Universe's End

Chapter 218: Regicide Redux Pt. 1

“Well, this is a little odd,” Rory said as he blinked his eyes in surprise. One moment, he was being pulled through an orange portal; the next, he was in… a place.

Technically, no, I could feel time and space warbling for a bit there, so some sort of disconnect in how long it felt and how long it’s actually been.

Ignoring weird timey-whimey shenanigans, as Rory took in the view, it was definitely a place.

No, really, what am I looking at?

The scale proportion just seemed off. For a moment, Rory thought he was atop a skyscraper, except skyscrapers didn’t usually bend and flow and branch upward together. Then he thought it was a forest, given that it was all clearly wood, except the trees were the size of small mountains.

It took several seconds before Rory finally pieced it together.

“Roots, god damn roots,” Rory muttered. What at first Rory had taken for a cityscape, and then a forest, was actually just a single root network of massive, well, roots, the size of skyscrapers, all flowing upward to connect to some massive mass overhead. The only reason there was any light –not that Rory would have had any trouble seeing through the dark with his eye skill— was that the air shimmered with a faint orange glow.

“Odd, very, very, odd,” Rory muttered as he realized he was merely standing upon a single ridge of one of many roots.

How exactly a collapsing domain, whatever caused this, no idea.

Rory’s impression of the area, aside from how odd it was, was that it felt, conceptually speaking, somewhere between a mind palace’s inner world, a domain, and whatever the fuck doohickery that non-physical delves operated through.

“Which might be exactly what this place is…” Rory mused, still looking around. The ‘portal’ had been opened when the King’s spire-reinforced domain was shattered. Added on the fact that the spire was already in a separate pocket of reality, and it wasn’t that wild a theory.

“Which gives me some ideas… For a different time,” Rory sighed. “Probably should focus on the now first.”

Spending several minutes longer getting a feel for the area, Rory’s eyes widened when, out of nowhere, an utterly massive bolt of orange lightning speared downward in the very center of the titanic root network. If that wasn’t enough, a moment after, hundreds of horizontal bolts of orange lightning flashed out, from one root to another.

“Terawa. I definitely got a taste of terawa in those bolts,” Rory said as he paced. “Or maybe terawa isn’t correct, but the movement concept within terawaw was the same.”

Pacing around even longer, Rory paused when he heard something, almost like a-

“Cliché as fuck,” Rory growled as he looked down, already confident of what he was about to see.

Yep, sure enough.

Skittering up the side of the massive root were tens of thousands of maggot-like creatures, orange phantasmal beasts as large as a dog, with hundreds of centipede-like legs tipped with blades.

Familiar. Really familiar. Wait…. Didn’t the first wyrm newt we ever saw summon something like these?

Comparing the memories in his mind, Rory nodded to himself. The similarities were enough that Rory figured the differences were a matter of individuality between the summoning monsters.

Except, you know, that very first newtling hadn’t summoned a sea of the things.

“Alright, so, hypothesis,” Rory said, still eying the wave of orange phanstmal maggots as they flowed up the root, a few minutes before they reached him. “These are summons from the King. Individually, pretty damn weak, but that’s a lot of them, and no idea if they’re going to ever stop coming. Taking a guess: Gotta ride the lightning.”

While saying it out loud sounded insane, Rory had recognized the movement concept carried within the orange lightning, so it wasn’t exactly a far-fetched idea.

“Big bolt of lightning is the signal that the littler bolts of lightning are about to fire off,” Rory continued, the skittering progressively growing louder. “Great.. So when is the next lightning strike?”

Pondering that question for seven minutes straight, Rory was finally forced to put it aside as the swarm was only a minute from reaching him.

“Don’t be overrun by maggot-centipede-newt-things first, riding lightning second. Easy.”

Flicking his hand upward, Rory focused, folding and deepening the pneuma forming his projection until moments before the swarm reached him, nearly twenty chakram-like items were spat out of their projection circles, swinging through the air like flying lawnmowers.

His ‘summons’ prepared, Rory readied himself with his staff, recycling as much external pneuma as he could so that he wouldn’t have to draw much from his own internal reserves. There were a lot of roots, and one glance around showed that his root wasn’t the only one being overrun.

Gotta be good with my usage.

Had there been no sense of time warbling upon entering this… place, Rory would have had some worries for Zoey, who had been unconscious at the time. Thankfully, during their ‘passage’ through the portal, time had distorted, and by now she’d likely recovered.

“Well, I’ve got myself to think about for the time being,” Rory sighed, lightning already building up. “Let’s just get this over with.”

I really, really hate newts, Zoey mentally sighed. She was lying on her back, arms crossed, her full-body metal manifestation in effect.

Now, why was she metal?

Because it was easier to just lie there like an anchor as the endless swarm of maggot-centipede-newt-things washed over her, failing even to scratch her metal body. Oh, sure, they tried really hard to hurt her, but the difference between her durability and their strength was just too much to be overcome. If they could even inflict a half of a half of a half of a percent worth of damage, sure, she’d have concerns with how many there were.

But they couldn’t, so Zoey continued to lie down as the little abominations swarmed over her.

Wonder what Rory is up to?

While Zoey was able to utterly ignore the sea of phantasmal monsters, Rory was probably having a grand time dealing with the endless deluge.

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Technically, she had no way of knowing if he was here. Of course, she had also known Rory for long enough that she doubted that he would abandon her to… whatever had caused her to appear wherever this was.

She’d been lying there for days now. She could have attempted to ride the lightning; she got a sense of something like terawa from the weird, horizontal, orange lightning that flashed between the roots.

Still, in truth, she couldn’t be bothered. If this were a real place to explore, sure, she’d get a kick out of that. As far as she could tell, though, the space was similar to a non-physical or portal delve, which is to say it wasn’t a real space. That was the difference between their top-of-the-mountain and bottom-of-the-mountain adventure. As hard as it was to wrap one’s mind around, everything within the bottom of the mountain, the Deep Chambers, was genuinely there.

Was it weird wacko-magic-bullshit that made it possible?

Sure.

But did it change the fact that those places, regardless of how much larger the floating planetoids and weird fake-space were than the mountain they existed within, all actually existed down?

Nope.

This, this was different. Zoey’s sense as an adventurer made that clear, even if she couldn’t get some sense of that just from the ‘feel’ of the place.

So, she continued to lie there, waiting for Rory to find her eventually. She didn’t require rescue, but, much like a lost child in a store, it was easier to be found if you stayed put.

And so, she remained there for days.

The lightning would ring out, the summoned monsters would vanish for roughly half an hour, then they’d return, rinse and repeat. The entire time, Zoey kept her aura sustainably flared.

Nearly two weeks of that later, did she finally feel it, a familiar aura appearing one root away.

Took him long enough.

Pushing herself to her feet, she dusted herself off, waiting the usual period for the next bolt of lightning to ring out, as a moment later, Rory seemingly materialized from thin air, his hair smoking lightly.

“This place sucks,” Rory sighed, the first words he’d said to her in two weeks.

“Really? I’ve just been bumming,” Zoey gestured toward the spot she’d been lying down for two weeks straight.

“Did… were you just hanging out this entire time?” Rory scoffed after a moment, able to get a feel of it just from how her aura seemed to have ‘stained’ the nearby zone.

“Yep,” Zoey said cheerily. “You know, back on Earth, there was this thing where you could get shrimp to pick the dead skin off of you. Tried it once myself, tickled. That’s basically been the last two weeks straight. Except, they were trying to eat me.”

“I hate you,” Rory grumbled. “Alright, we met back up, so, question. Now what?”

“You think the King is hiding somewhere?”

“Obviously,” Rory said.

“You think that-oh, hey, that’s new.”

Zoey pointed down below, where, when the swarm of monsters had once more reappeared, there were some distinct differences.

First, the sheer volume of monsters had massively decreased by a magnitude of thousands.

The other difference was that no longer was it the weird maggot-summons, but full-sized wyrm newts, the same kind that Zoey loved.

Well, alright, they weren’t exactly the same, given they also appeared like orange-y phantoms.

“Idea,” Zoey said, sticking her hand up like a student wanting to be called upon.

“Yeah?” Rory asked, stifling a snort.

“We kill them all.”

“And that’s not just because you hate them, right?”

“A little bit of that,” Zoey admitted. “But no, these are clearly summons, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, so maybe we kill them all, we trigger some sort of… next phase?”

“Ehh, seems reasonable,” Rory agreed. “Alright, we’ll go with that plan.”

“Awesome,” Zoey cracked her knuckles, ready to crush some of her hated enemy.

“Oh, one amendment,” Rory suddenly said.

“Already know I’m going to hate what you have to say.”

“I’m going to throw down a domain, but I can move an inch from my starting location to do that.”

“Can you sustain that?” Zoey asked, curious.

“Sure, I don’t need a full-strength domain, not again, monsters weaker than we are. I’ll alter the parameters, increase the range, decrease the power, and remove the ability to warp space. That way, it will just be a large field that I can siphon external magic from my claimed space.”

“Sure, you’re the magic nerd.”

“I mean, it’s not actually magic in the sense that- you know what, never mind, guess I won’t ever bother teaching you.”

“Wait, I can do a domain too?” Zoey suddenly said, eyes widening.

“Sure, but not if you call it nerd shit.”

“I never actually said ‘nerd shit’ exactly, that’s you telling on yourself.”

“Sure, whatever,” Rory rolled his eyes, projecting several chakrams that began to sweep through the air. “Here, a bit of extra help. Can you manage to keep them off for a bit?”

“Guess so,” Zoey sighed.

Having gotten her go-ahead, a magic circle in the shape of a clock appeared behind him, beginning to tick down. Within a minute, the swarm of hundreds of wyrm newts appeared as Zoey began zipping between the monsters and smashing their faces in. It was a stark contrast to how much they’d grown from the first time they’d fought a wyrm newt in tier seven, when a single wyrm newt had been a tough battle. It helped that her sword-steel skin skill allowed her to retain inverted attributes while maintaining a high level of defense.

That said, the tide of wyrm newts slowly grew closer and larger. Zoey simply wasn’t well-versed in large area denial.

But that also didn’t matter, because before it could ever shift into alarming territory, the clock struck zero, and it was as if they were suddenly plunged into the depths of space.

Or rather, like the depths of space had suddenly appeared around them.

One of the effects of his full-strength version of the domain was that he could ‘veto’ space; if something didn’t move along the points of space-time that he dictated, he could inflict massive damage. It wasn’t something he’d shown off against Apostolos, but that’s also because he’d still been fleshing out the domain at the time, and, with it capped at tier-seven capabilities, it was beyond his ability anyway.

As impressive as it sounded, it didn’t come without cost; the stronger the target within his space, the more costly it was on him to ‘enforce’ his verdict on the space. If he caught a tier-nine in the full-strength version of his domain, for example, if it decided to break his verdict, the backlash of attempting to enforce it on something so much stronger than he would be massive.

Of course, that was the full-strength version of his domain. What he’d manifested was a version without that effect. Its main purpose now was that it empowered him, for one, and two, he could siphon external pneuma from the space much more easily than he could dictate the movement of physical objects.

And the summons, thankfully, were themselves pneuma-born.

Within moments of his domain flaring to life, the summoned wyrm newts staggered and slowed, their energy being siphoned off to accelerate the drain even faster. Rory could instantly tell he was pushing against an objectively stronger force, that being the King itself. Thankfully, the King wasn’t directly empowering his summons, nor was it even directly here, almost as if the skill were running on autopilot.

Taking advantage of that, Rory continued to siphon away the magic, glowing crystals exploding into existence like stars being born in the vastness of space.

Oof, that’s actually a LOT of pneuma, more than I really considered. I’m… yeah, that’s HEAVY.

The sheer ‘weight’ of the domain began to double, then triple, as Rory felt like he was Atlas holding up the sky. Gritting his teeth, Rory was slowly pushed to one knee. Right before the point where Rory felt like he’d have to release the domain just from the sheer volume of pneuma it had siphoned away, a critical mass seemed to be reached, as the summons wyrm newts all plopped out of existence at once, splatters of orange ectoplasm painting their root.

It wasn’t the only thing that suddenly found itself colored orange.

“Bleh,” Zoey spat, suddenly covered in orange goo after the pack of wyrm newts she was in the middle of exploded. “Why? Why always me? I get eaten by oversized birds, covered in bird goo. I get covered in mud and dung on a trash planet, and now I’m covered in orange ji-”

“Zoey?” Rory raised his eyebrows as the woman sighed.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll stop bitching,” Zoey muttered, flicking her arms downward as casting off the goo. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Rory said as she rose back to his feet, dusting himself off. “Didn’t properly factor in that with such an expanded range, that was a lot of potential pneuma I could find myself soaking up.”

The domain had been dispelled as soon as he’d seen the wyrm newts explode, a metaphysical weight off his shoulders.

“Hmm, not sure a domain is all that it’s cracked up to be,” Zoey said as she examined Rory.

“Nah, it’s pretty dope,” Rory answered back. “I just still need work.”

“If you say so,” Zoey said with a chuckle before noticing Rory’s expression. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I figured out what’s next,” Rory said, still half frowning.

“Oh, really? That fast? How?” Zoey asked.

“Because of those.”

Pointing over Zoey’s shoulder, she turned around, her eyebrows climbing an inch.

“Yeah, I guess that does make it easy to figure out.”

Because if they thought the fighting was over, they were dead wrong. There, flying in the sky a short distance away and closing in quickly, was not one, but two of the King, each a phantasmal orange much as the prior summoned monster.

And on to phase five.