Accidental Reaver

Chapter 208 - 207: Risk to Evolution

Red sunlight breached through the elemental mist in the Western Front. A black pentagram imprinted itself on the celestial body for a blink of an eye before dissipating. Luke thought he'd been seeing things until the Defier's mark rose to the back of his left hand. A signal passed through his synapses. Its heat pushed back his self-generated cold and frost.

Intuitively, he knew it. A Defier had died. Who exactly wasn't clear, only that one of the eight other Defiers' long servitude ended. The Reaver took the Tide all the more seriously. None of the Defiers were pushovers—any hubris went out the window.

He detonated frost under him on the Envoy's skin, back flipping away from the muscle-bound beast's retaliation. In mid-air, he checked on Sooty through Reaver's Link. Her speed was respectable, but not instant. She'd yet to bring Lilly back to the ramparts.

Around the frosted and mist-filled tundra, the red sunlight thinned. Swirling snow kept the battlefield contained for an elongated period. The Reaver needed the isolation to calculate the power needed to devour the Ichor's regeneration. When he slid Xera into the Envoy's body with a pulse of frost, he located its hearts. One in its right shoulder, the other in its left chest.

Do these things have any abilities? Or is it a mass of Ichor and attributes? My theft is going off like crazy. Eldacar said they would, but this one hasn't done anything all that special.

Envoy's vocal cords vibrated soundlessly. Someone without control in the air would miss it, but the vibrations passed through Luke's Mist Shroud. On cue, hunters and other monsters alike started to flood toward his location, faster than before. Influences and instincts all crept into his mind, ruthlessly crushed by the Spectral Heart's and Golden Stigmata's effects.

A signal. Is that its ability? To act like a beacon? Or is it inherent to all Envoys? Fuck, this lack of knowledge makes things worse than expected.

Focusing in on hunters and other 'allies' coming this way, Luke spat on the frozen tundra. "I don't know who sold me out, but they're mistaken if they think it'll be this easy to get rid of me."

Whispering Tome opened its pages with frost-etched runes. A gray domain pinned the Envoy as its center. Silent Domain ended those vibrations. The other monsters, once rushing toward them like a flood, became lost in the mist again. Still, enough closed in, the Reaver surmised the 'alone time' with the Envoy would end soon. It's Ichor aura nullified the horror effect and heavily reduced the slowing effect, but caked-on frost already made the beast slower than Luke.

The frost condensing over Xera began to glint gold. Luke side-stepped, avoiding the gigantic Envoy's crushing blow. The Reaver stabbed Xera into the overextended arms, slicing, albeit with hefty resistance. He felt attribute theft flow into him, interacting with the greed concept to amplify itself. Infusion danced back around Xera, a frost marked Siphon appeared on the Envoy's forehead. It's other arm blurred, Luke summoned an ice barrier, pointing an index finger upward. The arm and ice barrier collided, bursting it apart. The unavoidable impact crippled the attack's momentum enough that the Reaver detonated the frost all around the Envoy's body, seeping the Greed Concept into it simultaneously. It bled like a sieve, all its blessings set about to overturn the damage, regeneration going into overdrive.

Frosting runes etched into the Envoy's skin as more attributes funneled into Luke. He pulsed ice inside the beast, meeting the Ichor's transmuted thermal heat. Essence Bond renewed on Xera, while afflicting the Envoy. Its persistence effect warred against regeneration and strengthening aura. Twisting Xera into a wand, Luke burst an Essence Lance inside the monster, ripping into the central heart. Ruinous Echo intertwined with the elemental frost to further dampen resistance and amplify consumption. White blood leaked onto the frost underneath. A gray elemental mark glowed luminously, sucking in the divine touched liquid. The second Essence Lance couldn't quite pierce through the mounds of muscle—reinforced by the white aura—to reach the heart placed in the Envoy's right shoulder. While its internals were a right mess, it also showed signs of regeneration already.

Luckier monsters stumbled into the eye of the blizzard and mist storm swirling around Luke. He could ruin visibility, interfere with speed, disrupt guidance, but couldn't stop dumb luck. Silent Domain stood tall, silencing the creatures from alerting any of its brethren for now. Aware of their presence, the Reaver made a snap plan.

Things are going to get hectic, and this brute has the key to Xera's evolution. I need to take some risks to overwhelm that regeneration in time before this place turns into a flood of enemies.

So far, the battle had bordered on easy, far from the warning Eldacar gave not so long ago. Compared to then, he reached a higher tier, evolved to be an elemental, grew a sub-step in Elementalization, among many other things. Plus, every second, he felt attributes flood in. Each strike, elemental command, or leeching from Siphon, fed him like a funnel. This thing's greatest strength, its blessing and attributes, turned into greater power for the Reaver. Luke knew better than to think it would go so smoothly against multiple Envoys, and unless the Mist Shroud was tampered with, at least five fumbled their way here.

Going all in, the Reaver let the Envoy wail on him. His elemental body could take it, backed by attributes and the Golden Stigmata. Damage dealt partially turned into healing received. And the longer this went, the weaker the blessed creature became. Living ice shattered, reformed, and sinful iced lifeblood mixed with its holy opponent. Withering Pulses lowered the Envoy's damage another step. Master crafting an ice claw over his hand, Luke further tore open the hole Xera blasted agape. Witnessing the shredded heart in the creature's chest already partially regenerating, a cold determination settled over the Reaver.

Temporal North.

Wayfinder shone in response. Two additional ice-crammed Essence Lances appeared inside the Envoy once more. Luke's ice armor crumbled on his back from the Envoy's instinctive prying. His strength attribute elevated enough to allow him to forcibly cling inside the wound. Its mouth opened to cry out—Silent Domain denied the pleasure. This time, he sent both Lances toward the shoulder heart, obliterating it. He funneled horrendous amounts of essence to Xera. The wand crackled with the energy, a black beam tinged with gold ate at the remaining heart. The tenacious beast encased it in all its white aura, struggling to stay alive. Gold flecks ate away at it, growing each second. Not risking it, the elemental human commanded the blizzard to rush in, imploding around the Envoy.

After multiple catastrophic, damaging explosions, the thing's unbelievable vitality kept it alive. The Reaver achieved his more immediate goal of exhausting the Ichor's white aura. Its chest heart weakly beat. Lightning arced all across Luke's body. He vaulted in. A frosted escort primed the way. Reaching out to the mutilated organ, Sin crushed it mercilessly, rime coated it, and black-gold essence consumed it. A sharp, magnificent pulse scrubbed the Reaver's brain, as foreign knowledge yielded. Drops of Ichor—purer than what he obtained back in the Shimmering Expanse—came into him. Following that, a white hot star, stolen away from the Envoy's death, touched Xera.

The sword-wand audibly shuddered as a black storm clouded her. She floated, turning the gigantic Envoy into a pit of gore, causing Luke to fall over ten feet. High-pitched hissing transversed the field. A white chain rushed to wrap around the evolving weapon. Luke stamped with Triple Step and clutched it with a hand during its transit. A familiar rejection approached his consciousness.

A World Law rejecting Xera's evolution? Who permitted you? Me?

Perfectly aware of the unsustainable damage he'd take forcibly halting the chain would inflict, Luke contemplated using the Patchwork active on his hand. That is, until a different idea struck him, and luck of his own appeared.

Sooty landed on his shoulder, waiting for instructions. Concern etched her eyes as she curiously inspected Luke's rapidly melting hand wrenching back the World Chain. The worldly manifestation was insistent on suffocating Xera's upgrade. Conjuring an ice platform with atmospheric moisture, the Reaver stood on it, letting the living ice sizzle and race to reform against the holy chain decreeing Xera heretical with maddened whispering.

"Sooty, see the uninvited guests down below? Gather them up."

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To assist his trusty corvid, Luke ignored the extreme pain in his right arm—currently melting apart—and opened up his left hand. An Essence Fissure piled up monsters and a few converted tier 1 hunters, from one end. A glacial wall gave them a stopping point, gathering them, and the blizzard flurried into the building mass. Silent Domain vanished sometime ago, leading to a loud cacophony coming from the literal thousands of monsters.

Sooty dived down, picking on one of the vitality specialized tier 2 monsters under the Tide's influence. While that made it moderately more powerful, it also got rid of any self-awareness. She tore into the creature, Reaver Beak decimated its armor, a secondary talon gash followed after Talon Strike, lowering resistances—Vorpal Rot spread upon its neck.

Going for as much area damage as she could produce, Sooty summoned her Shadow Wing Shade, allowing it to absorb the retaliation. Shadows coiled at her beak as she opened it wide. Sooty enlarged from Gigantification, priming the next attack. Wings of Reaver applied under that, turning the assault into irresistible true damage.

An ear bleeding dual Essence Screech left both Sooty and the Shadow Wing copy, infused with shadow and brown rot. On top of being controlled by frosting pressure and blitzed by Luke's blizzard, rime and shadow engulfed the thousands of targets. Collapsing the ice and frost near the glacial wall, Veins of Corruption festered in the herd of Tide-controlled monsters. Arcane damage wormed in through the elemental ice. Siphon, shadows, and cataclysmic rot spread like a blight, jumping alongside the trifecta of essence debuffs.

Vitality wisps coiled into Luke's mutilated and melting right arm, feedback from one ring's Blood Weave Artisan effect, and Vein's of Corruption's life return per spell. Which, when Elementalization deals damage the same second Siphon spread, worked out that way. Unfortunately, only Blood Weave Artisan worked at all times when the Reaver commanded frost for harm, but this trick would reverse heinous amounts of damage. Allowing his multiple means of regeneration to work in tandem with the influx of healing. Being living ice had advantages, like reforming melted, wriggling flesh.

The black essence storm around Xera grew abyssal in its pitch. Swirls multiplied around her. Luke's blizzard was torn asunder. Gray smoke rose from the wand's weapon body, greedy gold imprinted on her nominally white design. The laughs of the undead mixed against angelic damnation from the World Law chain. Weaker creatures below flattened their ears and lay on the ground.

Stronger ones jumped to snap at the Reaver, only for Sooty to tear their neck apart with a shadowed beak or smash them back down with a swipe of her talons. Unexpectedly, the Reaver's elemental mists sucked into Xera, exposing him to the gazes of the hundreds of thousands. Five Envoys, each a different design, entered the fray. Luke felt the disgusting holy Ichor dwelling within them. Their titanic size made them easy to pick out from the masses of beasts.

Ah, fuck me. Xera, you're killing me, smalls.

Listening to his battle instincts, Luke let the frost and snow below billow up, creating another visual curtain. It would confuse many, but its distortion effect was incomparable to the command the Reaver had over the Mist Shroud. The thunderous rushing of incalculable hostiles came to tear a forgotten soldier apart.

Luke took a mental snapshot. Essence Fissure closed up at the most inopportune time. Xera's busy. Sooty's already keeping far too many off me. This chain occupies itself on me, instead of smothering Xera's chance. I wanted to keep this back, for when things got spicy around the other Envoys.

Due to the numerous elemental maneuvers and Xera's taking of the mists, the snow, and frost, ice in the local terrain reached a dusting in quantity. That last move used what little snow was left over to cover for the lack of the Mist Shroud's optical scrambling. Now that Xera absorbed the whole damn thing to herself, Luke was unusually exposed. On top of that, most of the ambient frost whirled into her. Luke naturally held superior control and could stop it, but he trusted Xera needed the fuel.

I swear to God, wait. Gods here eat people. World Spirit, then. Xera, this upgrade better be something.

The chain flashed golden white, threatening to remelt Luke's arm. He tried funneling elemental power there to counter the damage, but the measure wasn't enough. While he was full on stamina and essence, health started to drop. With frost being consumed faster than he produced it for once, the Reaver's options plummeted in variability.

Five different heavy thumps came from various directions, encircling the Reaver. Each an Envoy, he sensed it in his blood, that same revulsion seeped into his veins.

Do I Rising West? Luke shook his head. That might solve the chain issue now, but just makes the oncoming problem all the more dangerous. Calling over Janeus is asking to get him killed, a waste of a piece. Calista is likely too far, even if I was willing to command her here. Holy hymns bled into the Reaver's ears and seared the already decimated right arm. An ocean of monsters below, and swarms of flying creatures near, Sooty kept back what she could, but she was only one bird. A not so insignificant fraction of them crashed into Luke, damaging him further, even as he commanded frost to crush them for the affront.

"You all want to tear out my heart? Come and get it."

A self-contained winter burst from the Spectral Heart, Frostfall Reave reinvigorated the terrain in frost and rime. The blizzard doubled in intensity, and the chain melting away Luke for his persistent defiance started to freeze instead. Its hymns settled, he sucked at the worldly power contained within, scrapping against it to continually activate the permanent Infusion applied to the Reaver. Blood Haze cleared his mind of the pain.

Commanding the new influx of frost, Luke focused it on one link of the chain, making each layer of rime fulminate until the physical manifestation of the world law weakened. A high pitched vibration expanded out from Xera. Black-gold essence went haywire. Any normal creature that came to stop her was consumed for fuel. Even the Envoys, now close enough to be within striking distance, were reluctant to challenge the unholy manifestation.

Except for one. Sleeker than the other four Envoys, the Reaver sensed a far denser concentration of Ichor in it, further developed than the others. Moreover, the monster spoke. Roses and dark trees bloomed from all around its vicinity.

"A tasty morsel, is this the Ninth Defier? How helpless." The voice held a tinge of femininity, underneath the deep bestial voice. It pressed down on black hooves, as curdling flowers birthed new corrosive poisons on its elongated metal nails.

Afterimages followed it as it rocketed up directly toward Xera. "An artifact attempting to subsume our Envoy Essence for itself. Quite the joke."

"The only joke here is you."

Ruthless to himself as he was to others, Luke imploded his right arm, the living ice fragmented the World Law chain, causing it to turn to dust. A crone's voice wormed into the Reaver's senses; he cut off its taunt. Triple Step crackled lightning around his legs, crushing the ice platform hovering in the air. He shot to intercept the abnormal Envoy. He concocted a plan with Sooty over Reaver's Link.

It turned its head to Luke, a devilish smile on its lips. "Coming to serve yourself to me? I don't bite too hard, Defier."

Black tree growths spawned from the Satyr Envoy. Four wooden pillars seemed to crush the Reaver, before a rotating Essence Lance tore open a new hole, with a black feeler snapped in half, misting away. He threw the other lance while streaking toward the blessed creature. It demurely smiled, green-pink vines lashed out to intercept the attack. Luke shattered an orbiting fragment to curve the lance's trajectory. Sooty hopped out of the shadows, raking her talons across the Satyr's exposed ribs. The Envoy clearly thought to ignore the corvid until Vorpal Rot sank in, making Ichor aura rise from within to clash against it. Calculating the projectile's speed, it turned for an instant. Consuming the other three shards, Essence Lance rocketed, piercing the Envoy through the chest.

Aiming to catch attention, Sooty Essence Screeched in the air, annoying the Envoy enough to earn a hateful glare. Spatial Distortion rang from her Spatial Feather, conjuring multiple afterimages of Sooty, and ruining the Envoy's senses. It thrashed around, with a lucky flail, it smashed a tree-grown arm into Luke as he connected with the Satyr. He flew down, splattering weaker monsters on the ground that served as a landing pad. Nonetheless, with contact, he succeeded in locating the Satyr's hearts, its upper leg, and the other was mobile from the looks of it in that short contact.

Beasts ripped into him as an equal ferocious blizzard froze them to death. Many lost their senses, stuck in Sooty's Spatial Distortion. Xera descended, the black essence storm started to calm, and other creatures swarmed in like bears to honey. An Essence Fissure opened its maw above them, smashing their bodies in the Reaver's glacial embrace. He felt tempted to use the Greed Concept here, but it wore at him, and could only come out for limited bursts currently. Thus, he kept it for Xera, his mist-stealing sword. Naturally, the Satyr Envoy crashed down beside him, with Sooty torturing it. It had no lucky strikes against a much smaller target.

Backhanding it with the full power of the strength attribute, the sheer power threatened to tear apart the ice elemental's hand. Still, its intended effect worked out, the massive body bulldozed away one side of the horde readying to eat him alive. Xera settled into Luke's left hand, with the right one currently regenerating. In no position to inspect her just yet, the Reaver applied Infusion to the strangely silent, upgraded sword-wand. Flecks of gold empowered her first strike. In dire need of spread damage, Luke used the Corrupting Aura active from his Sovereign Crystal, nearly bottoming out his health. He felt a resonance between Xera and him, far deeper than before, aided by an inexplicable flexibility.

A black and gold sword arc left the attack, accompanied by regular black arcs in a cone. Like a farmer harvesting wheat, hundreds of condensed monsters and converted hunters died, often in pieces. Veins of Corruption spread to the fodder, and Luke's health went on a roller coaster, topping out before rapidly draining again. Some of the monsters in this oceanic Tide of creatures must've had respectable attributes, as the Reaver's stats steadily advanced. Swirls of gold decorated Xera, with each swing, the incarnation of sin recovered, making a self-created sea of gore.

The wave tactic well and truly died against him. Tens of thousands to come, but in a mere hour, they fell one after the other. Attributes from all over fed into the Reaver, coming to a halt toward the end of that hour. It appeared even the minority of elite tier 2 creatures failed to promote growth anymore, outside of possible special attributes. Each time the injuries stacked up too much, he leveled, resetting damage. He lost count of how many times the process happened. After slaughtering a tier 2 elite Nether Behemoth, every creature without Ichor fell and fed into the blanketing snow. Leaving five to left to stand against the greed-infested walking blizzard of a man—the best for last, Luke supposed.

Recovered fully and stronger than ever, Luke pointed his weapon at the Black Satyr Envoy, which intelligently regrouped with the other four Ichor holding beasts. He opened his mouth to speak, a sword scream commanded the battlefield instead. One Concept filled slash bore itself into the Banner Holder, Yuriel. The strongest creature in the Tide careened back into a distant mountain, shattering its top. An enraged blood mist with locusts enveloped the skies, reaching even where Luke vied for command.

The locusts swarmed, nesting into lower level hunters and defenders outside the barriers. They all froze to death trying to swarm into Luke's elemental zone. Off in the distance, a composed, yet furious voice echoed.

"A lovely greeting, Musai. Allow me the honor of returning the favor," Yuriel said.

An aged voice answered, appearing in the sky to the far north of the battlefield, level with the now destroyed mountain. "Honor is for the fortunate and foolish, Vampiric Apostle. Your hunger for blood better be greater than your middling skills. You serve one purpose, and I shall reveal it to you soon enough."