Chapter 333: Leviathan-7 (1/2)
It reminded me of being locked into BloodHollow, where I barely survived and time again.
But I was a different person than then. I changed from the ground up and inside out. I wouldn't be sitting there, wallowing in a dark pit like before.
I was the Harbinger now, and it was time to prove it.
Initialization complete. Welcome to the New World: Leviathan-7
Panels of energy formed around me, reconstructing my reality. The world warped and changed, the air drying out and the ground hardening. Even when surrounded by rock, radiation bathed over me in its warm glow. Gravity intensified, turning several times more potent, and I burst out of my craggy coffin, peering around.
Above me, a sight of overwhelming majesty overwhelmed everything else. The black hole, Leviathan, took up nearly half of the sky. It siphoned in matter and stretched reality, like an eclipse in the sky rimmed with stretched gold. It dominated the scene and eliminated any doubt of where I was.
Even from this distance, Leviathan radiated out with an intense light, enough to fry most forms of life with ease. Gazing at my surroundings, nothing about the life here screamed average. Clouds of squirming, fleshy kelp floated in the sky, the air here dense as water. The plant strands floated with encapsulated sacks of gas, hovering well above the ground.
The giant glowing disc around Leviathan gave them enough light to live as flying creatures scooped up the plant matter. Quite a few animals used the gas bubble adaptation in the skies. Predators with large teeth and claws aimed at the giant, grazing herbivores. They dove down from above, seeking to pin the grazers to the ground. One of these flying manta rays fought against a cloud of drill-like predators. This herbivore lost, being covered in leech-like drills beasts.
It fell onto the ground, bringing my gaze with it. I raised my brow at the 'trees' on the planet. At their peaks, they used the same gas bubbles to hold themselves upright, along with sharpened spines for leaves. Approaching a patch of these spiny plants, a giant blob swung a single appendage at the gas bubble of the spined plants.
One by one, the 'trees' collapsed under gravity's might after having their sacks burst. Once on the ground, the upward-facing spines flattened. This blob rolled over the plant, peeling off the spines. After clearing it of needles, the blob absorbed the plant's core, leaving the dense wood behind.
I walked up, grabbing the leftover bark. It reminded me of oak, but it interspersed dozens more gnarled spots than average. I crushed it in my hand, finding some resistance. Metal threaded within its trunk. Looking at the dark, rocky ground, this place carried some life, but not as much as I expected.
I hovered myself up into the air, finding it denser than water. If not for my enhanced body, the atmosphere alone would've crushed me to a pulp. Peering around, no clouds dotted the sky, only the fleshy kelp. That clear horizon exposed rolling hills into the distance along with no nearby rulers. As I inspected several colossal craters from afar, one of the flying herbivores floated over.
It floated nearby, curious about what I was. I reached up a hand, finding its body smooth in one direction and rough in the other, kind of like sharkskin. It let out a few high-pitched calls, like a whale with a musical edge. Other flying herbivores came over, flowing around me and letting out a lot of calls.
I smiled as they created a hovering concert, these gentle creatures letting out strange, harmonic music. I let them do their thing for a few minutes before they dispersed back to their feeding grounds. As one herbivore hovered away, another group of predators floated over. They attacked the flying manta ray.
I killed the predators with a wave of Event Horizon. I owed the herbivores that much since they gave me a warm welcome to Leviathan-7. Over my head, A part of the accretion disc around Leviathan swelled and plumed, and it sent out a wave of radiation our way. Interrupting my thoughts, that flashing light clashed into the world.
The hovering clouds of kelp spread out into a vast web over the planet. They darkened the skies, turning day to night, and this vast web trembled. The rays from Leviathan blasted through the dense atmosphere, and in yet another expansive, majestic display of nature, an aurora borealis formed over the entire shaded skyline.
I gawked for several minutes, caught in the beautiful view. It was an otherwordly sight in every aspect.
And yet, it came with consequences. As the wave of radiation passed, the algae condensed into tiny points. Radiation glowed over them before massive creatures plopped out of the sky. These glowings beasts showed many forms, all of them huge and evolved for combat. They left remnants of kelp behind, new webs forming over the sky.
As the just-born beasts landed below, they left the entire planetside covered in scars. Craters formed from their landings, and they irradiated everything they touched or came near. The behemoths stood over fifty feet tall, each of them like walking skyscrapers. The monsters ran and sprinted towards one another, battling for dominance over the surface.
From the ground, other behemoths from the past resurfaced. They joined this wave of combat. As they swung, gnawed, and tore at each other, they destroyed portions of the landscape. Mountains leveled. Canyons formed. Blood vaporized, and air plumed outward.
While Schema didn't tell me, those titans were eldritch and robust ones to boot. Below me, two nearby ones came into focus. A giant, trembling mass of plates fought against a four-legged, armored centaur. They both covered themselves in thick hides, glowing skin oozing from between the gaps in their covers. As they ripped and gored each other apart, splashes of their glowing blood oozed onto the ground. More minor, weaker eldritch came out of hiding and lapped up these pools of blood. Even from a distance, those eldritch evolved at a rapid pace.
They fought one another, the entire landscape devolving into an absolute bloodbath. That's why the normal creatures here survived. They weren't even worth eating when the eldritch contained so much energy. One of those behemoths flew over towards me, able to glide on the dense winds of this world. Four wings spread over its back, bright red patches of skin covering the green glow beneath. It opened a serrated beak, four clawed appendages below spreading out to grab me.
As it got near, I waved an arm in a circle. Testing my new strength, I reared a fist back before snapping a blow into the creature's center. Using telekinesis, I concentrated my fist's impact. I empowered my punch with gravity wells and grounded myself with the same magic. I pulled the creature to me, and I even used a couple furnaces to help me out.
The results boomed across the entire region.
A kinetic bomb exploded inside the raging behemoth, detonating outwards in a spiral. The force alone vaporized the beast into a fine mist. The kinetic bullet raced past it, drilling further into the distance. It diverted or destroyed patches of eldritch algae, creating a patch in the sky. As I marveled at it, the behemoths below did as well.
I rubbed my hands together, Event Horizon's eerie, crimson aura encapsulating me. I propelled myself towards the nearest behemoths, the both of them sheening with latent energy. I tackled into the writhing ball of limbs, and I grabbed them both. Event Horizon assaulted their minds while I channeled ascendant mana within my body.
A monstrous hunger came over me, so I threw one monster into the air. I waved an arm, creating a thin, antigravitational slice as I did. This blade pulled the beast apart, cleaving it in two before I waved my arm several times. More antigravitational blades cleaved it into pieces before my armor shot out bladed plumes.
Like metal ferns, my armor shot into the massacred behemoth chunks. Blood rained over me as I skewered the meat, and the blood evaporated on my glowing skin. I pulled the meat chunks to me, the flesh sizzling. I turned to the other behemoth in my grasp, the beast twice my size yet small in my eyes. It jerked itself away from me, tearing its body away from my grip.
I pulled it to me with gravity, and my armor cleaved it into mush. It growled out in raging agony, and it cooked against my glowing skin. The monster's bones fed my growth, and the beast's body melted into mana. As both the eldritch died, my eyes found other targets in the distance. Giving way to the ascendant flow, I shot towards the creatures while laughing.
A cloud of red and orange miasma fought against an island tortoise and a thin creature made of floating metal pieces. They gnawed at each other, each of them trying to kill the other by eating it alive. I shot through the miasma, Event Horizon disintegrating it as I passed by. I redirected my charge in a sudden jolt, throwing myself against the island turtle's colossal, shelled back.
I smashed through a shell hard as graphene by shoving my feet down. My legs broke against it, but they healed in an instant. I erupted a swarm of armored blades from every part of my body, blending the turtle from the inside. It hollowed out while howling at the other metal behemoth. The faceless collection of metal pieces tilted its head at the turtle's dying face.
My hand shot out of the turtle's throat, pulling the metal behemoth into the blender. I pulled it apart, its body softer than my own. My helmet bit into the metal, savoring the odd flavor before I collapsed the empty shell with gravity. After assimilating that piece, I turned to another group of battling monsters.
I threw my body through a mountain, pluming the monsters in a cloud of dust. Sparks and crimson lightning erupted from within the cloud, the sounds of battle coursing across the hills and horizon. Minutes later, I pulled myself out of the cloud, holding an eyestalk in my helmet's mouth and a leg in my hand.
I found more prey. I darted down underneath the irradiated soil, finding colossal world worms coursing in the ground. One swallowed me, its entire insides full of mana-infused, poisonous teeth. The bladed edges snapped against my skin, and I sent out armored spikes that slit the creature as it passed by.
The sliced remnants regenerated in seconds, drawing in radiation from the nearby ground. I lifted a hand and created an enormous gravity well, my body radiating out with a deep blue color. The eldritch lifted out of the land, forming a canyon beneath us before I pulled it apart. The squirming beast let out blood dry as sand before howling out in a psionic wave.
The noise passed me in a harmless drizzle before I smashed its two writhing halves together. Immense as a mountain, it growled out while crushing under the gravity well's might. Once condensed, I snapped my fingers. A singularity fed on the creature before detonating it from the inside.
It fell in a hollow sphere, forming an eclipse of sand over Leviathan-7's surface.
I spent the next few hours killing massive eldritch. These things rivaled stronger Hybrids, being enormous creatures imbued with lots of energy. The sheer number of mutations defied convention, many of the beasts holding strange powers. One of them even warped around, being difficult to pin down. I would've tried taming the damn thing, but it died in Event Horizon's aura.
Either way, I established a radius absolved of the world-ending horrors. I took a deep breath before nestling myself on top of a mountainside, finding a fantastic view of the landscape. Craters littered its surface, not really from meteorites but from eldritch spawn. They allowed mountains to form under this kind of gravity.