Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO STUBBING AUGUST 15)-11-36. Detestable
The Painted Wastes were disorienting, and not just because of the shimmering rainbow of colors. That wasn’t pleasant, but as Elijah trekked through the desert, he found himself affected by the oddly flavored ethera. Part of it came from the sheer density, which had long since exceeded the levels he associated with Chimera Island, but there was something else in there. Something that left him constantly angry.
And it wasn’t something as simple as a different attunement. He’d felt that back in the area around Svetogorsk, which was blanketed in so much conflict-attuned ethera that it put the entire population on edge. Rather, it was biological in nature.
It took Elijah two more days to pinpoint exactly what it was, and when he realized what it meant, he found himself feeling nauseous.
Pheromones.
They pervaded the air, filling his lungs with every breath, and to the point where he felt dirty on a level that he hadn’t since being dragged through a pulsating sphincter and into the Chimeric Forge.
Only a few hours after he realized what was happening, he was attacked by another swarm of wasps. By that point, it was a common enough occurrence that Elijah prepared with nearly mechanical familiarity. A preemptive cast of Blessing of the Grove came first. Then Wild Resurgence. And finally, he embraced Dragon’s Echo as he readied his scythe. By that point, the wasps were upon him.
The comprising members of the first wave were the largest among the swarm, which meant that they were very nearly human-sized, with wings that stretched out to nearly five feet in each direction. With stingers like spears, they were also incredibly dangerous. Not from the wounds they inflicted. Rather, because of how they fought.
During his first few encounters with the wasps – back when he’d just entered the Painted Wastes – he’d been ignorant of their tactics. Now, he was more than prepared for their method of attack, which centered around spearing him in place. By themselves, those tank-like wasps weren’t very dangerous. After all, Elijah could heal from whatever wounds they inflicted, and pretty easily.
But they weren’t alone. Behind them came nearly twice as many much smaller and slower wasps. Those represented the true danger, as Elijah had quickly discovered after falling into their proverbial trap and allowing himself to be pinned to the ground. Once there, he’d had very little defense against the slower-moving wasps.
He had no intention of repeating that experience, and since then, he’d developed plenty of techniques to avoid just such a situation.
When the first wasps came in for attack, Elijah leaped into the air, slamming the blade of his scythe into its carapace. It hit with a crunch that sent a spiderweb of cracks arcing out from the point of impact. The things’ natural armor was almost impossible to cut, so he’d been forced to use his weapon as a bludgeon.
Thankfully, the impact was enough to foul the wasp’s flight and send it crashing to the ground. Elijah used Cloud Step to leap higher, avoiding a lancing blow from a second wasp. Then, he used the ability again, though at an angle that sent him rocketing toward the ground.
And the first wasp.
He hit it like a runaway train, smashing it against the cracked earth. A cloud of rainbow-colored ethera billowed around the crash site, briefly obscuring Elijah and his injured foe. That gave him cover to reach down and rip its wings off.
One down.
More than a dozen to go.
Over the next few minutes, he repeated that same strategy, downing the wasps one by one. All around, the smaller, red-carapaced wasps hovered, darting back and forth like demonic hummingbirds and waiting for an opening Elijah had no intention of providing. He’d gone down that road, and though he’d managed to survive, he refused to experience it again.
The spear-wasps were still dangerous on the ground, but they were clearly accustomed to attacking with the advantage of being able to move in three dimensions. Without their wings, they were ungainly and slow. Elijah used that advantage to target their joints, severing their legs and further crippling them.
Soon enough, the insects were capable of nothing more than wiggling back and forth.
And screeching in obvious pain.
Elijah didn’t recoil from it, though. Not like he normally would have. For whatever reason – probably because of what had happened during that first fight – he took pleasure in their agony.
After all the spear-wasps had fallen, the rest of the swarm hovered about in confusion. For all that they were effective at what they did, they weren’t very smart. And without the spear-wasps, they were incapable of adjusting. So, like any wild creature, they found themselves faced with two choices.
Fight or flight.
The smart choice would have been to flee. But the wasps were clearly the apex predators of the Painted Wastes, and they simply weren’t equipped to make that choice. So, even though they should’ve been capable of predicting the eventual consequences of doing so, they chose to attack.
That was what Elijah was counting on.
The second the swarm got close enough, he unleashed Lightning Domain. Arcs of blue electricity lashed out, slamming into the much-more-vulnerable wasps. The first few died instantly, but it wasn’t until the effects of Dragon’s Echo took hold that the rest fell victim to the full brunt of Elijah’s spell.
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Green lightning spread out like a deadly web of electricity, shocking the labrador-sized creatures and sending them to the ground. Elijah took that opportunity and brutally slammed his scythe into each of the hated insects. Unlike the spear-wasps, these new creatures – that he referred to as breeders – had no defense against his blade, so he managed to dispatch them before the shock of Lightning Domain wore off.
And just like that, the job was done, and he hadn’t been stung a single time.
Still, he used his Mantle of Authority just to be sure. The boughs of his soul spread, eradicating the eggs waiting inside the breeders. With a single sting, they could inject nearly a hundred eggs that would hatch within a few moments. The larvae would then use the victim as sustenance before bursting free as fully-formed wasps.
Elijah had experienced that a couple of times already, so he wasn’t going to take any chances.
The eggs withered under his Mantle of Authority, proof in his mind that the wasps were a menace and their progeny nothing more than a contaminant. He slammed his foot on one, splattering its innards across the cracked desert earth.
Then, he went on to do the same to nearly a hundred more just like it.
Up until that point, he’d tried everything he could think of to avoid them. But the things could see through stealth, could track him from miles and miles away, and were even willing to descend into the Hollow Depths to hunt him down.
Now he knew why. He was practically swimming in their pheromones, which a quick look inward told him had mixed with his ethera to create something that acted as a beacon. It had dissipated under his Mantle of Authority, but had returned in full force the second he’d let it drop.
The message was clear. If he wanted any sort of peace, he needed to keep his mantle going. He just wasn’t certain he could. But even if his soul ended up frayed beyond all recognition, it was better than being suffused with those wasps’ biological chemicals.
Over the next couple of hours, he experimented with his mantle. It was mostly fixed, with only the two versions available. However, he found that he could retract it slightly, meaning that it would affect a much smaller radius. The trade-off was that it required a lot less ethera to maintain, and as a result, it put much less strain on the boughs of his soul.
The problem was that it took a significant amount of concentration to keep it constrained. And focus was a finite resource, which meant that he had a lot less to spare for keeping an eye on his environment. A trade-off he could embrace, considering the visceral disgust he felt at being infected with those hateful creatures’ pheromones.
Like that, Elijah kept going, following the density of the ethera. Along the way, he saw more evidence that the wasps held sway over the entire region. They moved in swarms, swooping down on anything that dared venture to the surface under the light of day. Eventually, Elijah retreated into the Hollow Depths, where he finally let his Mantle of Authority lapse.
He continued into the tunnel for almost an hour before he reached a wide spot that would allow him to deploy his tent. After taking a shower – using Blessing of the Grove and plenty of soap – he crawled inside and finally allowed himself to rest.
His current strategy just wasn’t viable. That much was obvious. Even retracting his Mantle of Authority as much as possible, he could never hope to keep it going for more than a day – maybe two, at the outset – before he was forced to retract it or risk injury.
It wasn’t until he recalled the pattern of the local wildlife’s behavior that he realized that he was overlooking something important. The wasps were diurnal. That was obvious. And the rest of the region’s animals had adjusted their own cycle to take advantage of that by adopting a nocturnal nature.
Elijah chose to take that as a cue to do the same.
So, for the next sixteen hours, he remained in place, resting as he waited for the sun to set. Only then did he climb to the surface and resume his trek across the Painted Wastes.
He looked up, seeing a sky filled with a shimmering rainbow of light. It reminded him of an aurora, though far more widespread. After only a few minutes of study, Elijah recognized that it was comprised of the mixture of ethera and pheromones that had risen into the atmosphere.
Thankfully, there was nothing coming from the cracked earth, confirming Elijah’s theory about the wasps’ nature. They were fully diurnal. Whether that was due to the nightly cessation of the natural phenomenon that spread their pheromones or if it was the other way around was still a mystery. What was not mysterious was that Elijah could now travel much more quickly, and without straining his soul.
Unfortunately, he still didn’t dare take to the skies. Doing so would once again immerse him in those pheromones, which would ruin the entire strategy of traveling at night.
So, he stuck to terrestrial travel, and along the way, he found that the desert had come alive with battle. Everywhere he looked, he saw individual fights between various beasts. Thankfully, they ignored him, largely because he’d adopted the Guise of the Unseen. Even if those beasts could detect him, he was normally gone before they had a chance to react to his cloaked presence.
Like that, he continued to travel, covering a couple hundred or more miles each night before retreating back to the Hollow Depths. A couple of times, he couldn’t find an entrance to that subterranean world before daylight came, but he used Mantle of Authority to bridge the gap and avoid being hunted by the wasps.
With each passing night, the ethereal density grew ever thicker until it began to approach what he felt just outside of his own domain. And it continued to climb with each step.
In some ways, Elijah took pride in that. Everything pointed to the dragon Primal Realm being at the center of it all, so Elijah’s natural predilection was to simply assume that it would be the strongest realm of them all. And the rising ethereal density suggested that he was right to assume as much.
After a week, Elijah found out that he was not quite as prepared for the wasps as he thought he was. He’d been forced by the terrain to travel during the day, so his Mantle of Authority was extended – and that, combined with the monotony of travel had dulled his senses such that he barely recognized the danger before he actually fell into the trap. His mindless momentum kept him going for a few extra steps. To keep himself from falling into the crevasse, he used Cloud Step, leaping high into the air.
Only to become entangled in a web he could neither see nor sense. He tore free of the free-floating web, but something smashed into him a second later. He didn’t even have a chance to dodge, it hit him with so much force.
More troublingly, it sent him tumbling sideways and into the crevasse. There, he splashed down into something thick and sticky. He tried to climb free, but the substance hardened after only a second, trapping him in resin.
That was when he heard something truly troubling.
Laughter.
High-pitched and hissing.
Elijah couldn’t even turn his head, but he could sense something large and many-legged approaching him before he heard a voice, “Oh, aren’t you a pretty one? My collection grows. My children will feast.”
He managed to flick his eyes in the speaker’s direction, and when he did, he saw something truly terrifying.
11-36. Detestable
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