Chương 88: Chapter 75 – After the Storm

Cade collapsed onto his back, breath tearing in and out of his lungs. The battered shell slipped from his left hand and clattered against the ash-covered ground beside him. His right hand twitched once, grasping for a spear that was no longer there. It was gone, consumed in the blast. Reduced to smoke and splinters. For several seconds, Cade couldn't do anything but stare up at the pale sky and breathe.

His body felt hollowed out, like someone had reached inside his chest and scooped out everything that kept him standing. His arms trembled. His legs felt like wet paper straws. Even the steady flow of essence through his channels had thinned, sluggish and strained after everything he had just forced through. He pulled up his status with a thought, narrowing it down to only the resources that mattered. HP: 57 / 638 SP: 162 / 605 MP: 401 / 781 Cade stared at the numbers.

"Ho… lee… shit…" he rasped between gasping breaths. A smile crept across his face despite the exhaustion.

"That… was…" He sucked in a deep breath.

"So fucking cool." He took another deep breath.

"And so much more dangerous than I had expected." His smile faltered slightly as his gaze drifted toward his right hand. The rhizome lay dormant inside of him again as if it hadn't just turned his spear into a living conduit for prismatic lightning. Since when could it do that? Had it always been capable of that and he had just never pushed it far enough? Or had he unlocked something new in the middle of combat? The stories he used to read were full of that sort of thing. Inspiration gained at the edge of death.

New abilities born from desperation. Power discovered only when there was no other option. Maybe this was one of those moments. Cade let his head fall back against the ash. Around him, the battlefield was a ruin of burned flesh and violet gore. The broodmare's massive body lay twisted only inches away, its front half blackened and split open from the inside. Chunks of armored plating had been blown apart, scattered across the ash in smoking fragments.

What remained of its head was barely recognizable, the mouth and upper throat were carved open by the lightning that had erupted through it. The leeches were worse. Their bodies littered the ground around him in twitching, charred pieces. Some had burst outright, leaving only wet sprays of purple viscera across the ash. Others lay curled and blackened, their slick hides split where the lightning had arced through them.

The sharp stink of ozone mixed with burned meat and the sour chemical reek of the broodmare's bile. Violet acid still soaked into the ash in uneven pools around him, hissing faintly where it touched the ground. Thankfully, the patch beneath Cade remained mostly clear. Blood and pieces of dead flesh surrounded him, but the acid itself had splashed around rather than underneath him. Cade lay there panting, ignoring the System notifications still tugging at the edge of his awareness. They could wait.

For one moment, he just wanted to bask in his victory. He had fought a bus-sized worm and its swarm of leech minions. Or maybe they were its babies. Or vomit-spawn. He wasn't actually sure what they were. Maybe the broodmare had eaten them and spat them back up. Maybe they had been growing inside it all along. Either way, Cade couldn't bring himself to feel bad about killing them. This had been a fight to the death. Kill or be killed.

And as far as he could tell, none of them had been anything more than instinct and hunger wearing corrupted flesh. Sapient creatures were different. The thought of killing something that could think, speak, reason—that was another line entirely. Maybe if a sapient creature tried to kill him and couldn't be reasoned with or stopped in some other way, he would do what had to be done. But that was a problem for future Cade to worry about. Right now, he had won. And damn if that didn't feel good.

After a few more breaths, Cade finally exhaled and let the waiting notifications open. Ding! You have defeated [Corrupted Juvenile Swamp Leech — Level 4]. You have defeated [Corrupted Juvenile Swamp Leech — Level 3]. You have defeated [Corrupted Ashworm Broodmare — Level 15]. You have gained additional experience for killing a creature above your level. Race: [Human – (F)] has reached Level 11. +2 to all stats. You have defeated [Corrupted Juvenile Swamp Leech — Level 4].

You have defeated [Corrupted Juvenile Swamp Leech — Level 5]. You have defeated [Corrupted Juvenile Swamp Leech — Level 6]. You have gained experience. You have defeated [Corrupted Juvenile Swamp Leech — Level 5]. The list kept going. Cade skimmed through the flood of kill notifications, eyes darting over the repeating lines as he sorted through the useful parts and ignored the rest. By the time the stack finally ended, he counted seventeen juvenile swamp leeches in total.

Seventeen corruption filled leeches had come out of the broodmare when it vomited on him. And only three of them had actually granted experience. Cade frowned slightly and went back through the list. The broodmare had obviously counted. That one made sense. It was level fifteen and significantly stronger than him should have granted him bonus experience. But the leeches… He scanned the levels again. Three. Four. Four. Five. Four. Six. Five. Three. Seven. Most of them had been weak.

Cade exhaled through his nose as the pattern settled into place. It seemed like the System had a cutoff. It didn't award experience for everything he killed—only things close enough to his own level. Anything too far beneath him apparently didn't give him experience. Either five levels below him was the threshold, or maybe half his level rounded down. He didn't have enough data to be certain which. His mouth twisted slightly as another thought followed close behind.

The broodmare had died before the majority of the leeches. That meant the level-up from killing it had likely pushed his race level high enough that several of the level-five leeches stopped qualifying for experience immediately after.

"… Well that's annoying." If the broodmare had died last, he probably would have squeezed a little more experience out of the rest of the swarm. Not that it mattered now and there was no point wasting time being annoyed over optimization he couldn't change after the fact. He'd won. That was what mattered. The rest was just information to keep in mind for next time.

Cade frowned as his mind went back to the first leech he'd killed—before the lightning, before the swarm had fully closed in—had released a strand of pale green essence when it died. He had seen it leave the corpse. Seen it start drifting toward him. Then it had fizzled out before it reached him. At the time, he was too preoccupied with fighting to really take in what had happened. That was likely the System filtering what he could actually receive as experience. The essence had been there.

The transfer had started. Then something—some mechanism in the System—had cut it off before it could complete the transfer of the leech's essence into his experience. He should have paid more attention after the lightning. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

He had been too focused on not dying and then too distracted by the fact that he had apparently turned a spear into a handheld bolt of lightning to watch what happened to the rest of the swarm when they died. A missed opportunity. Still, he'd gotten more clues to piece together the whole 'essence to experience' thing. Cade dismissed the last of the kill notifications and pulled up the next screen. This one was less surprising.

Dungeon Quest Updated: Cleanse Cynthia's Legacy Progress: Minor Corruption Cleansed: 24 / 100 Major Corruption Cleansed: 1 / 2 Twenty-four minor corruptions down, only seventy-six left to go. As Cade stared at the screen in his mind, one thought came to the surface. Why the hell was a bus-sized ash worm considered a minor corruption? Cade let out a slow breath through his nose and dragged a hand across his face.

A giant armored monstrosity the size of a school bus, capable of vomiting acid and swarms of corrupted leeches, counted as minor. Meanwhile, whatever had been festering beneath the Stormsap Crucible—whatever had twisted that place and nearly dominated his mind—had counted as major. Either the broodmare had been weaker than it looked, which felt unlikely, or the thing beneath the Crucible had been far, far worse than he had realized at the time. Neither option was particularly comforting.

Cade sighed and pushed the thought aside. He wasn't going to figure out how the System's quest categorized levels of corruption by lying in a pile of worm gore. The next notification rose into view. This one made him sit up. You have fully accepted and integrated the Primordial Heartwood Rhizome into your internal and metaphysical channels. You have gained the [Prismatic Conduit] skill.

[Prismatic Conduit (epic)] – Using the Primordial Heartwood Rhizome, you may convert health into an unstable prismatic charge, refining the life essence contained within into destructive potential. Through living conduits grown from the rhizome, this charge may be shaped, directed, and discharged as volatile multivalent lightning. The more health consumed, the greater the resulting discharge.

"…Well," Cade muttered.

"That's pretty fucking cool. I guess the rhizome isn't all bad." He reread the description once more, slower this time. The skill required him to sacrifice his own health in order to use it. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. He had reforged his body using the Stormsap Crucible and he was able to power the crucible using his blood instead of the Great Tree's sap. This was basically the same thing, just with a portable version of the crucible.

The sudden drop in health, the dizziness, the feeling like something vital had been ripped out of him mid-fight—he had literally been pouring his health into the rhizome to transform it into lightning. Sasesh used his mana to shape the earth. Kranti used stamina to hit harder. And apparently I can now burn my blood to command lightning. Weirdly enough, that felt almost reasonable in this new System-run reality. His gaze lingered on the first line.

You have fully accepted and integrated the Primordial Heartwood Rhizome into your internal and metaphysical channels. For better or worse, the thing the Great Tree had shoved into him was officially part of him now and he still wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that. On one hand, he still carried a healthy amount of resentment toward the Great Tree for forcibly jamming alien plant matter into his body without so much as asking first. On the other hand… He glanced at the battlefield around him.

The broodmare's corpse. The burned leeches. The cratered ash. The rhizome had just saved him from being eaten alive. And if he was being honest, it was hard to stay too angry at something that let him grow weapons on the fly and then turn them into lightning cannons. It was the kind of firepower that he had been severely lacking but he was still bothered that he hadn't been given a choice. As he sat there he tried to reframe his thoughts about the rhizome. What if he didn't consider it a parasite and more like…

an organ. A weird, aggressively magical organ. Yeah, that was better. It wasn't a parasite, just a new organ he could use to cast magic. One minor problem with that thought, the Primordial Heartwood Rhizome was still listed as juvenile. Which meant that it would probably grow and evolve. Would it stay like this when it did? Right now it is useful and obedient, only listening to Cade's own will. Every time he had pushed it, the rhizome had responded to his intent. It obeyed and adapted.

It had taken his commands and turned them into something brutally effective. But would it eventually develop a will of its own? Would it stay part of him? Or would it eventually grow into something else entirely? Cade didn't know and there was absolutely no chance he was getting a useful answer to that anytime soon. With the notifications finally cleared and his breathing under control, Cade pushed himself upright and surveyed the battlefield. The ash around him had become a field of death.

Chunks of the broodmare's corpse lay scattered in heaps, split shell and blasted flesh strewn across the churned ground. Most of the leeches were little more than splattered remains. Blackened strips of flesh and ruptured organs littered the ash in every direction, their bodies reduced to scraps and wet smears. Through his [Essence Sight], Cade could see the faint green lines still lingering in the pieces of dead leeches, thin and dim and already fading into the environment. The broodmare was different.

Its corpse still blazed with dense green light. Thick currents of life essence pulsed through what remained of its massive body, brighter and richer than anything around it, packed deep into the corpse like veins of luminous ore waiting to be harvested. Then he looked down at the shell beside him and winced. The convex surface was a mess. Acid pockmarks ate across the outer layer. Jagged gouges carved deep grooves where the broodmare's black teeth had raked against it.

Cracks spread across the shell in branching fractures, and in several places those fractures ran all the way through. Cade frowned as he studied the damage more closely through his [Essence Sight]. The pathways inside the shell were fractured, the once smooth channels now splintered and uneven where the structure had been pushed past its limits.

During the fight, when the pressure had peaked and the rhizome had reached deeper into him, he had instinctively cut it off—denying it access to the essence flowing through his channels. He needed to save that essence to create the white flames. But he hadn't just cut off the rhizome. He had cut off the shell too. The tether linking him to the shell had been relying on that same flow.

When he severed the rhizome's access, he had disrupted his entire system, starving the shell of the essence it needed to reinforce and repair itself while it was still under pressure from the broodmare. Cade reached out, resting a hand lightly against the damaged surface.

"Guess I can't just shut everything off at once," he muttered. He lingered for a moment longer, his hand resting against the fractured shell, before his attention shifted back to the broodmare. He exhaled slowly and pushed himself upright, his gaze lingering on the corpse for another moment before he closed his eyes. Desolation, Vorduun's voice echoed in his mind, deep and steady. Cade drew in a slow breath, letting the air fill his lungs as he turned his awareness inward.

The flow of essence through his channels was thinner now—much of it drained from the fight—but there was still enough. At least he thought it would be enough. He followed the current as it moved through him, tracing its path through his chest. The sensation was growing increasingly familiar. Draw it inward. Cade reached out with his will and caught a portion of the circulating flow, pulling it away from the rest instead of letting it continue through the cycle in his channels.

The moment he did, heat flared in his chest and pressed inward against his lungs. As he gathered essence he forced it to move, to rotate. Slowly at first, then faster as he fed more into it. The motion tightened, forming a small vortex within his chest. Cade focused, commanding the flow as it spun, remembering the sensations from the first time he breathed desolation into the world. Compress it. He pushed and the swirling mass resisted. It was more diffuse and formless than before but Cade didn't stop.

He fed more essence into it and tightened the rotation. Building the pressure until the vortex collapsed inward, condensing into something smaller and denser. He fed it again and again. Each cycle pulled more essence from his channels and forced it into the growing bead of desolation until his channels were completely empty. The condensed sphere pulsed in his chest, unstable and volatile. With no more essence to pull from, Cade's focus narrowed further. Give it purpose. The memory sharpened. Ash.

Endless white ash drifting across a silent wasteland. He seized the image and forced it inward. The breaking down of all things. Stripping away everything until only the most fundamental remained. The sphere resisted, bucking under the weight of his will, but Cade pressed harder. He didn't guide it. He imposed his will upon it. Submit. The heat shifted as the nature of the essence changed. The concept took hold, the compressed sphere growing tighter, more volatile, its presence in his chest becoming denser. Now…

move it. He pushed upward. The sphere resisted for a brief moment before shifting, dragging through his channels inch by inch. The heat followed, rising with it, burning as it climbed toward his throat. Cade clenched his jaw as the pressure intensified, forcing it higher. Through his throat. Into his mouth. The moment it settled there, the heat exploded outward. It scorched across his tongue, his cheeks, and the roof of his mouth just like before. His body tensed, every instinct screaming at him to release it.

But he held it just like Vorduun had said. His vision tightened as he forced his awareness to feel the subtle shifts in his channels as they adapted, widening, smoothing, reshaping themselves to accommodate what he was forcing through them. Cade steadied his breathing through his nose, holding the condensed sphere of desolation in place. For a moment, his thoughts flickered back to the shell. Cracked. Fractured. Broken. The structure had failed when enough force had been applied.

The way everything—no matter how solid—could be broken down if pushed far enough. His Law Seed stirred faintly. All things may be broken down. The thought brushed against the sphere in his mouth, subtle but undeniable. Not just rampant destruction. Break down and refine. The sphere pulsed in response. Cade drew in one final breath through his nose, steadying himself as he turned his attention fully back to the broodmare's corpse.

White flames licked at his lips as he opened his mouth and breathed desolation into the world.