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Chapter 87: Escape

Torix waved us away, “Good luck disciple. I’m sure Hod’s presence will offer many advantages.”

I groaned as we walked out of Torix’s lair. After mentally cursing Torix, Hod and I walked out towards a nearby manhole. Before leaving, I opened my spacial ring and pulled out my grimoire. I pointed at Hod,

“I’m going to update some of your gear. Mind giving me your steel ring and dog tag?”

Hod shook his head, “Hod not bothered.” He handed me the ring and necklace, “Hod hate not helping. Dry man not want help from Hod. Gray man not want help from Hod either. Hod grateful Harbinger let Hod help.”

I sighed, “It’s not that they don’t want your help, it’s that they’re scared you’ll destroy the mission and them too. You’re kind of like a toddler being given super powers. Powerful? Maybe. Useful? Eh, not really.”

Hod’s chest deflated as he leaned down, “Harbinger hurt Hod feelings. Hod sad.”

I shook my head, channeling mana into the grimoire, “Tweak your perspective a bit.” I pointed at him, “I did say you were powerful. That’s much more than most soldiers. What you need is to just focus on learning to use that power effectively.”

I turned back to my grimoire, “I think of it as your fatal flaw or something like that. Overcome it, and you’ll be helping more than just about anyone else.”

Hod’s chest puffed back out, his mood lightening, “Hod think on what Harbinger say. Hod confused, but Hod sort it out.”

From my grimoire, a complex, intricate enchantment floated from the grimoire. I placed the dog tag over the enchantment, the tiny font fitting around Hod’s name on the dog tag. Lifting the steel ring, I placed a different enchantment onto the ring. I handed them back to Hod,

“These should help. All of them are enchanted with intelligence. I figured that’s what you needed the most.”

Hod took them from me, “Hod thank Harbinger.” He put them on, the dull look on his face easing some. He raised a finger, “Hod even smarter now.”

I stood up, “Well, it’s a work in progress. It isn’t like I’m not getting you much more than fifty points of intelligence anyways. Hell, I had to wait this long before I could put a dent in your intelligence anyway.” I waved a hand towards the manhole, “It should help at least. Come on, let’s go kick some ass.”

I stomped the edge of the manhole cover, flipping it upwards. It turned like a coin toss before I punched it. My hand flew backwards as the manhole cover shot towards a car. It slammed into the metal, leaving the metal cover bended out of shape. I leapt down into the sewer before Hod followed. As I fell onto concrete floor, I pounded my feet into the pavement.

Shooting down the tunnel, I relished in using Phaser. Having sat at a desk bored me to death, and babysitting legion members wasn’t much better. Spawns of Yawm were nothing to me now. Watching the soldiers kill them bored me even more than killing them on my own. Absorbing them didn’t even dent my armor evolution anymore either.

Avoiding deaths helped bolster morale and motivate the troops though. It was a necessary task at the time. As I traveled through the sewer tunnels, there was no need for restraining myself anymore. I bounced off telekinetic augments, launching myself around curves. I warped gravity to enhance my speed. I dove through walls, gliding through the ground and concrete. It was liberating.

Hod kept up with a struggle. In an environment like this, the Earth Glider skill helped with traveling much more than flight did. Despite Hod’s better build for speed, I outpaced him as I maneuvered through walls and around curves. If anything, combing Phaser, Earth Gliding, and some other unique skill would be my next mythical skill. Mobility was useful and too fun to pass up.

Soaking that feeling in, I reached near the rift in ten minutes. Hod caught up a few minutes after. Once we were there, Hod and I stood beside a ladder leading up the manhole. I raised both my hands at him,

“Hod. You must be quiet now. If you make too much noise, then we’re fucked. Once we’re inside the rift-“

A message from Torix appeared on the upper left corner of my vision. I opened it.

Torix Worm, of Darkhill(12:08 pm 11/27/00) – One of the followers is going through the town and decimating the tunnels I created. He’s heading your way. I don’t believe he’ll go into any rift, so be quiet if you can.

I turned to Hod, “We have to go, now.”

I reached out with Tactile Cognition. A map of what laid above visualized around me through hearing. I closed my eyes, focusing on that map. There wasn’t enough information for me to see what was going on. Even with my gravitational sense, I needed more sight and the wind to get a good picture.

I jumped up, flying up the slim tunnel leading outside. As I reached the manhole cover, I created a pad of telekinesis. The pad absorbed the impact from jumping, dispersing it as a blast of wind through the sewer. I lifted the top of the sewer pad, keeping a slow crawl before peeking outside.

The ground rippled beneath us and around me, quaking the concrete. A wave of sound followed, destroying a portion of the sewer. A blast of heated air funneled down towards me before I glanced down. Silent as a shadow, Hod waited right beneath me. I pointed outside, and he nodded. Lifting the manhole cover, I came out of the sewer.

It was a normal part of town for the most part. There was a gas station to my left, situated beside an intersection of highways. Further down that was a tunnel leading beneath a set of train tracks. A used car lot was to my right, away from the gas station. Weeds cropped up from between cracks in the road and concrete, showing the lack of maintenance here.

The only unusual thing about it was the sea of blue fire behind the tunnel and train tracks. Hod grimaced, “Evil burning beetles. Evil not know about Harbinger and Hod.”

Heated air brushed against my cheek, “Let’s hope so.”

I dashed towards the rift on my mini map, keeping in the shadows and alleyways of buildings. Hod followed behind me. I lightened myself with a gravity warp, and I used telekinetic pads to disperse the impact of my footsteps. I was still much louder than Hod. It came with the build I had though.

After four blocks of skulking around, we reached the rift. Laying within a cluster of bushes at the center of a park, creeping formations of stone rose into the air. It was like a leafless tree of stone. A bird flew over the one of the stone branches, and the nearest branch wrapped around it. Teeth of rock bit into the bird before it melted into the stone.

Stone Eater(lvl 646) – This species devours stones before using the minerals to coat their outer skin. Their teeth are made of the strongest minerals found, allowing them to chew through even metal with ease. Combine this innate durability with extremely effective camouflage, and the monster can kill sentients of a higher level if they are caught unaware.

Once the victim has been killed, stone eaters will eat the prey through assimilation. They remove their rock shells and fuse their own flesh to their victims. If the prey isn’t dead, it can become an unwilling parasite, living on the monster without being able to move away. Stone eaters have been found with many struggling creatures, creating abominations.

With your armor being too hard to pierce and your flesh too dense to eat, stone eaters will struggle against you.

Killing the thing wasn’t the problem. Killing it without making a concert’s worth of noise was the issue. Before I thought up a way of handling it, Hod turned towards his left. He sprinted into the gas station before a loud splat echoed from inside it. A crunching emitted from inside before the sound of popping bones and splitting skin took over.

Hod ran out, blood and guts hanging from his beaked mouth and red covering his eyes. He looked at me like a predator assessing prey before turning back towards the stone eater. Dashing forward, he stayed light on his feet. A black fire left where his feet stepped. Once it burned away, the filthy concrete was a polished white where his feet had been.

He reached the balls of stone tendrils. Three of them whipped towards him, but Hod swiped his darkened talons. Streaks of pitch black remained after the swipe. As the rock tentacles streamed towards him, they chopped against the black rocks. Weaving around his own weapon, Hod glided on his feet before slicing through more of the stone branches.

Almost like a dancer, he dodged their attacks while making them run into his own shadow streaks. The black cut through the rock without any hassle, and the tree was missing half its branches in seconds. Hod raised a hand, his fingers molding together. A sword of shade coalesced from his fingers before he cleaved through the tree.

I charged towards the monster, stabbing my arm through the stone skin. The tree drained of its essence before landing. Hod turned to me with a savage grin on his face,

“Good Harbinger.”

I nodded, “Good Hod too.”

As I sapped the tree, the opening of the rift appeared. A portal of stone led into a pitch-black descent. Hod leaped into the portal without any worry, more excited to kill than anything else. He reminded me of an eldritch of about level 1200, but trained for combat. That made him destructive as hell. He got that way over the past few weeks. Torix taught him control of his transformed state.

While still rough around the edges, he wasn’t some mindless monster anymore. He also avoided mana saturation, stopping himself from poisoning his body. The intelligence enchantments on his gear aided his form in that respect. After clearing out the next two rifts, his level would make him one hell of an ally too.

Looking forward too it, I jumped into the rift. The black mana wrapped around me like normal, consuming my vision in black. The icy sensation bled into my armor before the metal soaked it in. A stream of warm air splashed against my face as I crashed against the ground. I looked around. Behind me, a tunnel of stone opened to the black chasm of the rift’s opening.

The other side of it was the new world. It was made of rock like I thought it would be. The sky was red with black, dirty clouds. Rivers of lava coursed across the landscape, bathing it in orange and red light. The black and red stone looked like volcanic rock and rust. Despite the harsh landscape, life was abundant. From the crimson sky to the ground, creatures moved.

A few yellow mice walked up to trails of lava. Covered in spines like porcupines, they rolled up to the streams of magma before facing their bellies towards the heat. After a few moments of bathing in the heat, their stomachs glowed. Beside a string of three of these mice, a glowing horn pierced one of their bellies. The little mammal was pulled into the magma as the other mice scattered away.

A few feet down, another group of mice bathed in the heat. Another glowing knife shot out towards a mouse. This mouse turned around in time, its spines deflecting the knife. At the end of the horn, several malformed mouths covered a crystalline carapace. These mouths snapped towards the mouse. The little hedgehog launched several of its spines into the creature’s open mouths.

Lava gushed out of the crystalline lava swimmer as it retreated into the magma. Far above these lava streams, jellyfish floated on the plumes of hot air. As sparks flew up, the jellyfish snatched up the sparks, eating them with tiny suckers. Hod stared at the jellyfish as I spoke,

“Can you talk like that?”

Hod growled, “Yes.”

I gripped a fist, “Alright, cool. Let’s kill these monsters and get the fuck out of here.”

Hod pointed at a rock, “Hod eat?”

I raised an eyebrow, “You mean monsters? Yeah, sure, go crazy. Just don’t let that mana poison you again.”

Hod placed his hands on his hips, “I won’t hurt myself again.”

I blinked, surprised at how well he spoke in his new form. It didn’t handicap him any. If anything, he acted smarter, like a different person. Eldritch energy had that effect on people I suppose. He sprinted towards a rock that split open, revealing tentacles covered in teeth and rock. It was like a ball of death. Before Hod reached it, I stomped my foot into the ground.

I propelled forward, the ground shattering beneath me before I reached the rock first. So far I’d used Volatile Carnage against weaker foes. I’d yet to use it against an enemy worth killing besides the sandworm. It was so large I could hardly tell the damage I was dealing. Eager to test it out on something closer to my level, I reached the monster first.

With another stomp, I turned my charge into momentum for my punch. I channeled that energy up through my core before slamming my right fist into a telekinetic pad lying on the monster’s stony skin. My fist blew backwards, transferring the force into a telekinetic cannonball.

That telekinetic bullet exploded into the monster, blowing the upper half of it away. Using the blowback on my right fist, I turned on my heels before driving a left hook into what was left of the monster. It vaporized, leaving only a little portion of the corpse left.

Satisfied at the effect of my mythical skills, I pierced my arm into the little bit of creature remaining. It sapped away before I glanced at the stream of white light beaming from the bottom of a mountain. A labyrinth of stones surrounded the pillar of white, siphoning into the sky. The limits of the rift were set, unlike with Hod’s world.

Those limits set themselves by the tendrils of white light curving around the rift’s edge. Clouds once more floated in and out of the rift’s edge. I still didn’t know how the rifts worked, at least not exactly. Sure I understood how they worked in a practical sense. Run in, take core, dungeon gets destroyed. Simple. How it transferred the world? What it was transferring? I had no idea how to answer any of those questions.

A wave of heat diffused from the tunnels behind us. A wave of light, bright as the sun passed over us. With it came a wave of heat like a solar flare. Hod sliced the air, blocking with a shadow shield. I covered my slit and ears, protecting my senses. After the wave passed, I analyzed my health. Nearly a tenth was gone, which was less damage than I expected.

Beside me, sand melted into black glass. Closer towards the rift’s opening, the ground melted into magma. Hod growled,

“The evil found us. Harbinger and Hod run. Now.”