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Duskbound 3- Chapter 101
🕑 Added 2025-09-12 11:44:03 +0000 UTCThe whole city was panicking, not that Jensen blamed them. Velik had told some people that the system was going to break and that everyone was going to lose their class, levels, and skills, but it wasn’t widespread knowledge. Most of the people Jensen had tried to warn had just laughed at him.
They weren’t laughing now. The monsters besieging the city were noticeably weaker, too, but that didn’t seem to reassure anyone. Where before powerful, high-level archers were putting arrows through the skulls of fast-moving targets with unerring accuracy, now the arrows were deflecting off significantly slower monsters being shot from a much closer range.
It turned out the monsters were getting less from the system than the humans were. Thankfully, Velik had thinned their numbers considerably. As long as the system came back in the next day or so, Jensen thought the city would hold out. The problem was that he couldn’t say the same for all the little villages and towns scattered across the country.
And that wasn’t even getting into what was going on with their neighbors to the south. Jensen didn’t hold any particular fondness for the militaristic warmongers in control of Slokara, but he didn’t want to see the whole country overrun by monsters.
Gods, let this storm pass quickly. We don’t have the strength to weather it for long.
His silent prayer was interrupted by the man next to him. “What the hell are those?” he gasped out, his finger stabbing at a dark smudge filling the far-off tree line.
“I can’t make out the details from this far away,” Jensen said, annoyed about that fact. Yesterday, he could have counted the trees from his position on the wall. Today, he could barely differentiate the darker shadows of whatever was moving out there from the lighter shadows of the trees themselves.
“Probably just more monsters come to help finish the job,” another soldier said. “Like there aren’t enough of them out there already. Sure do wish they’d start killing each other and save us some effort.”
Over the next few minutes, the watchers stared out into a night illuminated only by a sliver of moon and the stars above—and the occasional brush fire ignited by a flaming arrow made from oil-soaked rags tied to the shafts. The flickering shadows made it even harder to discern any details, and it wasn’t until the leading edge of the wave passed by a burning stretch of field that someone finally figured it out.
“They’re people! Heavy armor. Marching in formation.”
“Slokarans?” someone else asked.
“Why would they be coming from the north if they were Slokarans?”
“Why would there be anyone at all out there? The monsters will tear them apart without their levels.”
Jensen ignored the speculation and stared out at the shadowy forms. Whoever they were, they were indeed killing monsters in formation. Pikes stabbed out over shield walls, and axemen hacked away at anything that got close, or just to cut bodies off the pikes as they retracted.
That tactic was familiar, though. He’d seen it somewhere, and not that long ago. “Oh, no,” he whispered. “It can’t be…”
“Hmm? You say something?” the soldier standing next to him asked.
“They’re undead. They don’t have classes or levels. They’re not part of the system!” Jensen explained.
“Neither is anyone else right now.”
“No, you don’t understand. They were never part of the system and you still need a coordinated group of hunters above level 30 to take down a regular platoon. Those things are probably the strongest fighting force in the country right now. They’re tearing those monsters apart, and they’re heading this way!”
Realization settled into the line, cloaking the watchers in heavy dread. The walls had been holding, so far, but a new monster had arrived, one that far outshone what they’d been dealing with. It didn’t take long for them to figure out that they weren’t going to be able to hold out against the necrotic abominations rapidly approaching the city.
“Send runners with the news,” an officer snapped out. “Make sure the rest of the garrison knows about this. We might have to evacuate.”
“How the hell are we supposed to evacuate?” someone else demanded. “We’re surrounded on all sides!”
“Better to take some losses cutting through monsters while we flee than to let this city become a mass grave when those undead swarm the walls,” the officer said.
Velik, whatever you’re doing right now, I’d appreciate it if you’d hurry the fuck up so the system would come back.
*
Yellow tendrils sprang out of the gap, just like the first one Velik had opened. They flailed around blindly, trying to grab at him, or maybe just as some sort of reflexive action. Considering the ones sticking out of the back of the divine beast’s head were still doing the same thing, it was entirely possible his proximity to the rent in the monster’s armor had nothing to do with the tendrils.
That didn’t make it any easier to get through, of course. Whether they were intentionally seeking him or just following some instinctive trigger to move made no difference to him. Either way, he needed to cut through the flesh to find whatever it was his LPS wanted him to find. [Void Lance] was the only tool he had for that, but the simple fact of the matter was that he was getting tired.
Fighting against divine beasts had allowed him to consume a lot of mana from their attacks to keep going. With this monster, however, he wasn’t sure he would survive a direct hit. That made it considerably harder to replenish his reserves, and even though the battle had only been going on for a few minutes, he hadn’t been stingy with using his skills.
The smart move was to back off, rest, and come back for a second attempt when he was fresh and could focus all of his energy on this one spot from the get-go. It offered him the highest chance of personal survival, whereas diving into that mass of flesh carried a strong possibility of dying in there.
But if he fled, the system wouldn’t come back. The monsters would eventually kill everyone, and the undead legions would be the sole remnant of humanity. That was assuming the miles-long divine beast didn’t destroy it all first. There was no reason to think it’d coil up in a big hole underground and go back to sleep, and its mere presence was so destructive to the environment that it would level the whole country if left to roam around unchecked.
When he framed it like that, Velik didn’t really have much of a choice. He either stopped the divine beast here and now, or mankind was lost. And damn the gods for putting us in this position, he thought bitterly as he started burning through his mana to carve open a hole in the monster.
Void magic slashed through the beast, but its regeneration was as impressive as ever. A simple blast, there and gone, wasn’t going to work. He needed constant pressure, or at least enough void shaped around him to keep the regenerating tissue from crushing him.
In short, he didn’t need to throw a [Void Lance]. He needed to be a [Void Lance].
This would be a great time for you to turn back on, LPS. I could really use your help adapting this essence configuration.
Unsurprisingly, the system was silent.
Yeah, too much to ask for, I guess.
Velik dove forward, sending bars of black, lightless void in front of him while holding them around his body like a fence. It was thirty manifestations of the skill at once, and he was thankful once again for whatever small component of [Phalanx] there was in the skill’s makeup. It helped him hold everything steady, though he was keenly aware that he wasn’t immune to his own skill. A slip up now would likely see parts of his body erased from existence.
The void sliced through the divine beast’s body, digging in like a splinter with Velik carried along. In an instant, he was thirty feet deep, surrounded by black energy on all sides. The bars circling him rotated rapidly, disintegrating the regrowing flesh before it could crush Velik, while the massive pillar of void power in front of him cut through muscle and ligaments and whatever else the divine beast was made of.
And there was essence trapped in here, so much of it that it was nearly blinding. It wasn’t doing anything besides existing, a thick blanket draped across reality that gave a metaphysical weight to the divine beast like nothing Velik had ever seen. It stretched out in every direction, completely saturating every single inch of the monstrosity.
Without [Sun Eater] to keep him moving, Velik would have stalled out and died right there. The essence parasite’s regeneration was too overwhelming, so much so that even with a lump of pure void consuming its body, it was still regrowing so fast that the skill was starting to break down. Only by pushing forward did he outrace it. Stopping, even for an instant, was death.
Why am I here? he mentally demanded from the system. I did what you wanted. Now show me the way forward!
Instead of getting an answer, his world turned blindingly white. For a moment, he thought that was the system doing something, but then he realized the truth. It was the same destructive power the centipede had unleashed on him for the entire fight, just coming from all the body tissue around him.
It was about to fry its own insides, with him trapped inside.
Comments
Etez
Thx for the chapter :D
