The world beca a furnace as Elijah spilled out of the portal and tumbled toward the cracked earth of the Painted Wastes. He barely felt it, and not just because his body’s durability had taken a massive step forward since he’d first set foot in the Broken Crown. That was part of it, but even more impactful was the bone-deep fatigue that held him in its tight grip.
He hit the ground a few monts later, only to be assaulted by a swarm of wasps. Without even moving, he shoved so ethera into his ragged Mantle of Authority, enforcing his will upon his surroundings. Their wings stopped moving, and they plumted to the ground, impacting in a cloud of dust. So died before they hit the ground. Others took a few monts, almost as if they were suffocating. In that ti, they tried to crawl away, but their limbs couldn’t quite motivate them.
Elijah felt it all.
But even then, he took a long few minutes – during which the wasps all died – to gather his wits. As he did, he summoned Grove Conduit, Blessing of the Grove, and Wild Resurgence to fill him full of vitality. His body drank greedily from that stream of healing, and slowly, it spread throughout his parched form.
His previous supposition that dragons took far more healing to accomplish the sa goal proved entirely accurate, and he used more than half the contents of his core to push him to a point where he could stand. Once he did, he finally looked around to take stock of his situation.
He’d appeared half a mile away from the dragon’s skeleton and the floating keep that served as its crown. As such, the vespirans and wasps barely paid him any mind – largely because it was night, and most of them had retired to their nests.
Lucky.
Elijah had no desire to fight another battle. Not after what he’d experienced during his last stretch in the Primal Realm. From the mont he’d absorbed the Worldseed, he’d been forced into a running battle without end. It had culminated in his fight against the blue dragon – whose na Elijah had never discovered – but his current condition was the combination of all the events that had co before.
He could heal from all sorts of injuries. Even more now that he had access to Mycelial Regrowth. However, there was a hidden cost to doing so. A level of fatigue that could, in a pinch, be ignored, but still stuck with him long after his body had reached perfect condition.
Elijah felt that now, and more keenly than ever before.
His first instinct was to simply use Roots of the World Tree and return to his grove. Once there, he could spend as long as he needed in recovery, safe and sound. He could inspect his gains, collect his reward, and plan his next moves.
He chose not to do that, though. He a couple of tasks to accomplish before he teleported ho. To that end, he stretched his wings out wide, blocking the multi-colored aurora caused by the wasp pheromones. Not for the first ti, he marveled at their appearance. They functioned much like any other set of wings, though with an added bit of magic to take care of so of the more physically impossible aspects. However, they looked like nothing so much as a pair of thick branches, from which grew a host of green leaves.
He also felt the mossy mane that ran from the crown of his head down his spine and to his tail. When he looked at his claws, he saw that the keratin resembled thorns, and he suspected that his teeth had a similar composition. He had beco a blend of tree and dragon, and it fit in ways he couldn’t really explain.
The bottom line was that he just felt comfortable.
So, despite his fatigue, he took off with no small degree of confidence. Soon enough, he reached his top speed, which was very nearly as fast as he could have flown in Shape of the Sky before entering the Broken Crown. It was also much stronger, far more durable, and a good deal more imposing.
Nobody wanted to pick a fight with a dragon.
Still, when the sun started to rise over the horizon, he retreated into one of the entrances to the Hollow Depths, where he took shelter from the pheromone-laced air. Doing so required him to shift into a smaller form, so he returned to his human shape.
Oddly, it didn’t quite fit him as well as being a dragon, but it felt almost as appropriate. So, was he a true dragon? Or was he a man? Both, perhaps? He’d have to ask Kirlissa next ti they t, which could very well be when he finally went to the Empire of Scale.
After everything he’d experienced in the Broken Crown, he was more interested in that than ever. But he still had a lot of work to do on Earth before he could make that particular trip.
Once he found a large hollow a few miles deep, he deployed his tent and finally stripped down and took a shower. Using his soap was cathartic, and not just because he could rid himself of the accumulated gri that ca from his recent experiences. Swimming around in spider hemolymph had left him coated in a greasy film that hadn’t dissipated even when he left Shape of the Sea behind.
But mostly, Elijah reveled in a deeper cleaning. His soap was powerful because it drew impurities out of the body and enhanced what was already there. So, it cleaned him inside as well as outside.
Once he’d scrubbed himself properly, he entered his tent and took four als from within his Arcane Loop. As it turned out, that was not enough to satiate his hunger, so he ended up eating two more before he finally groaned and lay back on his bear fur blanket.
He didn’t allow himself to sleep, though. There were a couple of major notifications screaming for his attention. Oddly enough, the least of them was the one informing him that he had conquered the Primal Realm.
Congratluations! You have conquered The Broken Crown. Grade: S
Claim your reward?
[Yes] or [No]
Elijah selected the affirmative option, and two chests appeared in his tent, one on either side. The first was intricate and covered in gold filigree. The other was slightly less impressive, though both carried an air of ethera that proved their power. Elijah chose to open the lesser chest first.
Reward for conquering the Broken Crown:
Soil of Reclamation
Elijah looked down at the clay jar within the chest. The emanations coming from it were powerful, but they also existed on a wavelength slightly out of phase with everything else. He had no idea what the contents might do, but he supposed it was probably sothing like the Primordial Loam. Certainly, Nerthus would be able to tell him more.
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Either way, he knew that, given his grade in the Primal Realm, the item was extrely powerful. Odd, but strong.
It fit the kind of Druid he was.
After slipping the clay jar – which was about the size of a milk jug – inside his Arcane Loop, Elijah turned his attention to the more elaborately decorated chest. He opened it, revealing a pair of black gloves.
Reward for conquering the Broken Crown:
Handguards of the Wild Revenant
Elijah couldn’t help but smile at that. He already had two pieces of that set, and they’d both proved invaluable. He used Cloud Step as often as so of his more innate abilities, and Plain Sight had most recently saved him from having his mind taken over by a wasp larva. So, he was more than a little excited about what the next piece in the set might do for him.
Still, he didn’t don the gloves straightaway. He’d heard too many stories about cursed items that he knew better than to completely abandon caution. Instead, he slipped the handguards into his Arcane Loop. The chests dissipated into motes of ethera a mont later.
The rewards were good, but that was only the beginning of his notifications. He’d also progressed all the way to level two-forty-eight, which ant he’d received a ss of attribute points as well as a chance to evolve another spell. He’d noticed the evolution early on during his mad dash for the exit, but he’d not had the ti – or the focus – to make a proper go of it.
Besides, he knew that testing a new ability out in battle was a mistake.
So, after dismissing the many level-up notifications, Elijah focused on his latest opportunity to evolve a spell:
Congratulations! You have achieved the requirents for the evolution of the ability Guise of the Unseen. Please choose a path:
Disguise
Shadow
Mirror
Conceal your true nature by following a straightforward path.
Beco one with shadows, lding with them as if you were born to darkness.
Adopt confusion as a ans of obfuscation, tricking enemies into jumping at nothing.
The odd thing was that he knew he’d crossed the appropriate level – two-forty – even before he’d reached the planetary core of the Broken Crown. However, with the Worldseed calling to him, he hadn’t even thought to look. At the ti, he had labored under the assumption that he was protected from that incessant call. He had been, but only enough to keep himself from plunging headfirst into that bestial desire that had plagued everyone else in the realm. Even so, it had filled him to the point where he’d completely ignored everything else, focusing instead on reaching the core and the Worldseed within.
That had faded once he’d reached the Lindwyrm stage of core cultivation, but by that point, he was far too busy to give his new spell evolution the attention it deserved.
Even if he’d not focused on his pending decision, he’d already skimd the choices. In doing so, Elijah had established so notion of what the different options represented. Disguise would send him down a similar path to the ability’s current incarnation. Likely, it wouldn’t change much at all, save in its relative power. Not a bad idea, considering that he’d long lanted the ability’s lacking strength.
By contrast, Shadow seed like it would be a more active ability – probably similar to Dat’s most powerful stealth. The idea of vanishing from sight while still in combat was an attractive idea.
And then there was Mirror, which sounded like the biggest departure. Though Elijah did think he had so idea what the ability might entail, especially after having experienced Phantom Shift. He imagined that whatever ability ca from picking the Mirror evolution would mimic that the.
Which was enticing, he had to admit.
But ultimately, Elijah wasn’t certain if he wanted to take the still-useful spell down that path. After all, both Shadow and Mirror ca with the feeling that they were limited duration abilities ant to be used in combat. anwhile, the more straightforward disguise could almost assuredly be used similarly to Guise of the Unseen, which he used almost constantly while exploring.
When he thought of it like that, the choice was as obvious as it was unexciting. After all, sticking to the sa path wasn’t particularly thrilling. But it was the right option. So, Elijah chose Disguise, resulting in another notification:
Guise of the Stalker
Passively deflects notice from enemies.
Actively blend into the environnt. Not usable in combat.
Only usable in the Predator line of forms.
The description was much as Elijah had expected, save for the first line. From what he could tell, Guise of the Stalker would act as a low-level stealth, even in its passive state. That could save him a lot of trouble. But the real use was the active state, which functioned identically to Guise of the Unseen.
It was not an exciting choice, but utility spells rarely were. However, he could think of a lot of situations where better stealth would have co in handy, so he was happy with the evolution.
Finally, Elijah took a look at his oft-neglected status:
Na
Elijah Hart
Level
248
Archetype
Druid
Class
Primal Lord
Specialization
Natural Dominion
Alignnt
Empire of Scale (Dragon)
Strength
1004
Dexterity
1046
Constitution
1013
Ethera
1134
Regeneration
1018
Attunent
Nature
Cultivation Stage: Lord
Body
Core
Mind
Soul
Bronze
Lindwyrm
Garnet
Expert
Elijah hadn’t even noticed that he’d passed a thousand points in each attribute. He’d long since reached those marks in various forms or using his equipnt and buffs. However, even without them – he’d forcibly deactivated everything just so he could see his baseline – his raw attributes had really gotten out of hand.
And in a couple more levels, he’d evolve his class and beco a demi-god. With the benefit of ti and distance, Elijah wasn’t entirely certain about so of his assumptions about the enemies he’d fought in the Broken Crown, he knew that at least a few of them were true demi-gods. And the power they wielded was impressive.
He wanted that.
So, even if he was exhausted from his recent trip into a Primal Realm, he was still excited about what the future might hold. Perhaps he’d begun to normalize the sorts of trauma that ca with his adventures. Or maybe his garnet mind was better at dealing with that kind of thing than he’d expected. One way or another, he was no longer afraid of the next step on his path.
And that was a nice change of pace.
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