Kaelen's eyes opened slowly; for the first moments there was a glossy haze over everything he saw.
'Im alive...'
The feeling was amazing and also confusing at the same time. one one hand, he now had 24 Awakened shards once he harvested them and an additional 5 from the Tyrant itself, but Kaelen felt like something inside him had changed subtly
After igniting his organs and forced the chain reaction, his mind had been set aflame as well; it seemed that after the insanity passed, the emotionless, numb feeling set in
He couldn't help but think if this was how Nephis felt when she used her soul flames
Trying to push himself of the ground, he suddenly felt himself propelled backwards with devastating force, landing on his back
'What...the hell'
He lay there looking at the roof—trying to raise his hand, he was greeted by a giant glowing yellow arm.
'Thats right... i grafted this thing onto my hands.'
It was much longer than his own hand would have been; both of them reached exactly to his ankle. Both of them ended with horrifyingly sharp claws.
Since he had stomped the creature's arm from its elbow going down, he had gained its massively powerful forearms as well.
All in all, there was a lot of power in his arms alone now that he was going to have to spend a few minutes adjusting to the power, and so he did just that
The arms were from an awakened tyrant, so he had a lot of power in him now. other than the arms now on his body, inside of him was a lot of golden liquid—and Kaelen could feel the liquid filling up on its own
Light did have an ability to spread in the space in which it exists, so in a way it made sense—or maybe that was just an extension of his ability.
His body was flooding with power
His stone skin had healed most of the cracks and even though he barely had any water blood left, he had a bit and a lot of the golden blood, which acted in the same way. his organs also burned a lot harder than it did a while back and also his veins and vessels that now flowed into the light arms
It was also unfortunate that he had lost sight in one of his eyes—but comparing the missing eye to a missing hand, well, he liked his new hands a lot
Managing to push himself off the ground without sending himself flying, Kaelen started to test the capabilities of his new arms—he swung them and punched the ground. It was amazing
Summoning the ossified zephyr, he enjoyed the feeling of holding the bow properly.
'... I wonder what the next trial is going to be like.'
He was not so worried anymore since his body was arguably in peak condition, but if he had to face awakened beasts here, where there should have been only dormants and the 1 awakened, what would he need to face in the next trial?
Would there be monsters, or would there be demons?
He would have to push through regardless.
Suddenly pulled out of both his numbness and worries, he snapped his head to the corpses around
'Awakened Shards here I come.'
He bent down and realized he no longer had a dagger embedded in his hand but in the process of bringing his hand down, the powerful hand dug into the glass body easily
'Hoh?'
It seemed that it had a significant amount of strength.
Plucking out the shards from its body, he gently summoned the seafarer's satchel and placed the shard in before doing so with the rest.
After that he went back to sit where he had passed out and begun to cook the last bits of the bird meat he had left—it had been a long while since he had to look and scavenge for food so even though he would need food a lot less due to his body structure, he would need to look for more
While he ate he summoned the runes and wanted to look at what his new memory was
Memories: [Hunters Mark] [Seafarers Satchel] [Swift Sea] [Burning Blood] [Claws of Flame] [Ossified Zeypher] [Glowing Glass] [Light Sword]
'...Could the spell not choose a better name than Light Sword?'
He didnt even need to pull out the runes to know what it was but he did anyway, wanting to see if he could decipher anything.
Memory: [Light Sword]
Memory Rank: Awakened
Memory Tier: 5
Memory Description: "If I drown this kingdom in light, will it push away that emptiness?... Will it give us the power to resist? I don't know but I... I miss my sister... if the light does not save us, maybe the darkness will save her.
'Another bit of backstory... how entertaining.'
Even this one did not give any hints about the enchantments of the sword, but Kaelen knew that this sword will be a great help in the next trial, which clearly seemed to be darkness—after all, every memory he got from a previous trial helped him greatly with the trial that came next
Summoning the sword he watched as a giant greatsword formed in his arm—normally it would have been heavy but with his increased strength he had a lot more strength
He was satisfied`
The blade was large and thick; it was as wide as his body and the blade was the same height as his body, not including the handle
He knew he would find out its enchantments in the future battles to come, but for now what he understood was that the sword was large, light and bright
Waking up from his seat, he sent a single look at the corpses around him and smiled.
"I assume your sister is going to be the terror in my next trial; I'll send her to suffer with you in hell."
Or would they go to the shadow realm?
Well, they wouldnt go anywhere... this was a nightmare after all.
He put his hand on the doorknob and turned it and just as expected, he was in some place surround by darkness.
The darkness did not feel like something as simple as the absence of light—it felt physical, almost like he was surrounded by a thick, freezing syrup that was trying to suffocate him
And in all actuality, it was
The only reason that Kaelen was not being frozen or devoured by the darkness was because of the light that was shining within his body and the light emitted from his hands
But those 2, even if keeping him from being swallowed did not help his sight,
Everywhere was just black
'Oh wait... i have that thing.'
He tugged on his soul and brought out the [Glowing Glass]
In the light trial its effects were negligible because light was literally everywhere but here its shine was made quite apparent. even though it did not illuminate everything, a range of roughly 2 meters around him was illuminated
Kaelen walked in the center of the small halo emitted by the memory; he could not really feel it because of his unique constitution but the cold around was very present
Each step he took felt slick but it was not like walking in the blood of the creatures he had killed before; rather, it felt like walking on cold polished bone
'So, for the next 5 days it will be hunting and exploring—I also need to make sure to get some food to eat.'
During this time Kaelen was going to try and get more comfortable with his new limbs; having this extra reach and power under control was going to allow him to decimate the terror.
Kaelen knew it now
After grafting the tyrants arms to his own, having his body repaired and rejuvenated, and having an almost endless supply of the liquid gold blood that would recover almost instantaneously when he decided to supercharge the flames that were now his organs to exhibit more strength
He could easily defeat the Tyrant if he faced it like this, so the terror would not be that large of a problem
...right?
He raised one of the massive glowing yellow arms; it contrasted against the murky black surroundings. Making a fist and opening it, he looked at the claws with a blank expression
'It will die too, and so will the titan.'
But the terror would come in 7 days and the titan in 14, for now Kaelen would need to deal with the creature in front of him.
He could not see it yet since the bastard was hiding out of range but he could see the brown dot that the hunters' mark was displaying its location
Wanting to use his strength, he didn't wait, lunging forward while taking a breath. He felt the golden liquid heat up—it wasnt like the water that would evaporate; this one started to speed up its flow through the air veins
He reached out with the extended length of his claws and grabbed what he believed to be the creature's head. He flexed his claws, the sharp points digging through the creature's neck until they met in the middle.
[You have slain a dormant monster: Ink Blight.]
'... how fragile'
He raised his hand, still holding the creature, and dug into its feline-like body, pulling out the 2 dormant soul shards. He shoved them into the satchel and stretched again.
'So these guys are like the feline darkness equivalent of the cauterized ravagers?'
As he looked up, the [Glowing Glass] revealed three more pairs of pale, eyeless muzzles drifting at the edge of his light. They were circling.
He didn't let them.
Pushing off the ground with his powerful legs, he used the weight of his yellow arms to build momentum, spinning in a wide arc. The [Light Sword] was still in his soul, but he wanted to feel this—the raw, physical dominance of the Tyrant's strength. He caught the second beast mid-leap, his claws shearing through its chest as if it were wet paper.
[You have slain a...]
The numbness in his mind acted like a whetstone, sharpening his focus
By the time the third and fourth beasts were reduced to corpses, Kaelen wasn't even winded. He just stood there
It was time to move to a new location
He turned his head, his one good eye scanning the dark. He needed to find a landmark, or better yet, something bigger to kill.
....
The next few hours were just as boring
Kaelen moved like a golden ghost through the ink, his heavy footsteps echoing off the endless abyss The [Glowing Glass] bounced against his thigh, casting long, distorted shadows of his oversized arms against the ground.
Every few minutes, the darkness would ripple. A dormant demon—a scrawny, multi-limbed thing that looked like a cross between an ape and a spider—would drop from the unseen ceiling. Kaelen simply reached out with his elongated yellow arms, his claws catching the creatures mid-air. He would crush their skulls or tear them asunder with a single, fluid motion, his stone skin shrugging off their desperate bites as if they were nothing more than annoying insects.
'Too easy,'
He stopped to harvest a shard from a creature that had been slightly larger than the rest—a dormant devil with skin like cold leather. As his claws slid through its chest, he noticed something. The blood of these creatures wasn't red; it was a viscous, black oil that smoked when it touched his glowing arms.
The environment was changing, too. The "syrup" in the air was thickening, turning from a freezing mist into a heavy, oppressive fog that seemed to eat at the edges of his 2-meter light radius. His blood hummed, sensing the shift in pressure.
He looked down at his yellow arms. They were stained with the black ichor of a dozen kills, yet they glowed brighter with every life he took. It was as if the golden liquid inside him was feeding on the conflict, or perhaps the light was simply more proud in the face of such absolute dark.
He checked his internal compass—a feat made difficult by the lack of stars or horizons. He was heading "down." He could feel the slight incline of the floor, and the air was getting colder and more stale.
He accelerated his pace, his powerful legs propelling him forward. Somewhere in the distance, far beyond the reach of his glass, he heard a sound that made him pause.
'That sounds interesting'