Chapter 174: Chapter 174: Those Who Came Before

 

My scale-flesh quivered in anticipation. My mouth watered in the overwhelming need to taste the Lesser Core on my tongue. The urge had been growing for a while now, only cast aside due to the distraction of the disciples’ fight. Now, back in my own body and moving ever closer to the source of my hunger, it came in full force; like the bite of a bad-thing or the heat of fire-water, it was impossible to ignore.

Impossible to ignore, too, was the knowledge that it wasn’t just anticipation sending tingling vibrations down my scale-flesh.

No, the fear wasn’t something that I could pretend didn’t affect me - even if I wished it didn’t exist at all. Some part of it felt wrong, like it was a sacrilegious emotion that I shouldn’t have let myself have. I was the Great Core’s chosen - no, created - Champion. My faith should have been stronger than this.

I should have been fearless, my emotions unassailable with the assurance that my origins brought me; I was nowhere near it.

I was afraid.

Terribly, terribly afraid.

My body trembled again, causing the ore-flesh wrapped around me to scrape against stone. I was buried in the rubble that marked the entrance to the lair, waiting for my opportunity to move closer. The useless moving-wall remained open and defeated, its battered corpse forming an inviting path that most would have taken.

I, however, was more careful than that. Even if most of the Lesser Core’s defenses were provided by the Little Puppeteers and those stolen by the spore-mist, it wouldn’t be all of them. Yet, at the same time, the Lesser Core’s defenses wouldn’t be undefeatable either. It was crippled by its nature - both as an innately inferior Core and one that didn’t create bad-things that could move about easily. Whatever traps lay within could likely be found, given enough time.

The wall-crack vibrated around me again, the motion stronger than before. Not from me, but from something else. The rubble that formed my chosen passageway shifted about, pinching at my flesh. It was the same tremors that had unbalanced Will and nearly cost him his life; they were becoming more common, more noticeable.

Just another thing to urge me onwards, to tempt me into slithering through the Lesser Core’s lair and throw caution aside - because whether the Lesser Core or something else was the cause, I doubted that it was anything good.

Despite that, I waited until it finally happened. The gem within my mouth pulsed again, shadowy tendrils shoving themselves down my throat. My flesh became ethereal - and I went straight through the wall, eschewing the need for any real passage and urging my spore-roots to push me as quickly as they could.

It was more effective than I expected. Between the near-weightlessness of my shadowy form, the increased speed provided by the ore-flesh clasped around me, and the strength of the vigor-infused spores themselves…

I shot through the solid surface with only a hint of resistance, finding myself in the Lesser Core’s lair - yet far further inside than I had wanted to be, gliding through the air as if held afloat by wings.

Looking down, I could only pray that the gem’s effect wouldn’t fade before I touched the ground.

Still, the temporary flight gave me a chance to look around the Lesser Core’s lair in more detail, secure in the fact that I was all but invulnerable until I wasn’t - whenever that happened to be. Hopefully not anytime soon.

The lair was eerily quiet, though I wasn’t sure what else I could have expected. Being bad-things formed from plant-flesh, a creation of the Lesser Core was unlikely to be anything but quiet. They didn’t growl or snarl or roar; they just waited silently in the way that plant-flesh did.

What I certainly hadn’t expected, however, was what else I saw. Looking back, the destruction of the moving-wall should have been a sign. Useless as they were, moving-walls didn’t destroy themselves.

They just stood there helplessly while other things destroyed them.

That same other had swept their way through the Lesser Core’s lair, a flurry of death and destruction. Ruptured and rotting plant-flesh was strewn across the room, flung about in the course of the battle. It all led to the center of the lair, to a single figure and two sources of light - one wrapped around the destruction’s source and the other atop an ornately carved pedestal.

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The Lesser Core and the Coreless that had come close to defeating it.

The gem within my jaws started to sputter, shadowy tendrils losing their hold on my flesh. I bit down a little harder, hoping that it would help eke out just a tiny bit more of its power. Maybe it did, but it hardly helped. I was forced to the ground quicker than I’d have liked, spore-roots bringing me back down again only moments before I was brought fully back into reality.

Luckily, the battlefield that was the Lesser Core’s lair was safer than I had expected, cleared of most dangers before I could even arrive.

The dead Coreless had made sure of that. She was the same size as The Grateful One, for all the destruction that she had caused. Giant compared to me, of course, but smaller in the way that Coreless females tended to be. Her body was covered in the same type of ore-flesh as the corpse outside, marking them as allies, the only difference being the innumerable skin-mouths that lined her waist - each filled to the brim with something or another, the items bulging out ranging anywhere from a thin skin-sheet covered in markings to small circles of ore-flesh. Even the gem set into her chest was the same, though this one had survived the fight almost entirely unscathed.

The Coreless herself had not.

A single glance was all it took to see why. The slender tip of a darkwood root had thrust upwards from the ground like a spike - and then thrust through her body, too. The Coreless had her hand pressed against the Core itself, her body held upright by the root that had ended her life.

Touching victory, but tasting death.

It was a morbid reminder to not be overconfident; the Core, lesser though it may be, had a powerful Guardian. One that had been able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. I froze in place, spore-roots holding me steady. I wasn’t sure how the darkwood’s attack had been triggered, but I knew that an attack would kill me just as surely as it killed the female Coreless. More surely, in fact. I knew my strengths, and survivability was far from being one of them.

Still, I was light. Light enough that, frozen in place as I was, whatever method the darkwood used to detect her - if one even existed and it hadn’t been just poor luck that had brought about the Coreless’ death - was unlikely to notice me. For at least a short while, I was probably safe.

The ground trembled again, the echoing sound of fracturing stone more prominent than ever. With my scale-flesh pressed against the ground as it was, I could get a faint sense of where it had come from. Whatever was causing it was, fortunately, elsewhere within the many-nest - which meant that it could be dealt with later.

Later, when the Great Core’s victory had been secured at last.

I just needed the shadow-gem to activate again so that I could move safely. I was almost certain that the Coreless had done the same, avoiding most of the Lesser Core’s bad-things through the captured mana of another. Even whole, the gem’s power wouldn’t have been perfect; if it had been, I wouldn’t be surrounded by the remnants of battle. The Coreless could have phased past any danger without even triggering any of the bad-things’ defenses.

Clearly, that didn’t happen. Even if it had, she would have still been forced to materialize herself in order to grab the Core - that part, based on the way that she had died, had happened. Then, just when she was at the cusp of victory, she found defeat.

I wouldn’t let the same happen to me.

My mind became sharper, razor-focused on the gem held within my mouth. Its oily scent-taste filled my senses, bits of shadowlike mana occasionally slipping out of the cracked surface. It wasn’t enough to shift my body into shadow, more of a tentative touch than the forceful conversion that I was waiting for. Everything began to fade, lost in the midst of my patient concentration. In the back of my mind, I noticed the ground trembling again. It was distracting, rubbing against my scale-flesh almost incessantly.

Then, finally, it stopped and I could focus again.

A wave of [FEAR] came from the Coreless of the many-nest, a flood of [PANIC] that shattered my concentration.

At the same time, the gem activated itself again, reforming me in the image of a near-weightless shadow.