Chương 44: Chapter 41: Dark Seeker

The moment their announcer finished speaking, Aaron exploded into action, flinging himself to the side and splitting his vines to make them thinner and more dexterous; he wanted to be ready to dodge, though he didn't take his eyes off the hovering creature. He watched the glow running along it intensify, all six wings swinging down at the same.

At the center of each wing, many lines converged into a swirling vortex-like shape; from each of these, a slithering dark projectile was shot forth- slow, but squirming, tracking him as he ran. Beneath him, Bwurzix asked if it should expend an attack to slap the creature out of the sky, but Aaron told it no for now. He didn't know enough about the situation to say whether he needed help or not and didn't want to waste energy before he could verify it would actually deal damage.

Easily outpacing the six flying projectiles, he was given a moment to turn around, looking directly at them under both the dying light of the sky and the glow of his blade. Swimming through the air, they were colored as inverted versions of the Dark Seeker, with purple glowing bases and dark lines running along them in various patterns.

Right in the center of their faces, a beady eye sat partially camouflaged against their dark skin, only visible because of the way their corneas glistened against the golden glow of his sword. The Herald, seeing him easily outpace them, quickly repositioned closer to him, charging up another attack- but, of course, he wasn't simply waiting for it to act. Windwhips shot out, darting for its sluggish figure and wrapping around its central body before it was able to pull away.

He pulled harshly on it and watched it struggle to remain aloft, but with a powerful exertion, Aaron was lifted off his feet. Its attack finished charging, and several of the lines along its body peeled away, leaving its wings dark and bare except for the vortexes at the center, where the strings themselves remained attached.

These thin ribbons of purple energy darted down at Aaron as the Herald yanked him higher, but he was unwilling to fully release it, knowing it would likely keep its distance from now on to prevent this exact scenario again.

Seeing the purple strands ignore his whips, going straight for him, he allowed one of them to unwrap from its oblong body, hooking onto one of the nearby dandelion stalks instead, Serving as his anchor, he pulled on both, and watched its balance upset even further, the strands losing direction as they went in different directions. Dark Seeker flapped madly, resisting its eventual collision with the ground- and making it worse for itself, as its momentum carried it in a circle around the stalk.

Leaning into this momentum, Aaron pushed his whips to bend in a way that would push its sideways acceleration even further. The wildly swinging ribbons were not to be ignored, so many filling the air that even its thrashing was enough to be a hazard, first clipping his Windwhip and phasing through it harmlessly, then swinging closer to him; he sliced through as many as he could with his Mushki feather, but there were simply too many to catch fully.

While most were severed with ease, a few made it through, sinking into his skin As they swiped through his body, they left no physical marks, but his mind shook as he felt something be siphoned away. An oily feeling permeated him, and he instantly felt horribly sick. He didn't get physically weak, but he felt… lesser, in some way. He let out a rattling breath, but the Herald was already swinging wildly to the side, its body fully tilted off-balance now.

The centrifugal force luckily pulled the rest of the purple ribbons away, giving Aaron the space needed to flex one last time, slamming the Herald against Bwurzix's leaves, the crumpling it in places. Immediately after it hit the ground, he was forced to release it and draw his Windwhips closer to him, stumbling as he hit the ground and clutching his chest. Looking down at his hand, he saw just how pale his skin was, the sickly feeling digging into his mind… or deeper.

Exhaling, his breath filled the air as vapor, and he shuddered despite not being cold. Forcing himself to his feet, he knew this was something that could be fought through, and so, would. An opposing warmth flared to life in his chest, staving off the hollow as best it could as he refused to kneel from the pain. From the corner of his eye, he saw multiple purple spots streak towards him, far faster than anything the Dark Seeker had thrown at him so far.

He didn't have the time to move out of the way before they sank into his right side in various places, and Aaron felt like his heart nearly stopped as he processed that they were the bits he'd severed from the Herald before.

'They were alive too?' Yet, instead of the disgusting feeling intensifying, perhaps to a lethal degree, he sighed in relief as a purifying, almost cloying feeling replaced the sickly one before, and his skin flushed under the influx of warmth. The world seemed to freeze as his mind worked a hundred miles a minute, assessing the entire battlefield and taking what just happened into account, cataloguing several related data points and pulling them into a single epiphany. When it touched him, it pulled something away.

As he cut it, he'd pulled some of whatever that "Something" was back, and by his reckoning, he won the exchange. It held a new branch of magic. Underworld magic worked by intense emotions, pitting you against the other person in a physical confrontation, the magic itself more roundabout in its effects. Herald - or, more likely, Abyss- magic worked by "Consuming the other, and being consumed in turn." Unlike his strikes, it could directly harm him, but it was a glass cannon.

Every time he blocked or parried, it would weaken. Also, though he had no natural defense against Abyss magic as he would against Underworld magic, it also had no natural defense against Underworld magic. His Burgeoning Memorabilia had faced no resistance whatsoever, unlike how Malric's constructs fought against him. The herald flapped, too far for him to reach before it left the ground.

Though he could send his whips out again, another path presented itself now that he knew every one of its attacks could be broken apart for strength. The slow-moving worm creatures finally caught up, and in order to catch Dark Seeker, he'd have to ignore them, a risky possibility.

Now that he knew Dark Seeker had to expose itself to attack him, he wasn't as worried about it building distance- on the contrary, it would be for the best to cut these worms down now, before the Herald stood once more and was able to help them. So, as the first worm divebombed in, he cleaved out at it. As if expecting his sword to do nothing, it didn't even bother to dodge, giving him an easy shot. Surprising to both of them, though, the collision of their differing magics had… unexpected results.

An iridescent explosion of sparks nearly tore his feather clean from his hand, the force knocking him on his ass and making his ears ring as the noise stunned him. Where the multicolored lights touched his skin, he felt a sickening prickle of power, energy of the Underworld variety surging through him and granting him strength- but it was of the twisted variety, something that should not be used, and would forcibly cast itself.

It wasn't enough to break into the threshold of Corruption: 1, but he would need to be wary… and try to understand what was so different about this spell compared to the other. As he hit the ground, he rolled away, quickly coming to his feet, expecting another of the worms to try and capitalize on his opening, but found them scattered. Having given up their assault, they fled into the air and observed him warily from above- and it was easy to see why.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. The worm he'd struck lay dead, half its body blown apart, the purple lines running along it slowly peeling away- and darting forward. This time, he wasn't surprised at the influx of power, skin flushing for a moment as the heat dizzied him. Where having "It" removed felt like becoming lesser, he could feel that he had more than ever, perhaps more than any being that didn't use Abyssal magic.

And it made him feel… Better. Greater. He wouldn't call it "Superior," as the throne had nearly granted him, but this was obviously a stat foreign to the Underworld. Superior implied that there were those beneath him, this one told him that he would be more of himself. An improved version of what he was already, not reliant on something as ephemeral as rulership. Seeing the hesitance of the monsters, even the Herald pausing to reevaluate whatever he'd done, he took advantage of their lapse.

Vines hoisting him into the air, one of them quickly went up and snatched a worm. The entire sequence of him falling, kicking back to his feet, seeing the dead worm, then snatching the next had barely lasted a second. The entire fight felt like it lasted much longer than it had. There was even still dim light in their surroundings, the sky proving the brevity so far. The Abyssal creatures rushed forward as the worm thrashed to escape his grasp, but they were too late.

He unraveled his whips from the creature, drawing them back at the same time that his sword came down like a falling meteor, catching the purple glowing Abyssal in its midsection and releasing an explosion twice as powerful. Again, he was blown back, but already in the air and more prepared now, his whips quickly shot to the ground, catching him and tilting him upright once more, just in time to block another worm with the flat of his blade, sending a much weaker spark of energy out.

And, from there, it was a barrage. Apparently, they'd been taking it easy on him, their leisurely attitude speaking of a history where much of the Underworld denizens had no way to fight back. The little piece Aaron had taken originally was of non-consequence, a strange anomaly. Now that he'd actually killed one? They rained down on him from all sides, the butterfly's ribbons snapping at him as he dodged and blocked the lesser worms.

He found himself gouged multiple times by the ribbons around the start, but slowly, a grin spread across his face, his body soon acting on its own as he entered the same flow state he'd found before. He found his power slowly increasing, the more Abyssal magic he took from them, the faster he found himself to respond, and easier he withstood each of the explosions. They ate from his flesh just as he ate from theirs, but he always took just a sliver more than they were able to pull from him.

Despite failing to recreate his two decisive attacks near the start of combat, he found the patterns running along them gradually being chipped away, the bodies of the worms pockmarked with wounds; if all six had been present, he might've been in trouble, but as it was, it seemed like Aaron was winning by a landslide. Internally, he knew the truth was a lot different. {Corruption: 0} -> {Corruption: 1} {Corruption: 1} -> {Corruption: 2} {Corruption: 2} -> {Corruption: 2. 1} Every time he hit one of them, a form of Abyssal magic would merge with the sparks infusing him, carried on the back of regular Imprint energy to end up in his body. Unlike regular Corruption though, the Abyssal variant was sticky. His body continuously tried expelling the muck, but it slid and slipped around. Unless Aaron stopped fighting to focus on it, he felt that it would just keep building.

While he was in no place to check his notifications now, it already felt like he held more than he ever had before, the only reason he wasn't morphing into something else being that his body was better suited to handle it; not a side effect of the Abyssal energy strengthening him, but of the new floor he was on and his heightened stat cap. That disgusting force within him gradually congealed, and he knew he'd have to remove it soon or face consequences.

Yet, he continued smiling, showing no difference in his behavior, because he could see the hesitation in the Abyssals now, and every moment they froze, every time it occurred to them that victory may be impossible, he would capitalize on it and widen the cracks further; he knew, though that his victory was killing him.

Exacerbating his success, he finally scored a clean blow on a third of the Abyssal worms, hiding behind his sword as best he could to stave off the sparks as it was fully blown to pieces and its dark body dropped to the ground, dead. The Dark Seeker shook, in outrage or fear Aaron did not know, but Aaron heard an odd shifting in the air that he struggled to describe- like two things grinding against each other, but the objects were removed, leaving only the idea of a sound.

The worms responded to its call, drawing back- but Aaron was already in the air, not caring about whatever stand-off or power-up it was soon to prepare; Abyssal magic clearly took time to channel, and he would grant it none. His whips swung around to catch the worm, but his attention was quickly directed away as the Herald itself threw everything at him, multiple purple ribbons cutting into his form and requiring all his focus to sever enough to recover his lost mass.

When the worm flew out of range, the Herald pulled back, and Aaron was left falling to the ground as the whips holding him up finally ran out of slack. He panted, readying himself as he felt the Dark Seeker begin charging up its third spell of the battle, this one a hundred times heavier than any before. The worms dissipated, their darkness joining its wings, while the purple light they once held surging in front of the butterfly, where a bright twisting ball started to form.

In the purple orb, Aaron could almost see multiple twisting faces, each pressing against the bounds, the thin membrane of magic being the only thing keeping them in. Herald out of reach, he had no way to interrupt its cast, and so did the only thing he could imagine: run away. Even if the Herald and worms were faster than at the start, they were absolutely still slower than him As he tried picking his foot up though, he found himself held in place.

Looking down, he saw multiple purple roots wrapping around his ankles, peeking out from between the leaves. Quickly, more snapped forward, holding his arms in place too with a strength he knew he would not be able to break free from in time, his Mushki feather held straight out to prevent him from using it to cut into the roots.

"Bwurzix!" he cried over their connection, getting a pained and battling feeling. Bwurzix did not respond directly, but it was clear that was only because they couldn't.

'I'm an idiot! The sparks! When I struck one of the Abyssals, any sparks that didn't land on me, hit Bwurzix, and unlike me, they aren't empowered by the Abyssal magic I've managed to earn!' Bwurzix wasn't dead yet, but whatever the Herald was doing, it usurped a portion of Bwurzix, forcing it to hold him in place He panicked, scrolling through his known abilities and coming up short.

'Perhaps my unknown?' he thought, and activated Cracked Plantshift, his new Corruption Secondary. He found the oily Abyssal energy within him being forced down into his left hand, and nearly cried out in victory, but that hope was soon crushed as he felt, just like all other Abyssal magic, his, too, would take several seconds to charge up.

Seconds he didn't have, as the Herald finally released its attack, the purple twisting ball screeching as the faces within seemed to lock into him, pressing their faces against the thin membrane. The world slowed, again, his life flashed before his eyes, but this time… he came up short. No trick that could reasonably save him, nothing that could verifiably heighten his chances, only the advice to throw every single scrap of energy forward, praying it was enough.

The part of Bwurzix that was uncorrupted threw its energy down the connection, donating it as quickly as he could channel it. Having no better option, he simply forced every scrap he could into his chest and out, with the intent of meeting the spell mid-air, though not quite getting that far. Not only did Underworld energy dissipate quickly in the air, but the spell was already on top of him by the time the first embers of a glow appeared over his chest- though it roared to life from there.

The screaming faces hit him, and he felt the unfathomable amount of energy Bwurzix was giving freely be drained away in an instant- pulled through him at an agonizing speed. Where Abyssal met Underworld, another unexpected reaction took place as both were crushed together. Aaron watched the purple spell sink into him, thrashing to get away and failing. The last hint of Abyssal light vanished, and Aaron decided to cut off Bwurzix's donation.

It was clear that the plan had failed; at the very least, he didn't want to take Bwurzix down with him by making it starve to death. It tried to open their connection once more, but he was adamant, and tears formed in his eyes as he felt death approach. Closing them, he awaited the end… … … … Slowly opening them, he fought down the confusion as absolutely nothing happened. The Herald, floating in the air, also did nothing, just watching him.

Five more seconds passed as neither did anything, until Aaron felt that Cracked Plantshift was done preparing its spell… and Bwurzix was fighting for control! The restraints on his right hand relaxed partially, giving him a chance to quickly cut it free. In one smooth motion, he cut the bindings on his left hand and held it to the sky; the roots fell away to reveal his fist glowing like a purple star, the spell moments from going out of control. Throwing his arm forward, he wasn't sure what to expect.

His arm erupting was not one. He blinked, and nearly missed it as a giant red growth, covered in eyes, exploded forward towards the herald, opening wide at the end in a crocodilian jaw that snapped shut around the massive creature with a thunderous crack, ending its life instantly. He felt an incredible surge of Abyssal power course through him, but something on his chest began to vibrate painfully.

He dropped his Mushki blade, using his remaining hand to tear off his bandages, holding his metal glasses case in his hand as it shook aggressively.