Book 13: Chapter 22: Silver

Path of Dragons

Elijah dreamed of happiness, homecoming, and falling asleep in Sadie’s arms.

And then, it all shattered. A sound like rolling thunder, followed by cracking glass echoed through the abyss as a fissure exploded across the green crystal encasing Elijah’s draconic body. His eyes fluttered open as wave after wave of dense vitality misted into the atmosphere.

A building-sized tentacle slammed into the obelisk with enough force to cause an earthquake miles below. Elijah – still half encapsulated by solid vitality – skidded across the peak at more than a hundred miles an hour. He didn’t reach the edge before another tentacle descended, crushing him beneath its meaty form.

And then it started to feed.

A million comparatively tiny maws yawned, revealing jagged fangs and forked tongues that whipped out to score the surface of the crystal. The furthest simply inhaled, dragging air, vitality, and ethera into a whirlwind of energy that disappeared into their gaping gullets.

It took Elijah a few seconds to fully awaken, but when he did, panic suffused his mind. The tentacle belonged to one of the gargantuan horrors haunting the upper atmosphere. He had no idea if it was a deity or more. His perception of power didn’t extend that far.

What he did know was that it could swat him like a fly, regardless of how far he’d progressed in his cultivation. Even the mouths pulsed with the power of demi-gods, giving Elijah a brief insight into how the eldritch monsters were created. They didn’t feel like individuals. Instead, they were more like a colony of bacteria that had somehow fused into something that far exceeded the sum power of its parts.

The moment of introspection was interrupted when Elijah felt the rapid drain on his own vitality. He deployed his Mantle of Authority, and a million mouths screamed all at once. The deafening roar of their displeasure echoed in Elijah’s mind as they recoiled – only slightly, but enough to allow him to slither free. As they descended, Elijah raced across the peak, sliding down the slightly sloped surface until he reached the edge.

He fell.

The tentacle hit the pillar a second later, and the shockwave of its descent threw Elijah hundreds of yards away. He would’ve gone further if he didn’t throw his wings wide, arresting his momentum. Even then, it took him a few moments to wrest control away from gravity and inertia.

When he did, he righted his tumbling path, turning it into an urgent glide.

Above, the tentacle chased him. Inch by inch, it gained ground until, suddenly, it stopped. Elijah narrowly escaped its falling fury before turning his flight into a steady dive that ended with him touching down at the edge of the crater. When he hit the ground, it cracked beneath the force of his landing.

Only then did he realize something very, very important.

He hadn’t deployed his Mantle of Authority, and he was only in a little pain. He glanced down at his emerald scales to see that the pace of the spreading corruption had been cut down to almost nothing. He still wasn’t immune to its effects. Far from it. But he could endure it for days without much effect.

It still hurt, but rather than feeling like he’d been dunked in a vat of acid, it was more like spilling rubbing alcohol on a papercut. If said papercuts were all over his body.

Not a perfect analogy, but it was accurate enough that it satisfied Elijah’s need for comparison.

In any case, he deployed his Mantle of Authority, which offered relief from the pain, and threw himself back into the sky. In moments, he’d reached top speed, and he was unsurprised – but still pleased – that it far exceeded his previous limits.

If he had to estimate, his flight speed in his dragon form now rivaled that of the Shape of the Sky. Or what it had been before his recent advancement with body cultivation.

He flew, reveling in the strength of his newly reforged body until he’d covered more than a hundred miles. Only then did he land and truly take stock of the changes.

The most obvious was that he’d grown larger. Instead of being fifty feet long, he was now closer to a hundred. And the rest of his body had grown accordingly. In addition, his wings – which had always resembled the branches of a mighty tree – had grown even thicker, both in terms of the limbs as well as the density of the leaves covering them. His antlers were wider and sharper as well.

But the real change came from his scales.

They were still emerald, but within their gem-like structure danced an ethereal light that had never been present before. They shone, emitting a subtle cloud of vitality that clung to his form, distorting the air like a heat shimmer.

When he looked inward, he found that his efforts at perfecting the structure of his cells had not been in vain. The final metamorphosis had built upon that foundation, solidifying everything into something he barely recognized. It far exceeded his expectations, but somehow, in a way that still felt familiar.

And then he saw the notification.

Congratulations! You have cultivated a Body of Silver.

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Being cut off from the system, he hadn’t expected that. However, in retrospect, he should have. After all, cultivation didn’t necessarily require the system’s input. And he’d long known that the system was a thing nested within every single person. It was also an outside force.

Elijah wasn’t sure how it all worked together, but a simple notification of his achievement felt appropriate, even isolated on a ruined world outside of the World Tree’s influence.

But whether he understood the inner workings of the system or not, the notification didn’t change. Nor did the fact that he’d achieved his goal.

He shifted back into his human form, only to discover that he’d once again grown slightly taller. Just a touch over six feet in total, if his estimates were accurate.

“A big day,” he said with a smile. He’d never really been that self-conscious about his height – or the lack thereof – but it still felt gratifying to finally cross that arbitrary line.

He knew he’d reached the limits of his potential, though. Not only would taking the next step in his body cultivation require an even more destructive environment – that he didn’t think he could survive – but his height increases seemed to be related to his innate potential. And that was limited.

Not that he cared all that much.

He told himself that he didn’t.

Still, it was with some degree of satisfaction that he set up the tent and dipped inside. When he was finally enveloped in its defenses, he let himself relax. He collapsed onto the pillows, only to immediately regret it.

“Gross,” he muttered to himself.

For all that his body had been rebuilt down to the cellular level, he had not escaped the process without quite a lot of dirt, grime, and corrupted residue. So, after dousing the pillows – and everything else he’d touched inside the tent – with cleansing powder, he retreated outside and used Blessing of the Grove.

The increased vitality felt nice, but he was far more interested in the rain that came with it. He retrieved his last bar of good soap from his Arcane Loop. When he looked at it, he saw that barely more than a sliver remained. When it was gone, he would be forced to use the soap he’d bought back in Dravkein. While it did the job, it definitely didn’t count as a body cultivation aid.

With some degree of regret – and more than a little relief – he showered. Most of his body was covered in corrupted residue which clung to his skin like glue. So, it took quite a while before he managed to scrub it all away. When he finally finished, he estimated that his soap would only last for a few more showers.

If that.

Sighing, he put the sliver away and let Blessing of the Grove peter out. After that, he spent a few minutes air drying before entering the tent. The cleansing powder had done its work well, so when he collapsed onto the pillows, he was greeted by the scent he usually associated with fresh laundry.

He was asleep in moments.

And he didn’t awake for more than three days.

When he finally did, he felt refreshed in a way that he hadn’t in months. While time had blurred together during his cultivation session, he could look back and estimate its passage. Approximately four weeks he’d spent atop that obelisk. The climb had taken another week, meaning that the entire process had required more than a month.

And Elijah was famished.

He didn’t hesitate before digging into his store of meals, which had been replenished in Dravkein. And he more than made up for lost time. In the end, he ate enough for ten hungry men, and even then, he wasn’t entirely full.

When he was done, sleep once again overtook him.

He repeated that process three times before he was back to normal. Better than normal, really, as he established when he headed outside to test his newly silver-tier body.

It didn’t take him long to find some enormous boulders to lift, and he was more than impressed with the results. His effective strength had nearly doubled, as far as he could tell, and he struggled to find a rock he couldn’t heft.

The same progression was true of his coordination. Even in Shape of Spores, he could control his body in ways he never could have before.

In short, his cultivation far exceeded his expectations, which he knew he would need if he intended to escape the excised world and return home.

He couldn’t get any levels. He couldn’t make it to demi-god. Not without access to an uncorrupted Branch, at least. But what he could do was cultivate. Not easily. And not without significant pain. But that was just how it went, and Elijah was eager to take a step forward with the other facets of cultivation.

It was too bad that it would take some time for his body to settle into its new expression. Until it did, he couldn’t take the chance of working on anything else, lest everything fall apart.

That had been made very clear in every single guide he’d read on the subject.

It didn’t matter if he had to wait years, though. He would keep going. Even if he had to reach the ninth tier in every single category, that was what he would do.

First, though, he needed to continue his journey to Ithalon.

So, once he was fully recovered, he packed up the tent, stored it in the Arcane Loop, and shifted into the Shape of the Scourge. After that, he took on the Guise of the Stalker and trotted in the appropriate direction.

While the world was mostly barren – save for monsters – it wasn’t without landmarks. Elijah used those to guide him toward Ithalon, following the maps Zek had given him. The journey was not a quick one, but day by day, he drew closer. A month after he’d set out, he reached a massive river. It was more than two miles wide and deeper than Elijah could sense. What’s more, it played host to powerful monsters with whom he didn’t want to tangle.

Flying across wasn’t an option, either, as evidenced by the many tentacles waving in the air. While crossing the land bridge months before, Elijah had seen just such tentacles snatch creatures out of the sky.

Though his instincts screamed at him to destroy each of those abominations, he ignored them. Instead, he followed the river – known as the Abyssal Serpent – until he reached a bridge that spanned the entire width.

The fact that it still stood was a testament to the natives’ engineering prowess.

As he approached, Elijah could tell that the suspension bridge wouldn’t persist much longer. The support pillars were all cracked, and many of the cables had long since snapped. The bridge itself swayed in the subtle wind, creaking with every motion.

Elijah didn’t dare walk across it.

Instead, he shifted into the Shape of the Sky and flew a few feet above the surface. Even then, he was forced to dodge a few stray tentacles that emerged from the black water to drag him into the churning depths of the river.

Fortunately, his newfound body cultivation helped him avoid that fate, and he reached the other side without much issue.

So his progress continued. Day by day, then week by week, he traveled. Along the way, he encountered more and more evidence of the fallen civilization. But two months after leaving the bridge behind, he finally saw new construction.

It was built like a bunker, and it was surrounded by nine concentric circles – just like Dravkein. After a little inspection, Elijah established two things. First, it was entirely empty, though not abandoned. The bunker-like building contained plenty of supplies, and it appeared to have seen recent use. Second, it was obviously a waystation of sorts.

That gave Elijah hope that he was getting closer to his destination.

Without further hesitation, he continued on his way, and two days later, he was rewarded with his first sight of the natives of Ithalon. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem peaceful, as evidenced by the ongoing battle between two distinct factions.

Elijah watched the battle unfold, unsure of how to react.