his shoulder. Elijah pushed the pain away, sequestering it in one of the eighty-one leaves of his mind. It quickly overwhelmed that leaf and spread to another. Then another after that. In only a second, two entire branches – eighteen leaves – were occupied. And it continued to spread.

But it still gave him a brief respite from the agony, which allowed him enough time to make a plan. And it was a simple one.

He pushed ethera through his Mantle of Authority, extending the boughs of his soul to their maximum distance. They reached more than fifty feet in every direction, only to be torn asunder by the sheer force of his proximity to the Worldseed. Elijah screamed in torment, the pain completely overwhelming every part of his mind.

By reflex, the Mantle of Authority extended again. This time, it was even more concentrated than before. Great torrents of ethera flowed through his soul, rebuilding the branches even as the destructive power of the Worldseed ripped it to pieces.

To counter the loss of ethera, Elijah pushed the eighty-one whirlpools in his mind to spin faster and faster. The vortexes responded to his call, the apertures opening wider than ever before. His mind drank greedily of the Worldseed’s dense ethera, and the conduits of his soul flexed, expanding more than they ever had before. The torrent entered his core, mingling with the rest of his ethera and converting to a usable state, only to be pushed back into the branches of his soul and fueling his Mantle of Authority.

The system worked beautifully. Almost with perfect efficiency. The only hiccup was his core, which stretched to accommodate the massive flows of ethera. If he’d not kept up with his cultivation exercises, it would have ruptured immediately. With every passing second, Elijah expected that it still would.

But it held.

Barely.

And gradually, Elijah found an equilibrium as his Mantle of Authority sheltered him beneath its boughs. It didn’t completely block out the heat, but it did just enough to create a bearable atmosphere.

Only when Elijah felt a claw ripping through his stomach did he realize that the respite he’d given himself extended to every creature near him. And it nullified the mental pull as well, freeing the creatures’ minds from their obsessive pursuit of the Worldseed.

Suddenly, old enmities once again mattered. All around him, chaos erupted as dragons and wasps fought one another while abyssals tried to kill everything within reach. And it just so happened that Elijah was an easy target.

An abyssal tentacle wrapped around him, squeezing him like a boa constrictor. Meanwhile, a handful of vespirans fell upon him, hacking with their claws and thrusting their stingers into his flesh. There were only two reasons Elijah didn’t immediately die. The first was the most obvious – he remained in the Shape of Spores, and even his natural regeneration meant it would take more than a few wounds to put him down. Even his blistered-beyond-recognition arm had begun to heal.

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That, combined with the passive Shell that surrounded him at all times, gave him enough protection to resist the attacks.

But more than anything else, his Mantle of Authority, pulsing with an incredible amount of ethera, meant that no one in range could manifest any abilities. Beneath the boughs of his soul, the local ethera was still. Within his Natural Dominion, only he could cast spells.

That protected him from true annihilation. After all, against a horde of demi-gods with the full use of their abilities, he could never have survived.

Elijah fought back, activating Throne of Spores. With so much ethera coursing through him, he had no issue pushing the ability to maximum power. Fungal tendrils erupted from the surface of the planetary core, only to be burned out of existence.

But the spores remained, clouding the local atmosphere with yellow death. And the rest of the creatures had no defense against it. Not without their vaunted abilities, passive or active. The spores entered their bloodstreams, slowing and weakening them as fungal rot took hold.

At the same time, Elijah cast dozens of instances of Nature’s Claim, and in seconds, the world was full of burning mushrooms. They only lasted for a moment after exploding from his foes’ backs, but by that point, the damage had been done. Not only were the consequential wounds gruesome, but the resultant spores only added to the growing cloud.

Physically, Elijah did not remain idle, either. He clawed and ripped, using his natural weapons to defeat his enemies. His club-like tail proved the most effective, though. He didn’t need to kill the creatures. He only needed to clear the area beneath the boughs of his soul. Once outside the dominion of his Mantle of Authority, they went back to their frenzied attempts at breaching the outer shell of the planetary core.

But even when Elijah managed to sweep the area of his weakened enemies, he found nothing but a smooth, unbroken shell. Gold and glowing, it pulsed with enough power to rival a dying star. Even under the auspices of his Mantle of Authority, the atmosphere was unbearable. A normal human being would have long since been destroyed, but with all of Elijah’s constitution, regeneration, and, probably most importantly, his body cultivation, he managed to stay just ahead of the damage.

It was not pleasant, though, and the resultant pain continued to spread through the leaves of his mind, taking over one branch at a time.

The imperative was to reach the Worldseed, which was within the shell of the planetary core. His first instinct was to attack the problem straight-on. But now that he’d found some measure of equilibrium, he could spare a moment to think. Looking around, he saw that simply beating his fists against that impenetrable barrier was useless. After all, creatures far stronger than him had been at it for who knew how long.

With that in mind, Elijah moved.

His senses were entirely overwhelmed by the atmospheric ethera, but he still had eyes. And he could see that many of the most powerful creatures had congregated – such as that word applied – at the very top of the pulsating globe.

Over the next few hours, Elijah carved a path through the frenzied creatures. Along the way, he took advantage of the brief bout of confusion inflicted upon them by his Mantle of Authority. Freed from the mental pull, they took a few moments to adjust. And that was when Elijah hit them, throwing them out of his path with as much brutality as he could manage.

The going was slow. The planetary core was only a few miles across, but it still took Elijah the better part of a day to reach his destination. Doing so didn’t come without a cost, either. By the time he arrived, the branches of his soul had grown ragged, drooping a little more with every passing hour. The current of ethera flowing through them was still strong, but the integrity of their form had begun to degrade.

It was only a matter of time before Elijah was forced to retreat.

In fact, he was truly considering just that course of action when he saw something that brought him up short. At the very crown of the planetary core was a crack. It was mostly covered by the mass of bodies, but none of the dragons, vespirans, or abyssals were small enough to slither through.

But that didn’t stop them from trying.

Indeed, there were three extraordinarily powerful examples of their races waging war against the shell, and through their efforts, they chipped away at that barrier a little more with every passing hour.

If Elijah retreated, he might give them the chance to reach the Worldseed before him. And if that happened, he’d never take it from them. They were too strong. Upper-level demi-gods, at least.

Elijah raced forward, plowing his way through the mass of bodies. Chitin and flesh parted before his Bestial Charge.

Finally, he reached the trio of elites. They barely noticed him – until they fell under his Mantle of Authority. Their minds cleared more quickly than any of the others, and they immediately threw themselves at one another instead of the planetary core. And with their power, the weight of their blows sent shockwaves arcing out from the site of their battle. Elijah rushed forward, but he soon found himself incapable of maintaining his footing.

He went tumbling backward a few dozen yards before he managed to slam his claws into an abyssal monster. He ripped free – along with a few massive chunks of rubbery flesh – before continuing his tumble. His momentum dissipated a second or two later. By that point, he was more than a hundred yards from the site of the clash.

The trio – vespiran, abyssal, and dragon – managed to keep their wits for a few more seconds before resuming their dig. For his part, Elijah dashed forward, already transforming. As he did so, he also retracted his Mantle of Authority to within an inch or two of his body.

It still kept him mostly safe from the effects of the Worldseed, but it didn’t affect the other creatures. Especially when he didn’t tarry.

By the time he reached the trio of high-level demi-gods, Elijah’s transformation had completed, and he’d fully shifted into the much smaller Shape of the Master. He lost the massive influx of regeneration, but he countered that by with his natural heat resistance – and by immediately casting Wild Resurgence. With those two factors working in tandem, he managed to keep pace with the damage, albeit barely.

More importantly, his small size and retracted Mantle of Authority gave him the opportunity to dodge between the frenzied elites and dive into the crack. Immediately, he was beset by even more heat and ethera. His body blistered, only to be healed a second later.

Like that, the cycle continued as he dragged himself through the fissure, one inch at a time. The form of the cindrandir had a lot in common with amphibians, meaning that he could contort his body to such a degree that he could fit into the smallest spaces. That came in handy as the crack in the shell narrowed. He pulled himself through, his serpentine body compressing to allow passage.

Elijah lost track of how long he was stuck in that crack.

Hours, at the very least. Vaguely, he could hear the constant cacophony that came from the horde’s attempts to breach the integrity of the outer shell, but that soon faded into the background. Moving forward was the only thing that mattered.

Until, at last, Elijah found himself tumbling into liquid fire.

But it wasn’t true flame. There was no real heat. It was just pure ethera given liquid form. Elijah’s Mantle of Authority began to disintegrate, but he pushed himself forward, his prize finally in sight.

Then, at last, he reached out and touched the Worldseed.