Chapter 879: Chapter 879

The landmass at the end of the chain appeared out of the now-ubiquitous haze so quickly that he only had a few moments to slow his descent before he slammed into the uneven terrain. A shockwave of force erupted through his legs, not stopping until it had bypassed his knees, leaving only pain in its wake.

He countered it with a surge of Wild Resurgence, eliciting a wave of relief.

If Elijah was honest, he still found it strange that he could just shrug off the effects of a fall at terminal velocity. More, considering he’d added his own wing-borne motivation to the equation. Constitution truly was a miraculous attribute.

He looked around, his serpentine neck giving him enough mobility to check every direction. The terrain was entirely barren, though he knew it wouldn’t remain so for long. The second the battle up above ended, the winner would descend the chain. And there were always more to come, and from all three sides. Elijah lacked the context to truly assess the numbers at play, but he knew they were overwhelming in scope.

So, he wasted no time before shifting into the scourgedrake form, adopting Guise of the Unseen, and setting off across the jagged landscape. Only twenty minutes later, his caution proved well-founded when he passed a group of migrating abyssals. Each one was almost as powerful as the chain guardian, and there were dozens of them. They shambled along, sometimes using their tentacles like the legs of an octopus, and other times via their often stumpy and usually uneven legs.

Elijah tried not to look at them, save to keep track of their progress. In any case, he gave them a wide berth, bypassing the group after only a few minutes. Only twenty minutes later, he found an army of dragons. They all felt like demi-gods, and many sported grievous wounds. However, they kept moving along, seemingly uninterested in fighting.

It was such a striking change, especially when Elijah could see a swarm of vespirans in the distance. In any other situation, the two would’ve already clashed – and that wasn’t even considering the abyssals following behind. Clearly, something had changed, and Elijah suspected it was the proximity of the Worldseed.

After all, he wasn’t the only one capable of feeling it.

Surely, they had as well, and it had created an almost hypnotic effect, dragging them ever forward. Elijah experienced it as well, though he had the advantage granted by the Antlers of the Wild Revenant. Through the helmet’s Plain Sight trait, he was protected against mental intrusions. That included whatever pull the Worldseed had inflicted upon the others in the Primal Realm.

Even with Plain Sight’s protection, some of that magnetic mental pull seeped through. Elijah sequestered it in one of his leaves, where it couldn’t affect his actions. Otherwise, he’d have found himself mindlessly trudging along like all the others. The source of thɪs content is novel[f]ire.net

Did they realize they were being manipulated? If so, what did they experience? Elijah had no idea. But he had no interest in letting something toy with his mind.

For the next week, he managed to avoid further conflict, which created two consequences. One was obvious – he made great time – but the other was a little more surprising. The lack of fighting left him feeling a bit pent up. Like the knot of anticipation that had been his constant companion throughout his time in the Broken Crown had suddenly tightened.

And he didn’t like it. Not one bit.

Elijah was no battle-crazed maniac. He could find enjoyment in the act itself, as well as the sweet taste of victory. There was something primally satisfying about overcoming a powerful foe. Then, there was the advancement of levels that provided even more positive reinforcement.

But he didn’t live for the fight.

However, as he trekked across that landmass, growing ever closer to the Worldseed, Elijah couldn’t deny that that statement was only partially true. Outside, he could keep those feelings in check. But the second he’d entered the Primal Realm, he’d taken on a different mindset.

It was necessary if he wanted to survive.

In a place as dangerous as the Broken Crown, he couldn’t afford to shy away from battle. He needed to be ruthless and willing. Otherwise, he might hesitate precisely when doing so would get him killed. So, he’d pushed himself into a more savage mentality where pacifism was an alien concept.

But now that he’d denied himself the taste of battle – especially with his enemies so close and seemingly distracted – he felt a deep sense of frustration.

It was like passing his favorite bakery after not eating anything all day.

Elijah was well-practiced in controlling his impulses, though. Or rather, he was very good at shoving them aside so they couldn’t affect him. After doing so, he continued on, marveling the entire time at the number of enemies he passed along the way. If he didn’t have Guise of the Unseen to cloak his presence, he would’ve had to fight every step of the way.

Probably. Assuming that the others even noticed his presence. If they did, he would be overwhelmed in minutes and forced to retreat. He could kill armies, but even his abilities would fall far short of dealing with the forces arrayed against him.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on NovelHub. Report any occurrences.

The landmass itself proved much smaller than most, and it only took him a week to reach the next chain. Once again, he used Shape of the Sky and Lightning Surge to bypass the crowds of monsters, wasps, and dragons clogging the way. This time, the descending chain was only a couple hundred miles long, so he ended up slamming into the ground at the full speed of lightning.

This time, his bones did break, and he was forced to spend a little more than three days in recovery. Still – it was a nice change of pace from the last time he’d hit something under the effects of Lightning Surge. Back then, he’d nearly killed himself – even when he was protected by multiple shields. This time, he was only subjected to a handful of compound fractures and a few ruptured organs.

It also opened up a few possibilities regarding his tactics.

He had little desire to endure broken bones every time he wanted to win a fight, but with the right set-up, going full kamikaze on an enemy might become a viable strategy. Then again, if he could endure it, then he had no doubts that most of his foes could as well.

In any case, once Elijah was healed, he moved on. As he passed more enemies than he could count, he focused a couple of clusters of his mind on his core exercises. The constant absorption and expulsion of ethera was almost meditative. Sure, stretching his core to its limit was a little painful, but in a lot of ways, it reminded him of that feeling that came with a good workout. The burn. The muscle tightness. The satisfying exhaustion.

It was his constant companion as he crossed multiple landmasses. The chains became shorter, but they were consequently even more crowded. At one point, Elijah found himself wishing he’d maintained Shape of Venom’s ability to stick to any surface. Then, he could have traveled along the underside of the chains, where it was a lot less crowded.

Along the way, the sense of the Worldseed grew ever stronger, filling the atmosphere with thick heat and ethera dense enough to be detrimental. If he’d been any less durable, he would have been forced to constantly heal. As it stood, he only had to stop every few days.

If the barrier around the planet’s broken pieces wasn’t opaque, Elijah suspected he could have seen the Worldseed, which he imagined as a miniature sun. Probably because of the heat and waves of ethera wafting off of it.

And then, after another a week, he finally did see it.

His characterization of it as a star wasn’t far off from reality, though it was difficult to see clearly because it was absolutely covered in wasps, abyssals, and dragons. They climbed over one another, all in a clambering effort to reach its surface. The ones at the bottom of those piles – Elijah barely caught sight of a few beneath the mass of living creatures – hammered into the Worldseed, obviously attempting get through the outer shell.

Given that it was at least two miles wide, that meant a lot of creatures. None of them displayed even the slightest sense of self-preservation. Instead, they went at the planetary core like rabid animals. And if they couldn’t get to it, they tried to dig their way through the others. Enemy or ally – it didn’t matter.

Elijah knelt at the edge of the last landmass, just watching the frenzied melee unfold. Since the World Tree had touched Earth, he’d authored quite a lot of death and suffering. In the Primal Realm alone, he’d already killed thousands. But watching sapient creatures go at one another like feral beasts twisted his stomach with nausea.

If he hadn’t appreciated the Antlers of the Wild Revenant before, he certainly did now.

During his various conversations with Dolo or his exchange with Ika, Elijah had learned a little about Worldseeds. The objects were still a source of some mystery, largely because they were almost impossible to reach for anyone below deity tier. And those lofty entities weren’t in the habit of handing out information to those below them.

Not just because they wanted to hoard knowledge for themselves. Sure – that was part of the reason for some people, but mostly, it was a question of what constituted support and how far it could go until it became destructive and overindulgent coddling. After all, no one ever appreciated their progress if everything was handed to them. The idea was that people needed to work and suffer for their paths to have meaning. Otherwise, they would reach a point where they were unprepared to continue.

It was a fine line to walk, but one that made sense to Elijah. From his personal experience, he’d never appreciated any accomplishment that came without challenge.

In any case, information about Worldseeds was thin on the ground, but Dolo and Ika had conveyed a few details. For one, what Elijah could currently see wasn’t actually the Worldseed. Rather, it was just a protective shell that had formed as a result of the planet breaking apart.

Instead, the Worldseed itself was supposed to be much smaller and formed of roiling ethera that functioned as the engine that drove the entire planet’s development. Once, Earth’s core – and thus, its Worldseed – had been rated as C-Grade. But just like everything else in the multi-verse, it was capable of growth.

On a planetary scale, that was incredibly slow and difficult. It also required a host of perfect circumstances and fortuitous events to make a leap of even a single grade. But it was possible.

The Broken Crown had obviously been a high-grade world, and if it had truly ever existed, its core’s energy would have been far too powerful for Elijah to endure. Even now, with the system having limited it to something he could theoretically handle, he struggled being in its presence.

His stealth had been stripped away, and he’d been forced to keep a heal going at all times.

The other creatures clearly had no interest in self-preservation, and they’d taken no steps to mitigate the damage. As a result, the bottom layers were roasted alive. But they never stopped clawing and scratching at that seemingly impervious shell.

Elijah knew he couldn’t afford to wait before going after it. For one, he wasn’t certain how long he could keep up his healing. Sure, because of his outsized regeneration and mind cultivation, he could continuously cast for a long, long time. But his efforts would outpace his ability to replace the ethera in his core. As such, every single moment he delayed the inevitable would mean he had less energy to use when he really needed it.

Despite that, Elijah was far more concerned with the second issue – there were some powerful creatures down there. Some were even stronger than the chain guardian. And that strength would eventually allow them to breach the shell. If Elijah didn’t move, and soon, he would miss out on his chance to obtain the Worldseed.

Would that mean he couldn’t complete the Primal Realm? Maybe. The notification had made the goal clear. But he suspected that the win condition was somewhat dynamic, especially with something as time sensitive as reaching the Worldseed.

Either way, he wasn’t going to test it out – not if he could help it, at least. So, without further ado, he began his preparations to join the horde of mad creatures in a quest to breach the Worldseed’s shell and defeat the Primal Realm.