Path of Dragons

Book 7: Chapter 64: The Head of the Snake

A carpet of charred bodies stretched out before Elijah’s eyes, extending more than fifty yards from his position. He didn’t know how many zombies and other undead he’d killed with Lightning Domain, but he suspected the number was close to five digits. Perhaps it had even exceeded that, given how eager the monsters had been to pile onto him. That he could inflict so much damage with a single spell was both humbling and awe-inspiring. He wasn’t even a caster, and he could do that. What, then, could someone dedicated to spell-casting accomplish?

Not that he had any time to consider it. As many of the undead as he’d managed to slay, there were still tens of thousands left. And he had their undivided attention, as evidenced by their steady sprint in his direction.

Elijah reapplied Soothe to take care of any lingering damage from the zombies’ assault, then shifted into Shape of the Master. Immediately upon finishing the transformation, the zombies – and other undead – seemed to slow. Meanwhile, Elijah darted among them, using his improved reflexes and enhanced attributes to avoid their grasping hands.

They closed in on him, and he knew that if he stopped moving – even for a moment – they would pile onto him and rip him to pieces. The worst were the remaining demons. He’d gotten the vast majority of them in his previous attack, but there were still a couple left. Avoiding them was a pain.

However, Elijah had a significant advantage in Heart of Fire. The zombies were comparatively slow and clumsy, which allowed him to easily dodge their attempted attacks. That, in turn, quickly built charges of Heart of Fire, and it wasn’t long before it was burning with significant potency.

With that, Elijah found an empty stretch of trampled snow, turned, and faced his pursuers. As he did, he kept his eye on the slower-moving hulks, which lagged more than a little behind the swifter zombies. Not by a lot, but over time, Elijah had altered his path to enhance his lead.

The result was that they had slowly clumped into a group, completely unaware that they were playing into his strategy.

At the same time, the leader had finally emerged from his tent, flanked by a host of succubi. He’d donned thick, black armor, and, in addition to his wicked axe, he wielded an enormous slab of metal in the rough shape of a tower shield. It had clearly been crafted by a less-than-talented Blacksmith. The succubi, by contrast, looked fast and sleek, each one gripping a blade in each hand. Elijah couldn’t help but notice that they were naked and quite well-formed, though despite their nudity, the most prevalent thought in his mind was that they must have been cold.

Whatever the case, his path had taken him nearly a mile away, which meant that it would be a little while before he had to worry about them.

He couldn’t give it the attention it required, though, so he ignored the notification and raced through the smoking aftermath of his ability. He’d finally made a noticeable dent in the numbers of the undead, but he knew it would take days of continuous effort to kill them all.

Still, he endeavored to repeat his feat, using the same tactic until he unleashed Incinerate once again. However, he couldn’t ignore a simple issue – the ability didn’t have a cooldown, but like many of his other spells, its cost increased exponentially when used in quick succession. A quick calculation of his remaining ethera told him that he could only use it one more time before he’d start to dip into his reserves, which he liked to leave untouched just in case he needed a potent burst of healing.

So, he abandoned the idea that he could just remain on the same track and slowly reduce the zombie army to ashes.

But that was fine. That had never been his primary plan.

A quick glance at the pursuing hulks told Elijah that it was time to finally move on to the last phase. So, he dashed toward the enormous, waddling monsters, slowing just out of range of their hooks. There were at least two dozen of the huge and disgusting monsters in the group, and then four or five of them that weren’t quite fast enough to keep up. Those stragglers stretched out for a hundred yards, though they were just as single-minded in following Elijah’s path.

Not ideal, but workable.

Elijah turned his attention to the rear, and through Brand of the Stalker, he saw that the leader had finally begun his approach. Flanked by his succubi, he’d used some sort of ability to take control of the nearby zombies. They moved stiffly under his direction, but they were obviously more disciplined.

Also not a perfect situation, but Elijah figured he could work with it.

So, he slowly led the hulks forward, shifting into his human form and casting Storm’s Fury. The spell was far more potent than it had been before his ascension and core evolution, but it was still one of his lowest-level spells. As such, it barely harmed the hulks. However, it was flashy and probably painful – if the things could even feel – which was the entire point. All Elijah wanted was to keep their attention, and in that endeavor, Storm’s Fury was more than up to the task.

Gradually, he led the creatures across the battlefield, and soon enough, he once again found himself surrounded by zombies. In his human form, he wasn’t nearly as adept at dodging their attacks, and despite his much higher attributes, he still found himself on the wrong end of a few claws. Thankfully, he had his healing spells on his side, and the wounds he incurred didn’t slow him down at all.

Keeping track of his own body, the horde of zombies, the group of hulks, and the oncoming leader and his retinue strained even Elijah’s Jade Mind, and he struggled to keep everything straight in his thoughts. So, when he burst through one clump of zombies and found himself facing off against the leader and his controlled undead, Elijah was a little surprised.

Still, he didn’t hesitate to enact his plan, immediately prompting a shift into the Shape of Thorn. It completed a second later, but that slight distraction was enough to give his enemies an opening. They piled onto him, biting and clawing with vicious fury. Fortunately, the Shape of Thorn was more than capable of standing up to whatever punishment they could inflict.

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At least for a while.

They would eventually wear him down, but regardless of whether or not they realized it, they didn’t have that kind of time.

With the sense granted by Soul of the Wild, Elijah kept track of his targets. The hulks had slowed, but such was their bulk and the nature of momentum that they couldn’t completely stop. Instead, they crashed through the crowd of zombies, crushing more than a hundred of the monsters in the process.

The leader, meanwhile, was far more successful in his efforts, stopping nearly fifty yards away. As much as he clearly wanted to deal with Elijah – and he did, going by the scowl on his face – he was willing to let his army do their job of ripping him to pieces. Not a bad strategy in most cases, but the thorned sentry was more than capable of enduring whatever they could dish out – at least for a while. On top of that, the zombies were slowly killing themselves on his thorns, which came with a weak paralytic that, when allowed to build up, would slow them down considerably.

Elijah inched closer to the leader, setting himself up for his final play. If it didn’t work, he would need to flee.

So, once everyone was in range, he activated Unchecked Growth. His Regeneration more than tripled, and any wounds he’d incurred healed in the space of an instant. But that wasn’t his primary reason for using the ability. Instead, he was more focused on its effect on his next step, which was to use Domain of Vines. As he activated the ability, thick roots and vines burst from the ground.

But they didn’t target the zombies.

Instead, they went after the leader and the undead hulks. The latter, merely to hold them in place – which, even with Unchecked Growth boosting it, was no mean feat – and the former, to yank him from his feet. The huge leader tried to resist, and maybe he would have succeeded if he’d seen it coming. However, he was clearly taken off guard, so the vines quickly wrapped around him, lifted him into the air, and threw him across the battlefield.

It took all of Elijah’s considerable focus to guide even that broad action, but he managed it all the same. He watched as the demonic leader sailed through the air, completely incapable of arresting his momentum.

Then, he hit the first hulk in its bulbous stomach.

For the briefest of instants, Elijah worried that his plan wouldn’t work. It was more than possible that the hulks could control their explosive nature better than Elijah had hoped. However, he was banking on their instincts to ensure the success of his plan.

And sure enough, less than a second later, the creature’s huge belly split open, erupting with the force of a powerful bomb. It didn’t stop there, though. Instead, it started a chain reaction, and when the blast hit its fellows, they too exploded. Before Elijah could congratulate himself, the explosion of caustic goo and immense force hit him.

Agony immediately overcame any rational thought, flooding every facet of his mind as his entire body was broken. In the face of that explosion – which seemed multiplicative, rather than additive – his high Constitution and damage reduction was nothing.

Unfortunately, the incredible Regeneration granted by Unchecked Growth was a double-edged blade. On the one hand, it was the only reason he managed to survive. On the other, it kept him conscious even as his body was broken, then remade. He wasn’t even allowed to go into shock, so he felt it all.

Thankfully, it didn’t last long, even if it felt like an eternity of agony.

In any case, he was thrown across the battlefield, and when he hit the ground, his momentum didn’t stop until he rammed head-first into the wall. For a few moments, he simply lay there as his bones painfully shifted back into place and his head cleared from the obvious concussion he’d just experienced.

By the time Unchecked Growth extinguished itself, Elijah was back to normal. However, phantom pains still echoed throughout his body. After a few more moments, he picked himself up with a groan, then surveyed the scene of battle.

Thousands of zombies had been completely obliterated. Tens of thousands, perhaps. It was difficult to tell, because the blast had destroyed them entirely. There were pieces here and there, but trying to track what went where was an impossible task. The only reason Elijah could make any estimate at all was because of the noticeably missing chunk of the zombie army. Their numbers had been halved.

The site of the explosion had been reduced to a smoking crater coated in acidic, green goo. The hulks were all gone. So were the demons. The few giant skeletons that had been in range were dead as well, though they had remained mostly intact. That was a testament to just how durable they were.

However, one thing was certain – Elijah’s plan had been a success, which, if he was honest, kind of surprised him. He’d made a lot of assumptions and taken a lot of chances. That everything had worked out was a testament to good fortune. With the echoes of immense pain coursing through him, he didn’t feel lucky, though.

He stepped forward, his gait little more than a stumble. Perhaps he hadn’t recovered as well as he thought. So, he shifted back into his human form, then cast Soothe and Nature’s Bloom. That helped, though Elijah wasn’t certain if that was due to the spells actually healing damage that Unchecked Growth had missed, or if it was just in his mind. Regardless, he relaxed a little with those two heals coursing through him.

Surprisingly, when he reached the crater, he saw a single body at the center. There were bits and pieces of others. Elijah thought he saw the torso of a succubus that remained intact. A couple of arms and legs. But otherwise, it was empty, save for the demonic leader.@@novelbin@@

Most of his equipment had melted onto his body, but his shield seemed entirely unfazed by the enormous impact. The same could not be said for the demon himself. The caustic substance had eaten through most of his body, exposing bones and rendering him unrecognizable. The only reason Elijah knew his identity was because he felt his life force. It was weak, but Elijah could feel that it was already beginning to recover.

What attributes did this demon possess that he’d survived that blast? Without Unchecked Growth, Elijah would not have. Even Shape of Thorn, which was far and away his most durable form, wasn’t up to the task of surviving that much damage.

With a sigh, Elijah descended the slope of the crater, already casting Swarm, then Nature’s Rebuke. To his surprise, the latter only did its normal damage, meaning that the demon was a perfectly natural creature.

Once Swarm had manifested its icy insects, Elijah shifted into Shape of Venom. The demon was alive but insensate, so there were no barriers to Elijah adopting stealth via Guise of the Unseen. Once he was undetectable, he used Envenom and Predator Strike before sinking his fangs into the demon.

He didn’t even flinch.

But Elijah could feel the potent venom coursing through the leader’s broken body. There was some resistance, but Envenom – especially empowered by Predator Strike – was his most potent available attack. Incinerate was better, so long as he had a chance to build up charges of Heart of Fire, but with no enemies nearby, it was unusable. In any case, Envenom was up to the task, especially when Elijah bit the demon a few more times.

The combination of the damage the demon had already taken, plus the afflictions of Swarm and Envenom, overwhelmed his Constitution and slowly finished him off.

Once the creature was dead, Elijah once again used Guise of the Unseen, then climbed out of the crater. The zombies weren’t all dead, but they no longer possessed the same power that had once coursed through them. Clearly, killing the leader – as well as the other demons – had ceased their empowerment.

Still, at the moment, he wasn’t in any mood to slaughter the rest of them. So, he slowly made his way back to the group so he could inform them of his success.

He also had reached a spell level, and he was eager to get somewhere safe so he could explore it properly.