Elysium's Multiverse-Chapter 349

Elysium's Multiverse-Chapter 349

Chapter 349
Chapter 349
Whoever had done this was very good at what they did.
And it was yet another lesson for personal growth that he’d take to heart. He’d come a long way and thought he’d been pretty good about not falling for stupid shit anymore, but the fact that he’d not been able to die here and was by far the most powerful out of every one of the contenders for the Apocalypse beasts… it’d gotten to his head again. All Riven could do was facepalm at his own arrogance, some character flaws were harder to fix than others, but at the same time he had to laugh. He’d not considered that the cultists would come up with a way to actually trap him inside this place, he’d completely underestimated them, and though his life had never really been in any danger - they’d still gotten the better of him this time.
He wasn’t in any danger, but sheer firepower wasn’t going to get him out of this one.
Riven couldn’t help but be honestly impressed. Whoever did this must have an immense understanding about energy control, both mana as well as some divinity thrown into the effort too, and that effort must have been absolutely monumental to create what he was now looking at.
It was a lattice, created through some kind of ritual that reinforced itself whenever it was struck. If Riven hit it the wrong way trying to break it, it’d just make the lattice stronger - while striking it in different ways or places caused it to weaken.
It was kind of like the lattice Riven had created in his soul to reach E-grade. Only this lattice was external and lacked the pillars, kind of like… Kind of like an enchantment, or better yet - a graphic. One of Gragle’s graphics like he used to help Riven create his totems with, but it was also different in that it was self-replicating and reinforcing depending on how the energy flowed. The massive sphere of power had channels of visible energy connecting to each other in an intricate web, with many streams of that energy reinforcing one another. But it also somehow had a soul element to it, so it couldn’t just be an enchantment, and the divinity used here was sewn into key points that acted as keystones - likely in an attempt to throw him off of how it worked because he utilize mana rather than stamina or divinity.
It was fucking brilliant is what it was.
And the fact that it had an external soul element to it, probably enslaved souls from the school of the Death Subpillar, was likely why it was able to cut off his own soul tethers and isolate him from his connected minion bonds.
Absolutely.
Fucking.
Brilliant.
Riven wanted to shake the man or woman’s hand who’d done this and wanted to ask them a whole lot of questions, as this was revolutionizing how he even understood the concept of creating energy and influencing one’s environment through it - before killing that person of course. His use of mana would change after this, without a doubt. But in the meantime, he was trapped.
Hopelessly so.
As was everything else within a two mile radius of where he’d blown half a mountain up.
And so after trying to blow the construct to smithereens for the past few hours, he decided to sit back and meditate as the sun began rising on the horizon. Closing his eyes in lotus position and sitting atop a large hill of rubble, he let the ambient energy of the web-like lattice around him etch itself into his awareness, as he fell into a trance-like state and began to think.
***
The storm clouds flashed with lightning around him, and the rain fell like tears from an angry god.
Narg was… changed.
There were many bloodlines in the cosmos, many of them a hindrance and detrimental - while many were simply useless. Some were grand, while others lacked. He’d always assumed his had been the opposite of a boon, but that’d been proven very wrong. His bloodline hadn’t been a curse after all.
It’d been a blessing. A blessing that his recent ancestors had failed to see.
Had failed to unlock.
He was more now. More than the demons who had spawned him. More than just a simple beholder demon. An Abyssal Eye Beholder wasn’t something he’d ever heard of, but Lillith had sworn that she’d met one from his family in the past.
Which is how she’d known about how to fix him.
How to… unlock his potential.
Narg existed in a place between truth and lies, between the immediate future and the present. His, albeit very minor, insights into the potential outcomes of the immediate future had been key to navigating his way through the maze in his mind that led to his ascension, and he now understood why it’d been locked away to begin with.
The keyhole was not meant to be used by those who did not see.
Because with this change, he felt his old personality, what had been his self, melt away in the face of a need for overwhelming cruelty and violence.
Narg as he’d known himself to be was gone now. In his place was something else entirely, and although he still had the same soul - he did not recognize the beholder demon he’d once been as a kindred spirit.
He was… better now.
He could finally see.
[Narg’s Status Page:
Level 204
Pillar Orientations:] Unholy Foundation, Infernal, Corrupted Abyss
Traits:] Race: Abyssal Eye Beholder, Archdemon. Class: Cruel Eye of Dread, Observant (+200% to detect stealthed enemies or traps), Long Ranged Tactician (Scaling damage bonus that increases the farther away an enemy is struck, up to 5 miles), Innate Flying, Minor Fate Reading (Interpret fate as it coalesces, giving a very minor amount of precognition), Born of the Abyss (You are able to phase your body in and out of the abyss akin to a cloud of darkness, hiding your movements, the movements of others, and even your own arsenal of attacks if used properly), Scoped Bombardment of the Dark Bastard (Your vision, aura, and the range of all your abilities all gain a 5000% bonus), Cruelty’s Gaze (Looking directly at an opponent with any eye can apply a weakening debuff that stacks over time, slowing them and increasing the damage done to them by your own attacks), ELITE RELATIVE RANK DISPARITY.
Abilities:] Seek Object (Unholy), Seek Danger (Unholy), Seek Safety (Unholy), Greater Identify (Elysium-Based), Nightmare Bombardment (Tier 3 Unholy / Infernal), Nightmare Barriers (Tier 2 Unholy / Infernal), Globspitter (Unholy), Hellspitter (Infernal), Black Harvest (Tier 3 Corrupted Abyss), Rabid Chomp (Tier 1 Corrupted Abyss), Ethereal Whiplash (Tier 1 Corrupted Abyss)
Stats:] 605 Strength, 1102 Sturdiness, 3588 Intelligence, 1199 Agility, 10 Luck, -18,101 Charisma, 3300 Perception, 445 Willpower, 0 Faith
Equipped Items:] None]
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, the violation.
Narg closed his status page with an internal scoff. Elite Rank Disparity. How pathetic.
But he internally knew that he had to prove himself to Elysium before being deemed as greater. Just because he’d grown into this new power didn’t mean he knew how to use it, and Elysium would not usually just ordain someone to be of a higher tag such as LEGENDARY without being sure they fit that description.
Of course exceptions were often made in extreme circumstances, but not always. This appeared to be one of the cases where he would have to show Elysium what he was worth before it evaluated him as better than ELITE.
He’d be sure to do so soon enough. If for nothing else, his pride.
High up in the sky and acting as an overwatch in anticipation for Nora’s arrival, Narg embodied an ominous black cloud with predatory catlike eyeballs that blinked in and out of the cloud from time to time at random intervals. Occasionally flickers of his true body would show through, a flash of crackling sin amidst the abyss that outlined what he truly looked like on the other side of the veil - even through the rainstorm. Occasionally, dark tendrils of his behemoth body would flow out of the mass that simultaneously absorbed and produced his body at will, like the emergence of Cthulhu from the legends of Riven’s homeworld; Earth.
His gaze pierced the pouring rain and across the landscape for miles from a thousand different perspectives, and yet he still did not see her coming. He was growing anxious, and the more he watched these people, these… rodents, scurrying around in their town - the place they called Outpost #84, the more he wanted to kill them. He could only barely stand to be inside that little pub for so long, not only due to confining his actual size so much inside the abyss - but because they were disgusting.
He didn’t want to kill them for the sake of hunger, no - he was not afflicted by Gluttony’s desires like so many of the others had been with Riven’s ascent. He had not been blessed with such a gift as unfortunate as that was. No, he wanted to kill them simply because they were less than him, and because he could.
Because he desired violence, and desired the act of inflicting pain.
The one they called Athela understood. She was a kindred spirit in some ways… at least he hoped. Though she did not truly see as he did. She did not see just what could be gained from overpowering violence, but rather she found it amusing - but even that was better than the stupid oaf of a brutalisk; or the inane yapping of that stuck up greater succubus.
He would have killed the bitch already if not for their mutual master. He would have taken that blade blessed by the commandments that he knew Riven still had, and he would have held Fay down to sear that blade into her heart as he devoured her life essence so that she could not come back. He wanted to murder her. She talked down to him, and he would put her in her place if not for the repercussions of what that would mean. For the wrath of the master would be great, and Narg was sure that even as he was now - he would not survive a fallout of that magnitude. No, he would be hunted down to the ends of eternity if he was to do something like that.
Such a pity.
A thunderous clap of thunder overtook his thoughts, and he felt a silent but notable shift in the currents of energy around his position. High above the town and amongst the clouds, his thousands of smaller, orange eyes opened simultaneously as the threads of fate coalesced and settled on a singular spot. Only then did his central eye open amongst the clouds, splitting open the storm with a 30-foot diameter and blazing orange iris that honed in on Nora’s location.
The black tendrils from the abyss stirred to life and began to reach out, beckoning to her.
She complied.
From across the landscape and over the hills, through the forests and across the plains they came.
Thousands of them.
Shadows that were not of this realm or the next, that did not have truly physical bodies yet were still present as 2-dimensional facets of nightmare bore down on Outpost #84 like a tidal wave of black; remnants of some of the people or stronger she’d killed and absorbed into her ever growing insane asylum. Mad giggling and laughter echoed throughout the army of crazed sociopathic creatures as they answered Narg’s call, and they killed any living creature they came across as they did it.
That made him smile.
Perhaps…
Just perhaps… She may understand his needs. His desires. Perhaps she, and her collective consciousness, her hive mind, was a kindred spirit as well.
“DARLING!!!” Nora’s scream rose above the thunder with a chorus of laughter that sent the town’s inhabitants scrambling into their homes. They’d seen her here before, but none of them found her particularly pleasant - and some had been driven insane simply by conversing with her.
In a flash of darkness, Nora’s figurehead body was there - held up in the sky by a mountain of surging alien bodies meshing together underneath her that propped her up like a sick pillar and throne. She leaned back in the absurdly tall chair made of bodies just a hundred or so feet underneath the orange eyes gazing at her from above in the clouds, her own pale white gaze the only thing giving note to her face as her otherwise imperceptible features were shrouded by the vantablack of her body. “IT’S BEEN SO LONG!”
The thousands of her others repeated her words like mockingbirds on a broken track.
“IT’S BEEN SO LONG!”
“IT’S BEEN SO LONG!”
“IT’S BEEN SO LONG!”
She rested her head on one hand, or at least Narg thought she did - but he couldn’t quite tell given the distinct lack of features she had. Only when she smiled wickedly, giggling along with all the others like a chorus of the damned, did he see any other features present on her.
But her voice dropped an octave, and her eyes narrowed as Narg did not reply - but merely inspected her for a time.
“You are the same Narg that saved us… before we became us. Are you not?” Her voice came out as a chorus of whispers from innumerable mouths, and Narg abruptly felt a sharp intent aimed directly at his soul.
He responded in kind, flexing his aura and ripping out from a hole in the abyss like a monster from the depths of the sea. His eyeballs and long black tendrils snaked through the air to challenge the other servant of darkness as tears in space began to crack and rip open, bending reality as his aura slammed into Nora’s hive mind like an oppressive mountain of will.
“Yes.” Was all he said.
Nora, for her part, only began to laugh again.
From further down and closer to the outpost, three new auras surged and began rising into the sky. An aura of bloody webs and silent death - Athela. An aura of pain and confusion that left false images in its wake - Fay. And an aura of burning wrath - Azmoth.
The three new auras collapsed his own under their combined weight, and Narg hissed in irritation as the other three archdemons came to a stop ahead of him. Azmoth had grown to his giant form with flaming wings outstretched, arms crossed in obvious agitation. Fay’s tail with neon-blue blades glowing out the ends was twitching back and forth in agitation as well.
But it wasn’t until Athela’s form of streaming blood exploded into her Arshakai body to perch on Azmoth’s shoulder that Narg realized what they were so angry about.
“CUT THAT SHIT OUT RIGHT NOW!” Athela snarled, red eyes flaring and blades ripping out of her back. “You nearly destroyed the entire gods damned town down there with that little stunt of flexing your aura! Do you know how many spatial rifts were headed that direction!? If we hadn’t nullified it, THEN HALF OF OUTPOST #84 WOULD BE SHREDDED AND IN THE FUCKING ABYSS! DO YOU REALIZE JUST HOW MUCH DAMAGE YOU COULD DO TO A BUNCH OF LOW LEVEL F-GRADES AS AN E-GRADE ARCHDEMON!? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING!?”
She looked like she was about to try and kill him.
“They are to be Riven’s subjects.” Fay hissed in turn. “You would do well to contain yourself and stop having a dick-measuring contest with Nora. If she wanted to, she could and would kill you. The display of strength is falling on deaf ears here, unless you simply wanted to scare all the mortals.”
The first thought he had was to slap Fay back down to earth and to let Athela try her hand at attacking, but then he rethought it. He wasn’t entirely sure he would win that fight even one on one. Despite his desire for violence, he probably didn’t want this fight even if it was a mere spar. Knowing Athela’s tendencies, which were more akin to his own than Fay or Azmoth, it likely wouldn’t end well for him if she did go all out.
Narg looked to the town where Athela had gestured, and realized she was also right. The entirety of the surroundings of the outpost was riddled with deep scars of frothing black abyss energy, echoing his aura’s intent and leaving long jagged tears in the landscape for a mile out in all directions. Trees and hillsides were decimated, and Nora’s swarming bodies hadn’t been affected at all.
Narg tisked, but kept his aura withdrawn. Painful shifting illusory images of Fay’s aura, red webs with an ominous presence to them from Athela’s aura, and patches of burning air erupting around them continued to ebb and flow - until Narg withdrew his body back into the cloud of darkness from whence he’d come. The rips into the void vanished, and only his single central eye remained.
“Next time…” Azmoth said in a deep booming voice, holding up a clawed hand and pointing a burning, obsidian claw in Narg’s direction. “Next time you attack, I attack back. No more warning. Not happen again. Riven’s child down there, I babysit, and I perma kill your ass if happen again.”
The armored titan flapped his flaming wings and burst skywards through the cloud cover, before plummeting back through the rain and regaining his smaller form to go back to the small pub the rest of Riven’s crew were currently using as a base.
Narg’s eye constricted slightly when he realized that Azmoth was right. Iris, Riven’s little spawn, was still down there. He needed to get his emotions under check and under control before doing something so stupid again.
Nora’s giggling smashed the silence left behind Azmoth departure.
“AND I THOUGHT RECONNECTING WITH YOU GUYS WOULD BE BORING!” She guffawed, cackling to the skies along with the mountain of shifting vantablack bodies she was perched on. “She slapped both her hands onto her face and then let out a long, melodramatic sigh. “WELL ARE WE READY TO DO THIS!? THERE’S A QUEST OUT THERE WITH ALL OF OUR NAMES WRITTEN ON IT! AND YOU, MY LITTLE SUCCUBUS FRIEND, ARE GOING TO BE THE KEY TO GETTING IT DONE!”

Chapter 349