Chapter 197: A Wealth of New Powers.

“I reached Level 80,” Moonwash just casually said, and my gaze was torn away from the pretty crystal-metal cavern to go stare at her.“What?” I remembered how her brain had reached Level 79 only a little while ago, and now it had already apparently leveled up again! “That’s amazing! Congratulations!”

Just when I thought the gap between us was shrinking, she pulled ahead again.

That was fine. All the better if the gap became a chasm, because all the safer she would be then.

“Thank you, Haell.” We hugged, and she planted a kiss on my lips. “I need to go evolve.”

“Of course.” I nodded as we all backed away from the center of Geonesis. There were precious few records of one of the Level 160s ever coming out of that ginormous cavern, but it was best not to tempt fate. Not yet, anyway.

Blood dripped through my girlfriend’s nose as she bore through the evolution of her brain. We watched and guarded her for the short time it took, until she finally opened her eyes again and immediately shot up.

“Hey. Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes. My mind is working so much faster right now. I need to hunt something.”

“Careful. You’re starting to sound like me,” I chortled.

“I’m fine with that,” she led the way, and we searched for monsters to kill.

A gold-ranked golam stood in our way, and she cooked it alive as the creature shambled towards us. The fire burned bright orange, which just as hot as my hellfire. Herokane ores had sagged and deformed from the heat, along with the tunnel that the monster had come out of.

We found more monsters to kill, from swarms of carnivaworms, to the tough and hideous anglerfrog. The former was similarly burned alive as my girlfriend rained fire from a ledge and down into an expansive cavern. The latter was battered by spikes of earth that might come from anywhere, whose power came quite close to what my girlfriend had once been able to achieve with rituals. It wasn’t enough to outright kill the anglerfrog as it was able to heal itself, even when its antenna-lure-focus had been sheared off. The rest of us then held the creature down while Moonwash drew a similar ritual to before, but significantly improved.

“Earth Drill.”

The projectile shot towards the anglerfrog and pierced clean through to the other side, burying itself into the cavern ground.

The monster finally succumbed shortly thereafter.

We encountered another one of those charaptors. The hero-rank monster woke up as we approached, and the walls of the tunnel immediately came alive in search of our blood. Moonwash used her magic to counter the creature, which was a battle that she still lost, but what power remained was now barely enough to even harm any of us.

It wasn’t able to stop us from retreating. Nor from leading it to the same trap its predecessor fell for.

“Icicle Age.”

Elfrafim pushed it into the waiting ritual, and icicle spikes shot out to pierce it all over, some burying all the way to the other side of its fat body. The monster was frozen so solid it could only shiver. The characptor tried to call upon its earth magic, but the attempt only shook the ground in a final whimper.

Its bodily functions stalled, until the charaptor was no more.

“We should go in,” Moonwash argued as we camped near the big Geonesis Core. That’s actually what the very center of Geonesis was called!

“Sounds good!” Elfrafim immediately agreed! Before me!

“No,” Arx countered. “That’s a bad idea.”

“It’ll be fine…!” Grandpa looked at all of us, but especially Moonwash and me. “Is what I want to say. But you still have a life to live. And we can’t die before taking out an angel! Maybe if we kill one first, and then come back. We can try hunting a level 160 then. Or a Genesis-Rank, as the people here call them.”

I swallowed, but didn’t say anything.

I felt almost insulted that I wasn’t the first to go urging the group forward. It annoyed me that I was hesitating. I was supposed to be the reckless one who braved dangers the others could only dream of. But I saw those Level 160 monsters. How fast that crystal turned into a bat and snatched that giant millipede up. That was faster than me by a large margin. The powerful creatures here were active, hunting, and hidden. I’d been thinking about it since yesterday, and I couldn’t come up with a damned plan to beat the thing. Even a stupid one. Even with everyone involved. I knew we’d just get killed. I could not win. I was too weak. Pathetic. Incapable–

I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath. I looked at Moonwash apologetically. “Sorry… hun. I can’t think of a way to actually beat any of them.

“My brain evolved. I’ve got stronger rituals now. You saw how I soloed that anglerfrog.”

“That’s… not untrue… But I don’t think I can even lure a Level 160 enemy to you without getting blown up.”

“That makes sense,” she said after a pause. “Fine. If we’re not going to get those Geonesis-Ranked Materials, then let’s go home.”

Geonesis-Rank was what the best materials that could be found in this wonderzone were called, whether they be the stronger jewels and ores growing on the core cavern, or the Level 160 monsters in them.

“Wait, right now? You want me to teleport us back?”

“Yes. I need my lab. There are so many ideas in my head that I think I’m on the cusp of getting.”

“Well, alright then!” I sent Arx back first, and then the rest of us had to trudge back to the surface to retrieve Astan, and not reveal that I could just teleport around.

I watched as Moonwash worked at a rapid pace beneath Pandemonium. Arx was right beside me, just as transfixed at the rituals and enchantments being rapidly drawn, tested, and then discarded. My girlfriend’s recent Human Brain evolution had finally pushed her to make some connections she was so close to realizing before, but never quite reached. Her Dextrous Hands quickly followed and reached the threshold of Level 80 as well, allowing her fingers to finally keep up with the increasingly demanding processes she could think up.

Now she wanted to consolidate all that inspiration, and turn it into a reality. Strange yet mesmerizing symbols were drawn into paper. Enchanted wooden talismans were wrapped in magical preserving resin. Rituals were drawn into the tiniest surfaces.

Finally, she set her newest wooden talismans in front of her, made of a ritual that was then enchanted over, and then covered in resin.

“Fireball.”

The talisman detonated and disappeared into the fireball that had formed. It burned as hot as my hellfire to my skin. I had to immediately grab my girlfriend and heal her, scolding as the joy and excitement warred with my exasperation.

“That was reckless!” I should’ve reminded her to step further away, but it had been weeks since she started her experiments, only to come upon failure after failure.

“You’re here to heal me,” she rasped. “It’s fine.”

“Ah, so you were careful when I wasn’t around.”

She looked at the ground. “Pandemonium’s also here.”

Right on cue, one of the well-used healing pods on a far wall was dragged towards us by the shifting of the floor.

I sighed and shook my head as I placed her inside.

“That was awesome!”

It wasn’t just Moonwash who made good progress during this time. I continued to practice flight with Oracle Jascara as Elfrafim tried to pepper us with arrows. Jascara summoned strong winds randomly to try and throw me off my game, and I had to respond to each one, further building my reflexes. She focused on the smallest corrections in posture that eventually added up, and I could only keep up with the training regimen because of my Rapid Combat Nervous System.

I finally got a Mutation to this level at the ripe age of 51. The wars never stopped as New Grandera and Edengar entered a new equilibrium. Edengar was in a slight disadvantage, for Eden was significantly less effective than me than armies. The queen of weakness was yet more vulnerable to being focused down by projectiles, and then bogged down by the troops on the ground. She also remained less present in the frontlines than me, when I was already taking frequent breaks for my own agendas. Eden on the other hand was required in the Capital City of Gardine for administrative work and other such bullshit. I was clearly the better leader, as a Demon Queen who knew how to delegate everything!

One day I found myself hunting another of those arbeasts for training. Their thick trunk-like legs sought me out, and I took my time in dismembering these creatures. Slice after slice, Devilcalibur bit into their bodies. My own muscles ached from overuse, but it was by this point a familiar companion. I was willing to make the sacrifice, if it meant the death of my foes.

My eyes widened as I suddenly became aware of an uptick in my strength. I raked my greatsword across the main body of one of the well-crippled arbeasts while I questioned if I was mistaken about the sensation. I purposely tried to summon this power… of sacrificing myself… for the destruction of my foe…

“Self-Destructive Antipathy!!” I exclaimed with a booming cackle. I flooded my body with this newer curse as I ripped apart the arbeast beneath me, and then the other. It was a curse I already knew, but now applied in an entirely different way! And just in the form of a buff stacked right on top of everything else, which was exactly my greatest weapon.

I had noticeably grown stronger by the time the two giant creatures lay dead.

“FUCK YEAH!!!” I roared into the heavens, for it too shall fear me one day.

—Grandpa PoV—

I woke up to a cruel sight I hadn’t seen in decades. As if there was still a chance, when my potential was long spent. I’d tried so hard, and for so long, but it just wasn’t meant to be. A hero was my limit.

I hacked and coughed again, panting as I held on to the side of my pod-bed. With a surge of energy, I arose from the small pool of healing blood around me. My body only ached ever stronger as I left its sweet embrace, but it wasn’t sweetness that I sought in my final days here. This pain was , for what would Haell say if she heard me complaining about something so trivial?

Probably nothing too horrible, she was nicer than that. But she think it. And she would be right. It would be pathetic of me to whine, when the ravages of old age was nothing compared to her daily experiences as an archdemon.

“Good Morning Pandemonium!”

The ceiling clapped, and I smiled broadly.

—Back to Haell PoV—

The teleportation finished, and I and my Grandpa arrived in some cave. I quickly healed the old man of any cuts and tears he might’ve suffered from the spatial turbulence as we walked out into the mountain. Moonwash and Elfrafim were already here, waiting for us as they played a dwarven board game. I gave my girlfriend terrible advice from the sidelines, while Gramps did the same for Elfrafim.

“Open a mine here! Right here!”

“No. That would empty out all my resources.”

“That’s how you win! Maximum greed!”

“Retreat! Retreat all the way!”

“What? Nooo. I wanna fight! And I can win! Moonwash will claim everything if I run!”

“But you’ll have much less to defend . Trust me. I’ve actually done this whole war thing.”

“Hmmm… You know… You done this in real life. Okay!”

The match finally ended in Elfrafim’s defeat and Moonwash’s victory. We left the boardgame there, which had only been quickly carved out of wood. Maybe someone would one day find it, and play another game of Mines and Dangers upon this nameless mountain.

We quickly made our way back to Jilders. We went straight for the wonderzone without stopping by any of the cities. Grandpa no longer had to worry about being allowed entry, as he’d already paid his reparations for invading Jilders before, not just with raw Materials harvested from the wonderzone, but also with some of the valuable artifacts he still had lying around. to Moonwash’s chagrin. She liked those! But… I couldn’t help her here. Gramps still owned those, and I wouldn’t just steal it from the old man. I felt that he did want to make some amends.

We stepped into the Geonesis mountain proper. A golam shambled towards us, and Moonwash took out one of her new wooden talismans. She threw it… and missed, but said the incantation anyway.

“Fire-Bomb.”

Her hands flashed through a rapid series of ninja-like gestures at the same time that she spoke. Her voice echoed strangely, but in a different way from normal rituals, clipped and rapid. The talisman she threw suddenly exploded into blinding bright flames from behind the golam, but it didn’t matter. The extraordinarily tough gold-ranked monster was cooked from inside anyway.

“What?” A harpy above us tilted her head curiously.

“What was that?”

“Could it be a ritual?”

“But she just threw something! That isn’t how rituals work.”

“I certainly felt like it was a ritual. That sensation cannot be faked from what I understand.”

“You’re right. We’ve never encountered anything like it.”

“While it felt like a ritual, it also felt off. I’m not sure if that’s what happened.”

“That’s true…”

The dwarves and even the harpies around us murmured without shame. Some of them left their work to come ask questions. Even the one Level 80 dwarven guard came, and not to stop anyone from bothering my girlfriend.

“Hey! You’re that Moonwash, right? I heard you’re an awesome crafter.”

“And a good ritualist too.”

“Was that thing you did one of it?”

“What did you do!?”

“Please, tell us about it.”

“Everyone, we must not crowd her. But I’ll admit, even I am curious.”

Moonwash took in the crowd impassively, and then began to explain without reservation. “It’s similar to a ritual, but created in advance, made possible by drawing the talisman with a particular mix, and then adding a preserving resin mixture on top of that.” She actually got part of the idea from my own mini-rituals. “The result is something weaker than regular rituals, but stronger than regular spell-casting, and in some cases faster. The incorporation of the hand signals adds a layer to it that strengthens the talisman magic. That’s what I call it, by the way. Haell found an ancient hand language from a species of people called the kumoru, and we adapted it for our purposes.” What she did not mention was how I got the idea from another world. Moonwash did know how to keep my secrets. We’d been doing it since we were children.

Moonwash continued her explanation, and proceeded to answer some questions, ranging from what mixtures she used, to a harpy who actually knew about the kumorus and found her hand gestures to be quite different. My girlfriend shared some specific mixes, which only drove home how it differed for every element and spell, but could be adjusted and changed out just like regular rituals. The rapid hand signs used were of course far more emphatic and exaggerated than the original, which was what I helped device.

Powerful explosions rocked the skies by the end of her quick lecture as Moonwash thoroughly demonstrated her new power to the adoring crowd.

It had taken around an hour until Moonwash finally extricated herself from that situation, with a promise to visit Jilderground City later to go share some more of her knowledge. The rest of us spent this time patrolling around the mountain, and supporting the guards where their might proved insufficient. Our presence was what allowed more of the dwarves on guard duty to slack off and go pester Moonwash about her new cutting-edge technique.

That was fine. The dwarves of both Jilders and Harfet-Dargo had always been kind to us. Moonwash herself had learned a lot from the strongest members of both societies. More than she gave away, because for all that my beloved was talented, the breadth of her knowledge was still inferior to that of entire storied societies.

But now, finally, it was time for us to descend back into the depths of Geokinesis.

“Wind-Fire-Nitro-Bomb.”

The explosive force produced from fire and wind absolutely and completely ravaged the pristakis… and then the entire tunnel around it.

“Wooo!” I cheered as soot flew towards my face.

“Nice,” Arx clacked his three mandibles.

“Yeaahhhh!!” Elfrafim jumped around the tunnel walls.

“That was awesome!” Grandpa laughed boisterously.

“Wind-Fire-Nitro-Bomb!”

The whole swath of carnivaworms died, blasted apart and then buried, alive or dead.

“Alright!”

“Hell yeah!”

“So cool!”

“I know,” it was said in her same bland tone, but I knew my girlfriend was loving the praise

Arx looked at all of us like we were idiots.

“Maybe you shouldn’t use that while we’re this deep underground?” he suggested.

“Hypocrite!” I accused. “You were cheering for it too earlier!”

“Well… I won’t deny that it’s some cool magic. But you don’t need to use it all the time!”

“You’re not wrong,” Moonwash said. “It might cause a collapse.”

“It did cause a collapse!” he retorted. “But alright. As long as you understand. Leave the explosions for when we actually need it.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Maybe?”

“It’s still super cool.”

“WOOO!!”

“COOLNESS!!!”

“YEAAHHHH!!!”

My giant inhex friend heaved an equally gigantic sigh. “Fools. Fools, the lot of you. And you’re my only friends.”

I patted my only friend on the carapace knowingly. “You lucked out.”

He turned a blank stare at me, until he just laughed.

“I did.”

“Is that music?” Elfrafim suddenly asked as we were walking along the tunnels. “No… no it’s not. It’s the damn opposite! It sucks!” She folded her elf ears in and pouted.

“I don’t hear anything,” Moonwash supplied.

“Me neither.” Arx corroborated.

“Same here.” Gramps added on.

“Are you okay, Elfrafim?” I asked in a concerned tone. “Is your head alright?”

“I’m not crazy! There’s really a bad musician! A very bad musician!!!"

I cackled, and then unsurprisingly, Grandpa and Arx later began to hear the same thing.

Soon, I came to hear it too. “It’s really bad…”

Like the chaotic clang of a thousand incongruous pieces of metal. A junkyard shoved into a bubble, and then shaken by the hand of a filthy god.

“I don’t think it’s music,” Arx supplied.

“No, it’s probably the noispider,” Moonwash said over the growing noise. “It’s hard to express sounds in descriptions so I can’t be sure, but I believe it fits.”

We went towards the horrible and annoying monster. Its ear-splitting ballad grew worse and worse as we drew closer, until I just ruptured my eardrums altogether. Moonwash protected the team with a bubble of wind that at least muffled it.

Finally we reached the noispider that had been announcing its presence without shame. It was shaped like a very tanky spider, except covered in random pieces of metal that scraped and clanged against each other. The monster had just killed a bunch of carnivaworms, and was currently feasting, hence why it was moving around. It would come to regret that choice, for we might have overlooked it and its horrible taste in music if not for that. But now, the noispider would die, for we had come to silence its cries.

The monster charged at us upon our arrival, but Arx immediately crashed into it, leaving the monster open as it wrestled with him. Their clash caused a constant cacophony of earsplitting noise that I could feel in my bones even without my hearing. The rocks all around us broke apart from the sheer force of it.

My own attack came next, and it rang just as terribly as Devilcalibur sheered through several layers of its metallic exoskeleton. The same thing happened with Grandpa’s own strike. My grandfather bled, and so did I, as the seeped past our armor, to damage the skin and flesh underneath.

The noispider would soon find out that it wasn’t the only one who could bypass normal defenses.

“OUT!” Moonwash commanded. She threw a talisman at the monster as the rest of us scattered. Elfrafim ducked down, and stopped the wind barrier she’d previously been protecting my girlfriend with.

“Lightning-Blast.”

Moonwash made the accompanying ninja gestures, and lightning arced towards the monster from the rapidly disintegrating talisman. The noispider shivered in pain, as the electricity passed easier through its metallic exterior to its softer insides. The monster somehow survived all that, but it was clearly well and truly paralyzed.

“Lightning-Blast.”

One more go killed it for good, and the world finally went quiet after one final irritating bang.

“We’re really doing this,” Arx said, clearly hesitant as we stood by a tunnel that would deposit us right on the ground level of the Geonesis Core.

“I’m satisfied with our contingencies,” I claimed. “But you can still back out if you want.”

Arx looked at us, especially my grandfather. “No. I’ll go. I think it’s a decent enough plan too. I just normally wouldn’t take that risk. You’re all a terrible influence.”

I chuckled, and didn’t contest the point.

We dropped into the maze of crystal monoliths and metal growths that came in all manner of shapes and sizes. The ground still had the brown of earth in some places, especially right near the tunnels that created a sort of dirt road. Only, it was covered in the shaved-off pieces of crystal and metal that sparkled like glitter. The brilliant lighting came from some select crystals all over the cavern that naturally glowed. Some lost that light when plucked off, but others retained it to eternity.

We immediately veered off and left the glittering dirt path. We tried to be as silent as we could be in this environment, which was made easy by our full suite of enchanted accessories. One of them masked our sounds using genuine sound magic.

We quickly reached our target area, which we had determined after weeks of stalking the place to have no hidden Level 160s nearby. A slavertooth jumped at us, but I easily dispatched of the gold-ranked tiger. There were a few other skirmishes along the way, but we’d checked before we came here, and our vigilance paid off as there wasn’t even a single herokane-rank fight to bog us down.

Moonwash took out her earth staff, and began to scan the earth all around us, and how it surrounded the sheer bounty of materials. More enchantments were placed nearby, to isolate any sound and dampen the vibrations that might spread through the earth. We then all got to work, as Moonwash loosened the soil, and the rest of us worked to pull the crystals and purified ores we wanted.

It was a great haul, and we escaped with it without any complications at all.

“Hooray! Riches!” I laughed as I paraded around a piece of gleaming diamond that was bigger than me.

We repeated this process a few more times, always taking at least a week to scout out every new spot we wished to harvest. We got gems that floated freely, jewels that rejected the touch of wind, smaller pieces of metal even tougher than herokane, sand with vast alchemical properties, and so much more. It was a massive fucking haul.

It inevitably went wrong.

“SHIT!! RUN!” I suddenly shouted during one of our excursions. A presence had stirred underneath my feet, and it was dense and powerful!

I dashed away, and my friends too snapped into action without hesitation. We scattered just in time to not get caught up with the gigantic monster that surfaced out of the ground in a catastrophic explosion of earth to announce its arrival. Jewels and ore were tossed free as a booming sound rang out. A thousand monsters far from our location began running as the gorilla seemingly made out of rough earth pulled itself out from the depths and .

We kept on running. Even as sheer intimidation washed over us. That our opponent was over Level 160 was only all the more reason to flee. Moonwash rode atop Arx, which left us to travel at the slowest pace of Grandpa.

A talisman soared through the air and hit the gorilla monster on the forehead as it continued to make a spectacle of itself.

“Curse-Mind-Confuse.”

Her hands had danced through symbols ever faster than before. Moonwash had been hard at work these past months, creating new talismans, working on her aim, and learning how to deploy them faster. The result was the stream of energy that entered the gorilla creature’s head. The monster then roared again and smashed the ground nearby, only allowing us more time to flee.

“Night-Darkness.”

The dark of the night followed, covering the entire space behind us. We heard the rapid pounding of an enraged monster draw closer, but we did not look back. Only kept on fleeing.

The next talisman that flew from Moonwash sailed through the air just to land right by the midst of a group of fleeing monsters. Normally, they would be at each other’s throats, trying to take the other down, and it was time to bring that enmity back.

“Curse-Mind-Confuse-Wave.”

A stream of purple-pink energy erupted in every direction and swallowed the monsters whole. They paused for a second before then howling and roaring as they began to tear each other apart, their fear of the all but forgotten. We veered towards them, but this was when that earth gorilla finally caught up. It raised its arm to strike us down, and I knew this would not be a blow any of us could take.

I turned around and met it. I sacrificed a great mass of blood inside me to push my body past its literal breaking point, and then some. My self-destruction fueled my power, where it would normally require some time to build up. I reckoned that was because the enhancing of my body could be used for far more than just to hurt my enemy.

The hand of the goreterra met Devilcalibur… and I was tossed away like a ragdoll! I bounced through earth and metal like a rock skipping over water! Elfrafim caught and steadied me as my pulped and broken bones were already healing. The Level 160 gorilla bled, for that earthen texture was just its skin, not actual rock. The sole cut was made all the worse by my curse, including the vengeance of my armor.

“Night-Darkness.”

“Curse-Mind-Confuse.”

The goreterra creature was plunged into dark madness once more. My broken limbs were already healing as Elfrafim tossed me to Astan with a massive gust of air, and my wings allowed me to change into a plummet. I landed near Moonwash, and Arx only grunted upon the addition of my heavy weight. He leapt again, ahead of the others so he could keep pace with everyone. My hands were well enough to take out my bow, and I infused the arrow with wrath.

The arrow flew for a fleeing charaptor… and I fucking missed. The next shot I’d already nocked didn’t miss, however, and the rage seeped into the creature’s brain, overwriting its cowardice!

The charaptor raged, manipulating the earth around it madly. We crossed the throng of frenzied monsters just as the rock gorilla finally caught up again.

“Curse-Mind-Confuse.”

Moonwash refreshed the talisman spell, while waves of my own curse and even hellfire washed over the monsters nearby to make sure they didn’t suddenly regain their calm. The level 160 gorilla still mowed through them like grass, but they at least brought us a precious few moments. I shot more arrows, and sure enough hit an orestrich, a rockamander, and an anglerfrog just about to flee into the tunnels.

I got down from Arx, and our whole group ran right past them while ignoring any and all attacks we suffered, so long as they didn’t slow us down.

We were finally able to scurry off into one of the smallest tunnels that could still fit all of us, while the rock gorilla was still busy tearing apart the maddened monsters we had left in its way.

We did not stop running, until we were confident that we’d fled a good way up.

“We should’ve packed up and left five hauls ago,” I stated the obvious once we were home free.

“Ya think!?” Arx dutifully retorted.

“We only did four hauls!!” Elfrafim helpfully supplied as she collapsed onto her back.

“It’s only three,” Moonwash corrected. “We didn’t haul anything today. Do you think we can go back–”

“““NO!”””

The three of us shouted in unison, even me.

My brows furrowed.

“Okay,” Moonwash just accepted it.

Grandpa had been panting earlier, and now he was coughing up a storm. I walked over to him, and then cycled the big man some healing.

“You okay?”

He looked at me, and then at everyone else with a solid yet emotional gaze.

“That was awesome!” He eventually bellowed, with a laugh full of genuine joy that echoed across the entire tunnel system. “ is what adventuring is all about!!”