371. The Final Battle I |
37X (to be updated)
The Leviathan loomed overhead like a gigantic astronomical object. It blotted out parts of the sky.
We had known that the time would come. That the creature we had waited and prepared for would finally awaken.
A creature the size of moons moved, and the void sea rippled. When the other head flailed about as if it remembered it was also a tail, the waves created in the void sea were so large that they moved worlds.
Here, from the Core Worlds, I gazed up at the heart of the demonic region. The prison stood unmoved, shackled by the leviathan's powerful magic.
I could sense it now. A magical bond between the prison and the leviathan. The bonds of the other five divine lords were just augmentations, additional layers of seals that kept Eras within. Maybe at one point, the five divine lords were the locks and seals while the Leviathan gained strength.
Today, it was the leviathan, almost fully mature, that held the main key.
It was the leviathan reviver that held and controlled the beasts.
The creature's many eyes glowed, a light that shone even through the darkness of the void sea. A light that pierced even the unnatural.
"I wonder why the System is announcing the leviathan's actions?" Lumoof wondered, but at the same time, I was fed reports of powerful demons emerging everywhere.
Normal demons that used to be beaten by a child with a stick are now powerful enough to overwhelm adults.
Lumoof mulled it himself. "Even if we cannot see the creature directly, the leviathan's actions still ripples through the system."
"Seems like it." I agreed. "Our followers and believers can feel me and feel my abilities and know what they are."
"It also means the leviathan is still a creature of the [system] and is therefore just a very high leveled domain holder."
I felt my roots stretch out and try to hold the world together as they felt the waves of the giant leviathan's body. It was large. So large we didn't know where to start, but all creatures had a core. A soul. If it is a domain holder, then this beast was no different. It might have created an army of soulless demons to conquer the world, but the beast itself was not a soulless creature.
It was a powerful domainholder.
And a domainholder had a soul. A soul that could be hurt.
But first, we needed to find it.
***
The Leviathan stirred. It looked like a den of snakes waiting to strike, we could feel its eyes searching for prey.
It then released another magical pulse, one that seemed to weave into the void seas itself. The Five Erasian Core Worlds, as well as some of the other demonworlds slightly further out, began to drift towards the center.
"Wow." Stella hurried the rest of the archmages. "Quickly, we take recordings and collect the data, then all of you, leave!"
Lumoof raised his fist.
We felt the skies of the Five Core Worlds begin to shred itself apart as if the worlds were pulled into a powerful gravitational field, centered around the demon's prison.
"How much time do we have?" Lumoof looked at the void mage, though the question was mainly for Alka and the bomb squads. They had to make the final preparations. My avatar repeated. "We only have one single delivery vehicle and that's unfortunately me."
"Hours?" Stella said.
We watched the worlds drift ever closer and the pull on the world's reality fabric only intensified.
Each of the worlds were like spherical water bubbles floating on a sea of black oil, and now there was something pulling that barrier of these water bubbles.
Could they fuse together into something larger?
Or would they just collapse?
I didn't know, but as the demon's prison stretched ever closer, we could also get a sense of the demon prison's own massive reality bubble.
"As Hawa and Aiva suggested, we should evacuate the planet's core." Lumoof said. "Can we do that quickly?
"Such a big object, how are you going to get it out?' Stella looked.
"Every core has a heart. I just have to cut out a big part of it."
***
Lumoof entered the heart of the Store of Eras and felt the power of a realm. Every population world, every inhabited realm felt solid. It hummed with the voices of millions.
But today, it was quiet.
Almost all of the dwarves were evacuated. Almost a billion dwarves from the five worlds moved to the unified Darkgardian planets, the only world with three large planets, with enough empty space and sufficient organization structure to still feasibly contain them.
"You can sense us, don't you?" Lumoof said to the gigantic stone-metal structure at the heart of each of the planets. We were here before, to get a glimpse of the world's ancient history. Back when we came to uncover the secrets of Eras and the so-called Reviver.
Today, we all knew that the Reviver was a lie.
The core of the world hummed along, and we could feel the core still trying to hold the entire realm together. But once the population dropped to near zero, I could feel the core change. It is now somewhat hollow.
Lumoof’s hand touched the core, and the stone crumbled. It turned brittle.
A world's core and the lives on it worked in a constant, virtuous cycle. The lives nourished the core, and the core nourished lives. When all lives were gone, the core was a conductor performing alone in an empty auditorium.
Lumoof's vines spread out and wrapped around the gigantic core. We didn't have much time, and the Core knew it.
"Take us." It showed us a vision of a world, a world where all the worlds existed in the same reality.
"Some day. One day." Lumoof said. If Eras could be revived, it might be possible to create a world where all the Erasian Core Worlds could exist together once more. The vines wrapped around the giant object, and through my ability, I yanked the core out of the heart of the planet.
It vanished and left a gigantic empty cavern, and the entire world above us began to collapse. Lumoof quickly repeated this on the other four worlds. I stored the cores within my clones. I would find somewhere for them some other day.
Thus, the five worlds began a slow self destruction. A rehash of a scene we once witnessed. The self destruction of the Cometworld, the death of the Canari's original world once more.
***
Jorkun and the Sentinels on the surface of the Darkgardian worlds, had a ceremony together with the other Erasian Dwarves, where they wept the death of their creator's Core worlds. It was necessary.
A declaration that the Erasians no longer have their ancient home to return to.
Darkgard and the peripheral worlds would be their new home now, and though they did not have much, these dwarves will survive.
I felt their collective sorrow and a shame that I could not do more for them now.
But they were safe, even if in a state of discomfort. More pressing matters demanded our attention.
***
The leviathan reacted to the vanished cores. As if it sensed that someone was meddling in its plot, the creature emitted another wave of magical energies that pulled the Five Worlds and the many others closer.
Some of those demon-infested worlds would resist our attempts to salvage or free their cores. We watched over the next three days as the worlds floated closer.
Then, we felt the leviathan's energies stir, and the black sun flared. The reality bubble of the demon's prison expanded rapidly. It pushed back against the void sea, and then, that larger reality bubble now made contact with the five crumbling worlds.
[You've entered the realm of the Ravenous Reborn. Various effects blocked by your domain.]
The leviathan now loomed over the crumbling world, and when it finally charged, It was as if a Cobra had struck with its coiled head. One of the massive heads uncoiled and rammed into the crumbling planet, and the already vulnerable and coreless planet shattered.
I was thankful that I didn’t relay the image of their homeworlds crumbling to the Erasians. I didn’t think they would take it well. We watched the gigantic serpentine head charge through the planet like a drill, only to find nothing at its heart. The creature roared, and there were thousands of smaller gaping mouths throughout its surface.
It roared in anger and fired magical attacks in all directions.
On the shattered rock of that was once the Store of Eras, my clone floated on one of them, and Stella waved her magic. We crashed right into the Leviathan's head and my roots spread out.
But the impact was also our golden opportunity!
The crash made cuts into the leviathan's gigantic body. Objects of such size colliding into each other created gaps and vulnerabilities.
My clone's roots touched the creature's damaged skin, and I felt the creature's abhorrent presence. But still, I pushed on. My roots spread about and latched itself onto the surface of the leviathan, even though it felt wrong.
I was like a parasite, hitchhiking on a predator that came for my original host.
It was a deeply ironic turn of events.
"Let's go!" Lumoof said, as we all teleported in. Our best shot was a hit to expose its heart, if there was one or more, and only then attack it. Now, we needed to first weaken the creature, since the Leviathan Reviver was a planetary sized beast.
Size was truly a quality of its own.
***
Lumoof jumped onto the creature's skin, but I felt it was more appropriate to refer to it as a surface, since the leviathan was just so big. Demons appeared on its surface as if they spawned and split apart from little shards of the leviathan's scales.
[Spawn of the Ravenous God]
Lumoof inspected one, and then punched through it. Or tried. The creature was so hard, even if Lumoof's strike crushed half of its body. It regenerated, but halfway through, Lumoof's second punch made it explode into a pile of goo.
Then there were more.
Creatures that resembled demons and possessed equivalent powers of demon kings, and we had to punch through them repeatedly.
I watched Lumoof make his way through the wave of creatures and found it amusing.
This reminded me of the late stages of an assortment of games I used to play, how challenges from the earlier days were trivialized in the late stages. It reminded me how demon kings that once threatened our existence were nothing more than a footnote in our military records.
"It is but the unrelenting march of progress. Technologies made difficult things easier. Why can't we make these enemies easier too?" Stella said as she watched nervously. Both Stella and Hoyia retreated and watched from the relative safety of my clone tree, ready for redeployment. I wanted Stella close by, just in case we needed her void magic to make any adjustments to our positions.
"Let's chop one of the heads down!" Edna said as she summoned one of the largest swords I had ever seen, amplified by the [Unity of the Pantheon]’s [Stronger Together]. She called on so much power that the void seas screeched in her blade's presence, and then her magic blade plunged into the rocky surface of the planetary leviathan.
It made a massive crack, like the earth itself pulled apart by an earthquake. A series of explosions followed.
The creature flailed, but not in pain.
It did not feel pain the way living beings do, even if it tried to be more like a living creature.
The massive thing defied all norms of living things. This thing was wrong.
I felt it as Lumoof stepped on the creature's surface. It tried to mimic some of a living's features, but in a way that disagreed with what I understood as nature.
I felt my collective will. Our collective thought, agglomerated from billions and trillions of trees and herbs, rejecting this form of flesh. As if I was made of carbon, and this creature was derived from some other element
But why?
Wasn't Ravenous the original beast god? Should it not have been a living beast?
I didn't understand.
But my domain holders attacked the creature and hammered the ground or the skin of the gigantic creature. Living beings should not be like this.
Just stepping here I felt this creature's need to consume.
More.
I felt a radiating need from the creature. My roots that pushed and attacked through the gaps between its gigantic serpentine scales were like a fast spreading fungal infection during a sped up crystal recording.
More
This creature could never be satisfied.
Ravenous. I felt through those skins its visions, its desires. It wasn't protecting its own thoughts.
I saw visions of burning worlds. Dead gods. Death to gods that I did not recognize. It imagined itself consuming them. Crushing and coiling around them. Eat them. It wanted to eat them all.
“It dreams.” Lumoof mused, but we were fighting.
The creature learned quickly as it tried to shake us off. The entire surface rolled as if we were now standing on the surface of an ocean. The crust of the leviathan and its gigantic serpentine scales moved up and down, trying to shake and break free.
My roots dug in.
I felt a creature that could not coexist with anything else. Not with something that has an endless desire for more. My roots broke through the gaps in its structure. The gigantic leviathan's size was a strength, but also a weakness.
From afar, it was large and seemed fairly dense, but there were gaps in its structure.
But not dense enough.
Not for my powerful roots that wrestled through small holes and orifices throughout the creature. My roots were like the knives of a master chef, making cuts into a gigantic whale's body, looking and searching for parts where the creature's sinews and muscles were weaker. Places where muscles separated and differentiated themselves were all weak points.
It mimicked the living, and so mimicked some of its weaknesses.
***
Lumoof ran along the surface, as my clone deftly relocated my body from the rocks of the Store of Eras to the flesh of the leviathan. It was the first time I did something like that, but it was something I knew could be done, because I now could establish my clones on any kind of surface.
Meanwhile, Stella also waited for the leviathan to attack the Library of Eras. My clone on the Library of Eras was perhaps the only thing holding the planet together, but once the creature attacked, I would also be able to transplant my clone onto the surface of the creature.
Size. It gave the creature such immense power. But large creatures always created space for parasites and stragglers. Elephants and rhinos were attacked by flies. Whales were covered in whale barnacles. The leviathan reviver, would now have a tree as its parasite.
"Well, we should be using our weapons. It would make it easier for Aeon to find the creature's soul if we can force it to use abilities." Lumoof said as he punched the ground with all his strength.
But we were like excavators digging away at a gigantic mine. Our bites were still too small.
So, Lumoof took out the first of our many weapons. First, the dragon Neira's tooth.
"Well, let us see what you can do."
The tooth shone with a deep blue light, and for a moment, we saw an illusion of a blue dragon looming over the leviathan.
The leviathan reacted violently to the present of the blue dragon and flailed. My roots sensed its intense hatred, so much so that the entirety of the leviathan's skin seemed to boil in fire. Then, it fired the same deathray that had melted the Descendants.
All of my operatives jumped or flew up and encased themselves in a protective barrier to avoid the entire skin of the leviathan turning into a deathray machine.
But my clone, now firmly embedded on the surface of the leviathan like a nasty infection, created a web of roots within the leviathan’s flesh. The roots drained the flesh of magic, and weakened the death ray, and allowed my clone to withstand the death ray.
"We need to stop that!" Edna said as she encased herself to protect herself from the death ray. "We'll be on the defensive!"
But the death ray was too far from the dragon's tooth.
The Blue Dragon was nothing but an illusion.
A massive bolt of blue ice emerged and slammed right into the leviathan's flesh.The power was so intense that the black sun momentarily froze, and we saw the black sun condense into a black crystal, only for a brief moment. Even the shields around us all froze briefly.
The leviathan itself was struck by the massive magical bolt of blue ice, and the skin, the crust of the leviathan's gigantic flesh, shattered and exploded outwards. There was a massive hole left by the frozen attack that revealed what was under the flesh.
Then, I sensed a surge in the creature's magical power.
I saw glimmers of where the soul was, but I couldn't pin it down.
The crystalline frozen black sun nearby shattered and returned to its normal burning state.
More
The creature whirled, and the damage began to regenerate. But it was slow.
"Get into that wound!" Edna grabbed Lumoof, and together they rushed for the wound. But more demons came for us. Lumoof and Edna cut through the army of demons.
Then, Lumoof recalled one more of the items from our storage, the [Gaya Summoning Ticket]. He tapped it.
The ticket melted.
"Foul Beast, you cannot bear to die, so you've come so that I can kill you once more!"
Gaya took the form of a magical illusion of an ancient man surrounded by ten floating colorful balls of light, each ball a different color. Gaya's illusionary man waved a hand, and the magical balls transformed into elemental magic.
Divine-tier magic. The first red ball turned the entirety of the leviathan's surface into a burning fireball. A powerful inferno burned and made me realize that Gaya was way more powerful than I had initially suspected.
No wonder Gaya was so confident.
But clearly, the Reviver was prepared for this. The fires burned off only the skin as only the surface itself burned into nothingness.
The voice roared and came from everywhere. The leviathan flailed once more, and magic flooded its surface. This time, this wave of magic was a regeneration, as the crust and skin remerged where Gaya's Divine inferno burned.
All except where Neira's frozen bolt struck. There, the cavity remained damaged as if a frozen energy prevented it from regenerating.
But still, the regeneration was so quick that it even undid Edna's earlier strike, and she cursed. "That was like trying to scoop water out of a ship with holes."
I understood the feeling. It truly felt like our attacks were not registering.
Now that the skin regenerated, it fired another wave of death rays.
But I knew how to fight with regenerating demons. I remembered the time when I interfered with the spiritual image of the demon king and stopped the demon king from regenerating. Even if the leviathan was a domain tier creature, I should be able to do the same to its periphery.
Size was a weakness for creatures at our power level. The souls' core was forever compact. It never fully covered every part of our existence. It was like how we could cut off our hands and our souls still live on. For a creature the size of moons, a lot of its body was just connected to its soul with a faint soul connection, like the limbs of a spider.
"I need to get deeper." I transmitted my plans to domain holders.
Both Edna and Lumoof were then struck by an attack from a large agglomeration of the leviathan's scales. The creature attacked and slammed into Edna's magical shields.
"I'll take this one!" Edna said as her spear countered. The demon was not the leviathan itself. It might be titanic in size, but it did not share power. This spawn, created from the creatures' scales, possessed the same restricted set of abilities just like its smaller components.
A shame that even demon kings had more ability-flexibility, but they were too easily destroyed by divine power.
Lumoof landed in the frozen gaping hole that Neira's attack created, and from there, he took out one more of my clone seeds.
My clone seed spawned in the depths, and now two of my clones burrowed into its body.
***
On the surface, Gaya's magical balls attacked the surface once more. A yellow ball turned into a storm, as lightning coated the surface of the gigantic leviathan. Powerful bolts of lightning made massive explosions throughout the creature.
But alas, the leviathan was resistant.
It could regenerate.
***
My clone exploded in the depths and dug.
My roots spread throughout the gigantic leviathan, struggling and trying my best to hold on. I felt the burning resistance of a creature more powerful than me, but I was not just a tree. I was the condensed presence of every type of tree, every type of natural flora, and to survive in every hostile environment was my desire and goal.
My roots fanned out, and together they formed an array of sensors that helped me triangulate the location of the leviathan's soul.
We needed to know where it was to kill it!
The Leviathan's powers were so overwhelming, but with the help of my network of artificial minds and Patreeck's constant analysis, we began to eliminate the noise.
"I need more time!" I told the rest of the team as they scrambled to position themselves. The leviathan was so large that it felt like we were hitting blindly.
***
Gaya's balls all made area of effect attacks that damaged parts of the leviathan, but it didn't make a substantive difference.
Edna traded blows with the fused creature as more of the leviathan's flesh reformed into more of the same creature.
"This isn't working. Nothing we are doing hurts it!"
***
Free me!
A voice came. It came from my head. It came from the Erasian Planet Cores in my storage.
I can help you!
"But how?"
Find the ability that binds the prison to the creature's soul. Shatter it!
***
"Find the soul!" But I could only find its soul whenever it used a large regenerating ability. That sudden flaring of the creature’s soul allowed me to detect its movements and source.
My clones were now on the surface of the leviathan, I quickly spread my roots throughout the leviathan and used its strength against it.
I drained the creature's powerful magic, and I felt a little light headed. The Ravenous abandoned its original demonic mana for something far more resistant against the old gods, but its non-demonic mana was far easier for me to absorb.
Long ago, when I was trapped under the Rottedlands bomb, I remembered how demonic mana felt like a pollution. A corruptive slush of dirty crude liquid. This version of mana felt more filtered. Cleaner.
So, as a tree, I turned its power against itself.
I took in the mana and altered it. Tainted the Ravenous' mana with my own, and it worked wonderfully.
The regenerating parts of the Ravenous began to decay near instantaneously, and the Leviathan Ravenous began to shrink.
My powers spread like gangrene on the leviathan's flesh.
Then, Gaya's illusion, now out of floating magical balls, launched one final attack. A single giant magical missile of pure magic. It slammed into the tree-gangrene infected head, and the entire head crumbled into dust.
***
But that was not enough to kill the creature. The Leviathan was too damned large.
***
The creature adapted.
The next wave of magical energies that came from the leviathan felt twisted in a way. It resembled demonic mana more than the earlier mana.
Edna noticed it when the scales reformed into something more demonic.
"Send me! If it's demonic I can deal with it!" Lausanne said. "Edna needs to attack other parts!"
"Got it."
I warped Lausanne to the edges of my roots, and Lausanne fought the demonic spawn.
***
Lumoof rushed. "We need another hole. Three clones to triangulate the demon's soul!"
"We need it to be planted deeper, on the other end of the demon's body." I said. My first clone was made close to the first head of the leviathan, when that head drilled through the Store of Eras. Neira's tooth made a deep wound at an area not far from the center of the gigantic leviathan, where I had a second clone.
Now I needed a place to put down another clone.
My trees were like infections, but right now they were too localized. Not enough for me to get a good grip on the creature's body. Not enough to lock onto the creature's soul. Without my tree meddling with the creature's magical energies, it would be able to constantly regenerate.
Even now, there were many areas not covered by my roots that could freely regenerate from whatever attacks.
"But I need somewhere deep! Only at depth can my roots interfere with the creature's major mana channels and corrupt them!'"
My domain holders rushed to the other side, and I felt the rest of them look nervously.
The lower leveled domain holders retreated back to my clone, because they were outmatched by the powerful scale-demons, even with all our tools. The unfortunate reality was that only Edna and Lumoof could operate freely on the creature's surface.
Everyone else had to be paired with the right matchup.
***
"We can help." Colette and Prabu said as they gathered the surviving heroes, and met in a massive operations room located on Treehome. "We're heroes, and like it or not, our powers are strong enough. Most of your domain holders lack the firepower. We may be fairly restricted in other ways."
"You're not resistant to the demon's curse." I told them. "The Ravenous inflicts a powerful set of curses. You may be heavily immobilized even if I send you there."
"Maybe, but right now, you need the firepower."
"But we can always try again." I said. "My domain holders can regenerate. I can respawn them if they die."
"It doesn't matter. The longer it lives, the stronger it becomes." Colette said. "If you need a hole, just support my soul long enough to blow through its crust. I have lived a long and full life, I do not fear death."
I felt Lumoof's voice through our shared connection.
"Let them, Aeon. The heroes feel purposeless. They need this, and I know they mean it when they say they are willing. We should not question their love and faith."
***
Lumoof blazed through an army of weaker demons. There were noticeably fewer of these creatures, after ten of Gaya's area of effect magical attacks burned through so many of these lesser demons and destroyed so many of the demon leviathan's scales.
Each destroyed scale was one less possible demon, and the scales regenerated far slower than the skin.
Despite Gaya's incredible arrogance, the old god had the power to back it up.
"Well, where do we want to go?" Lumoof asked. "How far is far enough?"
"Two thirds. We have one on this side, another in the middle, one there will do. I just need it super deep so that the main roots can grab on." I said as I felt my own clones infect more of the creature's flesh.
It was fighting me, but I also realized that when it came to the powers of the soul, it was not stronger than me.
My domain, expressed through my clones, could push back against the creature's domain. I felt its hatred try to flood me, but we held on.
The large size of the creature was room for me to meddle. Space for me to cut through and operate.
More clones meant I could hit the leviathan's massive underlying spiritual structure and mess with the regeneration.
"Got it!"
The leviathan flailed, and I felt the demon prison wobble.
Then, thousands of scales transformed at once and began to attack all of our positions physically.
Hundreds of demons charged towards my two clones, and they met my wall of bark. But my earlier battles with the demons had told us all I needed to know.
I was close to level 300, while these things, creations of a domain holder, could never amount to something like the real thing. All they could do was tire me down, and for a mostly stationary tree that could gain strength from absorbing ambient mana, that was extremely hard to do.
So I fought.
My roots fought off the hundreds of demons as their claws, blasts, magical attacks and magic breaths all scarred my gigantic bark.
Attacks that would have destroyed my tree centuries ago now were nothing more than an antbite. Their claws which would have cut through my trunk, their flaming axes that would have cleaved through me now were nothing more than a minor bump.
My two clones stood and dished back pain.
Centuries passed, and here I was today, crushing demon kings as if they were nothing more than another demonic hellhound chewing at my roots.
Die.
These creatures did not understand that.
My roots destroyed them. Every few minutes, my roots pierced their body, grasped their magical essence, and crushed them. Disconnected them from their patron that powered them.
***
"Would this be a good time to use Alka's bomb?" Discussions raged within my operations center back home, but with so many powerful demons charging our way, we needed a plan.
We would survive them, but it was going to be a constant battle of attrition and we would be exhausted before we dug deep enough.
"Not yet. We should use it on the creature's soul, if there is such a thing."
"Heroes, do you really mean to fight this war?"
Colette tapped her chest. "I have lived hundreds of years in this world and have come to love it. Why wouldn't I give my life to take out the source of so much destruction?"
The rest of the heroes agreed. They all had a good heart, even if they were worn down by reality a bit.
"Very well, help me cut a path into the creature's body!"
***
My domain holders Johann, Ezar and Roon, along with the heroes appeared around Lumoof, and they faced thousands of those demons. I could feel their fear. Their vulnerability. The demon's aura flooded them, and the weaker ones turned pale.
But three stood at the center, and they charged their powers.
It was not a time to hold back. Every single bit of their star mana gathered.
Colette, Prabu and Khefri raised their arms, and I felt them gather their star mana. A single white orb on their palms blasted outward and turned into a pure white magic missile that burned through the demons.
The two mage heroes' star mana powered magic missile pierced through the demons and blasted through tens before exploding in a massive flash of light. If these were the old demon kings, perhaps more than a hundred would have died.
Khefri's ball of light headed elsewhere. It slammed into the ground and drilled into the ground.
"Keep it up!" Khefri said as the other heroes gathered their star mana to do something similar.
"We'll keep the demons away!" My domainholders said as they blocked the rest of the demons. But honestly, I could tell that for the level 160s to 170s domain holders, they could take on these demon kings at a ratio of about 1.5 to 1, so they were a bit weaker.
But the joy was shortlived. These heroes were also like glowing lighthouses. They attracted demons like a fire attracted insects.
I could use the same soul forge powered root strike again. I should have been able to use it around ten times before my network of trees would be sucked dry, but I needed to deploy the third clone. Without being able to pinpoint where the massive Leviathan Reviver's soul was, I would just be wasting my attacks.
We have a limited number of effective shots against the Reviver. We still had Neira's scales, Hawa's bomb, Alka's two bombs, my superpowered root strikes, and Edna's full [Martial Paragon], when empowered with my pantheon.
Those were the few weapons we believed had strong efficacy against a creature of this power. The rest were good enough for the demons harassing us.
"You know, we really could use a level up right now." Roon said as he dodged the creature's attack.
The heroes charged, and their magic dug deeper into the ground. We were getting deeper, our combined attacks were making a small cavity, though the trench we made would hardly be visible from the surface.
The damned creature was so big, and we needed to get really deep.
"Keep going!" Lumoof said as we kept drilling downwards. The leviathan was layers of hard flesh after more layers of flesh. But there were also channels of magic, and once we got deep enough, we could tell the density of magic around us was thicker.
"How much more?"
"A bit more!" Lumoof said as the hours passed by. We were digging, and the leviathan piled demons against us. This was its own flesh, and it even tried to squash us by moving.
We were an itch, a parasite that it couldn't remove. It scratched us as we saw massive claws emerge from the leviathan itself and try to attack us. But its size was its own weakness. There were always gaps and holes. Places where two surfaces didn’t meet perfectly became places for us to hide.
The gigantic leviathan scratched itself, but couldn't find us. We hid beneath their own skin, as through Lumoof, we could manipulate the flesh around us and confuse them of our presence.
I felt the creature's magical energies, its domain trying to flood and reassert control over its own body.
But no. I was a [soul tree], and this creature of flesh was no master of the soul. Not here where it is far away from wherever the soul actually was.
Even as it scratched itself like a monstrous dog trying to rid itself of its pests, we dug and finally reached a place deep enough.
Lumoof held out my third clone seed and planted it.
My tree expanded outwards, and my roots crawled into every crevice and gap I could find. My powers infected the creature, and now, we were three.
With three, I could make a sense of the creature's magical energies and try to locate its location.
"Alright, the next part is harder. We need to force the demon to use large amounts of magic, so I can pinpoint the soul's location." I said as my third clone reached out and touched the heroes and domainholders.
I warped them back to safety, since my clone didn't need much help to survive out there. I had toughness to spare against the horde of demons.
***
"Well, I suppose send me back to the surface, and we try to cleave the creature in half?" Lumoof laughed.
"Let's do it!"
All they could really do was block while Lumoof charged up a powerful strike.
We gathered mana from my network once more, and I could feel the exhaustion in my network of trees. It's been just two to three weeks ago, I drained mana from across my network to launch a strike against the gigantic mountain-range sized worm. Now I was doing it again, and I had to hit harder.
I felt power flowing through my soul, and a single root strike piled downwards into the center of the creature.
The power of billions of trees, turned into a soul weapon. It burned through the flesh, which liquified.
I felt the glimmers of the creature's soul. My three trees tried to lock onto where the creature's magical energies moved and where they came from.
"Not enough! Again!"
Just like with the gigantic worm earlier, I charged a root filled with my soul powers.
"Come to me!" I roared through my roots, my presence flooded the flesh and skin of the leviathan. "I am your foe!"
I felt some of my trees die. I absorbed the demon's mana. I overwrote its flesh, and turned them into the enemy. The creature scratched itself, and the massive planetary claws pushed against my tree like a fingernail trying to dig out a very annoying and itchy mole.
But no, not enough.
My roots were too deep, and it couldn't get me out. I felt the creature's claws push against the trunk of my trees.
I was too embedded.
I launched three more strikes towards the creature. They were like skewers pressed against a gigantic bull's body. The bull was hurt, only slightly.
But each time, I felt a little closer to the creature's soul.
The leviathan's soul moved, and it was large. It was a beating fireball that moved across its flesh, and there were tiny flareups whenever it had to activate large scale regenerations.
I was getting closer.
***
Lumoof's seventh [Soul Forge] powered superroot strike was the moment when I found the soul!
The very act of finding it was so significant that the system gave me a hand.
[Spiritual Vision upgraded! You're now better at locating any creature's soul core!]
It was trying to move, the leviathan encased itself in a shell that was incredibly hard and powerful, made of a material that felt alive. It tried to resist me, but it was clearly ill equipped to truly do so, because it was optimized for a different type of opponent.
It moved itself all the time, but there were moments in between attacks when this movement was interrupted. Just for what was a split second to activate its regenerative powers.
Now that we had found the soul, we needed to hurt it.
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