Chapter 767: Wasteland (1/2)
Ilea stepped through the gate with most of her skills active, heat gathering within her core when she arrived in the desolate lands of the Great Salt. The fabric behind her normalized as her manipulation dissipated. She could see it now, how powerful the anchors really were, and how much effort was required to breach another realm without them present. She knew she couldn’t do it. Not yet at least.
She looked around to see the massive crater still present. The light magic blast leaving a mark on the land. Months ago it had been, though now it was just one of many landmarks, something that might as well have happened ages past. Ilea found no demons in the vicinity, a few single monsters running over the salt stone platforms hundreds of meters away, unaware of her arrival in their realm.
She checked her status, having invested the stat points from the levels she had gained during her intense training.
Status:
Vitality: 2000
Health: 67600/67600
Ilea looked at her fist before she opened up her hand, the skin covered by several layers of smooth ash, white fire flowing over the surface in serene patterns, wisps of ash moving through from time to time.
She remembered the first time she had come to Kohr, confused and in the ocean. Unfamiliar with the creatures that roamed these lands, unfamiliar with the history. Despite the knowledge, and the obvious dangers, she felt it made the place more graspable. Ground she could stand on, not a strange alien place full of monsters and forgotten treasure, but the lands of the Navuun, of the Ascended. And she herself wasn’t a random Shadow that followed the perpetrator of a horrific ritual, no, this time she was here to hunt. And she felt ready.
Ilea cracked her neck and spread her wings. The two broad limbs moved, pushing her heavy form off the ground and up towards the skies. Dark clouds moved, not a drop of rain falling, not a single sign of lightning in the endless expanse. She saw glimpses of the moon as she flew above the landscape, unsure if it itself produced the pale light or if it reflected the light of a distant star.
She didn’t have to search long for her prey, her eyes picking up the feelers reaching out of the clouds kilometers away. The creature was massive, larger even than the whale like being they had fought above Ravenhall. Most of its form was hidden within the dark clouds.
Ilea charged her wings and flew towards the being, her spells at the ready. She slowed down when she felt the magic in the vicinity. The same void like presence she had felt after the blast, when she had first seen the large creatures. She circled the being floating within the dark clouds, using her various perception abilities to try and gauge its size, power, and magical abilities.
A new sensation was added to the void like presence as she approached. A pressure within her mind, complex and powerful. Something strange and maddening. Ilea resisted it with her Mental defenses, but the presence unnerved her slightly. Not quite as strange and alien as the Leviathan she had seen but this creature certainly had things going on within its mind or minds that were not meant for a human to even begin to comprehend, and it spewed it all out into the vicinity, like some mind magic vomit.
Ilea wondered if the magic simply couldn’t be contained by the being, if it was some side effect of its immense power like the high mana density around the Meadow, or perhaps meant as a self defense mechanism, some kind of aura to get rid of pests. Demons that would think it dinner, instead finding whatever was left of their brains fried by the powerful mind magic.
She decided not to use Silent Memory in this fight, on the off chance that it somehow latched onto and took control of the creature. The combination might spell trouble. Not until she had full control of the artifact.
The pressure was immense, though as was the void magic now that she was a few hundred meters away from the large creature, its fleshy tentacles covered in bone like spikes, sometimes lashing out towards the ground where entire swaths of demons were sucked into nothing, vanished or consumed by the massive creature. Both her resistances to the respective magics were particularly high, though she planned to simply approach for now, to train the skills in case the being turned out to be too powerful for her to face.
The primal fear she felt at the sheer existence of her prey didn’t dissuade her, instead it pushed her onward. A dangerous and unknown foe, after so many beings she now knew in and out. When she got closer still, Ilea could feel a spell build up, recognizing the source somewhere within the cloud. Her precognition picked up the attack. She slowed down and summoned three round and golden shields in front of her. A beam of pure arcane energy enveloped her in the next moment, two of the barriers shattering instantly, the third holding for a split second longer before three layers of her ash were burned away in an instant.
She could see the single purple eye from where the spell had come, the clouds closing in once more to shroud the organ in darkness.
Her ash reformed as she sent a greeting with Monster Hunter, establishing a telepathic connection a moment later.
Ilea shook in the air, holding her head as she canceled the connection again. Her ash opened up before she retched up blood and vomit. Bad idea. Got it. She wanted to rip out the bits of her mind that stored whatever the fuck had just been sent by the ungodly creature. “That’s nasty,” she murmured, wiping away at her mouth before her mantle closed again. She transferred when another beam lashed out at her, the source different this time. Two more beams slammed into her in the next split second, more golden shields blocking most of the first before she was hit by the second.
Ilea tumbled in the air, a series of lights flickering to life behind the clouds, the tentacles now turning towards her as the entire thing moved, not hovering but somehow gripping to the air and clouds itself. She gauged the power of the spells and activated Primordial Shift, the flame of creation flaring up as she was anchored in the fabric, dozens of bright beams striking the strange area where flames and flesh mingled with the fabric, arcane energy absorbed, destroyed, and burned away.
The damage was substantial but she had too many tools at her disposal for it to matter. Sentinel Reconstruction brought her health back in mere instants, Ilea coming out of the shift with more mana than when she had entered it.
She summoned her beam cannon and aimed, vaguely into the cloud. Her beam of near white flame and heat seemed almost comical compared to the light show she had just witnessed, albeit from within her strange affected space. One small human fighting an eldritch abomination whose presence alone would turn most people mad. Her beam cut through the distant clouds, into what lay beyond.
Ilea braced herself when she saw and felt the shock wave come, a pulse of magic the likes only monstrous four marks could summon. The ground below shook, wayward demons thrown aside or splattered against stone. A screech unlike anything she had ever witnessed. Emotions too confusing for her to comprehend, a pressure that battered against her mind and skull. She healed against it, bleeding from her ears and nose as she grit her teeth, her eyes exploding a moment later, just before the wave had passed.
“Gross,” she said, using her ash to clean away the blood and bits of eyes. New ones had already formed, not that she needed them overly much with all her perception skills.
‘ding’ ‘You have heard ч̼͔̭у̹̘̫̻ж͎̞̘̖͢о̧͕̜й̳̗̹̜̥̣ͅ. You resist its effects’
Yeah, that’s about how it felt like, she thought and shuddered.
‘ding’ ‘Fear Resistance reaches 2nd lvl 4’