Chapter 314: B3: C104: Big Bad Berserk Polymorph |
<You’ve entered the Hunter Gorer Super Dungeon (Mythical-Level 160)>
<Beware! Super Dungeons are more difficult than normal dungeons. You are currently in a Super Dungeon that has defeated all challengers. None have made it to the Super Dungeon Boss. You have a one-use teleportation to exit the dungeon.>
<Do you wish to use the teleportation exit? Yes or no?>
Dungeons were fascinating.
They were worlds within worlds. Places bound within their own rules while following the greater will of the System.
To enter one led to facing a natural creator god, because, essentially, that was the nature of dungeon cores – little gods packaged into pearly orbs that wanted to defend their home and create deadly life. And inside of a dungeon, their domain, the little gods could reign supreme once given enough time to grow.
For most adventurers, facing a dungeon that had years and years of practice, preparation, and success was a death sentence. Zarian wasn’t most adventurers, so he entered the dungeon with the utmost of confidence.
He landed feet first, taking in the notifications before dismissing them to scan his surroundings. It looked like another jungle themed cavern, but with less steam and claws, and more of a purple gloom that hung over lone saplings and low lying plants.
Simple place. A little on the quiet side, though. No worries. Para’s enormous feet crashing down behind him, crushing plant matter into pulp, shaking the area, was a decent way to let the locals know of their arrival if they hadn’t known already.
The sentiment was appreciated, but it was only the first room, so they should be fine.
At the 1.2 second mark of entering a new dungeon, Zarian noticed his Devourer of Secrets and Stories was failing to grasp the hidden mechanics of the first area. Even the soft-felt bushes around his shins were resistant to giving up their secrets and stories.
At the 1.6 second mark, he looked up to evaluate their location with his own eyes again.
At the 1.7 second mark, an unidentifiable object flew at mach speeds for his chest.
Para slammed her kaiju hand in the way, but the object phased through her hand, ripped a hole through Zarian’s aura and sorcery, and punctured the right side of his chest.
It exited out of his back in an explosion of gore.
Numerous arteries, the right side of his heart, and his right lung turned into shredded pulp. Half of his rib cage scattered in a bloody splatter behind him that wet the soft-felt bushes and the claws on Para’s feet.
The pain was nearly blinding, but Zarian’s Willpower and willful traits kept him locked into the fight.
By the 1.8 second mark, Zarian finally had eyes on the threat: a humanoid monster with a boar’s head. It was twelve feet tall and armed with throwing spears it carried in a long quiver with one hand, the other hand already throwing another spear.
Para activated every emergency ward and force-generating array to disrupt the projectile. None of it worked. The spear ripped through magic and phased through a three-hundred-foot kaiju that was slamming her fists down again.
Zarian took matters into his own hand and used Super Speed Force +2 to throw himself aside, which was faster to activate than casting Void Paradise. The javelin changed its path instantly, unwilling to let its target go free, but it did fall short of killing him.
He felt his right shoulder get devastated instead, his arm hurled aside, his right side becoming a messier anatomical disaster. He was barely holding his life energy together with aura, vitality, and healing arrays.
None of that was greater than having a stellar healer like Gilbert, but it kept Zarian in the fight, prepping a spell by the 2 second mark.
Para was also going on the attack, throwing all of her weight down on the boar-headed monster, whose twelve feet in height was tiny compared to the kaiju.
A blue-green shockwave of aura pushed against Para’s mass without slowing her much. Then a second shockwave, this one green-yellow, slowed Para a little further, but her hand was already coming down with claws aimed to rake and divide.
The third shockwave, this one yellow-orange, was quiet and not as forceful. The blazing energy and bright light seemed to snuff away as Para’s hand closed around the boar monster with a crushing finality.
Then, right at the 2.5 second mark, Para’s entire hand exploded to her elbow. A potent force thrashed her whole body backward in a way that was unbelievable to see, yet Zarian stood as witness to sights that would’ve broken the Willpower of most dungeon crawlers.
The boar monster was juiced up with the unyielding power of Aura Ignition/Third Stage. Seeing that as Para crashed behind him was Zarian’s cue to drop the monster into the void with all his gumption, ripping the control of realms and planar magic free from the dungeon.
Doing so wasn’t a cheap maneuver, but the aura expense was a price he was very willing to pay.
He had more to do. Victory wasn’t yet his.
On both fronts, from the dungeon and the boar monster, Zarian felt his Void Paradise struggle.
The dungeon’s own magic over realms and planes kept interfering. And the boar monster was ripping and goring its way through eldritch challengers while on the other side of the veil.
Zarian looked up at Para’s collapsed form and felt her trust without having to ask. She knew what he would do next and accepted it. Zarian didn’t second guess himself.
Before the dungeon and the boar monster demolished his Void Paradise spell, Zarian summoned all of his grimoires for more wizarding prowess. Gator growled. Voidling orbited. Black rattled. And Morph fell into the wizard’s left hand, pages flipping wide.
Pointing Morph up at his loyal friend, Zarian cast the spell made from the combination of Big Bad Polymorph and Animate The Thing. The result was called Big Bad Berserk Polymorph. And what it would do to Para might just end up killing Zarian if he was too slow on the follow-up.
<Big Bad Berserk Polymorph (Mythical): Don’t use this spell unless you don’t have much of a choice. The end results can animate an object into an abhorrent monstrosity of mass destruction. Or it can take an already powerful creature and transform them into a living doomsday device that will surely backfire on you. To even use this spell costs more than aura. It costs life energy and very well may kill you. You’ve been warned. Scales doubly with Willpower, Wonder, and Mysticism.>
Zarian felt his aura drain halfway. He felt his already endangered life energy drop even lower. His vision shook from the rapid energy depletion, and his soul felt shifty, which would’ve been concerning if it wasn’t for the Divine Revival Charm.
It was at that moment, as Zarian poured magic from Void Paradise into Para’s transformation to make her transformation even scarier and deadlier, that he noticed his Divine Revival Charm was inactive.
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It was not something most people would check on until the charm was activated, saving one’s life. Yet he could notice its inactivation in his soul even though he hadn’t died yet. The only explanation could be found in the spear or the enemy or the dungeon itself.
Something canceled divine revivals here.
That would require a divine power.
A part of Zarian found that interesting. This place was the most murderhobo dungeon he had ever faced, and he was the one guy in the universe nobody wanted dead unless they were sickos.
Then all of Zarian’s limited focus snapped back to Para as her transformation neared its ending, since it was time to cheat.
Zarian dropped Morph and blitzed his way through hand signs with only his left.
“Lock,” he rasped at the end of the ritual, catching the berserk rage before it took over Para completely.
He did so right on time, just as Para reached into the cavity where half of his chest and his right were gone. Her claws stopped an inch away from snatching his heart away.
Who would’ve thought that becoming an expert at seals would become a thing for more than himself?
<Twenty Master Locks Sealing Style (Mythical): You don’t need tools or items to lock in your sealing style anymore. You are the master locks. Your gestures, magic, and/or aura can apply the locks masterfully to yourself or to your targets as long as you know what you’re locking down with this sealing style. Doing so grants you +100% Willpower, +100% Agility, +100% Wonder.>
The absolute training had incorporated sorcery studies first and foremost. But that wasn’t all. Ruvaria had ensured Zarian’s approach to his darkness and his sealing style went through intense refinement.
Through sheer practice and hard work, he’d advanced the old Bearer of the Twenty Dark Locks Sealing Style into the Twenty Master Locks Sealing Style. He could do more than just apply power locks to himself – he could do it to others as long as he understood what and how he was locking something.
The ‘how’ usually required his aura and some sealing know-how condensed into ‘locks’ on specific powers or effects, sometimes as large as an entire ability. In this case, Zarian targeted the ‘berserk’ consequence to the polymorph spell, because it was literally baked into it. He was the one who’d studied it, engrained it, and channeled it. So, of course, he would try to lock it.
That didn’t mean the target wouldn’t challenge the lock. Big Bad Berserk Polymorph was a willful spell that wanted to crash out, and it wore against the lock Zarian placed on it with a pressure that would break the seal in minutes.
Zarian applied nineteen more locks, maxing out the limit of his sealing style, subduing the spell’s berserk nature. The trade-off was reducing Para’s new power drastically. But even then, this new form of hers was vastly stronger than the kaiju form, even if it was puny in comparison.
“Leo, this body feels remarkable,” Para said, looking down at her hands and her feet, each digit tipped by supernatural claws. Then her eyes roved over her humanoid limbs and other parts. “It is solid and magical. It is pure insanity and power.”
She looked like a red reptilian version of him, but as a girl. A reptilian tail swayed and whipped from behind her. Her hair came down in flowing and scaled locks. There were patches of scale that covered the feminine bits while she stood naked at his height.
The most interesting part wasn’t her physical form getting condensed from three hundred feet to six feet. It was that she didn’t have a personal level, nor could Zarian identify much more than what hovered above her.
<Unable to Identify Unknown Quality.>
That … was new.
That … was a sign.
Zarian tried not to stare, since they were running out of time. He focused on reading the magic humming off Para’s powerful body, which sent out eldritch ripples, intense bodily heat, nauseating curses, and the familiar buzz of runic magic.
Additionally, she was still attached to his soul as his skill. He was pretty sure Para could leave the new body like leaving a suit and store it away in her pocket dimension.
But even if she stayed in this form, their attachment as host and phantom felt stronger somehow. They could sync up better this way while she remained as an absolute unit.
And there was more raw power waiting to be accessed behind the twenty locks. As long as Zarian and everyone he cared about could keep safe from Para going berserk.
But that was neither here nor there. Zarian was close to dying. And he couldn’t revive.
“Can you defend me? Or should we take the teleportation exit?” Zarian asked, making the best use out of having one lung.
Before Para could answer, the super dungeon and boar monster broke Void Paradise, which came with an unpleasurable feedback for Zarian.
A sound like the world was screaming ripped through the air. A tear in space-and-time opened up and closed behind a bore monster covered in the intense power of Third Ignition.
The yellow-orange energy shone like the light of a newborn star, blinding Zarian, chasing away the darkness, and laying upon him a deadly impression.
The Third Ignition, the stabilization of a powerful technique, bent reality toward the ideal that the monster would do nothing less but kill all hunters in a bloody and painful fashion. The moment it set its sight on Zarian again, it was already in his face with a spear thrust to gore and kill the wizard. Consequences be damned.
Para intervened again, her body humming with a storm of powers morphed with her new flesh. She grabbed the shaft, planted her bare feet into the dungeon floor, and yanked the ignited boar monster to a halt.
The spear fell inches short from Zarian who took the opportunity to back up. Reality shook with confusion, and the boar monster’s Third Ignition wavered, as if taken aback by someone else being physically opposing.
There was a lapse of action from the boar monster as it looked in surprise at Para, which provided Zarian enough time to unlock Five Percent Darkness and shoot the boar in the head with a beam.
It was not a large beam.
It was only the width of a dime in thickness. And it was not a beam that would destroy worlds or landscapes. There was no need for such destruction.
The point of Zarian’s darkness was to consume and destroy his targets, and his targets alone. The moment its job was done, the beam would act as darkness should, an absence of all things.
But until it served its purpose, a beam that represented five percent of Overwhelming Darkness had the power to shoot through a Lesser World and reach the other side easily.
The boar’s head scattered into atoms.
Its body took a step back. Then it dropped the spear Para had latched onto and shaped its ignited aura into energy javelins that thrust at Zarian.
The javelins rammed into a Five Percent Dark Wall. The impacts shook the starting area with the intensity of nuclear strikes. More and more aura-ignited javelins crashed into Zarian’s dark wall, but none could break through while he cast another spell.
Black spread his cover open, the grimoire emitting a dark red and ruddy light on the verge of brown from his pages. The spell being cast had come from combining Breath of Destruction (which was originally a skill called Super Destruction Flame Force) with Burning Blood Blast.
<Mega Desolation Blood Inferno (Mythical): Cast this on a bleeding enemy and turn them into an explosion of destruction magic and blood magic that spreads like an inferno. The flames will make other vulnerable enemies suffer the same fate and spread the inferno further. The flames will also grant you and allies life energy and increased vitality as long as there are enemies to desolate. Can only be used once every long rest.>
Brownish sparks appeared from the bleeding neck between the shoulders of the headless boar monster. Then the sparks ignited and became a brown and ruddy gout shooting up hundreds of feet into the air.
The desolation flames concentrated upward because the boar monster’s yellow-orange ignition was preventing the body from being completely consumed and blasted apart. But the focus on preservation opened the boar up to retaliation – Para flipping the spear around and stabbing it through the monster’s groin.
Zarian dropped the darkness wall and slashed a thin, hypersonic dark jettison from the hip to the shoulder, splitting the creature apart. The new blood ignited and spread the brown flames even further, yet the boar monster kept standing on nothing but legs and what remained of its hacked up torso.
It even tried to rush past Para and smash Zarian to pieces with a punch.
Having none of that, Para moved even faster, shoulder-checking the monster and sending it flying into the far side wall.
With plenty of space and time to line up his next shots, Zarian knee-capped the boar monster before removing its last arm, making its headless and limbless torso stay put in the soft-felt foliage.
Finally, the monster’s Third Ignition petered out. It gave in to the desolation flames and exploded, sending a big wave of brown flames everywhere.
Zarian sighed with relief, his dangerously low life energy rising quickly, his vitality supercharging. His injured right side healed faster, though it wasn’t an instant recovery. He did tap into Wizard Body Conversion +2, turning his body fiery to heal faster, even with it in the beta section.
“Zarian, there’s more coming,” Para said. “I can sense something like a murderous intent from them somehow.”
It hadn’t even been two minutes, and the Hunter Gorer Super Dungeon was becoming a menace.
Zarian took the best option.
He accepted the teleportation exit and went back outside with Para.