Chapter 136

Chapter 136

[The Apocalypse Beasts, Chalgathi, Personal Quest Update: 3 of 5 set pieces for Chalgathi’s Inheritance have been acquired. Checkpoint reached. Current Chalgathi artifacts have had their stats partially revealed and unlocked based on the aspect they bonded to within your soul. Full stat pages for each item that has acquired your aspect will be further revealed and unlocked after all 5 set pieces have been acquired.]

[Chalgathi Cultist Amulet (Legendary Heavy Armor, Gluttony Aspect) (Parasitic) (Unique Soulbound Sentient): The gluttony aspect absorbed into this amulet has transformed this artifact into ‘The Great Maw.’ This artifact is currently in an unstable transformation state and will consume you unless the item set is completed soon. This artifact set can attack and defend on its own. Set Piece: 1 of 5. This Item is part of the Chalgathi Cultist Set. Acquire 3 items of the Chalgathi Cultist Set for additional bonuses. Acquire 5 items of the Chalgathi Cultist Set for all bonuses.

The Great Maw: ???

Devour: This amulet can use shadowy tendrils to attack and pull in prey for devouring. If bitten, a potent paralytic poison is applied to your enemy. Devouring enemies allows this item set to slowly grow.

???]

[Chalgathi Cultist Pauldrons (Legendary Heavy Armor, Gluttony Aspect) (Parasitic) (Unique Soulbound Sentient): The gluttony aspect absorbed into this Pauldron Set has transformed this artifact into ‘Twin Cannibals.’ This artifact is currently in an unstable transformation state and will consume you unless the item set is completed soon. This artifact set can attack and defend on its own. Set Piece: 1 of 5. This Item is part of the Chalgathi Cultist Set

. Acquire 3 items of the Chalgathi Cultist Set for additional bonuses. Acquire 5 items of the Chalgathi Cultist Set for all bonuses.

Twin Cannibals: 1290 Defense to shoulders. +10% to all stats. +60 flat points of Sturdiness. ???

Blood in the Eyes: These pauldrons absorb blood mana passively from your surroundings up to a maximum of double your normal mana pool. These pauldrons act as a reservoir for both your passive vampiric regeneration, as well as a mana font to pull from like you would environmental resources. Once the pauldron’s eyes dim, your extra resource pool has run out.

???]

[Chalgathi Cultist Mask (Legendary Heavy Armor, Gluttony Aspect) (Parasitic) (Unique Soulbound Sentient): The gluttony aspect absorbed into this Mask has transformed this artifact into ‘Fallen Apostle.’ This artifact is currently in an unstable transformation state and will consume you unless the item set is completed soon. This artifact set can attack and defend on its own. Set Piece: 1 of 5. This Item is part of the Chalgathi Cultist Set. Acquire 3 items of the Chalgathi Cultist Set for additional bonuses. Acquire 5 items of the Chalgathi Cultist Set for all bonuses.

Fallen Apostle: +900 Defense to face, +325 Defense to whole-body via additional blood-skin layer that can be used underneath any other armor. Natural sunlight does not bother you while wearing this item, and all your senses are enhanced by 40%.

Identifier’s Clause: Wearing this item increases your ability to identify information concerning items or living creatures, being the equivalent of a low tier identifier class. Your own basic information will be much harder to identify.

???]

[Checkpoint update: In the past, you have made A Choice of Selflessness. A branching quest has been unlocked based on your previous choice: Savior of the Weak.

Chalgathi Side Quest, Savior of the Weak: You, Riven Thane, have proven yourself to be one of a bleeding heart. A rare case amidst your kind, you seek to bridge the gap between the damned and the saved. It is a path few walk, and even fewer succeed in during their attempts. Some would even call it a fool’s errand. Nevertheless, your previous choice of selflessness has landed you here - and now you will reap the rewards to play hero to those less powerful than yourself.

On the opposite side of the world of Panu, one of Chalgathi’s previous chosen is wreaking havoc amongst your kin of Earth and other humans in the area. This chosen is a blasphemer, having taken Chalgathi’s artifact to warp and distort it into a cursed item. This in turn caused it to become useless in the world quest entirely, and will not count towards your 5 set pieces, but it is also an item of great and corrupting power. Your assignment is to kill this blasphemer who has strayed off the path and disregarded the world quest to rampantly kill without cause. Completing this quest will please Chalgathi, save many thousands of innocent lives, allow you to take this item for yourself or destroy it at your leisure, and establish portal-points you can access both here in Brightsville as well as across the world through the staff you carry. These portal points will only become accessible after you kill the blasphemer. Abandoning this quest by using your guild hall’s teleport will result in angering Chalgathi immensely.]

[Your minions have been temporarily banished to the nether realms and you have been transported to the next probable site of conflict. Good luck.]

***

Riven woke up to the sound of birds chirping overhead, and the sound of men arguing fiercely about… something.

God his head hurt.

He blinked, only barely absorbing the information contained in the notifications before letting out a breath. To his surprise, his surroundings were crystal clear to all of his senses - far clearer than they’d ever been before at any point in his entire life. It was like he’d been awakened yet again, beyond the vampiric and into something truly divine.

He was in a prison cell, an old cement one with metal bars like the ones back on Earth. He could see the specs of sand and dirt on his surroundings in vivid detail, could smell the sweat of people nearby, could hear their heartbeats and the shuffling of feet, and a skylight overhead leaked in streams of dimming daylight that he did not shy away from.

Slowly, he reached out a hand - illuminating what should have been the bare skin of his fingers. Instead, he saw a thin veil of blood-red silk coating his body to fit over his skin like a tight glove. He looked down from where he lay on a rickety dirt-stained bed full of holes, and saw that he was essentially wearing a tight body-suit. But everything else was gone.

His staff was gone, his bag of holding was gone, his clothes were gone - everything was just gone; with the exceptions of his mask, the body-suit created from his mask, the monstrous maw of teeth etched vertically down his chest, and the two pauldrons which were gored into his shoulders with spikes of ivory. Along his wrists he also had a pair of basic iron manacles which had a lock on each of them, which had been enchanted somehow based on the faint white runes glowing on the iron, but they weren’t attached to one another and were probably only there to suppress his mana.

How laughable, considering he could feel just how weak the enchantments were. He did notice a slight dip in his power output when he flexed his mana channels, but was easily able to conjure two blood-lances along either arm. Blood-mana flickered along his already-red body like ribbons of power up to his shoulders, and he heard each of the manacles pop with a crackle of electricity just when the white runes were extinguished.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

[Broken Iron Suppression Manacle: 13 Defense. Enchantments extinguished. Forged by low level crafters of the native populations on Panu.]

His mask lit up with the information he’d long-since missed after the Chalgathi starter trials had ended, and a large smile was brought across his face. Sitting up and turning his body, he turned his attention away from the cell bars and towards a mirror set in the cell.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Seven bright red peacock feathers, or an equivalent, protruded from the outer perimeter of his blank, white, completely smooth mask covering the entire front of his head. There was one feather vertically up, at the peak of his head, one on either side at a diagonal, and two more on each side of his face for the total of 7. However upon closer inspection and when standing up to get closer to the mirror, he realized that the peacock feathers actually had… were those eyes looking back at him?

He saw one of the eyes divert its attention from where it was positioned at the end of the feather, glancing out towards the cell door, then shifting its attention back to him.

That gave him the creeps, and he involuntarily stepped back while pawing at his face. His hand touched the front of the mask, but when it made contact: the effort was like he was looking (and even breathing) out of a layer of thick glass. It was like he had a HUD of some kind, where he was trapped inside some advanced mecha suit - and when he tried to peel the mask off it wouldn’t budge at all.

HOW WAS HE SUPPOSED TO FEED LIKE THIS!?

Shit. Hopefully the mouth on his chest would take in blood?

Otherwise he was in for a really bad time.

The rest of his his head, neck, and body were covered in the newly acquired blood-red skin, and the teeth along his chest occasionally shifted from their interlocked positions to open - revealing a black abyss beneath them where shadowy wisps flowed out only to retract when the demonic mouth closed. The porcelain pauldrons of ivory color similar to his mask had glowing red eyes infused with blood mana, the depiction of horned vampiric skulls with open mouths and fangs protruding along their surfaces.

If he’d had his black wooden staff made in conjunction with flesh and flowing blood, he’d really look the part of evil sorcerer. Hell, even now he looked like a story-time villain of extreme proportions.

A knock on the cell doors caused him to turn his head right, and the feathers all swayed and adjusted to look with him - peering their red eyes at the figure that’d made the noise with as little interest as when Riven viewed an ant underfoot.

Holy shit. Riven could feel the INTENT of the thing he was wearing… of the incomplete item set he had on. It was all one entity, a will of its own - yet one that was subservient to him… at least for now.

Standing at the cell door was a man in an army uniform bearing the American flag on his shoulder, fully outfitted with grenades and a fully automated machine gun. He had a crew cut, a strong jawline, and was Caucasian. He was also likely in his late 30’s or early 40’s by the looks of it.

“You’re awake.” The man said gruffly, before two more soldiers stepped up behind him on either side with hands on their own machine guns strapped to their fronts. “You are something of a freak. You know that?”

Riven stared back, expressionless due to the porcelain mask, and turned his body to face ahead fully. He walked up to the bars and looked side to side, finding out that he was in the lowest floor of a two-story complex. There were at least a couple dozen prison cells here, with inmates banging on the bars up above and a scuffle breaking out in one of the other cells between two others that was largely ignored by the soldiers standing nearby on guard duty.

Riven turned his attention back to the man in front of him. “Where are my belongings?”

The echoing yells of the scuffling inmates caused the lead soldier with the crew cut to scowl, and he verbally cracked the whip at the nearby compatriots who were slacking in their duties. The guards who’d been chided snapped to attention and rushed ahead, unlocking the cell door to stop the bigger man from murdering the smaller one inside with a shiv.

“Your belongings are being held for study and evaluation. The government of Chicago needs every bit we can get in these trying times, I’m sure you understand.” The lead soldier stated gruffly, eyeing Riven’s shifting vertical maw along his chest. “You had quite the set of equipment, and we couldn’t even get most of it off of you when you mysteriously dropped into the downtown district from fifty feet in the air. Senator James didn’t want it damaged when we realized you were actually a person underneath it all until one of our identifiers saw you, and not one of the monster spawns in this area, but you’re going to have to give it up if you want out of here.”

“Is that so?”

“It is. If you give it up, we can start talking about getting you out of here.”

Riven snorted in amusement at the man’s steely gaze, then he crossed his arms and shook his head. If there was another of Chalgathi’s chosen here he had to be very careful and couldn’t waste time like this, who knew when the man or woman would attack - and if he didn’t have his staff, he’d be at a disadvantage. “I’ll give you thirty seconds to let me out of here to speak to your boss or whoever has my things. Then things will start to get dirty.”

The two soldiers behind the lead stiffened, and the man who’d been talking to Riven narrowed his eyes while undoing the safety on his automatic rifle. “I don’t think you understand the situation you’re in. You’re locked up, have suppression manacles on, and have no weapon. What’re you going to do? Spit at me? You’d have to take that mask off first before you can.”

“It’s only a safety precaution.” One of the other soldiers said with a scowl, lifting his weapon and aiming Riven’s way. “Don’t make us shoot you man. No matter what kind of shit you have going on with that outfit, you’re not going to survive 7.62 rounds to the head.”

That was actually very inaccurate, and Riven knew it, as long as these bullets were just plain and normal bullets. Based on the defensive perks he had on this equipment when compared to Breath of Valgeshia - his other mask with a defensive rating of 48 - he was more than certain even the weaker, thinner blood-suit he had on could take bullets like that at least a couple times. Not to mention he’d be able to heal whatever did make it through via passive regeneration.

Riven paused, then sighed. “Go get your boss and get me my things, or I tear this prison apart. There will be no negotiations.”

Riven’s arms flared with blood magic again, ripping off the manacles and shredding the iron like paper while dozens of spinning razors bloomed around their position. His aura exploded out of his cell, causing the soldiers to go rigid with shock as bloodfrost began accumulating along the walls, guns, ceilings and floor - and concentrating briefly on the cell bars caused them to literally crack and shatter. A palpable intent to destroy and kill was etched into their psyches, and the sounds of the other inmates in the other cells immediately silenced when the air inside the prison started to ripple with random cascades of red mana.

The soldier who’d been jittery from the get-go, the one who’d aimed his rifle Riven’s way - pulled the trigger, but the weapon jammed due to the frost. His boots stuck to the floor where they’d been frozen in place which caused him to stumble and fall when the ice shattered due to his weight.

“Pathetic and embarrassing.” Riven said coldly, arms pulsing with mana while staring down at the terrified man still fumbling with his rifle. “As I said, you have 30 seconds. The count begins now: 30. 29. 28. 27…”

“OPEN FIRE!”

***

The city lights of Chicago still shined brightly even after all it’d been through, a bastion of the old world under the dying light of sunset; where the tall buildings and sprawling suburbs were placed adjacent to a patch of land along a new ocean’s coastline. Ah how Richard had come to hate this city while growing up. A den of corruption, crime, and hate was what he’d come to know of it as a child, and things had only gotten worse after incarceration and the shunning from normal society many years later.

He was going to purge it. All of it. And with his newfound power, he was finally able to make that dream come true.

Looking back at one of his hatchlings, a newborn insectoid that’d crawled out of one of the corpses of a local patrol, he smiled with sinister intent. A yellow gleam to his eyes, Richard stood up - clutching the black orb he’d created from the remnants of Chalgathi’s artifact to his chest. His insectoid, chitinous legs shifted and groaned, splitting the earth underfoot with pincers that could crush cars, men, and even tanks.

He knew because he’d already done it. His awakened bloodline was just that powerful.

At level 51, Richard was at the apex of strength here on Panu. He would harvest these disgusting creatures he’d once called kin, he’d slay them all, and use them as fertilizer to plant his eggs. Then he would create a society where he and his children could thrive.

The time to strike would be soon, and after he was done with Chicago - he would head to the other cities further down the coast just like he’d done with the smaller towns here in previous weeks. The ones that hadn’t already been ransacked by creatures or internal strife would meet a quick demise under his grim claws, and they would know the pain they’d inflicted on him during his past life.

All humans were naught but lambs to the slaughter.