Their eyes bulged, and their brains struggled to process what their own eyes had just seen. Beyond the broken walls of the dreary town, a seemingly endless army of beasts marched forth towards them, emerging from beyond the darkness of the vast stretching woods.
Quiet whispers of the wind, tainted by darkness, along with the gradually increasing volume of the beasts' march spelled doom for them both. Their expressions greyed into one of fear, dread and regret for their bad luck. Why did they have to even be here at all? And worse, no other players were in sight. When Ceres discovered that the weakest creature was level 30, they grew even more sour. Yet no amount of sour could keep the monsters at bay.
Ding
[Mission Alert]
[Survive the beast march
Mission rank:??
Objective: you are currently in a situation of life and death with seemingly no way out whatsoever. Defy all odds and survive.
Rewards; Coin of fortune ×3
Coin of fortune; a gift for those favored by fate]
"Crap." Said Ceres," Did you get the notification too?"
"Diddo on that one lady, and yes i did. What are we gonna do?" Valentine replied.
" come on Ceres, think. Come on, come on, come on..." Ceres whispered to herself.
"I don't mean to be that guy but you might wanna think faster." Valentine stated as the horde drew closer.
"I got it!" Ceres said and immediately retrieved something from her inventory. It was a palm sized seed that didn't seem all that extraordinary.
"And how is that gonna help us not get killed immediately?" Valentine asked trying to hide the panic in his voice," I didn't know where I stood before but I'm pretty sure I hate V.R. now."
"I don't know what it is. All i know is i got it from a rare low level dungeon with a forest monster," Ceres tells.
"A forest monster?" Valentine asks.
"It's a forest come to life, now stop bothering me. Don't you see I'm trying to keep us from getting killed?" Ceres shouts out of frustration as she finishes planting the seed in the dirt.
"God, I hope this works." She mumbles because could only appraise its name. She wished in her heart that it would grow into a forest monster like the one she and the team she joined defeated but nothing happened. She stared blankly and the ground and then at Valentine and repeated herself quite a few times.
"Where is it?!" she shouts at Valentine. "How am i supposed to know?! You just put a seed on the ground so forgive me if I don't see where this is going?!" He shouts back. Before Ceres can retort the seed sprouted into a delicate little flower.
"Ooh, thank goodness," but before Ceres can celebrate even a little, vines pop up from the ground and bind Ceres, twisting around her entire body till she looked like a bud.
"What is happening?" she screamed as Valentine grabs onto her hand to help her but all for naught. She is pulled from Val's grip and fully bound. screaming from within she calls for help which Valentine tries to provide by using his rusted knife but nothing. "Okay," he said nervously, but in that very moment be it luck or misfortune the ground began to quiver and tremors spread out under him, seemingly moving. It very grew quickly in intensity and the movement became more erratic, making poor Valentine fall and roll all over the place. He was able to get up somehow and that is when he saw it, a huge serpentine wyrm. The beast shot up from the ground and into the middle of the swarm of beasts moving toward the settlement. Shock rattled his brain but he quickly noticed something. Something perhaps even more intriguing, a scarlet swirl of energy. 'The beast seems to be chasing it' he thought," but what exactly could it be." He couldn't appraise any creature present in the vicinity. How much more an orb of strange energy even he could feel at his low level. Between a captured Ceres, a beast tide, a monstrous wyrm and a strange moving red orb, there was a slight positive. In the monster wyrm's pursuit of the massive swirl of scarlet energy, he was making quick work of the beast tide, smashing and crushing all of them like paste.
"Come on, come on finish those beast and maybe, just maybe I'll get the reward and overturn this death sentence."
However unlucky for him that did not happen. The energy sphere stopped and enlarged. A humanoid figure appeared inside it but disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Next, strange writings started to form all around the outskirts of the town, most orbiting around the wyrm who had suddenly gone completely still. The writings lit up with a dark scarlet light, much like the energy sphere which even cackled with red lightening. Valentine, who is very far off was nearly blinded by its glow and couldn't even open his eyes, as an explosion of scarlet energy ensues. The energy travels in a rippling effect and covers a third of the entire continent.
[Warning! Warning! Warning! You have been affected by massive amount of dangerous energy.]
The energy wave knocked both Ceres and Valentine really far back. Due to the bud ceres wasn't really physically hurt but explosion broke all Valentine's bones and made him roll on the ground like tumble weed, and only came to a stop when he hit a building so hard his head started to bleed and he lost consciousness. His health plummeted quite fast, after all there wasn't much of it to begin with. Strangely he did not die. His health kept going from zero to one and back again, probably 100 times a second. On his hanging wrist a strange snake tattoo materialised, glowing a faint white.
Indeed Valentine had it bad but the beast tide had it worse. Their skins peeled of as their flesh began to melt. A cacophony of roars and growls echoed throughout the otherwise quiet town. Despite having consumed a fragment of a dragon's heart, the wyrm writhed about like a fish on a hook, thinning the beast tide even more. Its skin began to peel of as its scales cracked. Blood seeped from his skin and huge blisters started forming all over its gigantic body. Roar as it may, cry as it did the scene grew more painfully grotesque as the wyrm refused to die.
The humanoid figure inside the red energy swirl appeared again and cackled very loudly, staring in the direction of the town, "Now the two of you will know not to mess with me. Hahahahahaha!" It said and disappeared entirely from the place.
As the red swirl of energy disappeared a loud roar echoed throughout a different sector of the continent which knew no human life, only darkness and monsters left unchecked. The roar was loud and powerful, full of rage and passion. This roar belonged to a phantom like entity with a massive sword and armor that are a mixture of black and dark scarlet and a ghostly horse standing beside him.
"No! No! No!! No!! No!!! No!!! DAMN THAT STUPID LITTLE... " The phantom stopped himself as he felt the energy wave hit him like a truck... and it was supreme. He quickly used all his strength to suck up all the scarlet energy that was in the nearest kilometer around him and more.
"Chaos. Yes! Finally, I have you within reach even if it is but a shadow. You belong to me as only I am fit to unleash the full extent of chaos."
The phantoms eyes shifted from red to white constantly, reflecting his raging 'heart' because he'd been searching for the chaos energy for a while after the battle against this this reality. This world won where all others failed. Every single reality, timeline, and universe had fallen before them and had been layed to waste but this one. The very last existing reality by an unknown miracle was able to repel them.
"Those fools are done for this time. Even with this miniscule amount of chaos energy I can reclaim my true body, weapon and yours as well. We already have our hook in your side. All you have is time and even it shall crumble like dust" he says to the horse beside him.
"As for the one who stole that piece of pure chaos I'll rip them apart, when the time comes..."
He hops on his ghostly horse and fade into the darkness.
Back at the settlement which is now almost completely destroyed Valentine's luck starts to run out as his body starts to bloat and his veins glow. Too much chaos energy has entered his system and is destroying his body from the inside. He is constantly going from conscious to unconscious due to the intense pain but due to the swelling of his mouth and throat he couldn't even scream. His veins also glowed an orange red light and started to melt.
Ceres, as well as the vines covering her are also affected by the chaos energy that they were exposed to and start whithering. Ceres' scream rings out from within the bud as it continues to wither very quickly. The feeling is like that itch in the bones that you can't scratch but a million times worse. She felt as though a wild fire had been lit inside her body and the heat just kept rising. She began to glow red from within the bud.
At this point in time the beast tide had been killed but the wyrm survived, mainly due to the draconic mutation it had undergone. Its body starts adjusting and mutating to assimilate the chaos energy but before that is completed the skies are ripped open as an aurora lights the sky. Two individuals emerge from a spacial tear; a beautiful middle aged woman with leaves, twigs, vines and flowers woven masterfully as her apparel. Her hair is made of vines, decorated with flowers and her skin resembled polished wood. With her was an old man that looked like he never aged past thirty.
" We finally made it." The woman said," Do you sense her?" The woman asks the man.
"No she's gone." As they take a look at the surroundings they are left speechless.
" how much more time do we have?" The woman asks.
"About ten minutes. Can you find them?" The young looking old man answered.
"Hold on a second. I can sense their life force but it is very weak. They should be dead but they're not. The time stream is trying to resist the changes that have been made here." As she speaks vines pop up under Valentine and Ceres and drag then down the earth and brings them back up where she and the old man land.
"There's something else. She's made another change." The old man says," wish maker!" His body faintly glows with the colors of the aurora for a few seconds.
" what did you see." Asks the woman.
"She's killed the man who is meant to change him," he says pointing at the still swelling Valentine. He was about to say something else but he stopped himself as his eyes fell on the timer on his system screen.
"I can feel them coming, we need to hurry up." The old man says to the Nymph woman.
"But are you sure that this will not result in a worse outcome than the one we're facing. If we do this we cannot undo it, ever." The Nymph asks. The old man falters for a moment but when he sees the dwindling timer on his screen he reassures himself.
"There's no other way."
He steels himself, grabs Val and starts mumbling something. A massive magick circle appears under their feet that keeps getting bigger. The old man chants faster and faster as he looks at the timer and shouts 'Last Wish: Wish of the departed'. This skill was a skill of the genie race that can only be used at their death. It is considered to be their last and final wish. As he completes the spell he starts to turn into pixels which coalesce to form an orb. This orb enters Valentine's chest and a light explodes from him. Even amidst the pain a cooling sensation spreads throughout his body following a subtle warm feeling. His swelling stops and the orb coloured like the aurora borealis starts sucking in all the chaos energy that had made way into his system. Something considrerd to be impossible. Deep within his subconscious valentine was struggling still. Waves, winds and the turbulence of a violent tempest of chaos energy tossed him about. He had fought so hard that his limbs felt numb. "Keep your head up. Head above the waves. Come on. You can't stop. Don't stop. Never stop," he said to himself over and over as he held his head above the tides which crashed into his face ever so often. It forced him to take quick breaths till he couldn't anymore. 'How bad could it be' he said to himself and let himself go under. As he was submerged a large hand glowing like the aurora pulled him out. With a wave of the other the scene changed to the settlement earlier. The hand set him dowm and disappeared and an old man appeared behind Valentine. He has barely registered the giant had when it disappeared and was startled quite a lot when the old man touched his shoulder. The old man laughed and told him tk calm down. "I have seen your future," the old man said," " " who are you?" Valentine asks.
"I am only an old man who seeks to channge my future," The old man said but Valentine remained silent and looked at him intently.
"It doent matter if you believe me boy, but you will thank me one day." With that he disappeared and reappeared behind him and grabbed his head. A bright aurora fills the entire place as energy is transferred from the man to Valentine.
Outside the mindspace Valentine was covered in a golden mirage of a lamp with an aurora swirling inside. Boom, his eyes flew open and the lamp shattered but was absorbed into his body. His form had shifted, and his size was increased to about three meters. His body looked humanoid and very muscular but it was completely made of different kinds of auroras. His hands had golden bands on them, decorated with sea blue jewels. His body was also had s few streaks of gold but thus form didn't last long and reverted back to the old Valentine.
Ceres' situation was slightly different. When the lovely nymph delved into her mind frame she was almost dead. The entire scene was littered with huge plants of all sorts like sundew, venus fly traps and all sorts of man eating plants and vines. These vines had wrapped themselves around her and were tightening. They had Ceres completely unconscious and if she didn't wake up soon the whole mindscape would collapse in on itself. The nymph lady started chanting and soon turned into a tree. All the leaves fell from the tree and were carried over to ceres. The leaves cut apart the vines and created a shield around her. Next the tree shifted into the form of a woman who started to wither. As she withered a green and white energy seeped out of her body and went to the barrier. It penetrated the barrier and entered ceres' body which immediately shatters to reveal the forest core inside her. The energy penetrates the seed and engraves a strange pattern on it. The seed falls to the ground and enters it. While this is unfolding the monster plants bash themselves into the barrier constantly. Their size also increases with every bash but they still fail to bypass the shield. Meanwhile, on the inside the seed sprouts a small twig, which grows into a huge tree. The tree is quickly surrounded by multiple vines which snake around it, next comes flowers. Then the whole thing glows a
, especially the roots which cyphen all the chaos energy in her body to use ad nutrition. When every last bit of chaos energy is consumed the tree grows humongous and a single fruit appears on it. The fruit opens up to show a newly changed ceres. When she opens her eyes within the mindspace she sees the lovely nymph smiling at her for a few seconds before she disappears. The monster trees are no more, withered due to the vitality that the now giant tree absorbed from them. She finally opened her eyes in the real world to see Valentine by her side.
"Are you okay?" He asks her softly. "I'm fine," she answers wincing a little. She massages her temple and notices her hands which look like they're made of wood. Her eyes bulged but Valentine calms her down. She picks up a full lenght mirror from her inventory and stares at her new form. She wanted to freak out but she ended up admiring the beautiful dress made of leaves, vines, twigs and flowers. It resembled a body suit, a never before seen, absolutely perfect body suit and her hair was also made of vines with flowers decorating it. All in all she was quite pleased and ended up checking herself out which made Valentine think,'women' and shake his head.