B6 Chapter 692: Cliffs and Treasures, Finale (Patreon)

Kaius breathed softly, crouched high in the canopy above the plateau. Thick, waxy leaves with spiny edges obscured his potion, each denser and much smaller than the trees he’d found below. 

His escape had been fraught. The beast had been too damn fast — in the end, staying anywhere near the cliff had proven too dangerous. He’d burnt his Warps to the last, leaving him hidden in the trees that flourished atop the plateau, but empty of the mobility spells he’d need to escape back to the safety of the lower jungle.

The trees up here were different from the lower jungle. While the trunks were still immense, they grew to half the height — and their dense tangle of a canopy scraped the rocky ground they sprouted from, absent of convenient branch-roads to follow. It was a living maze — the perfect place to hide while he reinscribed.

Honing his Will, he stared at the stretch of scattered sand and crystal between the treeline and the edge of the plateau. He whipped his head to the left as a twisted beast erupted through distant sands, roaring in rage as it searched its surroundings. 

They’d pissed the creature off good — he didn’t dare make a sound. Pulling on his mana, he twisted it into the shape of Expedient Shunt, binding the inscription to Felmenia. It was a risk. While his mana control was immaculate, it was possible the creature might notice. But he’d burned almost every copy of the spell he had reaching this dense warren of trees, and he’d need more if he wanted to feel confident in his ability to escape.

For perhaps the dozenth time, the creature dove back into the plateau, phasing through the desert floor. The thing had lost him every time he was airborne — or was in the trees. It had to have poor eyesight, or it would have followed his position quickly. Thankfully, it had been expanding its search — appearing further away with increasingly less frequency. 

Kaius grinned. As soon as he’d inscribed as many copies of Shunt as he could, he’d be gone. A shame that he’d had to burn one of their good mana restoratives, but he wanted to be out and away from here as soon as he could. Porkchop and his friends had been on the move for some time, but he could feel his bond tugging on him like a lodestone. It would be easy to find them. 

Thoughts drifting to their stolen prize, Kaius couldn’t help but feel a small pang of despair and greed. Each and every piece of charged rosenite was a prize that kings would salivate over — and they’d only gotten half. He couldn’t stop thinking about the others that just lay there, waiting in the cave wall.

He squashed the impulse to return for them. That was basically begging for death — there was no way in all of the hells that the Platinum wasn’t ready for them to try again. They’d just stolen half its bloody hoard. 

It was just too strong. Kaius was damn sure that he would already be dead without his Scornplanes. No, he wouldn’t go back.

Moving onto his next inscription, Kaius focused on the tugging feeling of his bond to distract himself. Porkchop had moved deeper into the jungle — but his team hadn’t quite fled the Plateau entirely. They’d been circling it, thank the heavens. When he returned, they still needed to find a way back up here.

He glanced behind him, staring deeper into the plateau. The ground up here was more rocky than the rolling dunes in the jungle below, and scraps of life clung on between the giant trees — gnarled brush with thin needled leaves, and tough, yellowing tussock. The ground dipped in a gentle incline too; it seemed the top was a shallow basin of some kind.

The entire time he’d been up here, he’d felt a subtle, but strong energy pulsing from the depths of the plateau. It felt…ancient, and unyielding. Some sort of magical effect. He didn’t think it was a creature — it felt different even from the aura of darkness the Adamant spirit of Vainblood had produced. It was worth investigating.

His high vantage point had revealed other things as well. The scattered line of plateaus they’d seen arcing across the horizon was actually a ring — he could see them engulfing a section of jungle that they only now stood at the edge of. Deep in its centre a wavering mirage swallowed a clearing in the trees, blocking even his truesight. 

Even more interesting, there were ruins scattered through the inner circle of the jungle below. He’d only spotted them ten minutes before, given that they were almost entirely obscured by the sprawling canopy. He’d only noticed them because of a hole in the canopy thirty or forty leagues in, where a jungle-giant had fallen, half crushing a cluster of skeletal stone walls and disintegrating shingled roofs. A settlement.

There were other traces when he looked for them. A thin spire of rock, covered in vines and creepers, just barely breaching into the sun. A branch, blown by the wind to reveal swathes of grey that stood out so starkly on the pink sand. He never would have noticed it without Truesight.

He couldn’t help but ponder them. Was it scenery, like the structures found in the Depths? Or was it something more? Regardless, they had to investigate — it could easily be critical to the Proving. 

Kaius took a slow breath, tearing his gaze away from the pulsing energy at the centre of the plateau. Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to check it out alone — he had to reunite with his team.

As his inscriptions built, the prowling Platinum drew further away — the time it spent within the ground growing longer. His last Shunt clicked into place, but he held his ground — waiting until a distinctive monstrosity appeared what had to be a league away on the cliff’s edge. He watched it patiently, waiting for it to descend back, then waited a minute longer.

It was time.

Staring straight in Porkchop’s direction, he chained three Warps back to back, blipping through the open sky. Broken ripples in the spatial fabric tore into him like thirsty knives, shredding him to the bone as he rained red onto the canopy far below. It was agony — an all consuming itch of severed nerves, fraying muscle and crawling regeneration. He could never use the spell so close together in a fight — but fleeing was another matter.

Gravity took hold, pulling him to the earth until the first cracking boom ripped through the sky. Flung like a ballista bolt, Kaius lurched in the direction of his friends, casting again and again until the wind howled through his ears and he felt like he was forcing his way through water.

Not bothering to maintain his height, he kept a close eye on the rapidly approaching canopy, ready to use his secondary activations of Shunt to cushion his landing. 

Leagues from his original point, Kaius violently arrested his descent with a thunderclap of layered spells — a cloud of birds erupting around him in a shrieking panic. He dropped onto the highest branch road, immediately leaping to a lower level of the canopy. The noise didn’t worry him. In a jungle full of tier three and four essence creatures, a few loud bangs weren’t anything out of the ordinary.

“I escaped,” he said through his bond.

“Yeah, I heard — did it notice you?”

Kaius glanced back the way he had come, scanning the distant clifftops. He spotted the beast, silhouetted against the sky as it scanned the distant jungle below. It must have heard him — but it wasn’t following.

“It’s searching, but it’s still at the top of the cliffs. Find somewhere to wait and i’ll join you soon.”

He moved, heading closer to his team. They weren’t far — just a league or two.

….

Kaius scampered his way up the trunk of a jungle giant, digging his fingers into the cracks in the bark, and leaping from branch to branch. Quickly, he pulled himself up onto one of the massive branch roads that sprawled through the canopy, pushing his way through a dense curtain of leaves.

His team were waiting for him, sitting patiently as they rested in a sheltered nook.

“Hey!” Kaius said, taking a seat and pulling a waterskin from his ring. He was parched after his rapid flight — the dry desert air had ripped every scrap of moisture from him.

Kenva grinned at him, before she raised her brow at the clean slits in his scalemail — and the healthy coating of dried blood. Most of it was already flaking off, purged by the enchantments.

“I see you manage to escape in one piece,” she said slowly.

Kaius snorted. “Mostly. It got close a few times — I nearly lost my leg again. The things’ blades cut through just about everything like it was paper. Scornplane was the only thing that could slow it down, and I burned through all of them in the first clash.”

“Still breathing, that means you won,” Porkchop said, nudging him in the shoulder. A moment later, he whipped his head to Kenva. “Alright, he’s back now — so tell us what these monstrous Treasures we nabbed are.”

“Good to know where your allegiances lie,” Kaius said, shaking his head.

“You almost lost your leg. Almost. That means you're fine and I get to ask about the loot.”

Kaius rolled his eyes. “Thanks for waiting, at least.”

“My pleasure — it was good to watch them sweat,” Kenva said, unclasping the Voidvault with a click. She pulled free a shard of rosenite, the forearm-sized crystal lighting up their surroundings with a soft yellow light as potent energy washed over them.

Ianmus’s eyes went glassy for a moment, then his brow shot up his face. “Holy shit!”

“Can someone use their gods’ damned words and tell me what it does!”

“It’s Charged Rosenite,” Kaius explained. “Each one will let us evolve an extra General Skill when we hit our next Class.”

Porkchop froze, staring at the Treasure in disbelief. Kaius could see the shard gleaming in the reflection of his eye — almost like he wanted to snatch it up right then and there.”

“By the Matriarchs,” Porkchop said softly. “Did we get all of them.”

Kaius and Kenva both winced, looking pained.

“Not quite,” Kenva said.

“Half,” Kaius added. “There’s another six — we got chased off and had to abandon them. The creature noticed the energy levels dropping in the cave. Phased out of the damn wall, I just about had a heart attack.”

Porkchop let out a pained groan, slumping down.

“Not really much we can do about it,” Kenva said, depositing the treasure again. The energy it gave off was a bit too potent for them to leave in the open for long before they consumed them — none of them were in a particularly ready state to deal with another Platinum essence creature coming down on their head.

“Are you sure?” Ianmus asked, still looking a little shocked. “I mean…an extra Skill evolution. If that’s not worth the risk, I don’t know what is?”

“Gods’ no,” Kenva said. “That thing was terrifying.”

“I hate to say it, but we’d get slaughtered,” Kaius agreed. “Six of the damn things is a massive haul as it is.”

“Doesn’t feel like it when we only got half,” Porkchop grumbled.

Kaius sighed and shuffled over to lean on his brother’s arm. Gods did he know that — but their avarice didn’t really change much. Not everything turned about perfect, and they’d still done well. Besides, they’d barely survived taking the first batch, and Kaius had no doubt the mantis-thing would be ready for them to come back.

“We should absorb them soon,” Kaius said. “There’s no point waiting, and I don’t think its worth waiting until the next tier, since we’re aiming for Epic. Every extra skill we can raise to that rank will be a massive boon to our capabilities."

“Here?” Kenva asked.

“Let’s give it time for things to die down a bit. We can absorb them before we get on the move.”

“And where to?” Ianmus asked. “These were our main goal, right? Do we just keep roving for more Treasures?”

Kaius shook his head. “We head back up to the top of the plateau. Though, we’ll probably want to keep circling it until we’re absolutely sure we won't run into a pink monstrosity halfway up. There’s a couple of things we need to check out up there.”

“Oh?” Kenva asked.

“I won’t ruin the surprise,” Kaius said with a grin.