Path of Dragons

Elijah slithered forward, staying low to the ground. It wasn’t strictly necessary. Guise of the Unseen was more than sufficient to keep him hidden. Yet, he felt that it helped relieve the burden on the ability. Perhaps it did, but Elijah chose not to play with proverbial fire. After all, he’d been doing things the same way since the very beginning, and he didn’t see any reason to try to fix something that wasn’t broken.

Regardless, neither of the Voxx he’d been stalking were aware of his presence. So, once he was close enough to the first, he used Predator Strike, then launched himself at the misshapen, red-scaled creature with all the fury he could muster. His jaws clamped down on the monster’s neck, crushing it in a single bite. The monster went limp, but before it could fall to the ground, Elijah was already moving.

Not with his feet, though.

Instead, he used Flicker Step.

Flicker Step

Slip into the shadows, emerging behind your opponent. Only usable while under the influence of Shape of the Predator. Cooldown based on Dexterity. Current: 61.2 Seconds.

He disappeared just before the monster’s fellow closed in on him. Then, he appeared directly behind the creature. He used Venom Strike, then leaped upon the creature’s back. His foreclaws dug into the thing’s shoulders, while his back claws cut the monster’s lower back to ribbons. Meanwhile, he clamped his jaws around its shoulder – he’d been aiming for the head, but it moved at the last second – crushing bone as his mouth closed on the hunk of meaty flesh. Then, he ripped it all free before bounding away.

Elijah hit a nearby rock, which he used to change direction as the monster sloppily pursued him. It hit the earthen bulwark with a crash, and Elijah darted in, slashing his claws across its legs before he once again broke away. It staggered after him, though with the effects of Contagion and Venom Strike, it was barely capable of maintaining its feet.

It would have bled out in a few more minutes, so the smart – and safe – strategy would have been to continue to run circles around the creature. Yet, his attack had more than one goal. In addition to ridding the world of the taint of the Voxx’s existence, Elijah had set out to test his newest skill.

He’d already done so almost a dozen times, but he’d found that it was far more difficult to use than many of his other abilities. The sudden teleportation was disorienting, and it required a very different sort of mindset to use it properly. So, while trekking through the desert wilderness, Elijah had searched for opportunities to practice. That meant he made slower progress in terms of distance traveled each day, but in his opinion, it was worth it.

Not regarding experience. He barely got any from these low-level Voxx. Instead, he knew he would need to be able to use Flicker Step as well as he used all of his other spells and abilities. And that meant practice.

Besides, every day he killed a few of the horrid Voxx was a good day.

Regardless, he wasn’t interested in letting the monster bleed out. Instead, he waited the sixty seconds necessary for Flicker Step to reset, then used it again. He didn’t subject it to the same volume of attacks as his first pass, but he did slash his claws across the backs of its legs a few times before darting away.

The creature continued to stumble mindlessly after him. He knew it wouldn’t last much longer. A minute or so, at most. Still, Elijah managed to get one more Flicker Step in before the monster keeled over.

With that, he settled down and examined the way his body felt. Using Flicker Step was taxing to his stamina. It wasn’t quite as bad as using Iron Scales – which had grown easier as he’d leveled and gained attributes – but it was definitely noticeable. As a result, even if the cooldown allowed for it, he couldn’t use it without cost.

But that was fine.

Elijah had long since accepted that nothing was free. Each of his abilities had a cost that was usually balanced against its cooldown and power. So, the fact that Flicker Step was limited was nothing unexpected.

And it was powerful. The key to making his draconid form work for him was mobility. Otherwise, the shape simply wasn’t capable of mitigating damage. Sure, it was slightly more durable than his human form, but that was just because of its scales. And given the power of some of the monsters he routinely fought – in rifts and towers, if not in the wilderness – meant that the difference counted for nothing. If he was consistently getting hit in either form, he was probably going to die.

So, having what was effectively a teleport – albeit one with limitations – was a game changer that he hoped would help him further develop his fighting abilities. At worst, it would allow him to load his enemies with even more afflictions.

As he shifted back into his human form, he had to admit that he was very happy with his new ability. Yet, he couldn’t help but look ahead. Getting new spells was addictive, and though he expected them to become more infrequent at some point, he still very much looked forward to whatever he would get at level seventy-five.

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And it was just around the corner, too. While he might not have gotten much experience for any individual kill, there were enough of them that the last Voxx had given him enough to push him over the edge to level seventy-three. Two more levels, and he would gain a new spell.

It was easy to understand how some people fell into the trap of pursuing progression above all else. He certainly didn’t condone killing the wildlife just for a bit of experience, but with every passing level, he’d begun to understand the mindset better.

Still, that wasn’t a path he could ever walk – not with a clean conscience, at least.

Pushing that aside, he continued on his way, leaving the pair of rapidly rotting corpses behind. As he did, most of his Mind – six of the nine facets – was focused on memorizing the pattern he intended to use for his Soul cultivation. Even after a week, it was still a long way off, but now that he had a goal in mind, it wasn’t nearly as frustrating.

It did highlight the other issue, though: there was nothing in the guide he’d bought concerning the cultivation of his Dragon Core. Certainly, there were sections that concerned generic Core cultivation. There was even a missive containing information on a Nature Core. But there was nothing about dragons.

Still, he did get some insight that he thought might help. The first step to any Core cultivation was cycling. Or, to put it more simply, dragging ethera into his core until he could hold no more, swirling it around, before expelling it. Over and over, thousands – if not millions – of times until, the quality began to improve. However, it would never do that unless the process was completed in an area with incredibly dense ethera.

Like his cultivation cave.

Even his grove might suffice.

But regardless, that was only the first step. There was nothing about how to push to the next, either. So, he resolved to ask for that specific bit of information when he returned to the leven city of Arvandor sometime in the future.

For now, though, it was all he could handle to focus on traveling through the wilderness while working on memorizing the pattern for his cultivated Soul. But it was certainly something to consider.

The biggest issue, as far as Elijah was concerned, was ignorance, but not in the way one would think. Instead, he was ignorant of what he didn’t know. Often, he was just stumbling around, grasping in the dark. Sometimes, he’d managed to grab hold of something worthwhile, but the fact was that, even with a resource like a Branch’s Knowledge Base, he needed to be pointed in the right direction.

There were a host of questions he didn’t even know to ask.

That was where the rest of humanity was supposed to pick up the slack. With thousands of people in one place, surely some of them would stumble upon some necessary bit of information. The law of averages basically demanded it, the presence of Librarians notwithstanding. It made one thing abundantly clear – he needed to branch out. He needed to socialize. He needed community.

Otherwise, he would always be groping around in the dark.

At some point, his ignorance would come back to bite him, he was certain. He needed to get serious about heading that off at the pass.

To that end, he finally remembered to turn his attention to the Ring of Anonymity. More than once, it had gotten him into trouble. So, he’d chosen to do something about that. He didn’t want to discard the item altogether. It was still potentially useful. And he also didn’t want to walk around advertising that he was one of the top five most powerful people in the world. That would invite challenge, and it would bring unwanted attention.

Elijah intended to avoid that.

Fortunately, there was a happy medium that he thought would satisfy his requirements. He’d learned in Valosta that there were some classes that could hide their information, even from people with appropriate skills. In that small town, which saw plenty of travelers, it wasn’t even uncommon. So, Elijah figured that he could simply use the anonymous option on his ring.

He also shorted the displayed name to simply Eli.

That would hopefully keep people out of his business. And if not, he had plenty of ways to respond to any challenge.

So, he continued on through the desert, surprised that the terrain hadn’t changed. By his reckoning, he shouldn’t have been far from Seattle. And yet, the region was as arid as any desert. In fact, it still looked a lot like the American southwest, which shouldn’t have been possible. Of course, it was explicable the same way everything else was – magic. Or ethera, to be more accurate. The world had transformed, and the terrain had been randomized. As a result, many regions had been set down in completely different environments.

But did the area immediately turn to desert? Or did the vegetation slowly die, giving in to the arid climate? The latter didn’t seem possible, given that only four years had passed. Yet, the former wasn’t either. So, Elijah kept turning back to magic. Without having lived through it, there was no way to know. Perhaps the natives would.

Those thoughts occupied him over the next couple of days until, at last, he crested a hill and saw his destination.

Elijah had grown up near Seattle, so he knew the skyline extremely well. Even though he hadn’t seen the city in years – the time since the world’s transformation notwithstanding – he should have recognized everything.

But he didn’t.

There were landmarks he recognized. The Space Needle still stood. So did a few of the skyscrapers. He even saw Lumen Field, where the Seahawks had once played. But so many other familiar buildings had clearly fallen. And in the center of the city rose a giant mesa.

As expected, there was no shoreline in the area. In fact, the humidity had dropped precipitously with every day over the past week. And it had already been a desert. So, it was easily the dryest place Elijah had ever been. Still, in the area surrounding the city, there were dozens of huge container ships that had fallen onto their sides. It looked as if the water had simply disappeared, leaving the ships behind.

On bare feet, he continued forward at a slight incline of what had once been the seafloor, passing the graveyard of ships with no small degree of caution. But the derelict vessels were clearly abandoned, and the hulls had been used for salvage, with large portions of the thick steel having been cut free. It was an odd sight, though one Elijah should have expected. Ships were treasure troves of salvageable material, and the people of Seattle had had plenty of time to take whatever they needed.

Soon, he’d passed through the collection of ships, and he saw a large wall, which had clearly been built from the wreckage of the fallen buildings. About a mile from the city, he found a wide highway which was mostly intact. As Elijah followed it, he saw plenty of abandoned cars. They’d all been stripped of anything worthwhile, as far as he could tell. But he was no mechanic, so he didn’t know enough to say for sure.

However, as shocking as the area was, Elijah was even more surprised when he saw a black shape zooming toward him. Initially, he thought it was a bird or some other sort of animal, but as it came closer, he saw it for what it was – a commercial drone.

His first instinct was to tear it out of the sky with a well-aimed cast of Storm’s Fury, but he restrained himself. The thing didn’t seem dangerous, and as he’d already established, he didn’t want to draw too much attention. So, he gave the drone a lazy wave as he continued toward the city.

It turned around a few moments later, heading back toward the city. Elijah followed it.

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