Savage Awakening 493. The Lost Ruins (IV)

At first, Zane thought the sky had cracked open. Then he realized that was all stone—a great sea of stone, far above, stretching endlessly, a continent of fissures and stalagmites.

That was a ceiling—a very distant one at that.

They had to be deep underground.

They’d landed on a road the length of a football field. All dark-gray stones set seamlessly into one another—a straight, proud road. There wasn’t a mark there, despite the age.

A shattered grandeur rose all around him.

A kingdom built in a cavern. A kingdom built of a blend of sandstone and higher-tech stuff, steel riddled with dimmed runes—everything towered in stone-steel colossuses; castles and towers built into the cavern walls, stacking one atop another, weaving in and out of columns of bold rock, climbing steadily into the ceiling, widening as it did… it felt at once like he stood in some stone-age megacity and also a place higher-tech than any on Earth.

But most of those buildings were badly cracked. Blackened chunks taken out of them. But lots of it still worked—he saw many a cranking gear exposed amid those expanses of stone. Smoke still piped from chimneys, even with no one there. The ones that were left intact, anyway.

There were broad boxy buildings hugging the road at ground level. Some were broken-down husks. Others still hummed, cranking and whirring and clank-clanking; they were connected to each other by networks of pulley systems, with platforms notched to them—little elevators, maybe? Some led to the upper floors. Others dropped deep underground. A few were still lit up by warm hearth-glows. He could imagine dwarves going up and down them on a daily commute—it kind of warmed him.

It was clear there wasn’t anyone there, though. Not anymore. There was too much dust and grime for that.

There were a lot of gemstones cropping out of the walls—real high-grade stuff, stuffed full of essence. They gave the place a warm light. There was also a lot of steel, too, just exposed in the cavern walls—like there was so much of it the dwarves didn’t even bother mining it.

Shiny stuff, too.

Intrigued, he gave it a closer look in the Astral Plane.

…He was pretty sure a good chunk of it was peak Primordial grade—he even spotted some Divine Profound stuff.

Now that he looked at it, most of these houses were very good steel, too…

His belly rumbled.

It kind of looked like the dwarf kingdom he’d seen in the Superdungeon—but these were their ancestors. Just much, much higher-tech, higher-grade—a place that thought nothing of reforging entire continents for itself.

The Sage clocked his gaze. “Not yet,” he chuckled. “There's even better coming up, just you watch. Stuff those dwarves packed away in their hoards and their forges! We’re talking stuff the grandmaster smiths used to use… that’s where the real gains are.”

Zane nodded.

He’d finished up that big block of Divine Profound steel the Sage had thrown him about a week before they arrived—that’d gotten his Asura Titan’s Body up to level IV. He was feeling as strong as he’d ever felt—even just the way his blood pumped through his muscles. He could tell when he was in good shape.

“Where’s this stuff at?”

“Just up ahead!” The Sage nodded down the road. “You’ll have to get through some pests first, though.”

Up ahead, a mass of twisted souls lurked in the dark, shifting restlessly. They crouched in the abandoned buildings, slumped in back alleys. A mile into their trek, and Zane felt more still—twisted souls stumbling around in those castles high above. They weren’t abandoned after all. Creatures were stirring all around, waking up, and a groaning and creaking poured out—he caught sight of flashes of bone. Pale green orbs peering through cracked windows...

Far ahead—marking the horizon—there was a castle of wrought iron, all dreary spires, towering over it all. Casting a very long shadow down that main road.

“That ought to be it. The Hall of the Dwarf-King! It’s a straight shot from here to the end,” said the Sage cheerfully. He paid no mind to the twisted souls clanking closer.

“This here’s the Ruins, alright—it’s got to be the First Road. Back in the early times, this road’s the one thing connecting every damn kingdom in here—a single straight line going end-to-end! It was meant to be convenient. Trade, whatnot—not too clear on the specifics. Point is, we’re on it now. All we’ve got to do is go one end to the other and pick up all it’s got to offer.”

He grinned. “Sounds pretty simple, put like that, eh? ‘Course—who the hell knows what’s on it these days!”

“I’ve got a hunch,” said Zane, grinning—his heart going faster again, just thinking about it. He eyed the first Monsters breaking out of the houses. They made their way into the dim light.

They were skeletons, thickly set, smoking a strange ectoplasm. But by their skeletons, Zane could tell—these things had all been dwarves once. An eerie green lit their eyes. They staggered in, searing with a perverse vitality in the Astral Plane…

It was that new Corruption.

A different kind of Corruption—he felt a strong undead aspect to it, a feeling that excited him. These things were extra tanky—they had real vitality to them, an extra Health. Zane had seen undead before—he’d wrecked his fair share of them. But these things had that halo glow to them—like that Bloodline gave them a special boost…

Even their Distortion Fields showed that power. As they came up to him, dragging heavy hammers, those fields hung heavy in the air—all parched bone worlds, all monochrome, soulless, colorless. Some of them wielded meteors; a few stomped with avalanches at their back, and others were filled with ice like glass shards… but they were all pale and ghostly, lacking real color, real life—just suffused with an eerie shininess. Flickering as though the elements themselves were risen dead.

“I was talking to ol’ Steelheart about this once he woke,” said the Sage, crossing his arms. “That’s the work of the thing that tried taking this Galaxy before Malzareth. Some kind of ancient lich, so I hear—it likes its Monsters undead. They all do look that way, eh?”

Zane did wonder how strong these things were.

He wasn’t sure the ones up ahead would give him any trouble. But it did get him thinking about the half-step Empyreans—just how strong they’d be.

As though to punctuate the Sage’s point, a massive silhouette reared its head just outside that distant castle and vanished…

He was sold on this place already.

“You think we’ll fight that thing eventually?” said Zane, looking to the Sage. “The thing that came before Malzareth.”

“Be a waste if we didn’t, eh?” The Sage grinned too. “I damn sure hope so! But first… best take care of these bastards, eh?”

More skeletons were stomping out as they went—out of damned near every tower they passed. Breathing gales of black frost, those hollowed eyes glaring—the bulk of them wielding great hammers or shields, ghostly fires playing on pale steel…

“Shame, that,” said the Sage, eyeing them down. Some of the humor left his expression. “Never liked these undead. Wiping ‘em out’s bad enough—taking their bodies, too… that’s nasty work, right there. You fight your heart out, you deserve to be laid to rest, I say.”

He was happy to be the one to do it.

As soon as the skeletons got within striking range, they charged.

And dozens of peak True Gods were unleashed on him at once.

Then it felt like black-and-white avalanched him from all sides. There were meteors crashing down on his head—not just the fiery type. There were showers of ice meteors too, brimming with unholy energies—and when they exploded, thousands of shards of shrapnel pierced the skin.

There were some mages among the dwarves too, wielding these giant two-handed bone staffs topped with heavy crystals. And trapped in those crystals were tiny black suns—suns that threw out arcs of angry lightning—lightning so dense it looked like ion beams.

Zane blocked with his Chains. A handful still got through.

Ice meteors collided; ion lightning seared; meteors exploded, disintegrating all over him.

And barely left a mark.

He felt them like insect stings. All they did was annoy him. But it was a good kind of annoyance. The kind that made him want to come right back and pay them back in kind. That made him grin.

He took out his hammers this time. Two Red Giant Smashes crushed right through that opening cluster of Monsters, crushed right through their realities—he felt them collapse like tin cans.

His hammer crushed a heavily armored dwarf-charger—squashing it flat with nuclear force—and kept on going, thudding straight into a shield the size of a hill, a shield dense with gravity laws—

It still couldn’t stop his explosiveness. His hammer smashed the skeleton beneath.

He roared—and kept up that smash.

That hammer just kept on going. Laying out Monster after Monster after Monster—a domino of crushed True God skeletons that just wouldn’t stop falling.

A furious dark red had lit up all that black and white, had introduced a fearsome color into the world. Even as war red painted his own body, bursting from his heart.

He whirled around and swept out another hammer.

In less than ten seconds, it was over.

Level up!

Essence Level 572 -> 573

He was a little disappointed. He was breathing hard, but not heavily—they were tankier than normal peak True Gods, sure. They still couldn’t stand up to him.

The Sage saw his expression. “We’re not done yet, lad!” He pointed down the road…

A storm was gathering there in the dark.

Things were rising in those abandoned castles—stirring in the forges, now that the sounds of battle had rung out… tens of souls—but in seconds, it’d gone to hundreds… thousands?

“You keep on going—take it straight to ‘em, you hear? That’s a straight shot right down the middle—you gun that thing, and you don’t let anything stop you!”

Zane didn’t need any more encouragement.

He roared—and charged straight down.

Even as the walls burst open, high above—and Monsters rained down all over him.