Unbound

Chapter Three Hundred And Fifty Six – 356

Chapter Three Hundred And Fifty Six – 356

Below, huh?

Felix looked over the railing of the barge and into the black, steaming water. It was so opaque he couldn't see further than twenty or thirty feet, but just as before Felix felt at the thick coils of the Deepking and something else, at the very bottom of the chamber. If it was what he thought it was, then Felix knew exactly what the crafty snake wanted them to do.

The Abyssal Serpent rumbled, contemplative. "Do you hesitate? Wish to recant, little Fiend?"

"You want us to face what's in the Mana well, right?" he asked.

The Deepking's eyes widened. "Mana...well? Ah, is that its name? Curious. Yes, that is your challenge. I shall part the waters and open the way below, letting you pass into this well. Eliminate this threat to my realm and you will have proven your strength and power."

"Couldn't I just show you my Race in my Status screen?" Felix asked, thinking on the Amulet of Veiling around his neck. While his Race said Primordial now, the Chanter amulet could make it seem to say Nym. Yet the Deepking only growled.

"There are ways to twist the eye, Skills that would hide the truth from us. A show of strength is the only way." Felix tried not to let the scowl of annoyance show on his face as the serpent rumbled on. "If you are what you say you are, little Fiend, then it shall not be difficult for you in any case, hm?" The Deepking let out another laugh, this like an avalanche of shale.

"A show of strength. Right." Felix gripped his Inheritor's Will. "Karys?"

The sword buzzed to life, exuding a breath of green-gold Mana vapor. "My Lord?"

"I'm in this Temple's containment chamber. Gonna need access to the Mana well. Can you help?"

The voice of his Chancellor hesitated. "My influence is less comprehensive at such a distance, but I can assist in the initial connection. You will have to negotiate"

"Yeah, I get it," Felix said. "Do it."

Pit warbled a note of interest as he too ambled to the front of the barge. Felix spared him a quick glance.

Danger. I smell it. Urges?

"I uh, I'm not really sure. It feels weaker, but..." Felix looked to Zara and the others. "I need all of you to stay still and do not engage. Alright?"

"What are you?" Zara tried to ask, but the giant snake king boomed over her.

"They are not allowed to interfere in the Challenge. This is for you alone, little Fiend." The Deepking tilted his huge head at them all. "What are you doing? I sense a power among you...bright and fecund. It is...no. Stop your servant! What you try is not to be done! I shall open the waters, let you within"

"Let me?" Felix furrowed his brows, feeling Kary's power catch on something. "You want proof of my strength? Fine." He pressed his senses downward, toward the object below, and found Karys' presence holding the tattered edge of a long-worn inscription. Silently, it was pressed into Felix's grasp, and he secured it with a layering of his own Intent and iron Will. A trilling sound brought a blue window flashed into being before him.

Welcome Inheritor.

Internal And External Containment Breach Detected

Do You Wish To Access Containment Unit #609?

"Here's your proof," he said. "Yes. Access Containment Unit."

"No! Not all the way!" the Deepking roared. "You fool!"

The opening to the Mana well below them was all but identical to the one in the Waterfall Temple, and it shattered as a darkness flooded into the waters. The Deepking roared, thrashing his insanely huge body and sending the barge bucking high atop twenty-foot waves. Shouts among his company had them brace, hanging tight to railings and bindings of ice. Yet if the Deepking's response was violent, it was not nearly as frenetic as his Naga servants. The smallerbut still hugeserpents bellowed into the hot air and dove into the black waters in violent tangles.

Something met them. Felix could feel it like the light of the rising sun, until it filled everything below them with the acid-bright sensation of blood and rot. Massive hands composed of a thousand tiny bones thrust upward, catching the Nagafolk like they were worms on a hook before pulling them down. They vanished into the storming waters.

"Felix, what did you do?" Vess cried. "A presence...there is a creature below us and it..." She screamed and fell to her knees as the barge was throw atop another wave. "It hates."

Evie and Zara were also twisting in obvious pain, even Atar to an extent. The rest looked pale, as if someone had dragged a dagger across their soul.

"It's comin'," Harn said, his voice thinner than Felix had ever heard it. "Whatever you're plannin', do it now, kid."

Rising from the black waters came a figure, a small mountain to rival the Deepking himself. It was made of putrefied bones, hundreds, thousands of them all stacked and lashed together by cords of rotting flesh. It rose, black water pouring from its abscesses like cataracts, split by a hundred jagged ribs and three twisting columns of vertebra. Its back was hunched and spread over with paper-thin skin, the full bodies of a hundred different Races stacked atop one another, all of them interwoven by spikes of rusted metal.

It was a horror. Literally.

Name: Shambling Horror

Type: Spirit (Necromantic)

Level: 924

HP: 87258/108932

SP: N/A

MP: 32400/93452

Lore: A denizen of battlefields, a Shambling Horror is thought to form when the deaths of war pile high enough to choke even the greatest of funeral pyres. Spirits of necromantic death seek out these corpses, weaving them together to form bodies of ever-mounting rot. The greatest of these scavenger spirits will form into a Shambling Horror, a monstrosity that will not die so long as a single piece of it still remains whole.

Strength: More Data Required

Weakness: More Data Required

Felix swallowed, feeling the pressure on him from just its presence. The giants and legionnaires had fallen to the deck, overwhelmed by its savage Spirit, and the Henaari were barely braced against the railings. Felix's Eye felt its power and something of its advancement: it laid comfortably beyond any Master Tier he'd ever faced.

And yet...there was a brittleness to it. A hollow of empty bellies and dusty tombs. Felix shook off the images that assaulted his Mind, just in time to get hit in the face with the Horror's vile voice.

> Its voice was the voice of thousands, man, woman, and child all overlapping and screaming. A skull fashioned of some great beast pushed free of its rotting hunch, and its eyes were pits of black-green radiance that oozed as if more oil than light. It's broken jaw hung open and gaping, fangs the size of swords gleaming with ancient ichor and dripping water. > It snarled at the Deepking, and its immense bulk shifted toward the great serpent. >

"You dare speak to the King of the Deep in such a way!" Garox bellowed, and ten more Nagafolk emerged from the steaming depths. They were covered in burns, but they bared their fangs without hesitation. "You will die for the affront!"

The Naga rushed the Shambling Horror, Garox at their fore. They surged over the waves, cutting through them at one point, all deadly fang and unsheathed scimitars. The Horror thrust one of its limbs forward, and blackened green light flowed down...into the water. Bone claws the size of passenger jets ripped from the deep, clasping savagely around four of the advancing Naga and tearing them asunder.

"Noctis' tits," Evie whispered as the fight raged on. She balanced atop the rocking barge with ease, but her face was tinged green at the sight of the Horror. "That is..."

"The biggest undead I have ever seen," Atar finished. "It was held here?"

"Do-do we attack?" A legionnaire asked. She held her sword, still sheathed, in a white knuckled grip.

"No, this is for the Autarch alone," Zara commanded. "Everyone else, hold tight to the barge and we shall protect you."

The others rushed to obey, even the recalcitrant Frost Giants bowed their heads to the Sorcerer's words. Harn, meanwhile, looked to Felix with a question in his gaze.

"What do we do, kid?"

"I need" Felix started, but was interrupted by another titanic wave, and the guttural cry of the Abyssal Serpent. The Horror had killed another clutch of Naga, and the Deepking howled.

> It lifted two Naga corpses and fed them into opening, skeletal jaws all over its Body. Flesh and scales were rendered to crimson mush as it fed and the Deepking growled in outrage again. >

The Shambling Horror lunged for the Deepking just as the Abyssal Serpent dove to strike, his wide maw at least big enough to clamp around the Horror's chest. Their blows cracked against one another, sending each other sprawling; the Horror into the water and the Deepking crashing into the marred walls behind him.

> the Horror chanted, its rippling Spirit filled with frustration and rage. >

"A silence to which you will return, vile creature!" Garox howled, slashing forth with his twin scimitars. They flashed as they struck, spikes of ice erupted from the Horror's bones where they were struck. The Horror flinched back, but raged all the more.

> The Horror spun, ignoring the Spirit Naga and advancing on the Deepking in a wave. >

Just as the Horror closed, the Deepking struck, his huge head bashing into the Horror's labyrinth of rib cages. Bones snapped like gunshots, but the Horror's multitudinous claws found purchase on the serpent's back, digging deep trenches as they grappled. A third arm lifted from its hunched back, formed of reshaped bone and ligaments, rearing as if to strike as a scorpion stings. It thrust...and was held fast.

>

Black strands of shadow Mana clung tightly to its bone-forged limb, and the Horror's monstrous skull turned to follow them to their origin.

"Unf, hi there," Felix grunted, holding onto his Shadow Whips with both hands. "As much as I'd like to see the...Deepking there...kick your ass." Felix shifted his grip, moving the strands of shadow into one hand. With his other he traced a series of sigils in red-gold flame. "You're...kinda my fault and test at the same time."

Cardinal Flame!

The Horror all but froze, its entire Body seized by coursing red-gold flames. It twitched, trembling as it pivoted in aggrieved rage.

Felix let go of the Shadow Whips with a sigh, and rose on a crackling column of blue-white lightning. Mana poured from his channels, red-gold traceries that clung to the Horror like napalm, and dropping his resource pool faster than his regeneration could fill it. The monster was strong, taking everything Felix had to hold it in place, inches from tearing into the Deepking's throat.

> it cried, trembling with everything it had to throw off Felix's dominance. >

"Just a...good Samaritan," Felix grunted. Red-gold flame ignited, limning Felix's form between the bursts of electricity, and he could feel his eyes burn. He unsheathed his crooked sword and pointed it at the Horror's chest. The Horror's oily gaze widened, the green fading to a desolate black, and Felix felt its rampaging Spirit convulse. With fear.

>

The shout caused the surviving Naga to reel backward, and some of his own people to collapse, but Felix shrugged it off with a minor effort of Will. It truly had been weakened by its long imprisonment, and the force of the Horror's Spirit was dropping by the second, which was great news for his own plan. He was getting low on Mana, fast.

> the Horror said with a dark chuckle. The fear masked itself with more anger and now malicious glee. >

"You were," Felix said, just as Pit vanished in a flash of light that set the barge below to rocking. "Now, you're mine."

Chthonic Tribute!

Will to Will, Felix fought for only a moment. The Shambling Horror was strong, and perhaps in its prime it would have destroyed Felix, but that time was long past. Now it was barely holding itself together after years of confinement. The Cardinal Flame ate at its corpse bones, ripping them to charred dust as the rest burst into black smoke. Lights of a thousand hues flashed and pulsed within that column of dark smog, all of it sucked into Felix's channels over the span of thirty seconds.

Nothing remained.

Cardinal Flame is level 80!

Felix dropped back onto the barge, his Body cracking the ice so badly he was forced to spend more of his Mana to patch it, which made his Spirit and head ache all the more. The barge bucked again, and this time it was due to the black water that swirled around them all. Groans from the stone and gurgling roars could be heard, deep below the surface where the Mana well now stood open...and empty.

"The water is draining into the well," Felix said.

Their barge picked up speed, now racing around the massive, cavernous chamber at breakneck speeds. A whirlpool formed within the center of it all, right above the mouth of the Mana well and the water level in the chamber began to drop. Significantly so as more drained into the well than the cascading staircases could replenish.

"Zara?" Felix asked over the roar. "Can you stop this?"

The Naiad was already watching the water, and lifted her left hand. Blue-green light flowed from her, arcing out into the dark whirlpool and down. Felix could feel it drop away from them, a mote of power as strong as many of his own Skills. And then it vanished, like a popped bubble. Zara's face contorted, her brow furrowing as a sharp cadence sang out into the air. It was too much, too fast for Felix to follow, but he certainly felt the shift below them. A booming reverberation through the Mana of water and air, and then the whirlpool abruptly dissipated.

Zara hissed, holding her hand as if she'd cut herself, but stood up without aid as the barge spun the last few times around the chamber.

"Thank you," he said to the Naiad, and she gave him a nod in return. "Did you close it opening somehow?"

"I forged a plug of woven water, imbued with enough of my power to sustain it a very long time," she said, now flexing her hand. It looked whole and healthy.

Felix eyed the chamber, the steam-fog all the worse since the Horror's defeat. "That sounds complicated."

"It is. And I...appreciate that you know that," she said. "I'd advice you shape a stone lid over it before long, just to be safe."

"That's a good...idea...."

He trailed off, just as the gargantuan form of Kar'casitrix rose once again from the waters all about them. His huge head tilted, regarding their tiny vessel as it lazily drifted in the dissipating currents, and his copper eyes flashed with an emotion Felix had trouble parsing. More Naga rose from the depthsten, fifteen, fifty, more, until Felix couldn't look anywhere but see one of the enormous snakes. Colors that ranged between deep sea-green, warm brown, and deepest blue decorated them all, scales that glimmered in the light of the Belais Crystals so far above their heads. Even further, now that the water had dropped.

Felix felt tiny before the Deepking's regard, though he tried not to let it show. The man squared his shoulders and faced the Abyssal Serpent, noticing for the first time several oozing wounds on the great beast. No wonder he's pissed. The real question is, did I pass their dumb test? I

Without warning, the Deepking...bowed.

And every single Naga followed suit.

"You have proven who you arewhat you are, and the strength you possess," the Deepking shuddered. "It is mighty. Forgive this one for failing to recognize you, my Lord."

The bow deepened, until the Abyssal Serpent was just below eye level with Felix. His enormous, wedge-shaped head tilted sideways so that their eyes could better meet, though the king's were staring at Felix's feet.

"We acknowledge and surrender to your strength, God of Thunder and Flame. We are yours, bound by Oath and Power. Upon our honor shall we serve, or else upon our honor shall we die." The Deepking's rockslide voice shook the chamber as his copper eyes gleamed with an intense fervor. "This I swear! We shall henceforth serve the Returned God, in all things!"

"In all things!" came the echoed shout from every single Nagafolk present.

"Ah," Felix began to say, more than a little uncomfortable with the 'god' bit. But Zara gave him a sharp look that stopped the words before they could form. Clenching his jaw instead, Felix only nodded. "Sure. That'll do."

Congratulations, Autarch!

You Have Vanquished A Threat!

The Nagafolk (Cold Depths Tribe) Have Joined Your Fledgling Nation!

+25% To All Positive Relations With Nagafolk!

Authority Recognized, Inheritor!

For Defeating A Territorial Threat And Peacefully Subduing The Local Inhabitants

You May Lay Claim To The Haestus Temple!

Do You Wish To Increase Your Authority?

Y/N

Yeah, Felix thought at the System. Yeah I do.