Universe's End

Chapter 232: Cruor-Shu, Archon of Crimson Wealds

“So much easier going rather than coming,” Rory sighed as he appeared on the familiar volcano he called home.

More like a summer home. Vacation home? Wait, most people don’t vacation on a volcano. Though in fairness, Hawaii was basically a bunch of volcanoes. Is this just Hawaii in the sky? And upside down? And not at all like Hawaii?

Putting the errant thought aside, Rory focused on why he’d made the trip in the first place.

“In and out, just picking up the kid,” Rory muttered to himself as he locked onto the coordinate points within their base. Teleporting after only a few seconds of concentration, Rory found himself appearing next to the whirlpool forge, three figures jumping as if they’d seen a ghost.

“Ahh, Ron, Riley, Reese,” Rory nodded to the three who were hammering and heating what looked like a hauberk.

Riley lowered her head after a moment, her heart beating so hard that Rory could sense it. “Welcome back, Lord Founder. Was everything-”

“The city still stands,” Rory nodded. “My Bane attacked the Undercity. We suffered losses, including the death of the Khan of Blue Lightning himself. Things are being dealt with, but I actually need Gon Rong. Also, is Eia here?”

“Guardian Beast Eia made it a point to inform us she was intending to hunt upon another isle. In her words, ‘the juicy prey have all been plucked clean.’ As for Gon Rong, he can be found in the alchemy lab.”

Of course, perfect timing, Eia.

“Thanks,” Rory said, hiding his mild irritation that Eia had chosen now of all times to hunt somewhere outside his teleportation range.

I don’t have time to search for her, who knows where she could be.

Not bothering to walk through the halls of the volcanic base-

Still needs a proper name, not just ‘volcanic base.’

-Rory locked onto the coordinates of the alchemy room, appearing there a moment later.

Just in time to witness a vial of something explode directly in Gon Rong’s face. The good news was that the man was uninjured.

The bad news is he was down a pair of eyebrows.

“Been there,” Rory said as the startled man turned to face Rory.

“Lord Founder!”

“Yep, that’s me.”

“How is Ehkorrus?”

“Standing,” Rory said. “The main city itself wasn’t the target.”

“Then, the Undercity?”

“Not standing.” Rory sighed. “My Bane launched a hell of a sucker punch. Over two hundred dead, including the Khan of Blue Lightning.”

“No,” Gon Rong said, eyes wide.

“Yes, but measures are being taken in the aftermath. Which brings me to why I returned here.”

“Are you searching for Guardian Beast Eia? She’s out at the moment, but I’m sure-”

“Nah,” Rory dismissed. “I’m here for you. The old man and I are setting up a hell of a ritual, and we need the best alchemists the Rong have to offer.”

“Ahh,” Gon Rong nodded, understanding. “Then, I am to return with you.”

“Correct.”

“What of my aunt?”

“Oh, Kai Rong?” Rory glanced upward, thinking for a moment before shaking his head.

I’ll want her back for wave one hundred, but we’ve still got some time until then.

“No, she can remain. I’d prefer she continue to work on herself.”

“Then I am ready to go whenever.” Gon Rong answered before, suddenly perking up. “Oh, actually, I have a few durability brews to bring with.”

“Wonderful,” Rory nodded. Watching the man, he bolted to where a crate had been placed, made of the familiar coral that flanked the sides of the entrance hall to their base.

Keep? Maybe ‘Brimstone Keep?’ That sounds cool. Except, it’s not really a Keep. Hmm, still going to need some workshopping.

“Hand that here,” Rory instructed. Taking the crate, it vanished into Rory’s far larger and more secure inventory. “Alright, anything else you need to handle? We might be gone for a while.”

“No, that’s everything.” Gon Rong answered.

“Perfect.”

Grabbing his shoulder, the two of them vanished, appearing next to the prototype teleportation gate.

“Huh, did you guys update this while I was gone?” It hadn’t been that long since he had last left, only a few days.

“Just a few minor tune-ups,” Gon Rong confirmed. “Using the data of your departure with Lady Ascendress, we found a few blemishes that were easy enough to patch up. It should increase the performance by a few percent.”

“Not a lot, but enough to be smoother,” Rory nodded. “Good job. Crank it up and let’s get on out of here.”

Letting the young man do his thing, Rory waited. Sure, he could have helped, but image mattered, and Rory figured it was one of those times where it was better for him to let Gon Rong handle things himself.

Before long, the two were passing through; the travel through the void was indeed at least marginally smoother than the time before. When they reappeared, Gon Rong looked a little queasy, but he wasn’t quite as green as when he’d left Ehkorrus almost a decade ago.

And then they were back, the full circuit had taken less than an hour.

“Huh, it really was that easy,” Rory nodded approvingly as he gave Gon Rong time to collect himself, the younger man dusting himself off only a few seconds later.

So, planetary travel shouldn’t be much of an ask. Jury is out when it starts, including off-planet travel.

“It’s good to be home,” Gon Rong said as he straightened out, taking a deep breath. “I missed this air.”

“Spice and citrus are better than soot and brimstone, I get it.”

Gon Rong looked at Rory, momentarily puzzled, before deciding it wasn’t worth the question.

“You’re free to do your own thing now, just report to Hao Lin first.”

“Yes, Lord Founder.”

Watching the man depart, Rory made his way outside of the building after a few seconds, finding a nearby bench and plunking himself down. Blessedly, there was no one nearby. In the middle of the day, most adults were busy with whatever profession they’d taken up, and children were at school. Perhaps near the restaurants and food-related areas of the city, there would be some people casually strolling. Thankfully, the Null Window was far from a tourist destination to the city regulars, especially with the cityside entrance to the Maw being on temporary lockdown.

Tree, corpse puppet, and then? Well, then it’s time to prepare for wave one hundred.

Before Aelia’s heads-up that the Bird was apparently planning to capitalize on the wave to attack, Rory hadn’t felt like there was very much that needed to be done in preparation.

With their walls having been fully assimilated between Tsarina’s hive and the Ehkorrian Grand Tree –his home— he’d had zero concerns regarding the near future of Ehkorrus. The walls were stronger than ever, and even the turrets had been subsumed by plants that appeared like crimson and silver sunflowers, capable of blasting rays of overflowing vitality.

‘Overflowing Vitality’ as an attack sounded harmless until the effect was witnessed firsthand, monsters exploding in showers of gore as their entire bodies ballooned and popped like super-duper-omega cancer bombs. After which, the city itself would absorb the remains.

Not to mention all the other fun little surprises within the walls, trap plants, monster nests, and so forth.

The Bird changed the calculus. The obvious and easy answer was ‘make stuff, genius,’ but that itself wasn’t so simple. Rory knew that Eon knew that he knew that wave one hundred was all but in the bag. If he started gearing up beyond what was normal, it could trigger Eon’s suspicions. If Eon decided to investigate, Rory knew that the cosmic entity –bordering on divine— would discover that Aelia had tipped him off.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

And that’s when things would likely take a very bad turn, very fast. Perhaps a Khan or two or three would suddenly break free from the third floor of the Maw, which was only possible if Eon itself allowed them to.

So, I’ve got to be discreet. But how?

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Rory mumbled, head in his hands as he watched a leaf blow by.

As far as I can see, the only easily maskable act is a lot of ‘curiosity’ projects that just so happen to have direct application to warfare.

Tapping his foot, Rory finally shrugged.

I’ll figure it out, but let’s not put the cart before the horse.

“I’ve got a tree to plant, after all.”

Several weeks later, Rory was once again in the Maw, arms crossed. The golden luster of the grass and plants had faded, leaving a land that looked as if it had been fatally poisoned, trudging toward a pitiful death.

But not if I can do anything about it.

Rory wasn’t alone; a surprisingly large congregation had come along. Leading adepts, their students or assistants, notable city figures –many of whom Rory still didn’t recognize on sight— and many of the friends and families of the deceased.

Never had this big an audience.

For once, there were no speeches; Rory had very directly informed Irene and Apostolos that they didn’t need the distractions for what they were planning. Instead, the gathered onlookers quietly huddled around, tier seven guards nearby, even if it wasn’t exactly necessary with Rory nearby.

Not to mention Zoey, who’d also made an appearance. While she was a Founder just like Rory, she wasn’t directly involved due to a lack of skills, literal or metaphorical, that would assist with what they were doing. Instead, she was simply an onlooker who also, by nature of her status, acted as assurance to the gathered crowd that things were under control and no danger existed.

At least no danger externally.

“Alright, folks, let’s get our game faces on,” Rory said to the gathered Rong clan members. “It’s time we start.”

Sixteen Rong clan members spent several minutes positioning themselves around the lake surrounding the teleportation temple, standing within intricate bound circles that no one outside of Rory was likely to decipher the full conceptual intent behind. Atop the temple, Rory appeared in a single flicker. Standing within an inert bound circle, thirty-two prepared items surrounded him. Inside the bound circle, a small hole had been cracked into the temple stone, filled with bloody mud, as if it had been pulled from a crimson swamp. A young bloodwood sapling had been planted in the bloody mud, notched and split, with shards of bark carefully inserted, splinters from the Ehkorrian Grand Tree.

Finally, one last item was required. From his inventory, an oversized shard appeared within his right hand, the cracked samsara seed obtained from the fallen King of Molten Peaks.

With his left hand freed, Rory snapped once as a flare of light shot upward, the signal to begin.

From the sixteen points surrounding the temple, Rory felt a surge of energy. It wasn’t as simple as ordinary pneuma, the raw magical fuel that acted as the ‘gas’ of most magical efforts. It was a level deeper, intent, conceptual understanding, and significance itself being wielded, each of the sixteen offering up a fraction of their own significance.

It wasn’t optional either; what they were each doing was attempting alchemy of a higher order than any they’d ever done before. Transmutation, not of an item or object, creature or being, but of a raw concept. Each of the sixteen had been tasked with understanding an aspect of the building blocks of blood, whether literal physiological blood or the metaphysical and conceptual meanings that could be derived from it.

Then, using the energy of their own significance as fuel, they pairedit with an antithesis concept. Circulation with stagnation, sustenance with deprivation, regulation with disarray, so on and so forth. It seemed a contrary idea, but part of the concept of cruor, from what Rory had gleaned from his single offering of a Cruor-based skill, was that it was able to house opposing elements and concepts that normal blood wasn’t fit for handling.

Waiting for any signs of failure, Rory was relieved when each of the sixteen passed through their bottlenecks, the ‘weight’ surrounding them intensifying as the bound circles they stood within were saturated with a significantly denser conceptual element.

Having confirmed they’d succeeded, Rory snapped once more, unraveling the bound circles. From there, it was his job to take all sixteen newly evolved fragmented aspects of blood and weave them together once more.

Even with as many mental threads as Rory could split his mind into, when the sixteen evolved aspects of blood reached Rory, it was like being read sixteen different dissertations at the same time, an overwhelming deluge of information.

Which had been expected. Touching upon something many often tended to forget or otherwise weren’t aware of, Rory grabbed hold of the metaphysical anchor where Alchemical Transmutation and Alchemical Chemistry existed within him.

Then he activated them, the ‘passive’ skills flaring to life like a dying ember fed a gentle stream of oxygen.

When a passive skill was activated, it tended to have a specific effect: temporarily boosting understanding or the output of the broader spectrum it was connected to.

With both halves of alchemy flaring, the once-overwhelming deluge of information fed to him by his sixteen Rong assistants became manageable as Rory set about piecing them together like the world's most abstract puzzle, existing in four dimensions: three physical dimensions and a fourth conceptual spectrum.

As he did, Rory one by one reached out and ‘touched’ upon the thirty-two items gathered or created by the hard work of the Adept Forum.

And then he simply burnt them up, using them as conceptual ‘mass’ that was fed back into the weaving of a new element.

It wasn’t quick work, far from it, but Rory’s mind was dialed in, focused keenly, as the immaterial became material. Not all too dissimilar from when he projected something into reality, a single droplet of liquid began to manifest, hovering in the air just above his outstretched left hand. It was only upon the final of the thirty-two items being burnt up that, for a moment, Rory felt like he heard a crack, like a heavy lock snapping into place.

At the same time, a wave of significance washed outward like a tidal wave of progress. Synthesizing a brand-new element from essentially nothing was exactly the sort of thing that was heavily rewarded, but Rory didn’t have time to celebrate as he wasn’t done yet; the droplet of Cruor was only just the start.

Snapping the cracked samsara seed in his right hand in half, it turned into glowing dust floating just above his hand as if waiting for his direction. Left hand with the droplet of Cruor just beyond his right hand, Rory gently blew on the glowing dust as it floated toward the drop of Cruor, before flinging themselves within the droplet.

As the drop of Cruor began to shine with potential, Rory activated yet another skill, a skill he very rarely used.

Green Thumb.

Green Thumb

Rarity: Common. Skill Level: Experienced.

Any hand-planted flora can be granted a permanent variable growth rate increase for a small amount of Pneuma, dependent on the amount of pneuma used. It may also be channeled with life-aspect essences for greater variable results.

There was a reason Rory had been the one to plant the bloodwood sapling atop the temple; it was part of the skill requirement. With his two alchemical skills still flaring and Green Thumb active, Rory let the droplet of energized Cruor fall toward the plant. Yet he still

wasn’t done. His turn to burn up significance for alchemy, Rory took advantage of a recently acquired windfall of significance, burning it up within moments of having acquired it.In truth, Rory hadn’t even been counting on the significance; he had intended to burn up a small fraction of his own significance, but he wasn’t about to turn down the unexpected boon.

As the droplet landed upon the bloodwood sapling, Rory began to actively transmute the plant. Typically, transmuting a living thing wasn’t something easily done, if at all. Still, it wasn’t much different than what the Sol’s Glory trees had undergone when Rory had first created bloodwoods decades ago, except now with directed intent rather than random chance permutations and changes.

And still he wasn’t done.

Hands freed, Rory brought them together, a titanic clap ringing out far louder than a clap had any right to be, ringing with power.

“Dreams Shattered. Futures Culled. Blood Spilled.”

Within the temple, a little over two hundred bodies had been carefully moved from their temporary mausoleum and respectfully laid to rest, at least as respectfully as could be done for the mangled bodies.

“Rage, Fear, Indignation, and Confusion.”

Rory wasn’t just speaking to theatrics; he was lacing his words with the weight of his aura—a eulogy for the fallen, made into a chant of power.

“Love, Joy, and Hope for the future, cut short by the reality of Unfairness and Uncertainty. What is Lost cannot be Saved.”

Throughout the temple, tens of thousands of inscriptions began to flare up, dozens of monster cores burning up to further augment the grand ritual.

“But where the Lost cannot be Saved, the Damned may be Reborn.”

While it wasn’t the most poetic or eloquent speech, what mattered was the shape of the intent, an attempt at grasping hold of the remains and vestiges of hundreds of deceased and luring them together with the promise of purpose.

“What is Lost cannot be Saved, but the Damned may be Reborn, and the Reborn may stand as a light against the Endless Dark. The Vengeful Dead, Bulwark of the Living, Reborn Heart of the Broken! I name you Cruor-Shu, Atriarch of all Bloodwoods and Archon of the Crimson Wealds!”

As if responding to his beckon, the bodies within the temple melted away into the very stone of the temple. Elegant lines and swirling channels flared with red light, the vibrant crimson of life, the entire temple looking like an alien structure powering up.

All of that, feeding directly into the bloodwood sapling.

And he still wasn’t done.

One final step, Rory activated Ancestral Essence Inscription, focusing on the former function of Essence Spark to infuse elements of his own essence into something. Slashing his palm, a droplet of blood pooled up as Rory directed the droplet as the target of his infusion. Rather than merely infusing it with aspects of his own affinities, Rory touched upon a separate force, perhaps his newest acquisition.

Stigmata.

His ‘pool’ of the faith energy was still essentially a big fat zero after burning through as much as he had during his battle with the bane, but there were at least a few kernels of the potent energy.

I said I wouldn’t use this for combat, not that I wouldn’t use it at all.

The drop of blood, shimmering with a nearly golden glow, fell, plopping onto the tip of the bloodwood sapling already on the verge of bursting with energy and potential.

The change was as dramatic as it was sudden. The small sapling shot up as if time had accelerated a millionfold. The temple was rapidly torn apart, save for the ‘roof’ that Rory stood upon, the strange fusion of temple and office building that had been a landmark of the Golden Fields for decades destroyed as a titanic tree took its place, its roots diving into the lake below and then into the sides of the lake, burrowing through the soil and stone of the former Golden Fields.

Hiding his surprise, Rory looked out from his ‘new’ location, within a burrow inside the side of the oversized tree; the bark of the tree subsumed the stone he’d been standing upon, and only the teleportation platform remained.

Alone within the burrow, Rory glanced down at the bark beneath his feet and then all around him. Unlike an ordinary bloodwood, it was a shade of purple so dark that it was almost black, with motes of red that would occasionally glow brightly like a twinkling star before fading, the entire tree pulsing like some bioluminescent deep-sea fish.

With nothing left to do, Rory finally examined the tree.

Cruor-Shu, Archon of the Crimson Wealds, Atriarch of Bloodwood Groves

Grade: Unique

Level: ???

“Huh,” Rory muttered, pressing his hand against the bark and patting it gently. “Looks like it worked… and then some.”