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

The monstrous foot fell, slamming into the ground with all the weight of a calamitous avalanche. Flesh rippled across the eye-covered surface. The orbs blinked and narrowed as a thousand voices screamed in agony, horror, and gleeful hunger.

Crouched nearby, Elijah couldn’t help but recoil. That slight flinch was nearly his undoing. Hundreds of eyes flicked in his direction, then focused on his hiding spot. He froze, the breath seizing in his chest. Another rippling scream echoed through the terrain, slithering through the ravines as if a monster all its own.

The towering creature stopped, and a grotesque smell flowed into Elijah’s nostril. It was sweet, but rotten. It reminded him of high school, when some of his peers had foregone post-gym showers in favor of covering the sweat-born odor with body spray. However, it was much more pervasive and far more potent – like a physical blow that punched Elijah in the nose.

Oddly enough, it fit the image of the monster looming over him.

The thing was at least a hundred feet tall and built like a strongman. If said strongman was afflicted with bulbous tumors and lacked a head. It was also covered in comparatively short tentacles where hair might’ve been if it had been a human being. Or even human-adjacent.

What’s more, Elijah could feel that fighting it would be a grave mistake.

He might survive a few minutes in such a battle, but the aura of power surrounding the monster was so thoroughly oppressive that Elijah struggled to believe that it was a mere demi-god.

It wasn’t alone, either.

Indeed, he’d seen hundreds of them over the past few days. None of them were alike in form, but their massive stature and overbearing power – and the smell – was similar enough that Elijah felt confident in lumping them into a single category. On more than one occasion, he saw them slaughter other monsters.

One such fight had seen a horde of smaller, faster monsters attack one of the abyssal behemoths. And at first, Elijah thought it would be a good fight. The group of creatures worked well together – like a pack of wolves – and they managed their hit-and-run tactics well.

But it quickly became clear that they couldn’t really hurt it.

Slowly, the monster whittled them down. One small mistake was all it took for them to find themselves under its grotesque heel. Elijah almost felt sorry for them as, one by one, they fell.

Almost.

More than anything, though, it taught him the simple lesson that sometimes, tactics just weren’t enough to overcome long odds. At some point, power was all that mattered. And the behemoths possessed far more of that than any creature Elijah had encountered on Gorveth. Or anywhere else.

Someone like Kirlissa could obviously squash them like bugs, but he’d never met her in person. Instead, he’d only encountered hollow projections. Still, even in that weakened form, her power was too overbearing for him to fully grasp. By all rights, she probably could have obliterated the behemoths with a simple thought.

In any case, Elijah was a long way from having that kind of power, so if he wanted to avoid being killed by the things, he had no choice but to hide. Thankfully, they weren’t overly perceptive. Otherwise, he’d have been forced into a retreat.

It had been a couple of weeks since he’d finished recovering from his months-long tantrum. In that time, he’d made substantial progress toward his goal. Druhmor loomed ever closer, and he suspected that he would soon reach that destination. With every mile he traveled, the ethereal density had continued to thicken, and the corruptive influence of the abyss had increased apace.

By now, Elijah was forced to keep his mantle active at all times – much as he had when he’d first arrived on Gorveth – which was a testament to just how corrosive the air had become. Until recently, he could rely on his silver-tier body to keep him safe, but now, if he let his mantle drop, his skin – or scales, depending on his form – would quickly begin to blister. The last time he’d tried, every breath he took came with scorching pain in his chest.

Meanwhile, even his Mantle of Authority struggled to maintain its structure. The branches of his soul had long since become frayed, and they currently drifted along in a nonexistent wind.

It was painful, but not to such a degree that Elijah would let it distract him.

Instead, he countered the degradation by constantly funneling ethera through his mantle, which served to soothe and rebuild the damaged portions. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was enough to keep him going.

However, the day when he could take the next step in his soul cultivation loomed on the horizon. Even if he wasn’t perfectly prepared, the necessity of his situation would soon force him to take that road.

He had begun to consciously prepare for it, but he wanted to delay it as much as possible without holding his progress back. Every day he managed to survive without it meant taking that step would be that much safer. And despite his most recent issues, he did not have a death wish. He needed to escape Gorveth, if only to discover Earth’s fate. From there, he would make a decision on how to live the rest of his life.

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Whatever he found.

Once the abyssal behemoth moved on, Elijah left his hiding place behind and continued on his way. The surrounding terrain was characterized by deep, narrow ravines that went more than a mile beneath the surface. That was as far as Elijah had explored before giving up and returning to his trek.

Thankfully, they were narrow enough that he could easily leap across them, though he had to take great care not to find himself plummeting into the depths. After all, there was no sun to light his way. Just purple rivers of corruption slithering across the sky.

Otherwise, it was entirely dark.

More than once, Elijah had been forced to use Cloud Step to arrest a fall – which he didn’t want to repeat. Instead, he preferred to keep his abilities off cooldown just in case they were needed in a fight.

On Elijah went for a few hundred more miles across similar terrain. Barely an hour went by that he didn’t need to take shelter from one of the behemoths. They weren’t terribly common, but their size made them seem more ubiquitous than they really were. Each time he saw one on the horizon, Elijah quickly found a hiding place – usually a cluster of rocks, or in one instance, one of the ravines.

Like that, he continued his progress. The weather grew significantly colder until a dense rime spread across the ground. Each step crunched through the corrupted ice, sending puffs of corrosive mist to cling to his feet.

Then, a freezing rain began to fall.

Rain eventually turned to sleet, which in turn became snow. It wasn’t white, though. Instead, it was nearly black, with purple veins of dense corruption flowing through the crystalline structure of each tiny bit of ice.

Elijah trudged through it, cutting a path until the sides reached dozens of feet above his head. The close confines sent the level of ambient corruption skyrocketing until Elijah could scarcely bear it. When he reached his limit, he deployed his tent and trusted its defenses to protect him.

They were effective, but Elijah could feel the enchantment beginning to fray. Thankfully, it was equipped with a self-repair function, but it couldn’t rebuild those enchantments while active. That meant that Elijah couldn’t simply rest as long as he might want. Instead, he could only afford a few hours at a time, with at least twice as long between deployments for the tent to affect repairs.

That meant he could never fully recover.

Rather, each time he stopped amounted to more of a short reprieve than true rest. But it was probably the only reason he managed to keep going.

As it turned out, the situation made for great soul training. The constant degradation and repair of his Mantle of Authority hardened his soul more than he could have imagined. It felt a little like his mantle grew calluses.

After a couple more weeks, the snowstorm abated, and soon after, Elijah climbed a steep ridge. Once he reached the top, he found himself looking down on something truly wondrous. And grotesque. Impressive. Depressing. It was all of that and so much more.

Druhmor was also called the Cyst, and for good reason.

At first, Elijah thought it was just another hill in the distance. But it only took a few moments for him to see ripples of movement within. When he looked closer using Eyes of the Eagle, he saw that it was composed of rubbery, black flesh. Grooves cut through it, forming a discernable – but unrecognizable – pattern that put Elijah in mind of runic circles.

And finally, geysers of boiling pus periodically ripped through the membrane, sending streams of yellow liquid into the air. That pus rained down across the whole thing, coating it in sticky mucus that shone in the faint light of the rivers of corruption streaking across the sky.

Elijah couldn’t see the edges, but according to the maps he’d studied, the Cyst was more than a hundred miles across. And at its center was the site of the now-defunct Primal Realm, which presented as a massive, freestanding arch. Once, the center had swirled with ethera, but now, it contained nothing but empty space.

However, Elijah was currently more concerned with the area separating his current position from the edge of the cyst. Its name – the Abyssal Moat – had led Elijah to expect a body of water. But that just wasn’t the case. Instead, it was just a few dozen miles of scoured terrain.

The landscape had been sanded so smooth that it looked like black glass. Powerful winds swirled, picking up and depositing drops of pus that left a reflective sheen across the surface. From afar, the reflected and shimmering sky made it look like flowing water, which explained the name.

From the descriptions Elijah had read in Zek’s notes, it was so powerfully corrupted that no one had ever traversed it. Any attempts had resulted in the travelers’ quick deaths. Even high-level Explorers were incapable of dealing with the hostile atmosphere.

And Elijah knew he had to cross it.

In fact, he intended to use it to complete the tempering of his soul so he could finally progress to the next tier.

Before he did so, he deployed his tent and forced himself to relax. He ate some monster meat he’d cooked a few weeks before, and he drank his fill of clean water. He tried to sleep, but the mixture of anticipation and dread stood sentry before the blessed release of unconsciousness.

Without that small comfort, Elijah chose to focus on his motivation. At the top of the list was discovering Earth’s fate and hopefully reuniting with his friends and family. But following soon after was the drive to progress, to grow stronger. Not for the sake of power, though that was part of it. Rather, he wanted to progress because of what it represented – freedom. If he could prove himself capable of surviving and thriving in such an environment, he could go anywhere. He could live through anything.

There were other, less potent motivators that drove him forward. In the back of his mind, he believed that his efforts would positively affect the people of Gorveth. He wasn’t sure how, but if he could escape, then so could they. If he could conquer the abyss, then others could as well.

Other thoughts flitted through his mind. Other reasons. But the most powerful among the remainder was simple stubbornness. Elijah would not give up. He would not allow the abyss to win. If that meant a life spent rushing from one torment to another, then that was what he would do. And in the end, he would outlast the pain. He would win.

One way or another.

When the tent’s defenses began to fray, Elijah exited the temporary structure, packed it away, and undressed. His clothes were mostly rags by that point, but he knew they wouldn’t last through what he intended. His armor, obtained in Dravkein, wasn’t in much better shape. It joined his clothes inside the Abyssal Loop.

Standing naked before the most potent source of corruption he’d ever sensed, Elijah felt empowered. It was him against the environment, just as it had been back when he’d run his first tower. Back then, his clothes had been destroyed by the elements or by enemies.

Now, it was a conscious choice to attack the problem with nothing but his naked skin, the power of his will, and the power he’d managed to accumulate for protection.

He stepped forward, the strips of scales encircling his arms and cutting across his torso glinting in the faint light. Either he would win, or the abyss would kill him. There was no other outcome, and he was eager to discover which was stronger.