Path of Dragons

Book 7: Chapter 50: A Matter of Martial Might

Elijah stood on a cliff, staring in awe at the complex across the bridge. From an aesthetic standpoint, it was almost identical to the Man Mo Temple he’d seen from without. However, it was much, much larger, looking more like a grand fortress than a modest temple in the middle of a city.

The bridge itself was made of white bricks trimmed in jade, with sculptures of iconic creatures – ranging from pandas to dragons – adorning each pillar.

“You must proceed, or you will be expelled from the Shrine of War,” said a man Elijah hadn’t even noticed. He had no presence, even to the sense granted by Soul of the Wild. It was as if he didn’t exist. However, when Elijah looked at him – clad in decorative, white and green armor in the Chinese style – he looked solid enough. More importantly, the halberd he carried radiated a sense of power that made Elijah instinctively recoil.

The guard gestured toward the bridge. “Go. Test your mettle.”

Elijah knew better than to disobey. So, he took a deep breath and stepped forward. When he set foot onto the bridge, he was immediately thrown against the railing by the gusting wind. Thankfully, he didn’t tumble over, but he did get a view of the snow-covered ground thousands of feet below.

He pushed away from the railing, braced himself for the frigid wind, then proceeded forward. Over the next few hundred feet, the elements tried extremely hard to dislodge him from the bridge. If he was knocked off, he could have survived the fall by shifting into the Shape of Sky. However, he suspected that flying in that environment would be extremely difficult – if not impossible. What’s more, he believed that getting across the bridge was part of the intended challenge.

Regardless, Elijah had a good counter, so he shifted into the Shape of Venom, then skittered forward. With his much lower center of gravity and his ability to stick to any surface, the task became trivial, and he covered the remaining ground quickly and without incident. Still, when he finally reached the end and stepped off the bridge, he let out a hissing sigh of relief.

Shifting back into his human form, he glanced around. Before the enormous Shrine of War was an expansive plaza paved with white stones that had been engraved with intricate patterns Elijah couldn’t identify. On each end were tall trees that, to Elijah, felt like they’d been wrestled into submission and shackled. From a visual perspective, that impression was supported by their unnatural shapes. The trunks were perfectly straight, and each limb was arranged to support a perfectly symmetrical whole. Clearly, someone had gone to quite extensive lengths to cultivate a very specific aesthetic.

Elijah wanted nothing more than to free those trees, but he pushed those feelings aside. For one, he questioned whether or not the shrine was even real. In all likelihood, it was a solid illusion on par with what he’d find in a tower. There was probably more to it than that, but Elijah didn’t have time to figure out what qualified as real and what did not. In any case, the other reason he couldn’t afford to think about it was because of his purpose. He’d entered the shrine with specific intention, and that reason had nothing to do with mutilated and enslaved trees.

The interior was not what he expected.

Certainly, the décor followed the same theme, which was somewhat reminiscent of Chinese culture, but somehow bastardized by an outside source that only understood the most basic details. However, what truly drew Elijah’s interest was the huge circle in the middle of the floor. It was a couple hundred feet wide and defined by a slightly raised platform upon which it sat. Around it were hundreds of figures, each wearing identical white robes.

Three-hundred and fourteen, to be exact, according to Soul of the Wild. Some were stronger than others, but the most powerful stood in a clump of twenty-five. Elijah wasn’t certain how strong they were – not exactly – but he knew they were far from weak. Beyond that, his perception was a little muddy.

“Proceed to the center of the Ring of Battle,” they all intoned. However, Elijah’s attention was on a lone figure – easily missed – on the other side of the room. The man looked like he’d just stepped out of a kung fu film where he played the venerable old master, but more importantly, he was floating about four feet off the ground, his legs crossed in the lotus position.

“Proceed or die,” the circle of figures stated. “You have five seconds.”

Elijah wasted no more time before he obeyed their command. He thought he knew what was coming, but he would withhold judgement until he had more information. Whatever the case, when he reached the center of the so-called Ring of Battle, he held his staff at the ready, expecting a fight.

“Round one. Commence,” came a singular voice that Elijah vaguely recognized as coming from the old man.

Immediately, one of the fighters – he looked like a young man, maybe in his mid-twenties and well-muscled – stepped forward. He bowed before Elijah, then launched into an attack.

Elijah’s reaction was immediate and instinctive. His Feral Spire lashed out, smashing into the man’s head and sending him tumbling to the other side of the circle. He was dead before his momentum was spent.

“Round two. Commence.”

Two figures stepped forward, one from either side of the circle. They both bowed, then approached more cautiously than the first. From the way they moved – as well as the vibrancy of their life force and ethera – Elijah could tell that they were slightly higher-leveled than their predecessor. When they attacked, they did so on two different vectors. One went high, while the other went low.

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Elijah took the low blow, which barely even shifted his leg, but the second attacker’s strike found nothing but air. Elijah countered, his staff crushing the unbalanced fighter’s ribs and sending him skidding across the circle. The second, Elijah kicked in the face. She went down, her face a bloody pulp.

For a moment, Elijah expected the next round to begin, but then he realized the truth. Simply disabling his opponents wouldn’t be enough. He needed to kill them.

Suddenly, he remembered the name associated with the challenge. It was the Shrine of War. Not of competition. Not of the friendly tournament. War was brutal and bloody, and often wasn’t decided until the other side was dead. So it would be with this event.

It was too easy, executing those people. He knew they weren’t real, that they hadn’t even existed before he entered the Shrine of War. However, they looked real enough to activate the parts of his brain responsible for a guilty conscience. He was well-versed in looking past those sorts of feelings, but that didn’t mean he could ignore them entirely.

Still, he did what he had to do, and when his two opponents were dead, three more entered the circle. Following the same pattern, they were stronger than their predecessors, but Elijah still had no issues defeating them. This time, when he counterattacked, he aimed for kill shots. That was easier than executing unconscious people.

The next round featured four people. Then five. Six. On it went until fifteen fighters stepped out of the encircling crowd. This time, Elijah took a beating. More attacks landed, and when they did, they hit with enough force to stun him. However, with his healing spells, Elijah had few issues with defeating them. When sixteen fighters stepped out, he knew he couldn’t afford to remain in his human form.

By that point, though, Elijah had decided to use the Ring of Battle as an opportunity to test his fighting acumen. So, even though the situation likely called for Shape of Thorn, he instead shifted into the form of the blight dragon. Increased attributes flooded his status, making him stronger, faster, and more coordinated.

More importantly, he had the potent Envenom on his side.

He skittered across the ring, taking the battle to his opponents. The fighters all used a variant of martial arts that resembled kung fu, so the first one he targeted tried to stop him with a powerful front kick. Elijah had no trouble darting out of its path before leaping upon his enemy. To his credit, the man executed a perfect block, but he’d clearly been trained to fight other humans.

And at the moment, that did not describe Elijah. His fangs sank into the fighter’s forearm, delivering Elijah’s powerful venom. A second later, the man collapsed, dead before he hit the ground.

It seemed that Envenom had become much stronger. It should not have been that surprising, given the advancement of Elijah’s core to the Drakyn stage, as well as the sheer number of attribute points he’d gained. Still, he hadn’t expected the man to fall quite so quickly.

He didn’t take time to think about how much more potent Envenom had become, though. Instead, he sprang to the side, avoiding another attack before racing around and biting every fighter he could. He considered just taking the fight to the ones outside the ring, but he suspected that leaving the circle would be considered losing.

Once the sixteenth fighter of the wave fell, the still-floating master in the back of the chamber announced, “Round seventeen. Commence.”

And unsurprisingly, the pattern continued. So it went all the way through the twentieth round, and though the challengers became stronger each round, Elijah had no real trouble defeating them.

That changed in the twenty-first round, when the fighters took a large step forward in their strength. Suddenly, blows that Elijah could have easily dodged before connected, and he was forced to shift mid-air and resume his human form. He cast Soothe and Blessing of the Grove, landing in a roll. He didn’t have time to shift into the Shape of Thorn, so even as he dodged one attack after another, he embraced Lightning Domain.

Huge bolts of electricity erupted from his body, scouring the entire circle as they encircled him. The ones closest to Elijah were burned so badly that, within seconds, they’d become charred husks. However, after around twenty feet, the whips of lightning lost some of their power, and the fighters were only injured. Twenty feet later, the only negative effects were a stun.

Clearly, Elijah needed more power. He’d always known that his class wasn’t meant for casting. He could do it, and because of his stage of core cultivation, his attempts were strong enough to get results. Most of the time, at least. But at the root of his class – and the evolution into the Primal Lord – were his bestial shapes.

And there was one form that was perfectly suited to fighting multiple opponents. As Lightning Domain wound down, Elijah shifted into the Shape of Thorn. Doing so took a bit longer than transforming into the blight dragon, so by the time the shift completed, the remaining fighters – all eleven of them – had closed on him.

Elijah lashed out with his increased Strength, taking the first one by surprise. His backhand crushed the man’s shoulder, but the fighter wasn’t so easily deterred. He snapped out a kick that would have broken a leg if Elijah had remained in his human form. However, with his enhanced Constitution and Scales of Bark, Elijah barely felt it.

More importantly, the surprise that came with such an ineffective attack opened the fighter up to Elijah’s immediate reprisal. His fist descended with so much force that, when it hit, every bone in the man’s torso broke. Many of them erupted from his chest, spraying blood and bits of flesh.

After that, Elijah met the rest of the wave of attackers head-on. They landed plenty of blows, but such was the Shape of Thorn’s durability that their attacks did very little damage.

Still, the constant fighting had begun to wear on Elijah. He could keep going – especially physically – but he knew that his endurance was not endless. Not that it mattered. He still had plenty of tools to meet the challenge.

The next round wasn’t much more difficult than the last, but there was another jump in difficulty that came with the twenty-third wave. The same was true of the twenty-fourth, and what Elijah thought was the last round was the most difficult of all. Each landed attack now did significant damage, and Elijah found that he was too slow to truly combat the fighters. As a result, they pelted him with damage until, at last, he decided to play his most potent card.

To combat the powerful fighters, Elijah was forced to activate both Domain of Vines and Unchecked Growth. Even that wasn’t quite as effective as he’d expected. Sure, a few were killed, but most were only trapped by the snaking vines. Instead, Elijah had to finish them off via execution.

They tried to fight him off. They struggled against the powerful vines. But in the end, they were no match.

Finally, when the last one died, all three hundred-plus bodies disappeared, and the old master finally opened his eyes. He locked his stare onto Elijah and said, “Good. You have proven yourself worthy of testing.” He descended from his perch, his feet alighting onto the floor with barely a whisper. “Prepare yourself, warrior.”

Then, he stepped forward, and Elijah was overwhelmed by the weight of the man’s presence. Like him, the master was ascended.