Exploration- Chapter 37

Sorry this took far too long. I just really got into this fight. I ended up cutting off the final challenge and that will have to be Chapter 38. This one deserved it's own chapter and even then it was almost 2 chapters now.

I meant for the dungeon run to be only 3 chapters, but it'll have to be 4. I'll finish 38 tomorrow and then we'll be on to some other things.

On a negative note, I pushed my eyes pretty hard this morning. I'm probably gonna rest them in the morning and not start writing till like 10 am.

On a positive note, 11k words today- which is important to try to get back on my schedule.

Chapter 37- Larger Proportions

Once the last of the wyverns fell we reunited and I reviewed the gains up till now. I still hadn’t hit level 264, but that was fine. Both Samvek and Selena had gained a level. The other three were blowing past us in terms of growth. The wyverns pushed him to level 215, although he did say that he noticed it slowing a bit. Lexa was at 211. Oliver tried to put a positive spin on his inability to gain more levels by saying that he had increased the proficiency of some of his spells as he mastered them, by using them against much higher targets. The other good thing was that if he was earning XP he’d be earning it as a level 150, so potentially he’d be able to leapfrog beyond Clay if he got to keep that XP when awakened.

We only got a moment to catch our breath and while I’d been intending to wait to choose my spells, I asked the others what they thought. Ultimately, Selena’s question was what helped me make my decision. “I know that getting an ascendant tier spell sounds great, but when you put your mind to it, do you have a problem leveling your spells up?”

I shook my head. “Not if I have the time.”

“Then that kinda points out one of the spells you should choose and given the amount of damage your armor has taken here, I’d think it would behoove you to take Repair as your other spell.”

No one argued with her logic, so I took the two spells Time Pool and Repair. The knowledge of them filled my mind and I couldn’t help but feel that they were different from spells I got from my system. They weren’t attached to my class core.

No class consistent with the Fey System is detected. Spells are being modified to work with existing structure. If a Fey System class is later obtained the spells will improve.

That was promising as I was all about finding power from any source. But for now, I wanted to repair our gear. The cool-down on the spell was 24 hours so I’d only be able to cast once now, but I asked everyone to get as close as possible.

“I’m gonna try something with this. I’ve used it before with other spells, so hopefully it’ll work here.” Then without further explanation I attempted to target all of my gear and everything that was visible on each of the team members. As I cast the spell, I felt my mind being stretched but the denser mana here actually helped to empower the spell.

I held in a scream as I pushed to my limits but began to relax when I felt a hundred different threads coming out of me and attaching to different pieces of gear. My armor began to seal itself up before my very eyes. Even Wayfinder hummed in my hand with pleasure like I did when I used Clean on myself.

Multi-Target Spell: 209 >> 215

It would have been nice to celebrate the victory, but the dungeon had other ideas.

The ground split open ahead of us, stone tearing apart as something enormous hauled itself free. This wasn’t subtle emergence. This was raw mass asserting itself. A behemoth rose from the earth, its body a grotesque fusion of stone plates, ancient bark, and embedded crystals that pulsed with inner light. Each step it took sent shockwaves through the terrain, trees snapping and stone spires crumbling around it. It looked like the dungeon had gone from the swarm approach to the overpower approach.

Primal Behemoth (Legendary) Level: 310

Affinities: Earth, Gravity

Highest Stats: Strength, Vitality, Endurance, Durability

Lowest Stat: Dexterity, Mind, Agility

The aura which surrounded it hit like a physical force. Clay dropped a full meter before I caught him, Oliver’s spell collapsed mid-cast, and even Lexa groaned as the pressure tried to drive her back into the ground. I pushed against it, Trailblazer’s Aura flaring as I asserted my presence, and felt the dungeon acknowledge the contest.

“Let’s see if we can trap it.”

Lexa slammed her hands down, roots exploding outward in a massive network that wrapped around the behemoth’s legs. It broke them like they didn’t even exist. But she wasn’t alone. I cast Cone of Winter’s Debuff trying to slow it, but it didn’t seem to care anymore than the ground did about ice. Oliver was trying the same as he conjured an ice elemental in an attempt to hold one of its legs.

At the same time, Samvek and Selena were doing their own things. She warped reality causing the ground beneath its feet to be anything other than earth and stone. It almost looked like she turned it into something similar to crepe paper. The things massive weight caused it to sink through that though and when it made contact with the ground again, it’s power surged.

Samvek warped space around it, trying to use it in a way that I hadn’t seen before. It was almost like he was attempting to bring its insides out and its outside in. Yet the aura around it pulsed and gravity instantly became ten times greater. That wasn’t enough to affect us, but it warped space around it. Oddly, even the flow of time felt slightly off to me.

None of it seemed to matter to the behemoth. The thing was truly massive, putting dragons and dinosaurs to shame. It blasted out another wave of gravitational force pushing us all back and suddenly it was like we were back at the beginning of the battle. None of the damage we’d done had stuck and the creature was now moving freely, slowly, but without restraint.

The behemoth moved with terrible inevitability. Each step crushed a dozen yards of terrain flat, not shattering the dungeon floor but pressing it down as though the world itself were bowing. The plates along its legs ground together with a sound like mountains shifting, and every motion dragged gravity with it, the air thickening until even breathing felt like work. I felt the pull resonate deep in my bones, and worse, I felt my primordial aspect answer it with a low, uneasy hum. There was something there. I longed for the freedom that came with that type of raw power.

Samvek struck first, because of course he did. Lightning ripped from him in blinding arcs as he warped forward, spear driving into the behemoth’s knee with enough force to shatter a fortress gate. The impact sent a shockwave rippling outward, flattening trees and throwing debris skyward, but the behemoth barely reacted. It turned its head slowly, almost curiously, and brought one arm down in a casual sweep that forced Samvek to blink out of the way on instinct alone.

Selena was already moving, reality bending under her will as she folded space beneath the creature’s feet. For a heartbeat, the ground thinned into something insubstantial, like wet parchment, and the behemoth’s weight drove it downward. It had worked before but this time the creature emitted a field of gravity that prevented it from sinking in.

Then the dungeon reasserted itself, earth snapping back into solidity, and the behemoth surged with renewed power as though offended by the attempt. A gravity pulse rolled out from it, slamming into us like a tidal wave and Selena reacted before me, altering reality around them so that the gravitational force blasted into the ground instead of pulping their flesh and bones. She flew near me and said, “I’ve never felt this before, but it’s like when you touched me with your primordial aspect. This thing causes a yearning in me.”

I nodded in understand but couldn’t talk about it now.

I pushed back with my aura, Trailblazer’s presence flaring as I asserted myself against the oppressive weight. The pressure eased enough for us to move, but it was obvious this wasn’t a contest of dominance I could win outright. Lexa roared and drove her hands into the ground, roots exploding upward in a massive lattice meant to bind the behemoth’s legs. The creature tore through them without slowing, snapping wood and stone alike as though she’d tried to stop it with thread.

Oliver shouted something I didn’t catch as his spell collapsed mid-cast, the gravity disrupting his control. He recovered quickly, throwing strength and speed buffs across the group instead, his role crystallizing in the chaos. Clay darted in close, daggers flashing as he tested the behemoth’s hide, sparks and shards flying where steel met stone. His blades skittered off, leaving shallow gouges at best, and I felt his frustration spike through the air.

“Poison,” he called, more to himself than anyone else, already shifting tactics. He began carving shallow lines wherever he could reach, working fast and precise, trying to spread venom through a body that dwarfed buildings. It felt futile, but I didn’t stop him. Sometimes attrition was the only path left when brute force failed. In fact, the more I thought about it, I realized that he might have the right approach, but I wasn’t ready to give up on a faster kill yet.

I tried control again, focusing life force into Numbing Touch and driving it into the behemoth’s flank. My cultivator’s core spun as I pushed the flow of raw life force into it shaping it to my will. The energy flowed, pressed, and then simply dispersed, swallowed by sheer mass and vitality. The creature didn’t even twitch. Its response was a backhand that came down like a falling cliff, forcing me to blink sideways with spatial movement as the ground where I’d stood cratered inward.

Samvek adapted quickly, lightning coiling tighter around him as he layered Psi-enhanced physicality into every movement. The problem of course was that he’d run out of Psi all too quickly. He struck again and again, targeting joints and seams with brutal efficiency, but the behemoth’s durability was absurd. Even when his spear bit deep, the wound closed almost immediately, stone knitting back together under a surge of earthen power. Each successful hit felt like a victory that evaporated seconds later.

I reshaped Wayfinder into a heavy axe, the haft lengthening and the blade thickening until it felt like a siege weapon in my hands. Lightning crawled along its edge as I charged, driving the axe down into the behemoth’s thigh with everything I had. The impact sent a tremor through my arms and split a plate free, but the damage was shallow compared to the creature’s scale. It answered by stomping, a gravity surge slamming into me hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs despite my defenses. I followed suit after Samvek and used Physical Enhancement, pouring most of my Psi into it so that my stats doubled for just a few seconds. Even those blows weren’t enough.

For a moment, the battlefield felt completely out of our control. The behemoth dominated space simply by existing, its presence warping gravity, time, and momentum into something hostile and absolute. I could feel Selena straining to keep allies alive, Samvek pushing himself harder with every exchange, and the others fighting for relevance against a foe that barely acknowledged them. The truth settled in with brutal clarity.

This wasn’t a fight we could win by overpowering it. I needed to out think the trap. It had to be beatable.

The realization hit me like a cold blade sliding between ribs. We weren’t meant to trade blows with this thing until it fell. The behemoth wasn’t a wall to be smashed, it was a force of nature to be redirected, endured, and ultimately undone from within. Even as that thought formed, the creature proved the point by slamming both fists into the ground.

The impact was apocalyptic. A shockwave ripped outward in a widening ring, flattening everything in its path, trees folding, stone spires collapsing, and the swamp flashing to steam where raw energy surged through it. I threw up layered force constructs, one after another, each shattering but bleeding off enough power to keep us alive. Even so, Clay and Oliver were hurled through the air until Selena caught them by folding space and setting them down gently behind her.

Samvek used the opening with ruthless precision. He warped upward, lightning flaring as he drove his spear down into the behemoth’s shoulder, then twisted space to wrench the weapon free before the creature could react. Gravity spiked instantly, crushing down on him hard enough that I felt his bones protest through our bond. He snarled and pushed back, Psi and lightning reinforcing his body as he ripped himself free and blinked away at the last possible instant. It still wasn’t enough.

Selena struck in tandem, reality warping around the behemoth’s upper body. For a heartbeat, its mass didn’t align with itself, plates slipping out of phase as she tried to tear leverage away from its core. The creature bellowed, a sound so deep it vibrated through my organs, and responded by collapsing gravity inward. The distortion snapped back violently, forcing Selena to retreat as the world reasserted itself around the monster. There teamwork was impeccable and like watching a masterclass, but sometimes no amount of skill could beat simple mass.

Lexa’s attacks had been muted, so I pulled a sword out of Save for Winter. Dagen’s Sword of Sharpness has upgraded from rare to epic tier and was now a truly terrifying weapon. She charged forward and with it.  hands, Dagen’s blade hummed with supernatural sharpness as she drove it into the behemoth’s ankle. The weapon bit deeper than anything else had, carving a glowing furrow through stone and bark that oozed molten light instead of blood. The behemoth reacted instantly, dragging its leg back and kicking, the force launching Lexa across the battlefield until I caught her with a force net and eased her descent.

Clay committed fully to his strategy then. He vanished into motion, darting along the behemoth’s legs and lower torso, carving shallow but countless cuts wherever he could reach. Poison bled into those wounds, seeping inward drop by drop, a patient and relentless attack against a body that shrugged off everything else. I could feel the effect beginning, not damage exactly, but irritation, the monster’s regeneration stuttering in tiny, almost imperceptible ways.

I escalated things trying to simply slow it enough that we could take our time and focus on our attacks. Mana Body surged outward, my form ballooning until I towered over two hundred feet tall, lightning and force weaving into a colossal frame. I wrapped both arms around the behemoth’s torso and heaved, muscles and magic screaming as I forced it off balance. For a moment, impossibly, I had it, the creature tipping backward as the ground buckled beneath its weight.

Then gravity answered.

The pulse slammed into me like a god’s fist. A thousand times normal force crushed inward, collapsing my Mana Body in a cascade of shattered constructs and tearing energy. I was thrown clear, my vision flashing white as I crashed back into my own body, pain blooming everywhere at once. Selena caught me mid-fall, reality bending just enough to keep my spine from snapping.

I didn’t have time to recover before the behemoth pressed the advantage. It leaned forward, crystal growths along its chest flaring as it unleashed a wave of primordial force that tore through the battlefield. Oliver barely managed to keep his buffs active as he fled upward, while Samvek and Selena split in opposite directions, each barely avoiding annihilation.

Primordial Surge tore from me in answer, elemental fury slamming into the behemoth in a storm of lightning, ice, and raw force. The attack would have obliterated a city. The behemoth absorbed it, wounds sealing even as they formed, its vitality roaring back unchecked. Blood is Life whispered the truth I’d been refusing to hear. I’d been told that abilities which form our core become almost alive and I was definitely hearing it now.

You can’t kill it from the outside.

The thought was terrifying and clarifying all at once. As the behemoth raised its arms for another devastating strike, I stopped thinking about cutting it down. I started thinking about getting inside.

The moment that decision locked in, everything else narrowed into brutal clarity. If I was going to do this I was going to go all in. I Spirit Walked forward, slipping out of phase as the behemoth’s arm came down like a falling mountain. The strike passed through me with a pressure that still made my vision ripple, and then I was moving into the creature, not through a wound but through its mass, my awareness threading between layers of stone, bark, and crystallized vitality. Even in this form, I could feel the pressure of it’s aura, but I was a trailblazer… No, I was THE Trailblazer. I would not be denied and this was definitely going where no man had gone before.

The inside of the behemoth was hell.

Gravity twisted in impossible directions, crushing inward from every side, and the pressure was so intense that my force constructs screamed as they struggled to hold my body together. I phased back to solidity a fraction too soon and felt ribs crack, blood bursting from my mouth as the monster’s internal density tried to pulp me outright. I slammed every ounce of focus I had into reinforcing myself, force lattices locking around organs, bones, and spine just to keep me alive.

I found the heart by feel rather than sight.

It wasn’t a single organ so much as a nexus, a pulsing mass where earth, gravity, and raw primal vitality converged into something like a core. Each beat sent shockwaves through the creature, and every pulse tried to tear me apart. I wrapped one arm around it, anchoring myself, and felt Blood is Life flare with savage urgency.

This was the only way.

I tore into my own arm with my teeth, ignoring the pain as blood flooded free, already glowing with layered power. I drove my forearm into the heart’s surface and released Self-Propagation without restraint. When I first reaved this ability the System had warned me against misusing it, but we weren’t under the Heavens now. So I was going to roll the dice. My blood didn’t just spill, it invaded, threading into the behemoth’s internal pathways like wildfire through dry brush.

The reaction was immediate and violent.

The behemoth convulsed, its roar shaking the entire floor as conflicting instructions ripped through its body. With my blood came an adapted version of Night’s Fall. It was reshaped by the design of an architect, the blood of a man destined for ascension, and a soul linked to a primordial aspect. Regeneration stuttered, gravity pulses misfired, and the crushing pressure around me wavered just long enough for me to breathe.

Outside, everything broke loose.

I felt Samvek hit it with everything he had, lightning and Psi crashing down in relentless waves as the monster staggered. Selena folded reality again and again, forcing its limbs to miss, its footing to fail, buying me seconds at a time. Clay’s poison finally reached critical saturation, now that I had shut off its regeneration, his thousand cuts turning systemic as the behemoth’s internal chemistry fell apart. Lexa hacked deeper with Dagen’s blade, carving glowing channels that didn’t close anymore.

Inside, I pushed harder.

Blood flooded out of me, vitae and life force burning as they rewrote pathways that had never been meant to hold anything but primordial order. I screamed, not in pain but in effort, forcing my will through the connection until the heart began to slow. Each beat came weaker than the last, and with every falter the pressure around me eased. I used everything within me as though I were a virus intent on rewriting the behemoth’s existence.

The behemoth collapsed.

I felt it fall before I felt it die, its massive body slamming into the ground with a force that rippled for miles. Inside, the heart finally tore itself apart, unable to reconcile what it had become. I couldn’t use Spirit walk again quite this soon, but I had another options. At the last possible instant, I activated the Toe Ring of the Phased Step, and passed through the gray and decaying flesh that was breaking down around me and out into the light.

I hit the ground hard, rolling across shattered stone and steaming mud, my body screaming in protest as I forced myself upright. Blood ran freely from half a dozen wounds, but the behemoth was still, its vast form already being reclaimed by the dungeon in slow, deliberate waves.

Silence followed, thick and heavy.

Samvek was the first to reach me, lightning still crackling faintly along his skin as he grabbed my shoulder. Selena was there an instant later, hands already glowing as she assessed damage with ruthless efficiency. I waved them off weakly, breathing hard but grinning despite the pain.

“That,” I rasped, “was definitely not level appropriate.”

But all other thoughts were driven from my mind as a loot chest fit for a behemoth appeared where the beast had been.