Greed God chapter 116

February 20th 2016 Gemworld 8:00 PM EDT

I  walked for about two hours before finding a quiet spot that was out of  the way to begin the process of my upgrade. The place I picked was a  small clearing in the forest on the way to the border. I'd found it a  few days ago on one of my rare walks while the chalice was charging. I'd  decided to do my evolution here because it was out of the way and  actually kind of cool looking. It took me almost no time to reach the  place, and I enjoyed the peaceful walk under the moon, the magic damping  cloak blending into the darkness as I walked.

Arriving at  the clearing I had to whistle softly at the sight of it. The moon shone  down on a small pond against a cliff, a tiny waterfall, barely a  trickle, flowed into a small but extremely deep pond. The water of the  pond was crystal clear, and even through the liquid I could see a small  opening at the bottom. I looked to both sides of the pond, making sure I  wasn't being observed, then stashed my cloak in the pouch and dove in,  swimming down into the depths of the pond until I reached the small  passage at the bottom.

I had to hold my breath for a  decent chunk of time to slip through the passage, and when I came up I  was in a large empty cave. I climbed out of the water, relaxing as I  did. This ascension was going to be a big jump, and I was worried about  the disturbance it might cause. My jump to F rank had been pretty  obvious, and magically was probably pretty simple to detect. I imagined  the same was true of this next upgrade, so I wanted a big open space  that was cut off from the outside.

Of course, there was no  telling if the stone walls would help at all, but it was better than  doing some crazy light show in the middle of the forest where anything  could stumble on me. The nobles were strong, but I knew that there were  animals of corresponding ranks too. The last thing I needed was  accidentally alert some fucking A rank beast by mistake and get  swallowed like an idiot. Doing the bare minimum to avoid that wasn't too  much trouble for me.

Once I was in the cave I looked  around, appraising everything I could see just to make sure there wasn't  some secret monster hiding in here or something. It really did seem to  just be an empty cave, so there was nothing to worry about. Once that  was finished I started grabbing things from my pouch. I pulled out stone  after stone, flower after flower, liquids and woods and any number of  magical materials and objects that might be of use to me, spanning the  spectrum from powerful to pathetic, just so I'd have the best possible  items for my ascension.

I'd had the bandits out running  the forests looking for materials, with Zee coordinating them and using  her little magic sight spell to show them what they were supposed to be  tracking down. They'd scoured the woods near the village, and a decent  chunk of the points from the last few days had been from the things  they'd brought me. The maw of the hydra was perfect for stockpiling  random objects, and I'd made sure to keep all the best items in there  for this trip, so I'd have as many options as possible for when I made  my decision.

My first major choice here was that I needed  to decide what my goal was. I had several options here for abilities.  Mostly they boiled down to three things. I could enhance my current  abilities, add a new ability, or enhance a specific aspect of my  existing abilities, essentially creating something new. I'd considered  this from a few different angles, but I kept running into a couple of  issues whenever I tried to imagine where I could take my powers. There  were so many options it was impossible to pick the best aspect of myself  to upgrade, but that was kind of what got me where I was at the moment.

Despite  having come up with a few possibilities though, I had been given a  direction by the locals when I'd found the chalice. Blood. The cup made  my blood a precious resource, even more than the already life giving  properties it had. In light of the usefulness and the local  preoccupation with bloodlines, I was pretty sure I wanted to purify and  elevate the bloodline I already had, rather than dilute it by adding new  tricks. The lifestorm bloodline was damned impressive, and I had a  feeling it had more to show me.

While that gave me my next  step however, it didn't completely decide things. Mostly because there  were two parts to the bloodline. Lifestorm and wyrmkin. I could keep the  lifestorm and still upgrade my wyrmkin aspect, making myself something  closer to a dragon. This was the idea I'd been leaning toward since  hearing about the way locals regarded dragons, and I was pretty sure it  was what I wanted to do. I just needed to figure out exactly what I  wanted to change about my wyrmkin race, and how to adapt it best to this  world.

If I was luckier I might have found something  related to dragons, but I hadn't. What I had found, however, were a  series of useful blood related materials that might be the answer to the  problems I was having. I'd also found a few actual animals that might  have some distant draconic ancestry, and those would serve a purpose  too. So with that in mind I started cataloging exactly what I had here  that might be able to help me. As much as planning was helpful, I liked  to work off instinct when merging, so a large variety of items made  things easier as opposed to carefully chosen materials.

[Appraisal  function activated. Treasure detected. Bloodfruit- H rank. A special  plant that is considered a delicacy in Gemworld. Purported to increase  bloodline density and heavily sought after by lower ranked noble family  branches, this fruit has an infinitesimal excitation effect on bloodline  density when eaten consistently over a long period of time.]

That  one was interesting. I suspected based on the description that the  nobles thought this stuff was way more effective than it actually was,  but regardless of effectiveness it did work. I could make something  better with it, so I didn't care if it was mostly snake oil nonsense. It  was interesting that the fruit had gained this sort of mythological  placebo reputation, and it told me plenty of interesting things about  the minor branches of nobility. I made a mental note to try to recruit  some of those if I was here long enough.

[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Sangral  Mud- H rank. A topically applied purification medium for bloodlines  that increases not density, but potency. Condenses the bloodline to make  it more powerful, allowing for more potential growth. Extremely painful  to use, Sangral Mud is normally ignored by nobles, as decreasing  bloodline density is considered foolish. Only the most confident or  wealthy of the nobility are confident enough in their ability to recover  the lost density to use this aid.]

I  hadn't even known that was a thing. I'd assumed that the bloodline  thing was just a percentage. A hundred percent bloodline meant you had  the strongest power. But on second thought that couldn't be the case.  There were plenty of pureblood nobles, and not all of them were Lords or  Princesses. They wouldn't be so rare if percentage was the only factor.  It seemed that there were different potency bloodlines even within the  same family, which gave me another direction to take things in.

I  grabbed a second blood fruit from the pouch and merged two of them  together to create a stronger G ranked version of the thing. Oddly, the  fruit itself didn't change, still being a blood fruit, the only change  was the rank and the word infinitesimal. Apparently blood fruits came in  different ranks, which was an interesting thing to note, or maybe I'd  just broken the rules, who knew. Regardless I wasted no time merging the  bowl of mud with the new and improved blood fruit.

[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Ancestral  Mud- G rank. A unique substance that can raise the potency of a  bloodline without affecting its density, creating a qualitative shift in  the blood to excite ancestral power from deep within.]

That  was exactly what I wanted, the ancestral power thing was great. I was  hoping for a quantitative boost in my bloodline and race both though, so  I needed something a bit...more. I sorted through the pouch, looking at  and discarding multiple materials. I didn't want anything too specific  in terms of attribute, I needed something that would just create a more  powerful version of what I had. Finally I found it.

[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Devolution  stone- G rank. A rare crystal with a certain chance of helping wild  animals return to an ancestral state over a long enough period of  exposure. Effectiveness wanes with the size of the sample.]

Since  this one was about the size of an egg I was guessing it was pretty much  useless, which made it extremely interesting that this stuff was  considered G rank. To have that much power and still be so ineffective  just told me that the process this stuff initiated must be extremely  impressive. It was sort of like how deepvein titanbone could be  considered high rank when a small piece of the stuff didn't have too  much effect. I merged the mud with the stone, waiting to see what  exactly I created.

[Appraisal function activated. Treasure detected. Primordial Prism- F rank. A call to the lost. A beacon from the depths of time.]

I  grimaced. Well, that wasn't fucking helpful at all. It wasn't my first  time seeing that. Eros and Psych had been similar to that too. Really  impressive shit tended to show up as vague and ill defined, though I  wasn't sure why. It hadn't happened since I ranked up though, which made  me think that my appraisal was getting more effective. That was an  interesting idea, and I hadn't really considered what impact my own  strength had on the system.

That  wasn't important though. I wasn't here for that. It was finally time  for me to upgrade. I still had two hundred and forty thousand or so  points, and I was more than able to justify using another hundred. I  held up the stone, remembering how odd it had felt last time I did this,  but I needed to get started, so I focused, and without any more  stalling, activated the merge. The stone turned to energy, to pure light  and rioting power, and so did I. It was a strange feeling really, being  something beyond physical while still thinking with a brain that  shouldn't really exist.

I felt  the energy of the stone surge into me, mixing with my own power, and  when they mixed it was like pop rocks and coke. The energies reacted  with each other, creating a new energy, a new me, that exponentially  increased. I felt myself get bigger, become more, despite occupying  exactly the same amount of space. My last merge had felt strange, but  this was something else altogether.

This  was a qualitative shift in my plane of existence, and I was pretty sure  that it was going to feel more and more dramatic as I ascended. Each  rank being a bigger and bigger gap from what I was. I was climbing  closer and closer to...something. Something I was getting a glimpse at  now. Something huge and terrifying and MORE in such a way that my brain  couldn't process what I was seeing or sensing. The merge ended, the  power settled, and I started to laugh. I laughed uproariously for what  felt like hours, and when I stopped, I curled up on the ground and  slept. When I woke, it would finally be time to see what I had become.