Chapter 99 - Battle For the World (IV)

Chapter 99

Battle For the World (IV)

Ethan withdrew the sword as yet another spray of blood flew out, dousing him. He hardly cared, having already been dyed red from head to toe. Some of it got in his mouth, forcing him to spit out as he withdrew the sword back into his inventory. The dismantled body riddled with holes lay still on the ground beneath him, their surroundings obliterated–streets were ripped up, houses torn, shards of glass scattered about, and several unlucky cars destroyed.

There was even one unlucky straggler who didn’t manage to escape their fight in time lying under the pile of debris, dead. It was an old man in his sixties, and Ethan had seen him a couple of times in the pub, though didn’t know anything about him. He was jammed between a pole and cluttered pieces of concrete, his eyes having popped out of his sockets.

The entire area was covered in blood–most of it his, admittedly, but a lot of it from others as well. He stood in its midst, taking in the sight and watching his Health fill out to full. It was as though he never fought, despite the bedevilled scenery that spoke otherwise.

Strangely enough, two items appeared by the woman’s dead body, though Ethan had only expected one–the Stone.

Usually, when an Awakened died, all their items got ‘purified’--even those they had on their body, meaning that they became ordinary items. A sword that could shoot out flames for hundreds of yards? It would become an ordinary tool made of the most common material, barely sharp enough to be used to cut firewood. An orb that could be used to enhance the strength of spells? It’d just become an odd-looking decorative orb.

Every so often, however, there was a chance that one of the items in the Awakened’s possession–be that on their person or from their inventory–would not be purified. And that was precisely the case now.

Ethan bent over and picked up the stone, a purple-shimmying, uneven, rather heavy piece and stored it into his inventory before picking up the other item–a flat disc, oval shaped, draped in glistening, silver scales above black surface. It was rather heavy, even more so than the stone, approaching a hundred pounds, yet no larger than Ethan’s palm. He frowned, unable to recognise it. Inspecting it further exacerbated his frown–no window showed up detailing its stats, name, or usage.

It could mean one or two things as far as Ethan knew–it was either just an ordinary item with no functionality past looking strange, or it was not ‘registered’ as an item. This occasionally happened with rather queer and odd items people would find in the Tunnels that they were not meant to find. Inspecting it further yielded little and he didn’t want to stick around any further than he had to.

Before leaving, however, he burned her body, which was also when the window detailing quest completion appeared after the strange delay.

[Emergency Quest updated!]

[Having acquired [Wildtree Seed], [Dimensional Flux], [Warping Needle], and [Destabilising Stone], you are ready to proceed to the second stage of the quest.]

[Stage Two: bring all four materials to the Tunnel’s maw and place them in a perfect square around it. The Tunnel’s nature will be forcibly reverted, but due to the extraordinary changes in the volatile spacetime membrane, you will temporarily be transposed into the 4th dimensional realm alongside the Tunnel’s Crowned]

[In there, you will have to battle the Crowned for supremacy. If you lose, you will not die; however, you will be stripped of your Awakened powers and never be able to acquire them again. If you win, you will acquire 1 Skill of your choosing from any Class, Sub-Class, out-Class, and even beyond.]

[Note: the Crowned’s Level will not exceed yours, and their Stats will not exceed the maximum allotted limit for that level. Furthermore, their spells will, at the most, have a trace of the First Law, but their Mana expenditure will be massive.]

[You will learn of the Crowned’s identity and their brief summary as soon as you place the 4 items around the Tunnel’s Maw]

[Good Luck!]

Ethan stared hollowly at the window in front of him for a good while before dismissing it, letting go of a rancid breath he had been holding for a while. Whilst his thoughts churned, he turned and left, the small town of Thurleigh slowly fading back over the horizon. A momentous occasion occurred within it, but one that also permanently erased it from the annals of history.

Within ten minutes, he’d already left the town far behind, but hadn’t managed to calm much, if at all. He already knew well enough who the ‘Crowned’ was–after all, it was usually a title given to the strongest representative of a Tunnel. For the ‘Noble’s Last Roar’, that was undoubtedly A’stul, Last of Noblesse.

In his past life, A’stul was single-handedly responsible for killing over ten thousand of the strongest Awakened in the span of fifteen years. It wasn’t as though people were willing to throw themselves to the Tunnel, but the reputation gained from killing him would have been so massive that even the level-headed were tempted, let alone the ones with huge egos. Here and then, even Ethan contemplated gathering a party, but always thought better of it. Much stronger, wiser, and smarter than him had died in that place, after all.

What was known of A’stul was actually exceedingly limiting considering how long the Tunnel stayed open. In fact, no one who’d ever seen him had lived–as such, Ethan actually did not know how the creature looked. Nobody did, really.

In the end, the only reason the Tunnel got closed was that the Ten Beasts, in coalition with several other groups, made a deal with a particularly human-inclined Terror. Ethan didn’t know the nature of the deal–nobody beyond those in the innermost circles did–but what he knew was that, one day, from seemingly nowhere, the window informed them that A’stul had fallen, and that the Tunnel had closed.

A’stul himself never got qualified as a Terror–not by the system, anyway. There was a major threshold that a creature had to cross before they were deemed one, but as to what that threshold was… nobody was quite certain, and Terrors never mentioned it. Nonetheless, just the fact that he required the intervention of one spoke volumes to just how immeasurably strong he was.

Ethan, for all his confidence, lacked belief that he’d be able to fight the monster. Even with their Levels equalised, it hardly helped. It was never the Levels that gated humans from strength, but comprehension of spells and, most importantly, the Laws. Ethan himself had only comprehended the First and the Second Law, and to a rather limited success. However, he had absolutely no means of actually using his comprehension of those two Laws yet because of how little he comprehended them. Those more astute could inject a trace of them even in the low-level spells, and there was no contesting against that.

The First Law was the Law of Atonement.

Sacrificing portions of anything would yield increased output. For instance, if a spell originally cost 100 Mana and dealt 100 damage irregardless of equipment, it was possible, through the Law of Atonement, to increase the damage proportionally to the increase in Mana. The more one understood the Law, the closer the ratio would become. In more complex ways, however, Laws were used to alter the very nature of spells–Ethan’s signature skill, one that he always relied on the most, came about through precisely that.

Originally, the spell Shadowform allowed him to bleed into any shadow for however long he stayed still. He was imperceptible to most means of discovery, but as soon as he moved, the spell effect would end. However, through the First Law, he altered the nature of it, allowing him to use it on the move. Then, further down the line, he altered it even more, creating fake variances of himself within shadows to help with being detected. Later on, he altered it even more, allowing him to create permanent ‘shadow prints’ that he could teleport to if he was within 50 miles of them.

He wasn’t exceptionally unique in this department–most of the well-known figures did exactly that, took a spell that everyone of their Class had, and altered it to the point of creating a completely unique one that defined how they operated.

This was the part that gave him a stop–the window mentioned that A’stul’s spells would potentially have a ‘trace of the First Law’. However, even a trace could alter an ordinary spell into something entirely mind-bending.

He wasn’t without options, however. In the worst case scenario, he could do the cowardly thing–and, admittedly, a smart one too–and have someone else place the four items. The person in question wouldn’t die, but would simply be stripped of their Awakening. He could ask Sarah to find them a volunteer, and she would probably scrounge up dozens of them willing to even die to save the world.

Even if the reward being offered was likely the most broken reward he’d ever seen in his life, it only spoke to the degree of difficulty.

“Goddammit,” he mumbled into his jaw. “I don’t have to decide right now, right? Shit. I still have time. Yeah. I can decide later. I’ll think about it. That’s for the best.”