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Duskbound 3- Chapter 83

Velik’s mana reserves were dry. He’d blown it all super-charging that [Dread Lance]. He was hurting, too, having done more to harm himself than Zelamir had managed the entire fight. Now was not the time for someone else to interfere.

Snarling, he resisted the newcomer’s attempt to force his arm back, but the man’s strength was truly monstrous. Even if Velik had been fresh, he wasn’t sure he could have overcome that level of sheer physical power. His free hand ...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 82

All divine beasts shared a single quality, regardless of what powers they had or shapes they took. They were all arrogant, self-conceited bastards. Zelamir was no exception to that rule. If anything, he was even more full of himself than usual.

“Oh, excellent. I already have a baseline for your human form, which I’m sure you consider to be your real shape right now. Given the circumstances of your creation, I can’t blame you for feeling that way. A century or two will correct that...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 81

Every second was precious, but Velik still spent them studying the man. He was a divine beast, after all, and it would be the height of stupidity to expect something that old and that powerful to be felled by a simple ambush. He undoubtedly had ways to protect himself, and Velik needed at least a rough idea of how to breach those defenses before he struck.

Unfortunately for him, he didn’t have a clue what he was looking at. The man’s mana was woven into knots around him in some sort...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 80

The Gold Spire was cold and silent on the outside, but once Velik breached the threshold, it burst with life. There were hundreds or even thousands of creatures living inside it, all of them going about their lives. They made noise. They had smells. They breathed and moved and spoke words Velik had no hope of understanding.

It’s another monster civilization, he realized. A self-contained one, probably trapped in this tower.

He could smell the fresh turned earth...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 79

The sun disappeared behind the mountains, casting the world into the shadows of twilight. Velik could feel [Sun Eater] empowering him, though differently than [Duskbound] had. Instead of a massive rush of strength all at once, he started feeling the effects about half an hour before sun down. They were faint at first, but by the time it was fully dark, he was sure the new skill was even stronger than the old one.

It wasn’t a huge difference relative t...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 78

Velik stood atop the corpse of a monster the size of a small castle. Its body was layered in plates of organic metal, thickest across its back, chest, shoulders, and skull, but all four of its legs were well protected as well. Even the inside of its mouth was durable, the leathery flesh having metallic fibers threaded through it that made it difficult to cut more than shallow surface wounds.

It had breathed out billowing clouds of fire and cracked the earth with every step it took, but ...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 77

As it turned out, [Blood Toxin] was gross overkill for the average monster. Most of them didn’t survive the first blow, similar to Velik’s time on the frontier hunting things that were half his level and only gaining a level every six to eight months because of it. Being efficient in that environment took a different set of skills, but he wasn’t willing to abandon the ones he’d already created.

He was pointing his build toward hunting divine beasts, and if that ...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 76

As far as Velik could see, there were two routes forward. One was to consolidate his essence configurations into as few skills as possible in an effort to be efficient with his resources. Ten separate skills were probably costing him five times as much essence as one skill with ten components. Or at least that was his basic theory for how it worked, even if the numbers were off.

Never thought I’d say I wish I was better at math.

The other way was to spend his essence li...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 75

“Experiment—Velik—you should know the hierarchy among the divine beasts,” Eslaka said. “Despite our great age, we are not equals. There are centuries of time between the oldest and the youngest of us, and some have invested their essence wisely. Others have frittered it away.

“The weakest of our numbers was Halifex. I say ‘was’ because it is my belief that you already encountered him, and that he is dead.”

Velik said nothing, just stared at her. If she didn’t k...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 74

“I don’t want your help!” Tesir bellowed up at the sky. “This is my fight. Go back to hiding.”

In response, a twister descended from the clouds and plucked him off the ground like a man picking up a bug. Lightning flared in every direction, tearing through the winds and reaching out for the distant figure above, but the bolts couldn’t reach her.

She seems… stronger. But she’s not attacking. Is this a rescue attempt?

Velik couldn’t allow that, but h...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 73

Velik’s first thought was a simple, Why is he in that form?

His second thought was, Oh shit, he’s moving really fast!

Then there was no time to think. His body reacted to danger the same way it had a thousand times before, by moving and fighting back. It was a process so ingrained that he was already twenty feet into the air before Tesir landed. His spear came down on the back of the tiger’s skull, but even with all Velik’s new strength behind it, it stil...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 72

It wasn’t possible. Velik knew monsters. He’d spent most of his life hunting and killing them. He lived in their territories. He knew how they thought, how they reacted to the mere sight of other monsters or humans, and what they were capable of accomplishing. Building huts was beyond their capabilities. Living peacefully together was theoretically possible, especially if there was an elite controlling them, but coexisting with other nearby monster species was a stretch.

They would ...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 71

Those stupid tiger statues had no essence in them, just like the golems from the sky bridge. That was fine, except that more and more of them just kept showing up. Velik hadn’t kept careful track of how many he’d reduced to piles of broken rock slowly liquifying in the magma that had spilled out of them, but it was at least fifty by now.

They’d started coming at him two or three at a time, then eventually in an endless deluge with more showing up as fast as he killed them. It was ...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 70

I need some sort of heat resistance skill, Velik decided as he scaled the side of the mountain.

It wasn’t just the molten pools of lava, though those certainly didn’t help. His physical stat was more than up to the task of keeping him from cooking himself whenever he had to run above one. No, the problem was the sheer variety of fire-themed monsters living on the mountain. They weren’t even all elementals like he’d initially thought, either.

There were a ton of bi...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 69

There was a huge difference between monsters that flew with wings and monsters that used magic to defy gravity, and that difference could be summarized as either a need for or lack of forward momentum. Magic-users could do things like hover in place, fly backward, or even fly upside down. Things with wings generally could only move forward, and if they stopped, they dropped.

Halifex was the second kind of flyer, but Velik planned on treating the battle like the divine beast was capable ...

Duskbound 3- Chapter 68

The man had a mane of dark hair rising out of his skull and spilling down his back, and deep, sunken eyes that stared down a sharp beak of a nose. His skin was pallid, almost sickly, and his mouth parted to reveal sharp little triangular teeth.

He studied Velik while he waited for a response, the same way Velik was studying him. Not much to look at. Limbs are thin. Small stature. Fast, though, and sneaky. Ambush predator, then. But if that’s the way it is, why does he look so conf...