Unbound

Chapter Five Hundred And Fifty Three – 553

Chapter Five Hundred And Fifty Three – 553

Adamant Discord!

A tether of lightning lashed back, affixed to the very air itself as Felix fell in a tangle with the Steel Elemental and Chimera. Pit unleashed a heavy barrage of light crescents, each strike carving shallow slices into the elementals tough exterior as it forced its clumsy, grasping arms away. Felix rotated his body, twisting against the rushing wind until his feet met metal.

Cloudstep!

A platform of crackling Mana appeared just beneath the elemental, stopping its descent just long enough for Felix to flex his powerful legs. He screamed, anger and stress bottled as one, and blasted the monster through his Cloudstep and into the mountainside. The elementals roar cut off, buried under the sound of screeching metal and falling rocks.

You Have Killed A Steel Elemental!

XP Earned!

Shadow Whip!

From one hand, Felix hurled a coil of shadow, snapping it around his Companion and tangling against itself. Gotcha! Felix cried.

In his other hand, the lightning tether glowed fiercely. Felix hauled back on the empty air, grunting at the sheer strain as inertia dragged at his shoulder joint. His Body proved up to the challenge, and moments later they were both flung upward at breakneck speed.

The ledge! Pit shouted out.

I know! Felix passed the staircase where theyd fallen, ascending still on the cable-like connection hed seized from the air. Time to take a shortcut!

The mountain flashed by them, a blur of stone as more elementals crowded its surface. Boulders were launched after the duo, but Felix kicked away the few that came close. Ice Drakes swirled in the clouds all around them, their own attacks all but replacing the hail, but Pit met those with superheated light and an unflinching cry.

Yet monsters and weather were not their only obstacles. Theyd risen around a thousand feet, the stairway coming in and out of view, when a vicious pressure settled on Felixs shoulders. It shoved him down, or tried to, refuting his claim to the sky.

Felix screamed. The pressure buckled, dimpling the thick cumulonimbus clouds around them as true lightning flashed. Baseball-sized hail came at them sideways, shattering against Felixs newly summoned scales and Pits barding. The stairway rounded the mountain just above them, and Felix pulled them closer.

You Have Left The Path!

You May Not Return!

What? A sheen of prismatic Mana formed a barrier around the carved stairs, preventing them from landing. Fine!Adamant Discord!

Felix blasted upward, hauling harder than ever on his seized connections. Lightning became a bar of blue-white energy as he ascended, faster and faster, hurtling through greater and greater amounts of spiritual pressure. Felix bodied it all, smashing his midnight scales against whatever being wanted him to fail. They shouted, twinned Primordial voices screaming into the storm.

They would not be stopped.

Thick, cloying clouds washed over them, passed them, before they emerged suddenly from the other side. The raging blizzard was gone, left below. Felix stopped, hovering atop a set of Cloudsteps, Pit trembling beside him.

Thats a little intimidating, he admitted.

Spread out before them, flying just above the lightning strewn clouds below, were Ice Drakes. Not one or two or fivebut thousands. The immense creatures were strong, but Felix had beaten them handily before. Pit had too. What they hadnt handled before, however, was the monster that flew behind them. A Superior Elemental, fashioned into the likeness of an Ice Drake but magnified at least three times in all dimensions. Its back was surmounted by ice crystals the size of small trees, while its wedge-shaped head was lit by a purple-white light. Felixs Voracious Eye pinged its power at somewhere around a Tier VIroughly analogous with a Master at the upper reaches of their Temper.

Yeah, Pit agreed. His sides were heaving as he breathed, and a few of his minor wounds had opened back up. Just a little.

Felix could feel his friends exhaustion, his pain, and the stubborn anger that boiled in Pits heart. The temptation to make his Companion retreat was strong, but Felix pushed it away. You ready?

I Pit growled, but it was laced with a sharp whine. I cant. I cant fight them all, Felix. Im toothe climb, the fall, I Pit whimpered. It hurts.

Its okay. Felix hugged his friend around the neck, tight as he could without opening up his wounds. I got you, bud.

Convergence!

Pit initiated the retreat, vanishing in a flash of light and settled like a lead weight in Felixs Spirit. For a moment, Felix simply stood there, contemplating the approaching horde. He had perhaps thirty seconds before the distance Ice Drakes reached him. More than enough time to center himself. To breathe.

The Superior Ice Drake shrieked, sending a violent shockwave across the clouds. Felix leaned into it, ignoring the way it threatened to shatter his ear drums. He was focused. The horde drew closer.

Time to end it.

He shifted his weight and the Cloudstep beneath him groaned as he leaned forward. Adamant Discord.

Conjured platforms exploded as he took off, the very clouds around him blown through in an ever-widening circle. Felix rode lightning, skin shining with light and fire. The closest Ice Drakes opened their jaws and unleashed a torrent of freezing, unshaped Mana. Felix met it with all the fury and power at his disposal.

Rime Shaping!

Felix took hold of the unshaped ice Mana before him, splitting it in half as he sped through the breach. Each portion he shaped into blunt projectiles, hurled sideways at the line of Ice Drakes even as he ripped his fist through the first.

You Have Killed An Ice Drake!

XP Earned!

More were on him instantly, but Felix did not hesitate. He tore them apart, their frosty bodies no match for his command over their own element. A few escaped his control though, attacking from awkward angles as a dozen became a hundred. That was when he got clever.

Cardinal Flame!

Auroral Forge!

Auroral Forge is level 77!

Multi-Cast is level 80!

Explosions of red-gold flame and blades of whirling golden light spun from his channels like the counter-melody to frosts concerto. Wings were sheared through, bellies ruptured, and ice-flesh melted into arctic rain. Kill notifications streamed across Felixs consciousness, acknowledged and dismissed by instinct, as his dark claws wrought savage destruction on the horde around him.

Chthonic Tribute!

Dead elementals burst into color-streaked smoke, devoured as Felix fought. He was lightning and his strikes were thunder, filling the murky sky with cast off reflections. The elementals couldnt harm him, not with Sovereign of Flesh, and he would not tire before it was over.

Another roar ripped through the pile on of bodies, almost scattering the Essence Felix was consuming. Your turn, huh? Felix asked, just before the Superior Ice Drake slammed into him.

Not today! he shouted, and caught the monsters descending jaws between his scaled hands. Bat-like wings pumped, driving them down into the clouds as its thick, stout neck flexed against Felixs grasp. God, your breath stinks.

Potent ice Mana rushed up its gullet, easily visible to Felix as an ascending radiance. He twisted aside, slamming the beasts jaws shut just as its glacial breath hit. Nope! Keep that to yourself!

The Superior Ice Drake screeched, icicles bursting from the sides of its mouth. Felix released its snout at the same time he drove his spiked knee into its chin. The elementals head snapped back, the pathetic remains of its breath attack spent into the clouds around them, along with several of its sword-length teeth.

It collected itself swiftly as they plummeted, still falling through the flashing clouds, and reoriented on Felix. This time it was far faster, its broken maw open to swallow Felix whole.

He was happy to oblige.

Felix dove into its open mouth, cutting off the power of his Adamant Discord as he rode the slick length of the elementals throat. Instead, he conjured spell after spell, the same one repeated with Multi-Cast, until he shone with red-gold flames.

Multi-Cast is level 81!

Cardinal Flame surrounded him, melting the ice enough that his fists broke through the elementals constricting muscles with ease. The creature spun, hurling itself in circles to dislodge him, but Felix couldnt be stopped now. Its insides were confusing, but he punched his way through until he hit a layer of ice that refused to give way. Felix grunted, peering inside before grinning.

Got you. Cardinal Flame shifted, moving from his whole body to pull inward, toward the Mana Gate at the bottom of his skull. You wanna imitate a dragon? Ill do you one better!

Blinding, red-gold flame roared from Felixs mouth. He grasped it as it emerged, shaping it from a blooming gush to a welders flame. The spell compacted again and again, strengthening each time he sounded Cardinal Flame, rapidly devouring his Mana pool but increasing its potency with every instant.

Multi-Cast is level 82!

Cardinal Flame is level 94!

Fissures ran through the elemental, but Felix stayed focused on the slowly melting ice before him. The monster shrieked in pain and panic. Then he was through, the ice opened up just enough. Felix slammed his claws down, piercing the gleaming purple-white core of the elemental.

Chthonic Tribute!

Everything fell apart.

Felix dropped, summoning multiple Cloudsteps beneath himself to arrest his fall. The first dozen shattered beneath his weight, but he slowed enough to stop as the entirety of the Superior Ice Elemental was rendered into Essence, Mana, and a decent stream of significance.

Hell yeah. Way better than the measly dollops I was getting from the other enemies. Felix watched the skies, half hoping for another to come for him. Clouds swirled around him, completely obscuring anything beyond a dozen yards. You hear that, Pit?Gimme a couple hundred more like that and Ill have more than enough to use Unite the Lost.

Betterbetter get moving, then.

Felix snorted. Yeah yeah. Im on

Thunder boomed above him at the same time Felixs senses screamed in panic. He threw up his arms, just in time to bear the brunt of a metal fist the size of a sedan.

UNF!

The Cloudstep beneath him exploded into pieces as he was driven straight through it, rocketed downward through the clouds by the unmitigated force behind that punch. Felix ripped out of the clouds and crashed into the ground, cratering the ice and stone beneath him.

From above, a gargantuan figure dropped. Felixs eyes widened, and he grasped a potential connection up and to the left before zipping away. Lightning flashed and he barely dodged the school bus-sized feet that stomped hard into the earth. Clouds of snow and stone dust rose up, obfuscating the creature as it slowly stood up from its crouch.

Damn. Felix realized he hovered above a wide, icy plain, marked only by a few upthrust rock formations. A plateau. Its the summit. And thishis Voracious Eye flashedthe Final Guardian.

It was a Superior Steel Elemental, Tier VI just as the Superior Ice Drake had been. It was formed entirely of metal and shaped into a blocky representation of a humanoid. Two arms, two legs, a stout torso topped by a thick neck and square head. It was huge too, somewhere around fifty feet tall. Frost clung to it in spots, the snow marking the strange definition to the elementals musculature.

Damn. Dudes got twelve-pack abs. Felix was fit and crazy strong, but the elemental looked like it lived at a gym, and it was always core day.

A booming laugh ripped across the air. Not from the elemental, who Felix doubted could even open its sculpted mouth. Instead it was from the clouds above, and was accompanied by a sudden, intense spiritual pressure and even worse cold.

Thats not creepy, he muttered. The cold ratcheted up further, until even Felix was uncomfortable. Felix had no shaping magic to affect the creature. Metal was beyond his control, so he couldnt affect it like the Ice Drakes. He pulled at his Mana, sounding Cardinal Flame once moreonly to find his flames would not manifest. The cold choked them out entirely.

The elemental stomped out of the fading dust cloud, gaining speed with each step. It lifted an arm, clearly telegraphing its attack, something that Harn had told Felix time and again to never do in a fight. That is, unless your opponent had no chance of stopping it anyway.

Fuck it, Felix growled. You wanna brawl? Im game.

Adamant Discord!

He shot forward like lightning itself, fist pulled back the same as the elemental. Within his fist a corrosive green power gathered, splashing outward in a thick, undulated wake.

Hand of Calamity!

Wild Threnody!

They met, fist to gargantuan fist, and it was as if a mountain had split in two. A sonic boom tore through the air, followed closely by a wave of pure, potent acid and the sparks of metal on metal. The elemental staggered back, hand mangled and wrist bent out of true.

Felix followed. There would be no wasted time or testing this enemy.

Hand of Calamity!

Wild Threnody!

He sounded his acid shaping Skill over and over, stacking the patterns until they hummed with such ferocity it hurt his ears. Felix lashed out, landing on the elementals forearm and bringing all of his might to bear. With a nightmarish screech of metal, the creatures arm bent inward.

More.

Again he hit, this time a savage kick at the elemental's other arm, knocking it away and snapping off two of its fingers.

More!

Felix wreathed himself in acid, letting the waves of thick Mana envelop him entirely, before hurling himself straight into the monsters chest. The elemental lifted its arms, but its bent appendage left an opening, and Felix rammed intothroughthe creatures steel carapace.

Directly into its core.

Chthonic Tribute!

Just as the Ice Drake before it, the core dissolved, pouring into Felixs open maw before the rest of the elemental followed. The Essence and Mana were nice, but again the significance was finally more than a whisper thin rivulet.

Multi-Cast is level 83!

Hand Of Calamity is level 67!

Wild Threnody is level 86!

You Have Killed A Superior Steel Elemental!

XP Earned!

Final Guardian Defeated!

You have ascended the Path of Rule and fought to the very summit of the Ironskin Domain! Congratulations, Challenger! You have proven worthy of rule!

New Title!

Ironskin Champion IX (Epic)!

You have successfully conquered the ninth layer of the Ironskin Domain, proving your worth to the Frostfather! +20 END, VIT, DEX

What? Felix frowned at the notifications. Thats it? A single measly Title?

The sky rumbled again, but there was no booming laughter. A steely silence hung all around as the blizzard went unnaturally still. Even the wind had stopped blowing.

I know youre there! Felix shouted into the sky. I need more than this! We Felix snapped his mouth shut. Fine. If you wanna hide, then so be it.

He squared himself off, letting midnight scales crawl up his face and over his mouth, until he was covered in a second jaw of razor sharp fangs. A nightmarish half-mask.

Ill come to you.

Adamant Discord!