Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO STUBBING AUGUST 15)-11-59. Broken
One thing that surprised Elijah more than anything else was the sheer variety on display within the army. Not only was every facet of draconic society on display, but there was physical diversity within each category as well.
For instance, some of the dragons looked much as he’d been led to expect. Four-legged, reptilian creatures with scales, wings, and serpentine necks. But some were entirely terrestrial, with far stumpier bodies and entirely lacking wings. Others very much resembled Shape of the Sky, with arms integrated into their wings.
Among the dragons, that diversity wasn’t the most shocking, though. What truly surprised Elijah was that many of them appeared humanoid. Almost all of those had wings jutting from their backs, and they featured scales in myriad colors and patterns, reminding him of Kirlissa’s form. But they looked nothing like the European or Asian versions of dragons he’d been led to expect.
He would’ve asked someone about it, but now that Dolo was gone, Elijah had no real guide. Anytime he’d tried to connect with any of the others, they’d answered his questions in clipped sentences and pulled away as quickly as they could. He wasn’t shunned – not exactly – but he wasn’t really accepted, either.
Was that a facet of draconic culture? Did they dislike strangers? Or was it a feature of the Primal Realm meant to isolate him? He had no idea.
What he did know was that their dragoon allies were slightly more accepting, though they outright refused to speak of dragons at all. To call it frustrating would have been an understatement.
So, eventually, Elijah just stopped trying to connect with the army. It was easier that way.
Instead, he did what he was there to do. He participated in battles, often playing a key role in their victory, and in doing so, he pushed ever closer to level two-thirty. If he had to quantify it, the level had already taken the same amount of experience as any five levels before. And even after thousands of kills, he’d yet to satisfy its requirements.
But he was making progress.
If he’d relied on hunting back on Earth to level, he would’ve been at it for years. So, he knew very well just how great of an opportunity he had been given.
The only issue was that, with every battle, they lost people. As months went by, and they slowly progressed toward their goal, Elijah watched the army slowly dwindle. His comrades fell, and yet, both the environment – in the form of abyssal monsters – and the vespiran swarm continued to attack.
Even among the High Army, with their plethora of demi-gods, losses were staggering. But none hit him quite so hard as when, in the wake of defeating a swarm, he saw the largest and highest-level dragon in the army fall. She lay there, her body the size of a department store, unmoving. Elijah watched as the vitality within her drifted away.
He wanted to help.
He wanted to go heal her.
But he knew it was far too late for that. She was already dead. Killed in the latest battle. That was obvious when, a moment later, a swarm of smaller wasps burst free from her bulging chest, only to be incinerated by another dragon.
It all felt so pointless.
But if the hate for the wasps he felt in his own heart was any example, he knew that the dragons would never know peace with their enemy. The enmity ran too deep. The war had gone on too long. They would never stop.
Elijah barely even knew their history, and even he wanted to kill every wasp – or drachnid – he saw. For the others in the army, their hatred had been reinforced by years of conflict. Of loss. That could not be discarded so easily.
Doubtless, the vespirans felt something similar, though Elijah had some difficulty imagining that they could feel emotions at all. Maybe that perception made it easier to slaughter them in droves.
Because he had done just that.
It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that he’d killed more of the enemy than anyone else in the army. In fact, Elijah sometimes wondered if he was responsible for more kills than the rest of the army combined. Without him, they would have died in that very first battle, and the same was true of just about every other large-scale conflict in which he’d participated within the Broken Crown.
More than once, he’d considered just going off on his own. The only issue with that was that he didn’t really know where he was going.
Well – not the only issue. There were demi-gods out there. Creatures that far surpassed his level of power. Some were abyssal in nature, but the stronger wasps, vespirans, and drachnids were an everpresent threat as well. And they would all tear him to pieces.
Probably.
There was a part of Elijah that wanted to try his hand at fighting the stronger creatures. To push himself. To find a real challenge. He’d always made a habit of punching up, and he’d become somewhat bored with the monotony of weaker enemies.
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Perhaps that was why he wasn’t ready when the army met its match.
It started with a herd of thirteen-legged abyssal monsters that charged into the army without so much as a warning. They ripped through the lines like they were nothing, hundreds of grasping tentacles reaching out to grab dragons and dragoons alike. Anyone caught in those fleshy appendages died after only a few moments as the life was sucked out of them.
Elijah very nearly fell victim to one, but he recognized the threat at the last second and threw himself into the air, bounded high off of Cloud Step, and narrowly avoided the tentacle.
Others managed similar maneuvers, but a full third of the army fell in a matter of moments. The survivors quickly regrouped and attacked, but the damage had been done. For his part, Elijah shifted into the Shape of the Master, mostly so he stood the best chance of avoiding those grasping tendrils.
And he did.
The battle was quick and brutal, but in the end, the army managed a victory. Elijah didn’t even have the chance to unleash Incinerate, but he’d still sliced a multitude of the abyssal enemies into tiny pieces.
He was just about to shift back into his human form and start healing others when the familiar sound of a wasp swarm – which sounded a lot like a fleet of helicopters – reached his ears. He jerked his head toward the horizon, only to see a swarm unlike any other he’d yet witnessed.
Part of it was the sheer numbers on display. There weren’t just thousands. There were tens of thousands. And that was just the vespirans. Beside them flew innumerable wasps, and across the ground skittered thousands of drachnids. The uneven terrain was carpeted by crawling spiders – the drachnids’ progeny.
It only took Elijah a moment to recognize what had happened.
The wasps had somehow managed to drive the abyssal monsters into them. A quick focus on Soul of the Wild told him everything he needed to know. The creatures had been mind-controlled, as evidenced by the dead wasp larvae attached to their brains.
Elijah only had a moment to recognize that before the first wave hit them. For a second, all was chaos of wings, blood, and ichor. But then, he managed to get his feet under him so he could get down to the business of killing wasps.
He whirled around like a dervish, employing the same tried-and-true tactics he’d utilized since the very beginning. For the wasps and vespirans, he focused on removing their wings and grounding them. For the spiders, he took a more direct approach by simply beheading them.
For a while, it worked well. With all of his buffs working in his favor, he managed to stay ahead of the enemy. To them, it probably looked like he could see their attacks before they even committed to them.
And in some ways, that was true. By this point, Elijah had fought the things so often that he could read their intentions by watching for the tiniest of twitches. That, combined with his buffs, was enough to keep him relatively safe.
He was so focused on the fight that he didn’t even notice the passage of time. Or that his side was losing.
Everywhere around him, dragons and dragoons fell, stung thousands of times in the space of only a few moments. Their vitality overwhelmed by the sheer volume of toxins. The drachnids were particularly vicious, and the second their venom took effect, hundreds of smaller spiders swarmed their victims.
They fought valiantly, each dragon slaying hundreds of the enemy, but the army didn’t stand a chance. Even as dragoons descended from the sky, impaling vespirans with their long spears, and dragons bathed whole swaths of the swarm in fire, the writing on the wall was clear.
They could not win. There were just too many. The dragons too few. They had been outflanked. Outsmarted. And outnumbered. The outcome was obvious, even if Elijah didn’t want to admit it.
But even after Elijah recognized the danger, there was nothing he could do. If he shifted out of Shape of the Master – even for a moment – he would be overwhelmed. If he didn’t, he couldn’t use his full suite of healing abilities.
He leaped into the air, bounding off of Cloud Step, intending to shift into the Shape of the Sky. But the second he cleared the first layer of wasps, he recognized his error. The Hive hadn’t just sent one swarm at them. They’d sent multiple, all combined into a single, terrifying attack force.
The numbers – hitting from every direction – were overwhelming.
But even that wasn’t enough to truly shock Elijah. No – what made his heart rise into his throat was the sight in the distance. The entire High Army had already fallen. Those demi-gods had clearly put up a fight, as evidenced by the mounds of insectoid corpses surrounding the site of their last stand. But in the end, they had been defeated.
Elijah could recognize a losing battle when he saw it, so despite his hatred for the wasps – and concern for the army with whom he’d been fighting – he decided that it was time to retreat.
He leaped from his cushion of air, sailing a hundred yards away before using another charge of Cloud Step. Three more, and he’d reached the back of the swarm.
That was when he felt something big and powerful coming toward him. He threw himself straight up, flipping around to see a massive vespiran rip through the remnants of his summoned cloud. The creature reversed course the second it realized he’d missed, but Elijah used his last charge of Cloud Step to abruptly change direction.
The vespiran missed again.
Elijah plummeted to the ground, where he landed lightly in a valley between two jagged peaks.
The enemy hit the ground only a second later, and barely thirty feet away. He was an impressive specimen. Like all other vespirans, his torso was criss-crossed with jagged protrusions of red chitin, but his musculature looked like something straight out of a comic book. As was always the case with his species, he wore a haughty expression that marred his otherwise handsome, angular features.
He wore no armor – almost as if he thought he didn’t need it – and was armed with a single long spear that looked like it had been fashioned from a drachnid leg.
But as impressive as he looked, Elijah was more concerned with how he felt. Often, he’d thought that one enemy or another approached or exceeded demi-god status. He now knew just how faulty those assumptions were. But this creature? It had obviously passed that threshold.
“Pitiful, little dragon. Fleeing battle. Your cowardice is despicable.”
“I prefer to think of it as a tactical retreat,” Elijah replied, his grip tightening on the haft of his own weapon. He had one chance to beat this creature, and even that was a slim one. He couldn’t waste his opportunity. So, he held off, waiting for the perfect chance to strike.
Behind the vespiran, the battle still raged. But that fight was already lost. It was just a matter of how long the dragons could hold out. As he’d already decided, the only option was to run away and hope he could outpace the swarm.
The demi-god vespiran wasn’t going to let him, though.
“Call it what you will,” the wasp-man said. “The shame you feel for abandoning your fellows is evidence enough of your cowardice.”
Elijah couldn’t help but chuckle.
“You laugh as your people die?”
Elijah shook his head, taking a step forward. “They aren’t my people. I don’t even know them.”
Then, he attacked.
11-59. Broken
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