Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO STUBBING AUGUST 15)-11-66. Poking the Bear

Path of Dragons - A LitRPG Apocalypse (BOOK TWO STUBBING AUGUST 15)-11-66. Poking the Bear

Like all abyssal monsters, the creature at the end of the chain defied proper description. Elijah could catalogue all the parts – tentacles, eyes, arms, and legs – but the way they fit together was so incongruent that just looking at it gave him a headache. Still, he forced himself to do just that as he searched for weaknesses.
And he physically recoiled from the act once he saw thousands of faces lurking beneath the thing’s skin. They screamed, pressing against it from the inside as if they were trying to escape. The rubbery skin stretched like black and purple latex, but it never broke. Even from so far away, Elijah could hear their screeches. The sound was high-pitched, and it pierced his mind almost like an attack of its own.
In short, it was a creature that simply didn’t belong to his reality, and he could feel the nauseating sense of wrongness even from miles away.
At its feet were piled corpses. Or rather, the pieces of its slain foes. Mostly chitinous insectile parts, but Elijah saw more than a few scaled limbs in there as well. It was an indiscriminate killer, targeting dragons and vespirans alike.
Elijah had no idea how many it had slain, but if the number didn’t reach the tens of thousands, he would have been surprised. In any case, a mountain of dismembered body parts, blood, and chitin was a difficult thing to contextualize. The only saving grace was that looking at it distracted him from the creature itself.
“I’m really, really stupid,” he muttered to himself. “There’s no way this is going to work.” Then, he chided himself for his negativity. The plan made sense. Whether or not it worked was up to execution. And he intended to get that right.
With that in mind, he hunkered down and advanced across the remaining chain links. Closer to the monster, the metal was even more corroded, down to the point where it looked like it had been left out in the rain for a century. But it was so massive – and infused with so much ethera – that it still managed to hold.
Idly, Elijah wondered if it was more ethera or metal.
Probably the former.
He pushed those thoughts aside and focused on the task at hand. Unfortunately, that meant watching the abyssal monster’s every move. If there was any indication it could detect him, he’d have less than a second to engineer his retreat. Because even from afar, Elijah could tell that he was no match for the thing.
If it had been subject to the system, he suspected it would be well into the demi-god levels. But there was no way it was so powerful that it became invulnerable. Not completely. Elijah was banking on at least some degree of fairness with the Primal Realm. Otherwise, there was no chance of anyone ever conquering it.
Thankfully, his approach was entirely concealed. The creature didn’t notice him at all, and for a moment, Elijah considered simply sneaking past. But that option was taken from him when, suddenly, a tentacle lashed out. Elijah narrowly avoided it by leaping high into the air, then twisting to avoid a second tentacle screaming in his direction.
Vaguely, he noticed that the underside of said appendages were lined with razor-sharp, bony protrusions that would no doubt rip him to shreds. If he’d had any doubt about the lethality of the thing’s natural weapons, they were put to bed a second later when the first tentacle collided with the pile of bodies over which Elijah had been climbing.
Arms, legs, and chitinous torsos exploded upon impact. The ones nearby flew high into the air, accompanied by blood and flesh. Elijah paid the cloud of viscera no mind, fully committing himself to his plan.
He used Cloud Step, springing off a cushion of air just in time to avoid another tentacle. Closing the ground, he landed upon the massive thing’s tumorous shoulder, talons first. They cut deep, infecting the monster with Spreading Blight and Ethereal Sepsis. At the same time, Elijah summoned Lurking Swarm, conjuring a group of phase spiders that leaped upon the creature’s leg-like appendages.
It roared.
The faces beneath its skin screamed. At him. At their situation. At their own obvious agony.
And Elijah leaped free just in time to stay ahead of the tentacles. However, he didn’t account for the monster’s arms, which were tipped with hooked barbs. By the grace of his increased reaction speed, he twisted just enough to avoid those natural weapons, but the maneuver cost him the ability to dodge the tree-trunk like arm. It hit him like a massive club, cracking his ribs and sending him rocketing toward the abyss.
Elijah barely regained his wits in time to initiate a transformation into the Shape of the Sky before plummeting into that unknowable realm of corruption. He flapped his wings, skimming along the edge of that transcendent shield that protected the ruptured chunks of planet and the chains binding them together.
He banked, going back for another attack.
The creature hadn’t moved from its position, which meant that Elijah still had a lot of work to do. He continued to gain speed, pushing himself as fast as he could. When he was a second or so away, he used Shape of Spores, turning himself into a flying missile of a mushroom beast. He twisted, hitting the thing shell-first.
And he did have a shell.
When he’d first taken the time to inspect his newest shape, he’d been elated to find its presence on his back. In fact, he’d initially thought that the form was turtle-based. However, aside from that shell, his body bore little resemblance to any chelonoid beast. In fact, he more resembled a bipedal ankylosaurus, though one with a draconic head featuring a mane of six thick horns.
But it was not based on any creature from Earth’s history. Or its mythology. Indeed – it shouldn’t have even existed, because it was as much fungus as reptile, with moss covering the shell on its back and a thick forest of yellow mushrooms sprouting from its otherwise green body.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; any sightings.
Every step he took spread spores, from which rapidly grew those same mushrooms.
As with all his other forms, he also had generously sized teeth and sharp claws, as well as a tail that could be used as a club.
In short, if the Shape of Spores had appeared in a movie, it would have been instantly identifiable as the end boss monster.
At least so long as it wasn’t next to the abyssal monster.
Elijah hit it like a fungal rocket, and hard enough to stagger even the massive thing. He might’ve been elated if it didn’t also mean he had to touch the creature’s grotesque skin. The faces bit at him through the oddly slimy, yet dry barrier, and Elijah struggled to push the resultant nausea aside.
Even that slight hesitation cost him.
The tentacles lashed him, shattering his Shell and ripping chunks of flesh from his body. Each attack sent puffs of spores into the air, which were then absorbed into the monster’s body. It also served as a wake-up call. As wrong as the creature was, he couldn’t afford any more distractions.
With that in mind, he activated a suite of abilities, starting with Mycelial Regrowth, which mended all damage wrought against him. Next came Throne of Spores, instantly conjuring enough fungal tendrils to rival the monsters’ tentacles. They wrapped around its legs, and when they were destroyed, more yellow spores erupted into the air. And finally, Elijah used Nature’s Claim.
The spell didn’t say as much, but it was much more potent when he cast it in Shape of Spores. Not surprising, but still, a nice little boost to power that he was more than happy to use to his advantage.
As his many spores took hold and sprouted into various fungi that, in turn, erupted from the monster’s body, Elijah went to work with his claws, club-like tail, and teeth. Biting the thing was one of the most disgusting experiences of Elijah’s life. It sent a cascade of flavors ranging from sweet to bitter to spicy to rancid across his tongue. It was like drinking raw sewage that someone had doused with a layer of maple syrup then added a dose of peppers on top.
And that was just the beginning.
Its flesh was neither moist nor dry. Rubbery nor soft. But it was all of those things too. And with every bite, Elijah wanted nothing more than to spit it out and retreat.
But he stayed the course.
As he bit and clawed, and his fungi waged war against the thing’s body, the creature didn’t let him off the hook. It inflicted massive amounts of damage upon him. It ripped hunks of flesh away, tore limbs from his body, and broke countless bones. Fortunately, under the effect of Mycelial Regrowth, Elijah had nothing to fear from the monster.
Or so he thought right up until it ripped him away and tossed him toward the edge of the chain.
Briefly, Elijah panicked, and that very nearly cost him his life. For all his power, he didn’t think he could survive the abyss for more than a few seconds. Thankfully, his instincts once again saved him when a fungal tendril snapped out and wrapped around his leg. It broke almost immediately, but that minor delay in his flight path gave a hundred others the opportunity to mimic the maneuver.
Just before Elijah plummeted over the edge, his momentum halted, and the tendrils pulled him back.
Then, unfortunately, his abilities ran their course. Mycelial Regrowth was the first to lapse. A few minutes later, Throne of Spores finished. And miraculously, the abyssal monster remained on its many shifting feet. Sure, it was festooned with more mushrooms than Elijah could count, which had the added benefit of concealing its disturbing appearance with a blanket of fungi, but Elijah sensed it still had a long way to go before it would die.
And Elijah also knew that he wasn’t ready to move to the next part of the plan.
He hadn’t done enough damage.
So, at a safe distance of a few hundred yards, Elijah shifted into his human form, then cast Eternal Plague. He held nothing back, either, tapping into both Grove Conduit and False Grove to fuel the spell. At the same time, he pushed his ethera regeneration to its limit, draining vast quantities of energy from his surroundings. He funneled that through his soul and to his core, where it was transformed into something he could use to power his spell.
And it worked.
Thousands of blue dragonflies manifested, then descended upon the fungal-infected monster. They weren’t true dragonflies, as evidenced by their venomous bite, but they looked close enough that Elijah was comfortable referring to them as such.
Regardless, every passing second conjured more of the blue insects, and at his call, they flew at the monster. Before long, even the vivid ochre of the mushrooms had been subsumed by the blue wave of affliction-bearing insects.
And more came with every second Elijah maintained the spell.
It wasn’t enough, though.
Elijah knew it the second he’d started. But it was all part of his plan, so he kept going for more than an hour until he sensed that the monster was so inundated with afflictions that piling more on top of it would do little good. He let his spell lapse, then took stock of his ethera.
Half his core’s contents had been expended in the endeavor. Considering his massive ability to regenerate ethera – which was further boosted by Grove Conduit – that meant he’d funneled a truly apocalyptic amount of energy into the spell.
The only reason he’d been able to do so was because the monster refused to leave its post at the end of the chain. If it had, Elijah’s job would have been both much easier and far more difficult.
Elijah shifted into the Shape of Master, ready to continue the fight. He stalked forward, scythe in hand, and the fungus- and dragonfly-covered monster loomed even larger due to his diminutive size. The plague-bearing insects had already begun to dissipate, but the mushrooms remained.
The monster didn’t seem to notice, though, and when Elijah drew close enough, its tentacles lashed out with characteristic fury. It was a touch slower, though. Blessedly so.
Elijah went on the defensive, only using the scythe to block oncoming tentacles. Soon enough, he’d built a few dozen charges of Heart of Fire, but he knew he didn’t dare unleash Incinerate until he had a hundred.
Unfortunately, his plan was fouled when he took a glancing blow that sent him skipping down the chain for nearly three-hundred yards. He only managed to stop himself by hooking the blade of the Verdant Fang into one of the corroded edges.
Elijah quickly healed the damage via Wild Resurgence, but physical wounds were the least of his worries. No – the big issue was that he now had to start over with Heart of Fire.
Resolving to do better, he sprinted back into the fight.
This time, he made it to seventy-five charges before getting hit. The next time, ninety. Then, finally, he reached a hundred.
He didn’t hesitate to open his mouth and let loose with incinerate. Elijah wasn’t sure if it was because of his levels or due to picking the core-boosting Dominion specialization, but the fire was hotter and more voluminous than ever before. It enveloped the entire monster, burning with enough intensity to melt steel in an instant.
But when the smoke cleared, the monster was still alive.
It had taken noticeable damage, though. Half of its tentacles had been burned to a crisp – had it used those to shield itself? – and its faces were screaming with even more urgency than before he’d used Incinerate.
Elijah took that as a good sign.
However, when he tried to bait the thing into following, it remained steadfastly planted at the end of the chain.
But that was fine. Elijah had always known it would take multiple rounds. But with some of his cooldowns having been used, he needed to be even more careful than before.
He shifted back into his human form, then once again used Eternal Plague, renewing the cycle. He knew better than to hope his efforts would kill the thing. But if he could make it angry enough, it just might follow him.
And he knew exactly where he wanted to lead it.

11-66. Poking the Bear