Accidental Reaver

Chapter 224 - 223: Meric's Crossing

Golden flecked ice splattered in waves into the Fanged Cloudbeasts and Shifting Fiends.Sooty blitzed from one monstrous shadow to another, aiming for Cloudbeast's hearts or necks, and the Fiend's Achilles Tendon.

Luke began to unleash the inner-beast he'd been chaining down ever since waking up from the recovery ward, static ripped into reality. He noticed the enemies were reluctant to step into Iona's Domain range. They went as far as clinging to the water wall's edge. Darkness intensified like a sudden midnight. The wet slap of feet against semi-physical light paths reverberated unpleasantly in Meric's Crossing.

Xera giggled like a school kid when Luke bisected a cloudbeast. Dark gold spiraled off attacks with the sword-wand, forming an aura. Slivers of attributes wormed into Luke, elevating his power bits at a time. A blue-gold Essence Fissure flanked the monsters on the Reaver's side.

He fed a dual Essence Lance into the fissure, a vertical shard storm pincushioned the beasts. The pressure slid most of the creatures into Iona's domain, where they lost a hefty chunk of their speed and strength. Activating some of his AOE active, Veins of Corruption, each swing turned into a cone effect. While Luke rarely killed anything in one strike, under so many suppressive effects, the impressive attributes and tier of these beings merely extended their expiration date.

Parched, the tendrils of greed drank deep. Agility. Intellect. Hit Points. All of these funneled into Luke. The confrontation became a feeding ground. Monster guts and viscera piled up, limbs dismembered, the once gray waters tinged red with blood. Despite his efficiency, the Reaver devastated his side at the same rate Iona did. Where he often worked in tandem with Sooty, and flung around Concept-backed ice like it was effortless, Iona channeled her Domain effectively. Dozens of the irate enemies fell. When their greatest strengths, intangibility and numbers, catastrophically underperformed, the threat they posed vanished.

The waters festering with monstrous inhabitants settled. No new denizens of the depths came out onto the lightforged crossing. After tabulating the attribute and level gains by intuition, a seed of an idea bloomed in the fields of greed entwined in Luke's being.

"Iona, is there a rough limit to how many of these cloudbeasts and the upright jellyfish knock-offs come out on this floor?"

"Jellyfish?"

"Ignore that. The fiends."

"Right…" Iona raised an eyebrow, scanning the crossing, including the gray oceans on each side. "In theory, the Tower can only generate so many of these creatures from all the negative ether it stocks up."

"What if I use the anchor behind us as a lure? Will the effect wear off eventually?"

Iona's answer was a long, drawn-out sigh. "It's always something with you, isn't it? Most would be ecstatic to overcome Meric's Crossing ambushes like the one we thwarted with all limbs intact. Yes, Luke, its lure effect is temporary."

"Most have the luxury of time. I do not. Or at least, he doesn't." Luke trailed back to the anchor point. It beheld no symbol. "If it all goes south, do you have a recall scroll on hand? How else do you get out of this Tower anyway? Manually walk all the way back? That can't be it either, as the spawn point on the first floor, the sky above bleeds into literal nothingness."

Luke paused in front of the anchor. "I learned something interesting, and you yourself mentioned it off-handedly, Iona."

"And what would it have to do with this action of yours, Luke?" Iona signaled to her two companions with a low whistle.

"Every tier, monsters continue to outscale the four races in raw attributes. By the third tier, if you have no technique at all or extreme attribute training, you become reliant on Domain manipulation, based on my observations. That's not an issue that affects you or me, but it illustrates a point that's too potent to ignore."

"A common pattern, yes. We four races bridge the gap with superior abilities, attribute training, or, like you said, techniques. It's been an issue plaguing the Edgelands as a whole for centuries and easily the main contributor to why the vast portion of hunters fail to climb the tier 3 cliff." A green spring zone spread underneath the elf. Vines crawled up her forearms.

"That issue becomes my greatest opportunity here." Luke tapped the anchor point. A high keening that made one's hair stand on its end spread throughout Meric's crossing, reaching into the gray ocean walls.

He oriented toward the worst of the two surging oceanic walls with Xera at the ready. Monsters rose from the depths and crevices where none saw reason to tread.

Luke's frame paled in stature against the rising onslaught, like a man standing in front of an oncoming tsunami. Insignificant in the face of nature's wrath. On Earth, such actions were impossible. Death was certain.

"I'm tired, Iona. Mediocrity is no different than a wasted life to me. If the oceans of complacency will steal my dreams and hopes from me, a teaspoon at a time? Then let me freeze it whole."

"And if it gets you killed?" Iona's Domain condensed, fragments imbued her nocked arrows.

"A life is only worth keeping if you find it worth living. Stagnation is just delayed death. I don't crave the safety of obscurity. It turns all ambitions to dust. Steps like these are required to leave this wasteland behind."

Iona laughed, the emotion unreadable. "Did you have to drag me down to the depths of madness with you? Even for a Defier, you're closer to a deranged dolt than a crazed genius." Lulu set up her illusions near Iona, Timber pawed at the ground, facing the building monster waves.

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"Use your recall scroll if you wish. Just tell me how to get out of the Tower without one."

"Simple, kill a raid boss down here, or slay one thousand monsters in a region. It's a party wide requirement. I could do five hundred, and you do yours. After that point, we're free to go." Each of Iona's muscles glided, Granular Control exemplified her graceful power. "Lulu, Timber, we control our end. The three of us have faced similar foolishness before, haven't we?" She smiled at her two beast companions.

Lulu unfurled her wing-spawn. Timber roared. Lightning sparked in the darkness, running across the twin gray oceanic walls. Sooty's shadows spilled like black ink onto the ground, bleeding over into each wall.

Temperatures dropped drastically; water froze, cracking apart when a gaggle of Fanged Cloudbeasts crashed into the thin barrier. Several more such monsters spilled onto the floor. They stacked up, but flurries of ice and flows of frost stilled their advance.

Luke set Xera to the side, enchanting her with Essence Bond once more. Infusion danced between Sooty and Xera—flecks of gold wormed their way into the creatures, expanding the frost at a frightening rate. Luke activated Nemenoth's Sovereign Crystal, turning his attacks into a cone effect.

Siphon appeared on the centralmost monster. Sooty screeched, spreading Siphon and the immense amount of debilitating effects that Luke and his team accumulated at this point in their journey.

Despite the floods of monsters attacking, it almost seemed like they were rearing back from him rather than the other way around. Iona pressed herself against a water wall. Timber traveled through, attacking with his Thunder Paw. Lulu's illusions kept their positioning from being locked in.

The improvised team often swapped sides from one to the other. Iona would use her techniques and abilities to strengthen her two companions attacking one side, while Luke used his frost to freeze the other.

With each swing of his weapon, multiple monsters suffered debilitating wounds, and the tendrils of greed fed on their attributes, strengthening Luke each time. Piles of bodies began to form between the efforts of all involved. Whenever their numbers became overwhelming, Luke would reset the situation, ripping open an Essence Fissure. Frost would spread, tendrils of the Greed Concept infected golden frost—starting its own cycle, feeding on the vitality of the monsters.

Iona had to stop herself from looking over in curiosity one too many times, and she took a needless blow. Sooty dived in and out, malleable shadows assisted her. When Luke finally started to display just a modicum of exhaustion, Sooty used Spatial Distortation to draw attention to herself. With too many monsters attacking one focal point, it became like herding sheep.

Multiple AOE effects mowed and weakened them down; if it wasn't for the absolutely overwhelming sheer number of them, this couldn't even be considered a challenge. Siphon, Essence Bond, Vorpal Touch, Withering Pulse, even Sooty's talon gash—all of these effects spread upon the monsters. Anytime Golden Frost crept onto one, it also applied these effects.

The pressure from Essence Fissure piled up these monsters far faster than they naturally intended to do so. Luke's attacks turned into a cone effect with each swing, slaughtering many of the monsters once he started to understand their anatomy better. Eventually, he was able to slice the Fanged Cloudbeasts in one or two strikes.

The other type, Ether Fiends, proved more difficult. Their HP pool was higher and intelligence better integrated into their combat style. Occasionally, one would dodge, and others would cover for them, using the Fanged Cloudbeasts as meatshields. Iced meatshields.

On the other hand, such efforts often fell flat. Luke's frost simply slowed them down far too much, and he himself was far faster than any of them. Iona's Domain fed into that problem as well; many of their advantages disappeared the second they stepped into her radius.

While the pair couldn't set up a chokehold—being surrounded by the oceanic, gray, bubbling water walls on both sides—they could take this small area of the path between them as their own territory. Luke's frost. Iona's nature. Lulu's illusions. Sooty's shadows alongside Timber's thunder. It was like a multicolored Elemental Plane within one area.

Minutes passed, then half an hour. The once endless stream of monsters stemmed, becoming far less of an issue. It became a trickle. Once a trickle, a dried riverbed. Pools of blood formed and froze beneath.

Luke noticed that attribute growth had ceased entirely, outside of the occasional lucky theft of a special attribute. With that confirmation, he knew trying to lure monsters again was pointless. Originally, this act was to abuse the fact that higher-tier monsters possessed much higher attributes than hunters of the same tier—ripe for the taking.

With a splitting slice, he killed the last of the monsters alongside Iona. It was hard to say who had killed more than the other. Internally, Luke had to respect the fact that Iona, despite all his growth, clearly was still at least close to his equal. Sure, he could write it off as her Domain being the reason—but all the same. She was no slouch.

"I nearly went full throttle, and you kept up tit for tat, Iona."

"Can't let my junior pass me by without a fight. My reputation as Sylen's best beastmaster is at stake here."

Sooty landed on Luke's shoulder, exhausted. Whispering Tome settled on a relatively pristine patch of ice. The keening from the anchor point ceased. Luke went around collecting loot, leaving a fair share for Iona. A meledy of monster limbs floated about in the gray waters. Lulu plopped on top of Timber, complaining with loud hoots. Timber panted, tongue out.

Sloughing off monster visceria via ice shedding, the Reaver practically became a janitor. Minutes later, except for the red tinge in the upright water barriers, there was no trace of a battle. Typically, resting in Meric's crossing at any point was a bad idea, as it developed a reputation for cloudbeast ambushes. Obviously, that issue mattered not if you made all cloudbeasts on your floor in the region go extinct.

Luke leveled up two times during the fight, reaching level 70. Withering Echo also went up a rank through repeated application. He applied some magic crystal bleach to a spare cloth and cleaned up Sooty. Lulu as well, after she asked. Timber casually dove into the gray waters and came back out a soaked bear. Iona sprouted withered vines that sucked up the moisture.

"That's incredibly handy for drying off. What else can you do with those vines?" Luke said.

"A hectic place for extended conversation, Luke. Once we're rested, we travel the rest of the crossing until we reach Meric's dwelling at the end."

Xera flew through the air from one side of the anchor point to another, black essence misted off her blade body. "We were unstoppable! Every slash, a cone of cold. Every pierce a rushing flurry, and each smash a golden avalanche. It was almost too easy."

Feeding Lulu and Timber a restorative herb, Iona focused on the task. She said, "Stunts like that get weaker tier 3 parties killed. You're bereft of any normal standards, Xera." The elf bandaged up Timber, who took the most damage on her side. "I wanted to see what an elemental human was truly capable of. It's shocking, like a rose sprouting thorium-tipped thorns. Annika often has an entirely different style compared to you."

Brushing off Sooty, Luke said, "I'm still getting used to being an elemental. Tons of practice, and yet, I often intuitively know my ceiling is far from mastered. How to best use ice with a Concept, then that with the spells, each attack, item effects, positioning, enemy abilities, my group, and add in any teammates like you. I need an internal battle IQ far higher than what I possess."

"Chin up. No one becomes a master in a day. Change at your speed is bound to come up with some growing pains." She rounded up Lulu and Timber, her Domain expanded out, converting to scouting instead of power. "Since you've gone and plummeted the creatures on this floor to critically low levels, we're almost certainly free and clear to walk directly to the end of this place. Can't be too careful, however."

Traveling down the crossing, the team made fast paced headway. The waters were still. The darkness ineffectual against either Defier. Humid air brushed against Iona's Domain, then filtered itself. Sticking ozone radiated everywhere. With each step, ether pressure amplified until they stopped before a sandbank.

Each gray ocean inverted, feeding into a single shallow water bed. The sky above glittered in linear starlight. A helix absorbed the radiance. A thin translucent divider separated Luke and Iona from the creature striding atop the water bed like a dragonfly.

[Meric, Warden of Descent] (Raid Boss)

Tier: 3

Level: 90

HP: 500,000/500,000

Warden to the Spire's depths. It harbors an unyielding hatred for any progeny of the cursed races. Sentenced in a past age, a relic that hunts the hunters. Yet another chained Sovereign.