LEVEL 0 IMMORTAL-Chapter 63: The Killer of Kings
For a moment, nothing happened, and the only sound was the frantic chewing of hundreds of monsters who were eating their mother alive, but Elias squashed any hints of panic that were slowly bubbling under the surface, as the thought of being eaten alive was a visceral fear in the heart of anyone.
He had been able to easily command his swarm into his fingers to create blades because they were following the natural progression of his body, and all his blades were simply an extension of his fingers, but what he was attempting to create here was outside anything his body could naturally make, he was pushing the swarm in the direction that his consciousness should not be able to take at the moment.
Elias felt his mind breaking, and this only made him smile, because he knew if he survived this, then his Elder Talent would make another great leap forward.
He urged his consciousness to places it was not meant to go; he did not want natural, he had always been a freak of nature, and had long accepted this part of him, why the hell would he ever want to be normal, when the fate of the weak and the meek was to be consumed!
"Spear," he whispered again, voice barely audible through crushed ribs, and the swarm answered. They did not know what to do, but Elias showed them the way, and they followed.
Purple motes surged from the nine marks on his chest, thousands, tens of thousands, spiraling down his right arm like liquid metal. They flowed into his hand, into the blades, fusing, lengthening.
The purple claws stretched, not just longer, but thicker, denser. The swarm compressed itself into a single, rigid shaft: twelve feet long, needle-sharp at the tip, edges serrated with tiny, writhing filaments. The spear pulsed with violet light, golden flecks dancing inside like trapped stars.
Elias made the weapons he used for his hunts, and all of this experience had translated into making this perfect weapon, supremely balanced, and it was undoubtedly the most dangerous weapon he had ever held in his hand.
He would have loved to remain here just admiring the weapon, but a hunter’s best way to admire a weapon was to use it effectively. Gripping it with both hands, his left arm, still missing chunks of muscle, screaming in protest, but obeying.
Elias thrust upward.
The spear punched through the meat above him, clean and deep. There was no resistance at first, then a sudden hardness; he knew that this must be the cartilage and muscle knot surrounding the heart. The weakening effects on these monsters, he did not know how deep it went, but already, this cluster of flesh and cartilage was harder than a five-foot block of Profound Iron.
Elias snarled, and he pushed harder, the waving filaments on the edge of the spear acting like whirling sawblades as they assisted him in drilling through the obstacle in front of him.
The spear tip cracked bone with an unexpected but satisfying crunch, and the monster’s heartbeat skipped, a single, terrified stutter that reverberated through its entire body, and Elias felt it passing through his flesh and settling deep into his bones.
The scream that followed was deafening, even inside her body. It vibrated through every inch of flesh around him. Elias felt his eardrums rupture again as fresh blood leaked from his ears. He didn’t stop, because the heart was still beating and his spear had not reached it yet.
He twisted the spear, once, twice, grinding the serrated edges into the obstacle in front of him, and the monster convulsed.
Elias was already in a claustrophobic hell, and he was not even breathing due to how tight the surrounding flesh had squeezed him, but on the verge of death, this creature summoned more willpower, and the flesh around him squeezed harder.
His ribs snapped further inward as Elias tasted blood in his throat, bright red this time. His own heart had also been punctured. If he could, he would have been laughing at the irony of the entire affair.
He pulled the spear back, just a foot, then drove it upward again. Deeper. The spear met something softer, a chamber, pulsing, wet. The heartbeat was right there, inches away.
In that instant, the hunter inside him roared to life. He had set up everything for this moment. The instant he saw that first creature being drawn back, and he saw the umbilical cord linking it to whoever was in the darkness, Elias had known that one way or another, he would find himself inside this place, and every decision he had made from that point forward had ensured he was here.
Elias roared, wordless, raw... There was no air left in his body, but his voice still echoed like something out of a Hunter’s Dream, and he shoved with everything left in his body.
The spear plunged through the final barrier and slipped into the heart. The thrust was perfect as the heartbeat exploded into silence.
"Saethar vael’kyris thraem’saethar."
"Killer of Kings."
The monster’s scream cut off mid-note, replaced by a long, gurgling exhale that shook the entire chamber, and the flesh around Elias went slack as the squeezing stopped, not that it would help him breathe, as his lungs were crushed and there was no air inside this place.
Elias hung there, spear still buried deep in the creature’s heart, his body suspended in cooling meat, and he did not move for ten whole minutes as his body drank every bit of golden fluid from the mysterious orb.
At the end, his Stamina had reached 0, and if not for the momentum still carried by his body, and the fact that the movement of the spear seemed to also depend on his willpower that pushed it more deeply than any force his body had exerted, it would have been too late for him, and he would have died here.
The Silence was absolute as his surroundings grew dark when the last of the golden liquid entered his body, he was surprised that the flesh of this creature did not turn to ash, but he knew that what he had taken from it was more precious than Lumina, as he could sense no trace of energy or vitality in the slabs of meat that surrounded him.
He felt the swarm retract into his body, the spear dissolving back into motes and flowing into his chest. His arms dropped as he slid downward through the softening tissue, slow, like falling through mud.
It took several minutes, but his body soon hit the floor of the chamber, and he landed on his back in a pool of black milk and his own blood.
Above him, the monster’s body sagged like a mountain collapsing in on itself. Breasts deflated, cords withered, and the gaping hole in her stomach closed slowly, meat folding inward like a dying flower.
There would be no more births, no more laughter, and no more babies dragging their heads across the ground in eternal torture.
Elias lay there, not moving, and he glanced at his Status bar again and sighed, "Did I just break my stamina?"
Vitality: 142 / 2385
Stamina: 0 / 613
