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Edge of apocalypse 104
🕑 Added 2023-08-07 19:45:00 +0000 UTC104 – Terrible weapons
Albert had decided to meditate a bit before sleeping the night and, before he knew it, the whole night had passed. He had meditated through it all, and surprisingly he was feeling as refreshed as if he had slept a full eight hours. Perhaps even more. It seemed that system-aided meditation was quite restorative, and it allowed him to cultivate for several hours without pause.
Level: 1/20 – XP: 972/2000 -> 1709/2000
Meditation granted a 100% buff to mana regeneration, bringing Albert very close to the cusp of the first level. Finally.
Another benefit? Albert was usually a deep sleeper, but here in the forest it was better to always be ready to react to danger. Now, with meditation, he was never really asleep and always kept a small part of his mind focused on his surroundings.
That is how he managed to react to the last of many ambushes at the hands of the Elves. Kainen was still faster than him, even though the former guild master was asleep when the elves came. How he did so was a mystery, probably the fruit of years of training and a life lived in close proximity with danger.
The party was quickly defeated using new tactics, coordinated attacks and even a modicum of modern weaponry from Earth brought into the mix. The battle was completely one-sided, over before it even began. Hopefully it would serve as a lesson, and would dissuade the elves from sending more people after the party of two.
The attackers were bound, and then freed afterwards without a casualty. Almost. None were dead by the end, and it was all that mattered.
A notification had appeared after Albert was done testing his Psionic Suggestion on one of the elven prisoners. He did so before releasing them, when Kainen was far enough away that he couldn’t see the skill in use.
The notification was, frankly, disturbing.
New Quest: Elven Awakening.
· Your Essence of Nature stirs. You now must choose:
· Nurture the essence, making it bloom into a fully awakened essence and transforming you into a high elf.
· Usurp the essence, retaining your half-elf, half-human nature and gaining a weaker version of the elven buffs.
· Find a way to incorporate the essence into your cultivation system. The result of this route is unknown.
Of all the options, the third one was the most tantalizing. If anything, it was so in the way that gambling is to a gambling addict: the promise of a great gain hidden behind unknown perils and odds.
But it would have to wait.
“Impressive weaponry.” Kainen said after the fight was over. “How many do you have?”
“Dozens. They can be mass produced. I personally improved them all with my skills, but even without the improvements they are pretty powerful—”
“Keep that fact for yourself. Pretend the weapons are a part of your personal power or something. It would spell the end of conventional warfare if knowledge got out.”
“Why?” Albert asked. “Too powerful?”
A shadow passed through Kainen’s face. “They are not very powerful if you compare them to grand magic and trained soldiers. But it is the fact that anyone could use these weapons, and they would still be as effective that scares me.”
Albert felt a proudness in his chest that he could not place. “I see.”
“I don’t want to imagine how wars are fought in your world.”
“During the first World War, machine guns reigned supreme.” Albert mused. “Then mechanized warfare once again changed all that.”
“First World War?” Kainen raised an eyebrow. “And a combative culture like that managed to create someone as soft as you?”
“You don’t understand. Nuclear deterrent makes another world war impossible. Otherwise…” Albert trailed off.
Kainen did not comment. Perhaps he was getting used to Albert talking about things he did not know, or perhaps there were parallels to this world that allowed him to understand, if not to grasp the real meaning of what was being said.
“We need to move fast today.” Kainen stated after a while. “We’ll be the deepest into Elven territory, close to their capital and to their stupid sacred tree. They hate when humans get close to the tree.”
Albert was not surprised. “Religion?”
Kainen nodded. “More like spiritism but yeah. Combine it with their racist ideology, Arcane Equilibrium and our trespassing… you see why it might be a problem.”
They ran. And as they did, Albert felt that something tugged at his consciousness from all around, calling to him more and more the closer he got to the center of the forest. His eyes were drawn to the contents of the latest quest he received, and he thought about what it might mean for him and how he wanted to proceed with it.
For the first time ever, a new kind of thought arose. He was reluctant to accept the power-up. There was a fear that had not been there before, but that was made more and more present the more he felt the tug of the forest in his soul. He was scared he might be losing his humanity.
The little rest window while Kainen recuperated his spent stamina and mana – since he did not have mana resources to draw upon unlike Albert – saw Albert finally reaching a conclusion about what to do with the Essence.
The nagging sensation in his mind, soul and body was simply too alien and too scary to ignore. All he wanted was for it to go away, to leave him alone.
Turning his inner gaze upon the presence of the Essence in his status, and in his astral manifestation of what might be considered the soul, he tugged on the strings of mana that weaved skills together and made them work. It was time to Usurp. Carefully, because the Essence resided in a place very close to where his budding mana ‘core’ lived.
Right at that moment, as he was about to utter the word and make the skill do its work, Kainen’s powerful voice pulled him back to the real world.
“We are surrounded.” He said, falling into a low stance and looking around at the unmoving forest with sharp and concerned eyes.
The truth was that neither him nor Albert had felt the elves come until it was too late. And now, ten of them were staring down form the crowns of the trees, and another was approaching them from the ground.
Grinning.
