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Duskbound 3- Chapter 90
🕑 Added 2025-08-21 11:55:12 +0000 UTCAuthor's Note: I had planned on this series being four books, but then I changed my mind and decided to just extend book 3 by about 40% to close it up as a trilogy like I originally wanted. We're about 15-20 chapters out from the end of the story at this point and heading into the final arc now.
* * *
While [Void Lance] had penetrating power, it lost a lot of the versatility and wide area effect of [Dread Lance] as a trade-off. At the moment, that was exactly what Velik needed. He drove the first [Void Lance] into the dragon’s neck, right behind his skull, and was pleased to see it actually penetrate the divine beast’s scales.
The dragon gave a full-body shudder, a wave rolling down its massive form, and Velik dared to hope he might definitively end the fight before it could escalate further. Hope didn’t win fights, though, so he mercilessly formed [Void Lance] over and over, multiplying it again so that dozens of them floated in the sky. Eslaka took one look at the black, light-consuming bars and fled.
Then Velik sent them down, mercilessly stabbing them into Reisha and discharging their magic. Flesh, muscle, and blood vanished as each spear detonated into a sphere of all-devouring magic. Reisha convulsed in place for a moment, then crashed toward the ground. They were so high up that it still took a few seconds to get there, and he made no attempts to pull out of his descent.
Despite the grievous wounds, his body was already regenerating. Velik stared at the dragon for a second, both astounded and appalled at the amount of damage Reisha had weathered without succumbing to his injuries. Then he shook his head and started summoning another [Void Lance] swarm.
The black spears rained straight down on Reisha, erasing chunks of his body faster than he could heal. It took hundreds of them to do the job, but eventually a cloud of essence burst out of the corpse. Velik watched as the remaining void spears even ate through that, making holes where they passed.
It… shouldn’t be able to do that? That’s got to violate some sort of rule of reality.
His LPS didn’t automatically scoop up essence like usual this time, but Velik tried to sort of reach out and grab some of it anyway. He wasn’t exactly sure how to do it—his old skill had only encompassed sensing essence, not manipulating it—but he’d hoped that the exposure would be enough to feed the LPS so it would wake back up and take over.
Nothing like that happened. Instead, Eslaka landed near him and started casting her own spell. The loose essence immediately flowed into her, and it kept flowing until there was nothing left. Finally, she let out a satisfied sigh. “I’ve been waiting to kill him for longer than your civilization has existed,” she said. “Even if I didn’t get to strike the death blow, it was still every bit as satisfying as I’d hoped.”
“Making you the last divine beast,” Velik said.
“Technically, there are two of us.”
Velik frowned. He didn’t think of himself as a divine beast and had no desire to become one, no matter what color his blood was now. Divine beasts were monsters. Besides, he’d only gotten the gold blood when he’d picked up the skill. What would happen if I could remove it? It’s just an essence configuration. As soon as my personal system starts working again, if that ever happens, I can just tear it down. Hell, I could remove [Duskbound] from it as well and just be a normal human.
There was a sort of appeal to that, but on the other hand, he felt like it was far too late for it to matter. He wasn’t even sure what would happen once he returned home, or even if he could. Reisha was dead, and before he could do whatever it was that would destroy the system, so that was mission accomplished as far as Velik was concerned, but he didn’t know what Eslaka was planning.
“What happens now?” he asked her. There was no point in being subtle about it.
“Now, I can finally end this cycle. I’ve been denied for too long.”
Velik stared at her blankly. “I have no idea what that means.”
She brushed off the question. “Not important. Reisha was an impediment. He’s been removed. You have no part in what comes next.”
“So… That’s it?” he asked. “It’s over. We just go our separate ways. You’re not going to try to kill me?”
“Why would I do that?”
Velik gestured around at the extremely burnt landscape. Their fight had broken through four different floors of the Gold Spire, annihilating everything and probably killing dozens or hundreds of monsters in the process. Eslaka had fought without regard for the destruction she left in her wake, and she didn’t seem much like she regretted that. Then again, Reisha had called her the Queen of Carnage, and that didn’t seem like a title one obtained by worrying about collateral damage.
“I’ll be leaving this place behind. I recommend you do as well,” she said. “Not that I think anyone loyal to Reisha would stand a chance against you, but why go through the hassle?”
“Huh,” Velik said slowly. The enormity of it was still sinking in. He was really done. It was over. He could just walk away, go home. “I guess I just go back to the sky bridge and make a quick run across the desert on the other side.”
“You could, but why would you want to?”
“Because that’s where I live?” he asked. “That’s where everybody and everything I’ve ever known is at.”
“Not for long,” Eslaka snorted.
“I guess on the scales you’re used to, but I’d like those remaining decades,” Velik said with a frown.
“No, I meant it’s all getting destroyed.”
“What? No, we killed Reisha before he could do… whatever it was that would trigger the end of the system—waking up the imprisoned beast.”
Eslaka laughed and shook her head. “Oh, no. No, no. You have so much left to learn, little wolf pup. Reisha triggered that twenty minutes ago before the fight even started.”
“What? How?! No, it doesn’t matter. Can I still stop it? How long do I have?”
“Stop it?” Eslaka echoed. She glanced over at Reisha’s corpse, still riddled with holes from Velik’s skill. “I suppose anything’s possible, but it’s going to be quite difficult to do from here.”
“How long?” Velik repeated.
“I have no idea. It could already be over with for all I know, though… I think not. I would have felt it. Likely, it’ll take some time. Hours, maybe days, but not much more than that.”
“I need to go.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry to rush to your death, wolf pup,” she called after him as he ran for the far wall.
There was no time to waste trying to find the real exit, not when he could just [Void Lane] the wall. Velik blew through it and ran into open air, then immediately oriented himself to head west toward the sky bridge. He could only hope he’d be in time.
*
Jensen paused in his writing, his quill poised over the parchment. A slight tremor rumbled through the room, barely enough to be felt. But there was no mistaking it; he had felt something. The ripples in the goblet of wine sitting at the edge of his desk were proof he wasn’t imagining things.
Probably somebody big and brutish doing big, brutish things nearby, he thought to himself, dismissing the tremor from his mind. When he’d taken [Vault Seeker] as his class, he’d thought he’d spend all his time hunting for the next pile of treasure. And he could have done that, if he’d trusted someone else to run the business side of things. But the wares he put up for sale were often unique, relics of antiquity or, in the case of that old sky bridge, metals that no one knew how to make anymore.
That made it a lot harder to put a good market value on things, and to find buyers for some of the more esoteric trinkets. It took a special set of knowledge, or a special set of skills, to know what was truly valuable. [Treasure Hunter] was invaluable that way, but unfortunately, he was the only person he’d ever met who had the skill. [Appraise] was a weaker substitute that was far more common, but also far more imprecise.
A second tremor shook things, this time strong enough to rattle his desk. He snatched up his wine just in time to keep it from spilling across his work, then stood up and strode across the carpet to throw open the door.
“What the hell is going on?” he called out to one of the servants.
“I don’t know, my lord,” the servant said.
Nobody knew, Jensen soon found out. Even outside his household, people were in the streets speculating. A low undercurrent of fear circulated through the city, more from the unknown cause of the tremors than from the damage they were doing. That was minimal, and people with powerful classes and high levels had done worse to Ashala.
Suddenly, alarm bells started ringing on the north side of the city. Jensen hadn’t heard that particular signal in a long time, and never in the heart of the country, but there was no mistaking the unique three-note ring. Those signals were standardized everywhere, from the smallest village to the capital itself.
A monster horde, led by an elite, was coming. In a tiny village, that could be a death sentence. Here, it would be simple to find someone to take care of it. Besides, the monsters here were weak. They never had time to grow past level 10 or 15 before a hunter killed them. The alarm bells were a formality, not a promise of real danger.
On the other hand, whatever was coming must have one big monster in the horde for it to shake the whole city like that. Size usually meant higher levels, 30 or more. That could be a bit harder to deal with. For a moment, Jensen considered joining the defense. Gaining a new level wouldn’t hurt anything, after all.
No, I have more important things to do. The city will handle it.
He was about to return to his study when another set of bells started ringing. The same three-note ring from the first time echoed across the city, only this time from the west. A second horde? The timing is… implausible.
Then a third bell joined in, and a fourth, and a fifth. Soon, the whole city was full of noise and its citizens were openly panicking. Just what the hell is going on here? Jensen thought to himself as he rushed inside for his gear. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a standard horde.
Comments
Shelbo
Oh wicked Reisha didn’t do the classic villain thing where they wait until after a fight to activate the death machine. Eslaka didn’t sound as insane as her other self was implied being. Also the system is going to shatter since the DB that powers it is no longer going to be forced to a hostage unless Velik is going to sacrifice himself to be the heart of the system. Plus I’m still waiting for that Evil God Divine retribution, She’s probably going to whisk the DB away once it slips the chains it has connected to the system
Cruz115
This series is on its way to become on of the most solid 100 chapters series ever, great work.
