I grinned impishly. “You… you need me, don’t you?”
He raised a brow and frowned.
“That’s right. You need me to cancel out the curses! You don’t give a shit about me or my alliance! Whatever you might think about the dungeon core, you need her power to keep your new world as chaos free as possible. Because what you’re planning will take a hell of a lot of arcane magic, which would yield curses that you cannot control. A natural by-product of immense power. But with the dungeon core, you can sweep all of that under the rug. But in order for you to do that, you need my help. Yeah… now it all makes sense. I’m connected to the shards. It’s why you haven’t stolen it from me, right? It’s because you can’t!” I shouted. “Because if you did, you sure as hell would have bucked it right on out of here, considering you already fucking know where to find it! That book in your hands would lead you right to her shard…but you need all three to influence her to clear the curses…” I laughed, my insides hurting as I strained. “Oh, this is rich! I bet you didn’t expect that, douchebag! Haha, oh hell! You’re a fucking clown! All of that smoke you were blowing through your ass… I’ll give it to you, you’re not a bad liar after all. Mix some truth with some lies, had me guessing all the way through. But there’s one thing about you Rufian that’ll never change—you’re reckless. You act now, and think later. And now, it’s come to bite you in the ass again.”
He chuckled. “Congratulations, hero. You figured it out. But, I can still do damage with one crystal shard. As long as it’s not connected to you, I can syphon its energy endlessly.”
“I doubt you would. Because in order for your plan to work, there needs to be a world standing, and you’re not going to let the goddess die. Right Rufian?”
He was speechless.
“You’re going to let me get the fae shard and hope that I find the dragon’s. Only then would you try and kill me…”
He snickered, Rufian clapping his hands together smugly. “My, Silas, you are indeed smarter than you look! Credit where it is due! I apologize for ever doubting your capabilities. You are in fact correct. I do need that pathetic ‘lover of all creations’ goddess to be alive. Only she has the power I need to clear the curses I will create after annihilating all other races. In order for Senterrians to flourish, their world cannot be tainted. So given such, I will give you the coordinates to where the High Order is keeping the crystal shield. It is in your system…”
“You’re delusional! You think Alzera-Kar is going to stand by when you do all of this?!”
He laughed. “Goodness, no. But I have plans for her, just like I have plans for you.” He raised his hand and pulled out a blade, slashing a diagonal line through it. His blood stamped the floor, and as he levitated the codex and the Grimoire before him, he mouthed a spell.
Unlike the other flashy bullshit that came from him, nothing happened. But then he said something to me that made me hold my breath, “Your lover is in Dradersi…” He smiled. “Jezz never ceases to amaze me.” He looked down at me as he closed his books and put them away. “I don’t know what makes you so special, Silas. There must be something inside you that refuses to let all of that power go. But… I sense that that same force may backfire on you…”
“What?”
“Don’t worry. I brought you a gift, two to be accurate.” As he said that, my cyber sense alarm started to go off like crazy, monsters detected from all directions! “Alas, I cannot stay to see how you will fair. We will meet again, hero. Hopefully, in better terms.”
“Screw you, asshole,” I said, still in a coughing fit. As I started to feel my limbs again, the tiara faded, and the first thing I did was charge right at him. But it was too late. He left, leaving me in a floating piece of ice to fend for myself against what felt like an army heading my way.
“I need to get out of here,” I said to myself, downing a healing potion. However, the effects didn’t radiate with me at all! In fact, I started to feel warm, like really fucking warm. I was getting so hot that I was thawing out the sheet of ice underneath me.
Afraid of falling through, I jumped to the next piece adjacent, but my body temperature didn’t allow it. I sank into the sub zero degree water, my skin burning up so hot that I didn’t feel the heart-stopping cold. Instead, the water began to bubble, as if I was going nuclear!
“What…what was happening?!”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
As I sunk deeper into the water, my body continued to radiate intense heat. The water around me was scorching hot, creating a steamy cloud that made it impossible to see in front of me. But I felt a horde approaching. I saw shadows from within the steam, large behemoth sized beasts closing in on me! And then a different warning began to flash across my system screen:
Critical Arc!
Critical Arc!
Critical Arc!
Panic set in as I struggled to process what was happening! I was oblivious to this flux of power, and I had Rufian to blame for triggering it! I just knew it wasn’t a spell—the energy I was feeling had the same aura as when Rufian first tethered the plum to the shard shield, and again when he tapped into the shard to defeat those Nogiaths. In the position I was in, I was fucked, but the intense heat made it difficult to move. Hell, I was shocked I was even alive!
As I screamed, the water around me parted along my perimeter like Moses and the Red Sea. Trying my best to suppress it, I crouched over, curling up and locking my body tight. Something inside of me was itching to come out, itching to break beyond the surface. The energy grew stronger, the heat building up inside of me until it felt like I was going to explode. My thoughts were jumbled, and I struggled to control the energy as it surged through my body.
It was intense, so fucking intense!
I couldn’t hold it anymore, letting out a shrill cry as I allowed the energy to burst through.
The chasm felt my wrath… everything around me was obliterated in an instant.
The walls of the chasm cascaded into a crumbling shock wave, chunks of rocks scattered throughout. Trees and other vegetation were uprooted from the ground, while flames shot up in every direction. The air became thick with smoke and ashes that filled the sky like a blanket of gray.
Waves of ice and water crashed and flooded outward as if a tsunami had been unleashed. It swept across land clearing anything in its path, nothing left standing in its wake.
It was hell on earth; the sound of destruction booming in my ears and shaking my feet. In turn, the more power I put out, the more defective cyber sense monsters materialized around me…
Barely able to see my glitching system, I saw numbers rolling up. I was stacking exp like nobody’s business. First in trickles, then in stacks. Somehow I was attracting the nano bots in the air like a moth to a flame. I was leveling up so fast that it was making my head spin. And then finally, a calm in the storm…
The chaotic god energy began to taper off…
Exhausted, I dropped my forehead on the ground, where the water was gone, and the monsters were, too. I’d obliterated and torched everything in my path that I had no loot to take. Anything that power touched was gone, the output of insane energy leaving me breathless.
I curled up and clutched my stomach, my body shaking from the power of a god.
All I did was use you to stomp the ground… what the—actual fuck…
I panted until my throat went dry. Trying to move, I could feel my sore limbs pulsate, the residue of power lingering still. My joints felt like they were barely able to keep me together as I sat myself straight on my legs. Honestly, feeling muscle pain was the only thing connecting me to reality right now, because all of this felt so god damn unreal...
The outlook was hard to watch. My eyes frowned as I looked around at the destruction I had caused.
Sweat swept my forehead, strands of hair sticking along my temple and over my eyes. When the heat died down I became more aware of my surroundings and less concerned about how I’d just survived that. My heartbeat relaxed, and my chest stopped heaving like I was short on air. For a second, the world sat still, where I could take everything in.
“This is what you were afraid of, Alzera-Kar?” I whispered to myself, fully grasping the damages she could do in her desolate state.
But as I sulked in the calamity I caused, I realized I wasn’t as alone as I thought.
