Vraxious- The Forsaken Lands
Vrax stared at the achievement notification, mouth hung open, trying to grasp the implications of what it said. He pointedly ignored the top half of Sunshine slowly crawling through the smoldering green flames for some godsforsaken reason and instead slowly read the achievement again. Adding Sunshine’s top half back to the garden almost as an afterthought when it came within reach.
[Achievement Granted]
[Bloodied Claws]
Defeat another divine champion far above yourself in level at the behest of Vurune.
[Divine Reward]
[Talent Granted]
[The Herald Of The Hunt]
Shrines to Vurune in places where the cycle reigns supreme allow the Champion of Vurune to stake a Kings Claim. Maintain supremacy to maintain your claim. Claw and Fang Sword and Staff will answer those who question the resurgence of the god of life, the god of death, and the ever-changing progress he brings. Craft places of savagery and growth that revel in the challenges of the constant struggle between life and death, my champion.
Holy fucking shit, if anyone ever sees that, I’m going to get turned inside out by the actual king’s guard… Border claim artifacts are…almost nonexistent these days. This is fucking saying I just make a shrine that says, Bow before the cycle of life and death, motherfuckers, and I've staked a system-bound claim? Could I walk over to that tree right now and make a shrine saying this is a new country and it's mine?
How many people actually have a King's Claim still in the world? Seven or eight? The things you can do with that…hell, if the textbooks were even halfway accurate, you essentially get a sanctuary that applies to an entire country. Gods, the opportunity to shape a chunk of the world in a very tangible way...at the low, low cost of having the very unwanted attention of some of the most powerful people in existence. Gods, what tier is King Chronus now? During the nation's founding, it was recorded that he was on the cusp of the fourth tier, and that was nearly eight hundred years ago.
Vrax spiraled for a few more minutes in his thoughts, staring out over the flames, until the Dreadfeast bumped up against him, screeching something he didn’t quite catch, but he gave it a dazed, fond pat before numbly walking back towards the market boulder.
He found Torvald. Battered and bloody next to the shattered effigy and the broken corpse of the biggest, meanest-looking Bogart he had ever seen. Torvald poked the mutated bogart corpse with his hammer. “So...I think I got the better end of that deal. This thing was strong, but good-fight strong, not...whatever the fuck the thing that chased you was.” He grimaced slightly at Vrax’s very singed and scraped appearance.
“It...wasn’t great…” Vrax admitted while taking a sweeping look around the market. The remains of hundreds of Bogarts preserved in moments of agony as dried husks, the endless tides of dandelion seeds sailing through windows and over roofs searching for anything to sustain them.
Torvald looked around for a moment. “Soooo...we are camping here, right?”
Vrax looked at him like he was insane. “Fuck no, start looting. We need to go hole up somewhere nearby for like a day after making that much fucking noise...on the plus side, the, uhhh...fog of death? will discourage most things with low physical resistance…. Honestly the dandelions work way too well.” Vrax immediately climbed back up to where the dreadfeast killed the mage looking for that staff it had.
Torvald talked while turning out pockets. “One of those could kill a city, Vrax…I know you said these ones eventually stop reproducing, but…this…”
Vrax interrupted him. “Yeah, no, don’t worry. No more using these outside of the forsaken lands unless I change them to, like, melt after a day or something. I’m really fucking glad I gave my dad some adapted bracelets to hand out to a few folks. I would actually feel bad if Feldwin popped by to make some smart-ass comments and got infested; he would probably be fine. I mean, he is Tier-2, but I doubt it would be a fun time…”
Vrax and Torvald finished looting the area, got the sugar gliders back into Vrax’s pocket, and made a hasty exit to an old, wide-balconied two-story manor a few blocks away they had spied earlier. It would have once been a stunning building. Filigree was set in geometric patterns into the stoneworkof the steps and walls, and even a thousand years later the interior still had the vestiges of crimson paint that had been painstakingly added to every bit of wooden trim.
The Dreadfeast surged through the building, clearing it of a few small threats as they made their way into an old wine cellar to hide and level up for the evening. Torvald cleared himself a patch on the floor, pushing aside a row of rotted wine shelves and grabbing a mostly intact bottle with a shrug. “Hey Vrax, what was that fucking thing that we ran from a couple days ago? You know, the reality-breaking nightmare?”
Vrax also dug through the ancient shelves for a moment to find a bottle of his own. “I’m just going off of what Feldwin has told me, but it sure as hell seemed like one of “those that remain,” ancient warped things from the fall of Elysium, mad immortal mages that reached too far? Maybe even the broken shards of a god—no one really knows what the hell they are. But we don’t want anything to do with them.” Vrax said and took a big pull from the ancient wine bottle, immediately sputtering and choking on the vile, near sludge inside.
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Torvald looked at Vrax, trying not to wretch, and set his wine bottle back on a nearby shelf without a word, settling in to a small pile of furs he favored for bedding. “Let’s see how far that got us. That was some shit from legends! You may be a deranged motherfucker with a real questionable grasp on your sanity, but gods following you around is good for leveling up! I bet I'm damn near at my first trial now,” Torvald said with a smile and closed his eyes, fading into his sanctuary.
Vrax huffed at Torvalds's joke, then followed suit after making sure the basement door was at least passably barricaded. Vrax’s sanctuary embraced him like an old friend as it formed around him. “Whoah…” Vrax exclaimed his sanctuary was highlighted by the flickering flames dancing across the surface of his overflowing lake. The constant predation all around him was highlighted by the sheer potential hovering within his soul.
First things first…. Let's evolve a skill! I already know what I want to add to [Adapt Life] for that last level. But the real question is what is the system going to offer for evolutions? My use of the skill has been so all over the place. It's anyone's guess if it's going to be useful or not.
Vrax wandered past the Sunshine and its much smaller offspring; they were both busy having a game of tug-of-war over a terrified turtle. He walked up and laid a hand directly on his sculpture; a small amount of the condensed essence trailed from the lake and into [Adapt Life] as he added a recall function to his adapted monsters.
[Adapt Life] (lvl 10)
Change living beings to better suit your needs. Entities changed with this skill will be less hostile towards the paladin, and towards those who wear an adapted mark of the cycle upon themselves. You may view and adapt the [Talents] and [Skills] of adapted entities. Faster changes or changes farther from the base functions of an entity will use exponentially more mana. The more powerful an entity, the more mana required. All adapted entities can be called back to you the willingness of them to return hinges on distance and if they are occupied.
[Mana Cost Massively Variable] [Increased Efficiency]
[Duration Permanent]
[SKILL EVOLUTION AVAILABLE]
What the hell… I can recall them, but they might not always come. That's how that reads. That change really wasn’t very in line with the purpose of the skill. I guess I should be happy it even worked... Bah, it's probably still better than trying to chase down my creations in dangerous places. Vrax stared at the evolution notification for a moment in excitement. Then dived in to see what his options were. The world faded away once again, and he found himself with a god's-eye view of an indistinct cloaked man in a forest glade.
The man prowled through tall grass for a moment, horrifying creatures slinking through the grass alongside him—fanged things in the rough shape of canines. He paused for a moment as they crept towards a camp filled with heavily armored men. The man made a series of hand gestures, and the beasts next to him struck in synch with another half dozen of the canine horrors previously unseen on the edges of the camp.
The man skirted around the glade, never straying from the tall grass. His whispers and will nudging the monsters actions, he diverted three away from the camp to chase down a fleeing man with nothing more than a flare of mana. When one of the men within the camp rushed towards the grass upon seeing the cloaked man, every creature at the camp turned its head as one and rushed after him, tearing the man to shreds before he even made it halfway to the cloaked figure.
The glade reset, and this time it was the man holed up within a small cavern; a horde of armed men around the mouth of the cave wielding weapons were waiting for him. But the cloaked man simply calmly summoned forth a plant abomination that looked uncomfortably like Sunshine. He placed one hand on Sunshine and another on a small bushel of flowers within his pack.
One after another within the span of what seemed like just moments, the flowers twisted and warped, being changed into sick parodies of the creature they copied. Until a veritable tide of floral monsters clambered out of the cave to meet the small army with the shadowy sunshine at their head.
As the man's monsters were slain, he simply walked into the middle of the battle spanning the cave entrance and placed his hand on a patch of bloodied wildflowers, a wicked smile peeking from under the cloak. The wildflowers, one by one, turned to even smaller but no less vicious versions of sunshine and joined the fray by the hundreds.
The glade reset once again. This time it teemed with life around the cloaked man as he walked among a vastly varied menagerie of strange shadowy horrors, seemingly inspecting them one after another and shaking his head. He finally paused next to another of his creations and looked back towards the glade edge, where a serpentine beast of vast proportions cracked bones beneath its fangs.
“You will do…” Quietly eased from the man’s lips, whispering across the glade with far more gravity than it should have as he placed his hand fondly on the horror before him.
The beast's slowly expanded fangs grew to sword-like proportions, and muscles bulged to the point of stretching skin as the beast slowly transformed from just another horror to something far more. In the end the cloaked man looked up at a creature from the darkest of legends as its new growl cowed the crowd of lesser horrors it was elevated from.
Dammit! All of those seem amazing, but the first and last especially. Gain more direct control over my creatures. Or make a few of them something special…. I do feel like both have very hard limits and drawbacks, like everything else in this confusing class. Canines following orders loyally makes sense, but I feel like a few of my unruly friends might be harder to direct. There is also no way the evolution would let me make something that mighty yet; whatever that thing was looked to be at least Tier-2 after he elevated it.
Gah...I already know which one I want more… Hopefully the other is a future evolution choice, even though it will be a very long time before [Adapt Life] evolves again.
Vrax focused on the third option, letting it fold into his skill sculpture and become part of his being.
[Skill Evolution Chosen]
[Apex Guardian]
[0/2 Guardians Chosen]
You may designate an adapted creature as your Apex Guardian. This will strengthen the bond you share with it as well as vastly decrease the mana costs required to adapt it. This process will empower and change the creature in fundamental, irreversible ways.
Vrax still had a massive swath of essence to spend, but he was too excited to even try and carefully use it at this moment. He pulled himself back into the basement, practically scrabbling his way up towards the staircase.
He peeked past the barricade. “PSPSPSPSPSP, hey, come here, you little fucker. You want a name and one hell of an upgrade!?” Vrax shout-whispered at the Dreadfeast, who was hanging like a horrible bat from a rafter just above the staircase exit.
The Dreadfeast cocked its head curiously, tasting the strong emotions in the air with its tongue. “Is it dinner time, Father?” The hopeful voice of a child chillingly spilled from its maws.