Chapter Two Hundred and Seventeen – 217Wild Threnody is level 50!
Journeyman Tier!
You Gain:
+5% RES, MIG, FEL
Lightning consumed the Blight, tearing from it's throat and lighting up the former chorister's insides. His friends leaped away, bowling through the encroaching horde while smaller, foot thick bolts of electricity arced outward, lighting up the Revenants nearby.
You Have Killed The Pride Of Blight!
XP Earned!
Territorial Quest Alert!
You Have Gained Significant Contribution!
The Blight collapsed to the ground, a lump of charred meat and blackened scales. A flicker of other kill notifications came in, Revenants dying by the dozen, but it was all Felix could do to keep standing. His core was rioting, a blue-white flame that was barely flickering. His Essence had dropped precariously as well, and the pain of their upset balance burned through his gut.
Pit let out a worried squawk, but they weren't the only ones in pain.
The two Scales that had emerged were pumping out that dire vapor while he fought, and now their production seemed to kick up a notch. Towers of crimson fog poured from them, more like volcanoes than smokestacks, and people had started to succumb. Felix saw Acolytes fall to their knees, clutching their chests and throats as the corruption turned the air to soup.
No no no. Felix spun, terrified.
Atar had already fallen, grimacing even in unconsciousness, and both Evie and Vess were close behind. Bodie and Harn, Cal and the Elders, all of them stumbled to their knees. Felix's dumb, stupid Tempered eyes could pick out scales forming even on their advanced Bodies.
"Vessilia!" The Hand shouted, appearing at her side in a blur of wind that barely stirred the thickening air. "What is happening? Fiend! Do something!"
Ravenous Tithe!
Huge chunks of the miasma was pulled into Felix, thundering through his channels and into his core. But it wasn't enough. It was like air: there was always more to fill the gap.
The Shadow Hounds, which up til then had been fighting off a sizable pack of the Revenants, flickered and died with ghastly howls. The Revenants let loose their own cries, but it was one of triumph and bloodlust. Mouths eager for the slaughter.
The horde charged.
"Reed! Take them all! Get them out of here!" Felix said.
Even the Hand seemed a bit woozy, but he held his ground. "By myself? What'll you be doing?"
"Something stupid, probably."
Reed paused, just long enough to give Felix a begrudging nod. Then he conjured some sort of spinning vortex of air Mana; the thing twisted on itself, shaping into some sort of concave disc and the Adept grabbed Vess and the others in rapid succession. All of them were tossed onto the disc.
"Keep them off my back, Fiend," the Hand demanded. "I can't carry them all and fight off an army!"
"Don't worry," Felix grunted, watching his Mana regenerate as the horde closed in. "They're here for me."
The Broodmother screeched again, and whatever primal magnetism Felix held over the Revenants redoubled. The monsters were tearing each other apart to get to him. The nearest Scale was to his right, and those Primordial Spawn that weren't headed directly for him where swarming around it. Even as he watched, a Revenant screamed in pain and pleasure as its body tore itself apart...and rebuilt into something larger and more vicious.
That's how the Ghouls are being made. Felix ran forward, flaring his Unfettered Volition in spurts. His Mana was still recovering from his last burst. All this Essence, concentrated. Its forcing them to grow. To mutate. He spun aside, dodging several swipes toward his chest and thighs while lashing out with his own claws. Just like the choristers.
Ravenous Tithe!
More Essence streamed from around him, accompanied by a relative trickle of ambient Mana. His core throbbed with imbalance, but there was little he could do while his Mana still hadn't recovered. He zipped through the charred remains of the Blight, retrieved his Blade of the Fang and unsheathed his Femur of the Envoy. Well, one thing.
A torrent of Essence poured from him and into his weapons, and Felix swung them about like a wrecking ball. His Strength, Endurance, and Agility combined with the preternatural durability of the weapons to devastate those Revenants near him. They were all, at best, six or seven levels below him and Felix's stats were well beyond the norm. Flesh ripped and bones snapped beneath his onslaught, teeth and claws and thick, pungent ichor sprayed in gruesome fountains with every swing. Felix was death incarnate to the Revenants.
Experience and Contribution streamed across his vision, but the enemy never stopped. Out of the swirling mists more and more gnashing teeth came howling, all of them piling over one another without care or concern for survival. Felix could sense it in their stunted Spirits: rage, hate, and an all consuming need to devour him.
Influence of the Wisp!
His Mana had recovered, enough for a few castings. Blue-white fire limned the bodies of dozens of Revenants, each of them freezing in place as their scales and flesh and fats were turned into fuel for his Skill. Dropping his shoulder, Felix rammed through them.
The Scale! It was close, maybe fifty more feet. He could feel the infernal heat of it.
Influence of the Wisp!
The next group froze as well, and Felix wasted no time with killing them. Instead, he gathered more of his Mana and, ignoring the riot of pain that clenched his core, he sent it surging out of his channels.
Stone Shaping!
Ahead of him, the overgrown floor buckled and rippled into a sludge forty feet in diameter. Revenants and three newly minted Ghouls stumbled and sank to their hips and knees, respectively, before Felix dropped the Skill. The stone solidified, trapping them for at least the moment.
Unimpeded, Felix jumped. He cleared the sunken grasp of the Ghouls and landed, Fang first, onto the side of the massive Scale. The Blade sunk into the ten foot tall ovoid, but only a few inches. Felix could feel the Essence he fed into the Blade pushing back at the Essence burning within the Scale. With a mild grunt, he lifted himself atop it, confident the Essence running through would handle his weight. Revenants and Ghouls began to rip themselves up from the shaped stone, several of them growing bulkier as they struggled.
Felix swallowed, mouth dry in the utter heat pouring off the Scale. He easily recalled the feelings the last Scale had put him through, the pressure and pain. Yet from that height, Felix could see the Hand retreating, his friends trailing behind on a floating gurney. Bad for you, and it's killing them. Don't hesitate.
Ravenous Tithe!
Felix and Pit screamed, their voices unified in agony as a hurricane of Primordial Essence screamed into his channels. The corrosive power burned him from within, a sanguine flame that did not stop, could not stop. The Scale beneath him ripped itself apart, sublimated into luminescent vapor that thundered into Felix, and even when his Blade fell away he remained, floating. Held up by nothing but a storm of power.
The Spawn screamed all around him, the Ghouls and Revenants alike clawing at their flesh, digging into their own chests. Only part of him noticed them at all, and soon even that part was subsumed by the tumult within.
Essence poured from his channels, a raging, ceaseless influx. It gathered above his core as it did before, a cloudy nebula above the sparkling solar system of his core space. Again, thankfully, the abyss within the center of his ring core tore the lion's share from him, consuming all that it possibly could. Felix became a conduit for the Essence, and it didn't care that his skin began to tear and his eyes burned a brilliant, blinding sapphire, or that his fangs lengthened and sharpened. The blackened armor across his body thickened, heavier scales growing atop the old along his back and shoulders, while the bone spikes at his elbows and knees curved, darkening from a yellow-white to a slick ebon.
Then it was over. He fell.
Territorial Quest Alert!
You Have Gained Significant Contribution!
Territorial Quest Alert!
You Have Gained Significant Contribution!
Territorial Quest Alert!