Savage Awakening 562. Leagues (II)

A/N: Hey folks! No chapter Monday, 9/29, sorry about that--got fried from traveling and couldn't recover

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Before Zane knew it, yet another shard season had begun—his third so far. By now, he’d spent nearly five years in the Pure Yang lands in total.

Time seemed to fly when he was deep in a grind.

The valley and the mountain remained quite separate—folks down there didn’t even attempt trespassing anymore. He was pretty sure it had something to do with him making increasingly bigger and more frightening slashes, though Kain’s giant one-shotting pillars didn’t help. No one seemed particularly interested in messing with them. The common wisdom seemed to be that the two experts on Mount X were best left alone.

Besides his slash progress, he’d also managed to cross the 2x Starfire strength boost right before the season began—which meant he’d doubled his speed and his strength since his time here. It felt like a massive amount to grow in that short a time frame… strength-wise, he still felt he had quite a ways to go, too, before he maxed out Starfire’s potential.

But he supposed it was true that every jump up in power was also a jump in scale. Going from T0 to T1 Empyrean, for instance, meant far more than a 2x increase in relative strength. It seemed a little more reasonable when put in that perspective.

One night nearing the end of his third shard season, about four years into his time in the Pure Yang lands, he saw Kain wandering over to his side of the mountain.

“What’s up?” said Zane. He set down his buns and got up. He’d been happily spectating the Yang league, as per usual. Kain almost never broached his side.

“My muffling runes appear to have been overloaded,” said Kain, looking quite miffed. “In the middle of my midnight meditation session. Continuing proved impossible. I could hardly hear myself think in the middle of all this… what exactly is all this?”

Zane nodded down at the valley, where a vicious battle was underway—nine dragons against twelve wizards. “Makes sense. It’s the biggest battle of the season so far.”

“Hm.”

“They’re a newcomer this league, actually. Pretty exciting stuff. They’re a coven of explosion wizards. They’re the first folk who’ve managed to actually stand up to the dragons in ages. They don’t really cast spells; they just keep lobbing these rune-bombs.”

“I see,” said Kain. His brow furrowed. “Just how long do you expect this’ll last?”

“Another hour or two, give or take. Feel free to watch too, by the way. I could get out an extra chair. I’ve got some extra steamed buns.” He waved his bag of buns.

Kain hesitated.

“Just try it,” said Zane. “It’ll only go on for another hour.”

“Very well,” said Kain. “Just this once.”

“Neat.” Zane got out another chair.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Kain dryly. “There’s a reason I keep to tomes and quills. It’s simply not my thing.”

***

Four hours later—

“What do they think they’re accomplishing, burning out their arsenal like that?” Kain was on his feet. The explosion wizards had just launched what they thought was a back-breaking assault on Jaxary’s position—only to find her emerge from the smoke, barely burned, ready for vengeance. “Now they’ve done it.”

“They’ll survive,” said Zane. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“They’ve ceded the high ground.” Kain looked upset. Sure enough, the rune wizards were now being beaten into a sorry retreat. “The fight’s finished. How is it that one can execute near-perfectly for four hours, then throw it all away on a blunder as baffling as that?”

“You should’ve seen them at Horn Hill just a few weeks back,” said Zane. “It’s kind of their thing.”

“Horn Hill?”

“The one over there, that looks kind of like a horn?”

“Ah. …That is not a horn.”

“Well, that’s its name,” said Zane, frowning. “If you have a problem with it, go name your own thing.”

“Fair enough.”

From that day on, every Monday and Friday night, Zane and Kain watched the Yang league, eating steamed buns as they did.

***

By the end of that season, Zane had scavenged 4 shards of Destruction through regular meteor drops and 8 from the end-of-season shower—bringing his total count up to 36.

***

More letters from his friends came into his Scryer’s guild mailbox.

“I made it through!” cried Evan. Behind him stood Chomper, wagging his tail.

It had taken three quite frightening years, but he’d finally emerged from that vast four-level cave system. He happily narrated what had gone down.

The Boss ruling those cavern floors was called the ‘Nightmare King’—a boss so big he seemed to span half a floor all on his own. He seemed to be able to make any patch of darkness part of himself, so it was like fighting this giant, grinning night sky. It felt so daunting that at first, Evan wasn’t even sure where to start tackling it all.

To make things worse, the Nightmare King made liberal use of fear magics. Shrieks that would shake the soul, nightmare-inflicting attacks, and these extremely difficult-to-block sleep spells all made the guy quite the challenge, by the sounds of it. Even trying his best, Evan just couldn’t get his sunbeams through. And his beams just kept getting weaker and weaker as he felt his hope and confidence getting chipped away.

It took some self pep-talking, along with a long think about the power of friendship, for Evan to muster the gumption to give it one last final battle. This time he was able to fight the Nightmare King to a standstill, dispelling that vast darkness. It turned out the darkness-spirit look was just an avatar. The King was really this powerful old lich who wielded it as an intimidation tool. In the end, Chomper made the final difference—he snuck up behind the King as the King was monologuing and simply chomped him up.

“I think it made Chomper evolve…?” said Evan. “I’m not really sure… Chomper has this new moon symbol on his head now!”

Chomper barked. There was now a crescent moon symbol on his dark head. Chomper’s devouring abilities had also grown to include spells with peak Tier 6 Laws.

“I think we’re through with most of the hard bits!” said Evan. The difficulty was meant to ebb for a while, then ramp back up when they approached the Delver King—all the way up at Floor 99.

He gave Zane a wave. He couldn’t wait to see him, Reina, and Avery again.

Zane smiled as he finished up the letter and wrote Evan back. He always liked hearing what Evan got up to. His own updates were much less eventful. Not much happened other than his strength-ups and various Yang league shenanigans. He did note the latest neat boulders he’d seen on his various expeditions into the valley, along with little scrying images of them.

Evan was quite interested in the Pure Yang land, partly for all the giant starfire-cracked boulders, partly for all the starlight here. There was quite some overlap with his own laws. He hoped to one day get his own Galaxy Gear and check it out, but that’d likely be far down the line. Maybe not until the end of the war.

Now Evan was moving onto a floor composed entirely of beast tamers—he wasn’t allowed to battle himself there, bafflingly. It was some tower-mandated rule. Instead he had to use beasts he befriended. He’d have to clear the region’s 12 ‘Trial Captains,’ as well as the ‘Elite Eight’ and the Champion. Luckily, he had Chomper by his side.

Avery, much like Zane, also didn’t have that much going on.

“I got unbanned!” she explained. It’d been a temporary five-year ban. This proved catastrophic for her general health and fitness progress, which had been going quite well until then, she assured him.

She still seemed quite convinced that in the next forty years or less, she would be the strongest being in the Galaxy. “I just need to get over this gaming stuff,” she said seriously.

Honestly, he was still a bit doubtful. Avery still had offered no evidence of the vast strength gains she claimed were definitely occurring. He supposed they’d just have to wait and see.

Nothing much had changed on Reina’s end either. She was still hard at work in her skill grind. She did have one update that he quite enjoyed.

There was this soul defense array she’d been setting up that they were calling the ‘Grand Astral Shield’—an array that ran the length of the World Tree, a truly monumental undertaking that’d taken years to set up. She’d managed to link the World Tree’s vast essence pool to it, finally granting the World Tree protection from Malzareth’s constant soul assaults. It’d also protect all the World Tree’s inhabitants.

“Now his soul attacks won’t even be able to touch me,” she said. “Even if he manages to break loose of all the Superdungeon’s bindings. He’d have to corrupt the World Tree first.”

***

Kain maintained that he wasn’t a Yang league fan, at least not like Zane was. Kain was only interested in the fates of the rune wizards. He didn’t root for or against anyone else.

Zane, meanwhile, had a few camps he was invested in. There were his Stone Axes, but he also quite liked this band of lightning berserkers. And he was heavily anti-dragon, who felt to him quite full of themselves, on top of being boringly dominant most seasons.

***

At the end of that shard season, Zane’s shard count climbed all the way up to 48, and he finally achieved his fifth Star-Crushing slash. With it, stacked on top of his Charge, he could finally one-shot Shard Bosses—though not without needing a heavy recovery period afterward. Still, it felt like an important milestone.

Before he knew it, he was 9 years into his journey in the Pure Yang. By his estimate, he was more than halfway done with his time here. He was quite happy with it; it felt like quite a productive 9 years.

One unassuming day in the offseason, right after work, he received a letter from the Barbarian Sage. It contained updates about the boot camp gym the Sage was busy preparing for the next time they met.