LIGHTNOVELONLINE V1CH38 The End Of The Prelude
When we approached the source of the roar, we saw two giant creatures.
The first titan was the Alpha Wendigo. It was a fifteen-foot tall, emaciated man with a stag head completely covered in dirty knotted pitch-black hair. Its several foot long daggerlike claws radiated a black miasma of corruption, pestilence, and consumption.
_
James Cain
“It’s greatest weapon, the stench”
Grade S
_
The other titan, a bigfoot, was a very rare creature for this world, a powerful positively aligned being as it was a protector of nature. It had as much muscle packed on its ten-foot frame as biologically positive. Said muscles were wrapped in clean green fur that radiated a vibrant green glow of enhancement. The only part not covered in fur was its simian face. It also had gigantic feet as you would suspect given its name.
_
Samuel Oakborn
“I got big shoes”
Grade S
_
The two figures were engaged in a slugfest lacking skill of any kind that was only impressive due to the sheer power being thrown around. Both parties were as powerful as spirits can be without becoming literal gods.
Which was both good and bad news as whichever entity succeeded would be vanquishing a powerful enemy of the same attribute but an opposite alignment. That would be an ascending act that would make the victor a god and turn the forest into their flavor of nature.
The wendigo would become a god of famine and pestilence ruling over a forest with that same fundamental nature. The forest would spread across the earth, spreading great famine and disease with it. Due to those concepts being closely associated with the apocalypse, the new god would usher in an apocalypse that would strengthen it. Which would in turn strengthen the apocalypse, creating a vicious feedback loop. The only hope in that situation is that it runs into a more powerful entity that liked the status quo before it built up too much momentum.
While the bigfoot would become a god of protection and nature ruling over one of the few bastions of positivity in this heavily negative natured world. It would be a powerful candle of hope in the sea of darkness that is this reality.
It was due to these possible outcomes that the world was giving the slightest of boosts to the wendigo. This sliver was enough though and the twisted spirit was winning.
The bigfoot had multiple lacerations that leaked black sludge. It got some good shots in as we watched but it was a losing battle, and everyone knew it. The bigfoot gave up its slightest chance of winning when it stopped trying to win and started trying not to lose.
We were witnessing the beginning of the end and worst of all there was little Olivia or I could do about it. Quite simply neither one of us had the power to pierce the defenses of the wendigo and it would just overpower any effect on it or the battlefield I could create. My artifacts just were not conceptually powerful enough. Orpheus’ Melody was my best chance but its tier of five was dwarfed by the wendigo about to reach tier ten and ascend.
When the wendigo missed a claw slash and destroyed a tree sending wooden shards infused with a powerful corruption everywhere, we realized we were not even qualified to witness this event.
We entered a nearby cave that we quickly discovered was where the wendigo resided to avoid the aftermath of the titans’ clash. It was filled with skeletons seemingly made from a material similar to what I’ve been calling White Immaterial. It wasn’t exact, but it was like a generic version of my personal brand of cola. The ceiling was covered in gray mist made of the victims’ soul remnants and resentment. The wendigo was quite the messy eater leaving those scraps lying around.
Having an idea, I, with Orpheus’ Melody’s help, forged the skeletons into chains and imbued them with the scraps of soul and resentment. They could feel that there would be no reincarnation or afterlife for them. That they would cease to exist when their job was done. The twisted remnant of people just did not care. The instant I was done with the imbuement, the stark white chains that glowed a sickly gray flew out of my hands towards the cave entrance. I had created an artifact could affect a borderline god which was quite the achievement in my opinion. Even if I had the perfect materials for it and it would cease to exist very quickly after it was first used and it could only affect a single entity, it was still an achievement to be proud of.
We followed the chains out and saw the wendigo with its spindly arms pinned to its side, its maw sealed shut, and its legs bound together. The bigfoot, which had been half eviscerated in the time that we had been gone, proceeded to stomp its opponent’s head into the ground. It only stopped when the head was only a memory of what once was.
The bigfoot pounded its chest and released a roar over its opponent’s corpse. It started to glow, and the light slowly grew into a pillar marking the process of its ascension to a god.
The light suddenly blinked out.
The bigfoot succumbed to its injuries and then fell backwards dead.
“Well, that’s disappointing.”
***
While looting corpses, especially of something that was just my sort of ally, was not the most ethical, it was who I was now. I was less troubled by looting the corpse of the being that could have ended the world.
I next extracted the core essence of the two beings. These contained both sides of nature: the growth and the decay, the nurturer and the reaper, the beginning and the end, the giver and the taker. It showed the cycle of how rot nurtures new growth, how death leads to life, but also how all things end. How everything dies, whether that be in an instant or an eternity. The buds of life will always include a sliver of death and death will always have life sprouting from it.
These resonated with my body as it was all about using rot to create life. The golden skin also resonated due to its paradoxical nature of both purity and taint, of both angelic and demonic. I did not even need to weave it into my body as both essences dissolved into me as soon as I touch them.
Going off instinct I immediately dissolved a series of artifacts: Matthew’s Water, Orpheus’ Melody, Moses’ Trek, Sacrificial Scarf, and [Redacted]. I promptly threw them into the process the core essences started.
My body started reaching for something higher, something fundamental. When it reached some cosmic record, I was presented with a choice, what was I? was I the all-consuming fungus. Or the mighty tree. Or the beautiful flower. Or something else entirely.
The bone apple tree. I was a bone apple tree. It spoke to me like no other. The tree got its name from the fact that it grew amid a graveyard of bones. You see the tree created death from life by producing toxic fruits that killed any creature that consumed one. It then drained all the nutrients from the corpses to grow ever larger, creating life from death. The second I confirmed the choice I felt a shudder run through me.
I was no longer a golden apple. Now I was a bone apple tree. My body no longer resembled an apple made up of a skin, fruit, and a stem. However, it did not resemble a tree either. The tree was more conceptual. It more decided how my body would operate than its structure. My new body was homogeneously made up of threads imbued with the concept of the bone apple tree.
Now that did not mean that it was wood or nature aligned. I was by design fairly unaligned; the only real alignment I had was to life and death. Which was the same for every being to various degrees. It more meant that my body could process both life and death essence to operate. I was a paradoxical being that was both dead, undead, and alive all at the same time.
The main effect of this new form was that I no longer needed “apples” as I could draw energy from a myriad of sources. Now I would in all likely hood need to keep feeding on people to maintain an acceptable energy level, but I could survive of environmental energies. Besides that, I was still pretty physically weak, but I was more FE Male than Supreme Man anyways.
The real gain was the authorities contained in the two core essences: empower and consume. I think you can guess which came from which. The first could bump up the potency of pretty much anything as long as its below godhood. The second would help me drain energy quicker. Neither were game breaking, but they were the best things I could create and still control. I was a long way from godhood.
The extra ingredients led to my body having a soul tattoo crafted from nature itself, Celestial Weaving. While not the perfect job, it was perfect for me as my body and it were designed in concert. It covered my arms and shoulders with a rainbow wavy grid like structure made up of specialized body threads. I finally found a use for my collection of various essences even if they were all currently tier zero barring a few. It looked like an aurora had a baby with a graph. The tattoo also had seven starlike focal points stemming from my sacrificed rings: sand, water, faith, holy water, necromancy, and rot. Water occupied a blue part of the grid, faith a golden part, and holy water the intersection of the two. Sand was between a yellow section and a green one. Necromancy was smack dap in the middle of a black section. Shadow hovered between black and gold. Rot was right next to necromancy and glowed so bright that it was almost a sun. The rot had only strengthened after feeding on the wendigo’s pestilence. Too bad I could never use it, the rot had always been a rabid dog the only difference now was that I had chains on it.
The tattoo also featured two starting celestial bodies, one on each shoulder. My left shoulder blade featured a vibrant green sun and my right had a blacker than black blackhole with a small crimson planet orbiting it.
Being:
Body:
[Bone Apple Tree]
Soul Tattoos:
[Celestial Weaving]
[Sand: Tier Three]
[Water: Tier Five]
[Faith: Tier One]
[Holy Water: Tier Three]
[Shadow: Tier Five]
[Necromancy: Tier Five]
[Rot: Tier ErRoR]
Special Abilities:
[Consumption: Tier Nine]
[Wound]
[Empowerment: Tier Nine]
When I was done my hair had turned into a messy dark green mop with the occasional splotch of red. While my eyes had turned a matching crimson that seemed to draw people into them.
Moving on to the next order of business I looked through both creatures’ souls. There was little of note except for the wendigo’s feeding method. It fed by turning the sins and corruption contained in the minds, bodies, and souls of its victims and eating them. This showed me a method to produce more of the rot that my body so loved, well something that was close. it was an even better way of consuming people, it seems life really wanted me to kill people.
With my business out of the way, it was time for us to head back to the car.
As I was following Olivia, I caught a scratch on her side leaking a jet-black fluid.
With the proverbial blood draining from my face, “Olivia, your side.”
She put her hand on her side and felt some wetness. She looked at her hand and saw what looked like an oil smear on it. “F*ck” was all she got out before falling to the floor.
I was able to soften her fall by catching her in my arms, “I got you.”
After coughing up some black corrupted blood, Olivia got out, “I’m not feeling so hot. Think you could patch me up here?”
I saw a black spiderweb weaving all throughout her body with several branches running through her soul, “I’m not liking what I’m seeing. The infection is too interwoven and set in too deep. I could maybe fix this with much more experience years down the line, but right now all I can do is cut out everything that has even the slightest chance of containing the infection and fill in the gaps where I can with whatever I can find or have. The only problem is that you will integrate too much, too quickly. It will become a question of what non-human thing you would like to become. Wound transfer is also off the table as the wendigo was close enough to ascension and I lost just enough in the integration for the wound to be just out of my reach.”
With a look of resolve I rarely saw on my friend’s face, “I would rather die than lose my humanity.”
“That is the only other option.” I said with a defeated sigh knowing I had a better chance of convincing water not to be wet than changing Olivia’s mind on this. Not that I blamed her, she takes me up on my offer and there is no place for her in this world anymore. She would be an outcast to the MFBI and due to her family’s heavy involvement in the organization, she would be an outcast there as well. She also would not be too welcome amongst the monster due to her previous employment.
“I have a confession to make.” Olivia said lifting her head to look me in the eye.
“Is this where you tell me that you have always loved me?” I said with a chuckle.
“No.” *Laughter* “God No.” *Laughter* “it’s about how I’m an empath”
“I know”
“I know you know. Just as I know you know that I know the true depths of your hollowness. Cover it with humor all you want, fake it till you make it all you want, but I know that this is the equivalent to your fifth favorite TV show being canceled.” My friend said with a smile.
“You know I want to be sadder, right?”
“I know. I also know that a good man is in there fighting a flood of apathy and indifference. That’s why I want you to take my heart, my ability. I want you to live in my place, feel happy in my place, feel love in my place, and unfortunately feel sadness in my place.”
We spent the next several hours talking about everything and nothing. When she finally passed away from weakness, I used my Petrification Ring and material weaving to create a statue of my friend. I would not allow my friend to become a rotted skeleton.
I collected a wisp of the death essence in the area to create another Death Dogtag to remember the loss of my first friend. Unfortunately, she would in all likelihood be far from the last. I then fulfilled my promise and put her heart inside my chest.
After placing the note she dictated to her father on the statue, I left for a second time that day, only this time without my friend and partner being truly with me.
Being:
Body:
[Bone Apple Tree]
Soul Tattoos:
[Celestial Weaving]
[Sand: Tier Three]
[Water: Tier Five]
[Faith: Tier One]
[Holy Water: Tier Three]
[Shadow: Tier Five]
[Necromancy: Tier Five]
[Rot: Tier ErRoR]
Special Abilities:
[Consumption: Tier Nine]
[Wound]
[Empowerment: Tier Nine]
[Empathy: Tier One]
Current Equipment:
Head:
[The Black Wasp Jackal’s Face]
Earrings:
[]
Necklace:
[]
Clothes:
[]
Rings:
[The Mentalism Ring]
[Mena’s Book]
[Petrifying Ring]
Bracelets:
[]
Shoes:
[]
Armaments:
[Beastly Heart]
Storage:
[Chi Organ]
[Spirit Shards]
[Various Murder Weapons]
[Green Thumb]
[Glass Eye]
[Various Articles Of Clothing]
[Death Dogtags]