Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 175: Changes

The clashes kept going for god knows how long between the two whirlpools in Zac’s body, and the energy contained in the center between them was growing more and more horrifying. Zac knew if something destabilized whatever was going on within the blazing waves of energy he’d explode like a nuclear bomb.

The tenth pill had thankfully been enough for him to regain some sort of equilibrium between the two opposing forces, and he wholeheartedly focused his energy on keeping the energy fluctuations as stable as he could.

He was fresh out of ideas and options, but he refused to give in. Giving up control at this moment was tantamount to dying, and so he kept overtaxing his mind and kept pushing his Dao past its limits. He had no idea where he was going or how long he ran, but finally his legs went out, and he didn’t have the energy to get up again.

Still, he kept fighting against the inevitable, hoping that something would change. His will had transformed over the past months, and even though the pain he was feeling far eclipsed what he went through in the pool of Cosmic Water, he never thought to end it.

Instead, he stoutly endured the raging battle between life and death in his body, his mind focusing on his goals and ambitions. For cycle after cycle the two whirlpools clashed, and Zac forgot everything except those two forces’ ebb and flow.

A prompt flashed in his periphery as he kept struggling, but his mind was too over-taxed to notice it. He only kept focusing on stabilizing the two opposing forces and stabilizing his wound. Finally, the frantic bursts from the miasmic wound gave in, just as Zac’s Dao-swirl was on the verge of completely dissipating.

Zac thought he could sense a wave of reluctance and hatred before it disappeared and stillness settled in his body.

The clashes abruptly stopped, and relief flooded Zac’s mind. But it also was the last straw as his mind quickly started to descend into darkness. He had kept himself conscious through sheer willpower, resisting long past his limits. But just before his mind submerged into a deep slumber he sensed something new in his wound.

A small seed barely as large as a fingernail, but containing enough energy to blow up a city was quietly nestled in his gut.

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Sharp pain in his leg woke Zac up from his slumber with a groan. He looked around with bleary eyes, who widened at the sight of a desiccated zombie dumbly gnawing at his ankle. Luckily his gear and attributes kept him safe, as the bites only left some surface wounds.

Zac quickly slapped the head of the undead, instantly destroying its brain. However, the rapid motion caused a bout of vertigo, and Zac emptied his stomach without warning. Finally, after a few dry heaves he managed to sit up and look around with a squint, his head still aching from overusing his mental energy.

He was in some random forest, with nothing around as far as he could see apart from dead or dying trees. In his muddled state it took some time for him to realize something was odd; he wasn’t hurting. That, of course, wasn’t completely correct, as every part of him hurt. It was odd in the sense that the wound in his side that had plagued him for what felt like forever was completely inert, not even a twang remaining.

The only pain he felt at the moment was a general ache all over his body accompanied by a splitting headache from over-drafting his Dao. The great change prompted him to quickly close his eyes again and focus on his side.

He was amazed to sense that there barely was any miasma in his wound, and it was almost completely inert. It still absorbed a small amount of miasma, but it could barely be called a trickle. And that was with his Dao not currently rotating. It likely wasn’t much worse than what anyone traversing the Dead Zone experienced.

Suddenly he remembered the small ball he saw right before passing out, but after checking around he couldn’t find it in his wound. He even took off his shirt again to visually inspect the wound, but couldn’t find anything either. However, he was able to note that the blackness of the wound and tendrils were quite faded. The skin they covered also wasn’t cold like a corpse’s like before, but had regained their warmth.

It was a relief, but Zac frowned as he remembered the sense of extreme power in that little ball that was created from the clashes between his pill-empowered Dao-whirl and the miasma in his wound. It took almost half an hour, but finally he found it. It was nestled right below his navel and had somehow integrated itself with his pathways.

The little beads seemed completely inert, as though the monstrous amounts of power it contained were locked away. Still, it was only after long hesitation Zac dared to channel some cosmic energy through the paths. It was with a huge sigh of relief he felt that the energy passed the bead by without it even reacting.

If it started making a ruckus from energy going through he would essentially be crippled, as the bead was nestled in a core position of the pathways. What made him confused though was that its position reminded him of what he’d learned about the Cores of D-Grade powerhouses.

They were often located in the very same position he found the bead, making it almost seem that he’d formed a Cosmic Core. However, there were some differences from what he’d heard about the topic. A real core was supposedly larger, and while the power contained in his bead was high, it was nothing compared to a real Core.

A real Cosmic Core was the source of energy for a D-Grade powerhouse. He still didn’t really understand what that entailed, but from Ogras it wasn’t only a matter of quantity, but also of quality. The energy a genuine core was of a higher grade than anything he could come in contact with, whereas his core was something else entirely.

There was also the issue of how it was formed. His core was created from miasma and his Dao, making itʼs composition completely different from what it should contain. He didn’t even understand how the core could form, as the two energies that it was made from should be each other’s bane.

Zac guessed he would have to slowly try to understand what was going on, as he simply had far too little information to make any educated guesses at the moment. He would have to ask someone whether it was possible to form a Core embryo before reaching D-Grade or something of the sort. For now he had to focus on what he could do and instead opened his status screen.

Name Zachary Atwood Level 58 Class Hatchetman (F) Race Human (E) Alignment Port Atwood - Lord (Earth) Titles Born for Carnage, Ultimate Reaper, Luck of the Draw, Giantsbane, Disciple of David, Overpowered, Slayer of Leviathans, Adventurer, Demon Slayer I, Full of Class, Rarified Being, Trailblazer, Child of Dao, The Big 500, Planetary Aegis, One Against Many, Butcher, Progenitor Hegemon, Core Dao Seed of Heaviness - Middle, Seed of Trees - High, Seed of Sharpness - Early Strength 320 Dexterity 158 Endurance 227 Vitality 188 Intelligence 90 Wisdom 85 Luck 93 Free Points 6 Nexus Coins 49 903 653

Zac’s brows rose when he saw the number of Nexus Coins he somehow possessed. He’d gained around twenty million nexus coins since he checked last. He knew he gained around 70 to 100 Nexus Coins from the Zombies, so killing 10 000 of them for his quest should account for less than a tenth of the total number. His memory contained some blanks from his desperate instinctual flight earlier, just what had happened?

That wasn’t the only thing, his level had increased by two. He was somewhat close to leveling to 57 before running into the zombie horde, but still he’d gained a whole level on top of that, which was quite a lot seeing as how arduous it was becoming to reach new levels.

He also sensed that it wouldn’t take much effort to gain another level, bringing him just one step away from level 60. A quick glance at a watch reassured him at least that only one day had passed, making his current leveling speed the highest he’d ever managed. He wondered what humanity thought when they saw him push past two levels in no time.

His stats had improved once again almost across the board, and he quickly noted a large reason for this. His Seed of Trees had finally reached High level, bringing it just one step from the peak. His speed of improvement was almost unfathomable, and it made Zac realize why most people ventured out adventuring rather than sitting at home meditating when they were stuck in a bottleneck.

He never would have improved his Dao of Trees to the middle grade if it wasn’t for the battle with the Corpse Lord, and his current breakthrough could be directly attributed to experiences while moving through the Dead Zone. He quickly opened up his Dao Screen and took a look at his evolved seed.

[Trees (High): Endurance +10, Vitality +40, Intelligence +5, Wisdom +5]

The seed now gave a whopping 60 attribute points, doubling up from before. Zac couldn’t help but get a bit excited even though he knew it would happen. Comparing from how it was before his new insight gave him +15 Vitality, and 5 points in Endurance, Intelligence and Wisdom each.

His insight was based on the dynamic nature of the life of a Tree, how it went from almost a death-like state during winter back to teeming with life during summer. It was everchanging, and it was only through death that life could come. Even if a forest burned down, the ashes became nourishment for the seeds germinating in the ground.

Zac felt that this concept was applicable to many things, but for the moment he had no time to properly sit down and ponder on it. He had too many things to do, and he didn’t even know where he was, or what to do about the miniature bomb lodged in his body uncomfortably close to his family jewels.

There was however one more change in his screen that might give him a hint of what was going on. He saw that there was a new Title in his growing list of accomplishments. With anticipation he focused on the new Title called Core, but what he saw only made him more confused.

[Core: Successfully form a Core. Reward: ??????]

Zac blankly stared at the odd line for a while until he hesitantly closed it with a frown. After mentally going through it in his mind there simply was no reward from the Title, differing from all other ones. If he didn’t know any better he would have guessed there was a bug in a computer system.

But the menus and prompts weren’t part of some random program, it was part of THE system, an Entity powerful enough to conquer multiple dimensions.

He was completely confused as to what the weird line meant, and he wasn’t even sure whether it was something he should ask around about. The thing with bugs was that they tended to get corrected, and he wasn’t sure how the system dealt with people that did things they weren’t supposed to.

Zac had a feeling the weird prompt was the result of a series of coincidental circumstances. The combination of his specific Dao and whatever the Corpse Lord injected him with had transformed and created something odd through the circumstances of being triggered by the purifier.

Next was the insane amount of miasma that entered him in a very short span of time. Normally he shouldn’t have survived something like that. It was the same with the pills. Taking two was risky, three was suicide. But he gobbled down ten at the same time and still lived to tell the tale.

The only reason he could think of as to why he was still alive was his experience in the pond of Cosmic Water. The experience had been a bit similar, though it wasn’t exactly the same. His body had absorbed extreme amounts of energy from the Fruit of Ascension along with the Cosmic Water and was ripped apart and reformed untold time.

Perhaps that very experience had changed something with him on a fundamental level, and allowed him to survive when he by all accounts should have exploded or become an undead. However, he didn’t have time to figure anything out or even get dressed because an eerie laugh dragged him out of his thoughts.

“Well, what’s this?” a hollow voice drifted out from behind him, prompting Zac to whirl around and whip out his axe.