Unbound-Chapter Nine Hundred And Seventy Two – 972

Empyrean Embrace!

The Echo shredded, its gutted form crushed between ethereal jaws. Within Felix, the Beast roared. Hesitation abandoned, it climbed out of his center to gorge on the rotted, unstable ruin of Noctis’ remnant.

Foul! Despicable Ruin!

Eyes blazing, Felix set his Sonata thrumming. Jagged strings of unstable Mana fought against him, but the Beast had given up on its hesitation. Jaws snapped and claws dragged pieces of the Ruin-drenched Echo deeper into Felix’s core space.

No! The Echo shuddered.

The diluted Ruin had all but vanished and its blinded eyes pulled back from the Beast—they split and congealed into a singular orb in the Echo’s chest where the Omen Door once sat. It rolled toward Felix, the shadow of violet flame surging around its lids. It stared at him as the bent streamers of its flesh were pulled inexorably into Felix's open maw.

YOU. The word shook through him, shaking Felix’s Spirit like a leaf in the wind. Even his steadied Mind and Body quaked beneath the single word. I KNOW YOU.

Teeth burst along the flesh Felix devoured, tearing at his chest and face. Through his channels, they twisted, a bladed chain set to blend.

Warning!

Health Has Dropped To 15%!

Sovereign of Flesh marshaled within himself, diverting power to healing as Unite the Lost took a backseat. Felix clenched his teeth, blood running from his eyes and nose. Yet as his power faltered, the Beast rose up.

I Know You Too, it growled. Destroyer! Thief!

Sparking blue-white fangs sank into the Ruin’s malformed appendages. Unstable Mana rioted between the Beast's teeth, spraying in every direction that cut furrows into the earth. Ruinous power seared, the violet darkness brighter than the sun as it lashed out. Felix’s Named cores shook, wobbling with the impact of a thousand twisted limbs, while the Divine Tree shook as if in a hurricane. Violet darkness flared up, that sun-bright radiance following Felix into his core space. It washed over him, the Beast barely able to stop it.

Empyrean Embrace! Felix quaked, scales trembling. The ruinous power, no matter how diluted, was strong. Yet it wasn’t strong enough to overcome him—not in his core space. His Named rings shook, his Skills vibrated with a newfound burr, and his insatiable hunger did not yield.

Mine! the Beast crowed.

The false goddess could only scream.

Felix opened his true eyes, just in time to witness Vess and Yin once again tearing through the Echo. Their corporeal form, a spectral dragon, hugged their Bodies as they tore through the piece of Noctis once more. It recoiled, the eye in its chest blinking madly before its tendrils were filled with rotating teeth. It lashed at the pair—

Only to have its limbs smashed by chitinous spikes the size of houses.

“Bullseye!” Beef crowed as dozens more spikes rose up around him. “Elowen!”

“Order Departs!”

The Theron’s call was answered by purple-gold Mana that seized Beef’s creations and hurled them into the Echo. The thing’s chest cracked open like a walnut, speared by their Skills even as it reformed around them. It wasn’t fast enough. Spinning blades cut through tendrils like chainsaws while arrows burst with bubbling acid and freezing shadow. Hooked vines snagged its limbs down to the earth, cutting through pieces, dragging down limbs even as they shifted and reformed constantly.

“Sit still!” Evie swung her flail and its icy chains chewed through the Echo’s side. Creatures that resembled Sprites danced around the wounds, their forms jagged as ice, trailing frost in their wake that locked down the unstable Mana.

Unbound! Unclean All—!

Explosions burst against its empty face, knocking the Echo’s words clean from its lacking mouth.

“Finally! Take that!” Wendell leaped to the fore, his swords slashing and releasing a thunderous expansion of air and heat. Tendrils baked, withered, and were blown apart entirely by round after round of Precision Mines. Chunks of flesh rained upon the empty crater, and the Echo had no more cogent words. It was bestial now, running on instinct as the final dregs of Ruinous power vanished.

The Echo pulled and Felix flared his Beastly hunger. The diluted Ruin flickered and faded, gone entirely as its eye closed for good. All that was left was the unstable Mana of the Echo of Noctis. Felix ate it all. The Beast grimaced with every bite, a sour growl in the back of his throat after every swallow, but the riot of unstable Mana was held back.

Unite the Lost surged in Felix's veins, repairing the cracks as they formed. The Ruin might have fled back into the sky, but its touch could not be denied. Felix cursed through shattered teeth, muscling down the jank of instability. Diluted as it might be, the soured silence of its presence cut at him with every swallow while the unstable Mana sang bitter and false. He sounded his Sonata right back, amplified by all of his Skills that touched upon the Grand Harmony. Gorge rose within him but Felix never stopped; his choked screams echoed with power and potency, crushing the destabilizing wave of vibrations.

The unstable Mana shook for a moment, unable to defend itself, unable to infect and run riot. The Beast swallowed it all.

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"Felix!" Vess cried, drawing his attention to outside of his core space. He immediately saw what she had: En’Cridhe was falling. Felix jolted forward, but fissures of unstable Mana shook through his legs like cramps in his muscles.

The tower collapsed, but then halted, its shape limned by purple-gold light as Elowen flew above it, veins sticking out of her neck. "I can't hold it long!”

"You don't have to!" Beef bound forward, leaping across the terrain. “Entropic Paradigm!” Chitin followed him, landing beneath his hooves into a bridge that spread outward, extending underneath the base of the tower, propping it up with complicated arches.

"That's my boy!" Wendell shouted.

The tower stopped falling, but the earth groaned, crumbling to pieces. Felix shot forward. Irrespective of his aching limbs, he ripped deep furrow into the earth, shattering it in his wake. The Void opened up in those deep trenches, untextured and inky black, releasing mottled creatures from its depths.

He paid them no mind. Felix shot for the tower.

His Crown gleamed across his brow, and the Chalice shone from his chest. A new scaffolding, beyond the chitin, formed across En’Cridhe. It shimmered golden and silver beneath the effect of Felix's Authority, and a Seal loomed up high above. It sang.

ERROR!

Corrupted Mana Detected.

ERROR!

Corrupted Mana Has Been Greatly Reduced.

The Seal transported itself to Felix, the bright scaffolding of sigaldry lifting him up bodily from the ground. It shimmered around him, filling his senses as a host of fractal patterns flashed through his Mind. The world faded before the onslaught, until all was silver and gold, layering around him in patterns he could barely track let alone understand. He got the gist, however. The Seat and Seal shifted, rising up to Felix’s eyeline as its empty center gleamed with a newfound glyph.The burning eye and crown of House Nevarre.

With an acknowledgment of his Will, it seared itself into the center, and the construct flashed.

Lay Low The Golden Sun!

You have defeated Ocalla Marzul, Hierophant of Amaranth and the leader of the Hierocracy. Your Authority has been expanded! You may now claim all Territories formerly under the Authority of the Hierophant!

ERROR!

Due To System Overload, Authority Cannot Be Accessed Remotely!

Traverse To The Location Of The Seat And Seal To Claim The Conquered Territories.

You Have Traversed To The Seat And Seal Of Amaranth!

Do You Wish To Claim The Territory?

Yes. Again.

Territorial Instability Has Been Greatly Diminished.

Source Eliminated.

Authority Stands In The Breach!

You Have Claimed A Broken Empire.

Do You Wish To Unite Or Forsake?

Unite!

Power rolled through him, pulling at the piece of him that was more than just his Skills or his cores or his magic. His Authority sang in concordance.

A wave of power swept away from him and the Seal, rolling across the landscape. Creatures that had crawled from the Void screeched and were unmade, their flesh turned to undifferentiated Mana that was pulled into the earth itself as fissures and chasms closed with resounding snaps. The ground swelled, while all around them the earth bent away, flush with new life.

The gold and silver of Authority swept across the breadth of Amaranth. Felix could feel every piece rolling outward, his awareness following it like a bird flying just behind its leading edge. The black clouds were scrubbed clean. The charred and broken earth was remade, and the

glitching abominations were set right. The monsters were ripped asunder, their strange starlit flesh bursting before fleeing upward into the sky that had turned a silvered turquoise. The ash settled into dark soil, which was soon filled with a new green-gold radiance. Grasses grew, along with moss, ferns, and wildflowers. Trees shot up in their wake, growing as rapidly as Felix could fly. A forest filled Amaranth, spreading across farming villages and walled towns alike. Empty of people, the remaining stone structures burst open, filled with a bright fecundity that couldn’t be contained.

A rising crescendo shook through Felix; through everyone. A song hitting its zenith as the crash of cymbals and timpanis met the sharp rush of brass. The power hit the edges of the Territory and washed back, racing towards the center a thousand times faster than before. It swept through half grown forests and lush new hills and the fertile mounds where villages once stood—then it reached them. There, it found Felix and his people, surrounded by the concentric mountains of Noctis' moonfall. The power clung there, swirling around Felix as the crater behind him lifted up out of the earth.

The Lost City Of Aeonis Stands Beyond The Elysian Gate!

Do You Wish To Unite Or Forsake?

Felix hadn’t a clue what the System was talking about, but it didn’t matter. There was only one choice he wanted to make. Unite!

Unite The Lost Detected!

Hail, Nymean!

Hail, Friend Of The Elysians!

Hail, Cardinal!

Authority Recognized!

Beneath where Amaranth once stood, new buildings rose up. En’Cridhe lifted, moving through the stone swirl as if guided down a stream as towers thrust up around it. The Shining City was built anew, but it looked distinctly different than before. Walls rolled upward like cresting waves, organic and flowing with the land, while tiered platforms lifted each tower across the walls in soaring bridges. Wood and stone flung outward like sea spray, connecting elegant structures together by gossamer buttresses and archways hundreds of feet tall. It gleamed, not a blinding white but a bevy of radiant colors drawn deep from the earth; pthalo greens and blues anointed with deep silver and gold, chased by pearlescent striations amid glittering reds and oranges.

It was a city held aloft in the sky, surrounded by rolling hills and forested streets dotted with residences that combined rural and urban in the same breath.

Significance, the last major bit from the Echo, was spent. It spiraled through his Skill, funneled into the Territory in a wash of golden light. Stone and tile works repaired themselves, set among the shaded squares and empty marketplaces. Ancient art, not seen for Ages, reformed before Felix’s eyes in beautiful arrangements he could barely appreciate.

All he could see was the soaring expanse of En’Cridhe standing tall among the sweeping wings of a palace bigger than any other Felix had ever brought back.

Aeonis!

The Giants Grove!

Lost No More!

All Hail The Inheritor, Sovereign of Aeonis, Felix Nevarre!

Felix fell to the ground, but instead of ashen rock his fall was broken by soft grasses and black loam. It split under his heels, slick with new dew, but Vess was there. She held his elbow and his gaze.

“Hi there.” He swallowed. “You’re alive.”

Her cheek dimpled. “I am.”

Notifications flashed at him, at least a dozen, but Felix ignored them all. He bent into Vess, Spirit aching, and she jolted…before melting into his embrace.

The System could wait.