Forged By The Apocalypse - A LitRPG With Draconic Potential

An ocean of malice was unleashed as Mortesax unstoppered his soul and let the virulent energies within tear their way out. A battle raged, if you could call it that. It was as much a battle as a man standing on the shore kicking back the waves was a fight. A flickering soul was buffeted around by tides of death and darkness. The magic demanded capitulation to the inevitable end, and the soul rejected this truth.

In the waking world, the Elite dungeon was completed and the four conscious men in the room hesitated. The bodies on the floor did not stir, and after a few minutes of hopeful waiting, the lich’s body was collected into a soul space. The rewards from the dungeon were gathered, but no one could touch the body still laying on the hard floor of the catacomb cavern beneath the throne room. The energies coming from the statuesque form of Grant Kaeron were deadly.

Outside the dungeon, the results of the completed quest were immediately visible. There were cheering the shelters, and wailing in the streets as those who could not get to protection realised they had survived. Nolan Grey hugged his daughters, and the defenders of Londimin fell to the ground in exhaustion. All except for one.

From within a smouldering crater, the guardian fairy of Londimin shot like a laser. A streak of energy punched through the air from broken satellite to twisted antenna, the path of least resistance on her way to the Elite dungeon. Even before the main battle was over, Naea had blown through her mana reserves like crazy to finish off the boss monster. Her tenuous connection to Grant had opened wide unexpectedly, even though he remained in the dungeon for now.

She could feel Grant, and he was as feeble as a candle flame within a desert of desolation.

With a few gashes from the thorns for her trouble, she had frantically uprooted the Wriggling Rafflesia and actually had received a Guidance Stone for her troubles. Her mind was racing, but there was no sense in using it now. She had access to Fairy Dragon and Rivers for her Guidance Stone to attach to, and neither were likely to combine with the stone of Seeding to create a worthwhile effect. By the time she arrived at the dungeon, she was shivering, her heart smashing against her chest like a hummingbird.

There was a crowd of people around the entrance. Naea noticed the armoured form of Seth looking relatively catatonic on the floor as she tackled the dungeon’s barrier. Now that it was complete, the entrance was shut firm until everyone inside left or the dungeon resolved itself. As an Elite dungeon, it would remain here permanently even upon completion.

So she needed to get inside.

Access Denied - Dungeon Instance Ongoing

“Fuck. You.” Naea pressed harder, ignoring the pointing and confusion from below. No one here mattered but Grant. She screeched with effort as the net around the dungeon continued to push her away. In an instant, her ire evolved and changed direction from frustration as the Elite dungeon’s rules to absolute fury at the System itself. “How fucking dare you?”

She was born of the System, to work for the System. It was only in this most dire moment that Naea realised how much Grant had freed her from its clutches. She, like the billions of other dungeon fairies, was created whole cloth from the mana of the System to do its work. Guide others, help them gain strength and then disappear as the plane of existence you had been granted was defeated and demolished to make room for more. With horror, she realised the name of her birth was prophetic. She had been made as a prisoner within the dungeon she called her home.

Grant had not seen her as a monster, nor an asset to be taken advantage of. He had immediately and without restraint brought Naea into his soul and made a home for her within. He had saved her from imprisonment in a doomed dungeon. Now it was her turn. Something had happened, and Grant was hanging on by a thread. With heavy, Dao infused punches, Naea rallied against the barrier.

“Help me!” She called out, desperate. The people below were slow to move, most of them uselessly hovering around Seth’s comatose body. Whatever Grant had done to him, it would be fine for another five minutes. “The person who saved your shitty town is dying inside here. Help me!”

Rhythmically, Naea smashed against the Elite dungeon. Each time she did, the System reminded her that she was denied entry. With each kick or punch against the barrier, falling like rain on concrete, the System told her it forbade her from saving her partner. Each pause she took highlighted the growing emptiness projecting from Grant. Naea barely noticed when the crowd below began to add their strength to her’s, paltry as they were. Initially, at least.

A single, mundane fist was nearly as weightless as a feather these days. A single person could now be stronger than ten had been before the Shift, doing the work of those same people with more speed and acuity than the others combined. There were many unlevelled and low-levelled people milling around the Elite dungeon. The cooks, builders and scouts who were gifted safety by the actions of others moved first. Instinctively, they were excited for the opportunity to do something.

Naea understood the feeling all too well. All she wanted to do right now was something. Anything. If she had to storm through the dungeon on her own, haggard as she was, she would do it for Grant. It would be easy, so long as it was to help him. The people below weren’t aware of the depths Grant had gone to for them, but Naea’s fervent cry spurred them to action all the same. Naea found herself supported by the strength from below her position.

It was just for an instant. Just a single iota of a moment, but exactly what Naea had been waiting for. Luck, desperation and the exact right amount of strength combined to give her the window she was searching for. The crack was tinier than a pinprick, but it was enough. Activating Sparkstep, Naea launched herself into the chip in the barrier. It wasn’t wide enough, even as a being of energy and light, for Naea to push through. The System’s rules still held her back.

No.

She rejected the System. She rejected the idea that there were controls on her beyond her own choices. The fury which had been bubbling grew to new magmatic heights as she rallied against the very source of her birth. The font from which all strength in the universe flowed from, and it had made itself her enemy. If she had energy to spare, she might have smiled and made a joke about how Grant was a terrible influence, but instead she fought.

She fought because it’s what Grant would have done.

Inside the dungeon, Naea’s entrance was heralded by the sound of shattering glass. Like a planet-sized chandelier had fallen onto a larger, sun-sized floor, the dungeon shuddered. Naea scorched through the Elite dungeon like a beam of light, ignoring the walls in her way like they weren’t there. To her, they might as well not have been. The dungeon was far too large, so she shortened the distances with a thought. Her eyes flicked to the System prompt which had appeared but she ignored it. She could focus on that later.

First she had to find Grant.

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Access Granted - Dungeon Administrator Privileges Unlocked

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I was adrift. The damage from Mortesax’ final act of petulance had been done, and there was no recourse. For all the shadows I had faced, each different form of darkness I had experienced in the recent past, the current emptiness was a true end. All I had left was pain, and the anger that this damage had been inflicted upon me. In truth, I barely remembered why I was in such a state. Only oblivion extended onwards, non-existence trickling out behind me.

It was a storm of such calamitous force that the strength I garnered from it seemed antithetical. Dao was no simple thing, however. A gargantuan rock was teetering over my head, but I had the piece of paper to counter it. A flimsy excuse, a reach of potential which broached the ridiculous… and yet, it worked. Burdens and pressure were no new thing, I just had a lot of intense experience with them since the System arrived. Even before it had, I was weathering storms of doubt and fear on a daily basis.

The same principle which pushed me then gave me strength now. If the question was “will you endure?” Then my answer was always, always “yes.” The Dao of Tempests hadn’t been created simply by the combination of the Dragon and Water, but my own ideals and they were fiercely needed right now. I had no mana to use because the fragment of my consciousness which remained was not the body. Mana was a physical resource as much as the burning energy of stamina was physical.

Dao was not constrained in that way. In the fine pinprick of existence I struggled to maintain, I could actively feel the various System effects bolstering my efforts. I found myself really wishing I had a Dao bound to Fortitude, but that was a problem for later. I focused on being grateful towards the Survivor achievement for bolstering my recovery, the Draconic Legacy achievement for decreasing negative effects and even Thick-Skinned was working due to the corrosive nature of the Dao of Death.

The System worked in places where my own skills couldn’t. Dao was not too dissimilar. Unlike mana which needed to be controlled and directed, or a fist which needed the same, Dao was the intent. By holding onto my psyche even to the smallest degree, the Dao I had cultivated within was at my disposal. The Tempest allowed me to brace against the overwhelming cyclone of anguish, despair and hate which Mortesax left behind. The Dao of the Dragon was my vessel to fight back.

From that single particle of me, that tiny portion of my soul that remained, the dragon erupted like a volcanic explosion. Burning, scalding, scorching life blazed into being within my core as I unleashed a conflagration of unfiltered power to incinerate the darkness which had taken hold. Like a vacuum, the empty space caused by Mortesax’s attack had been filled with a gummy, oily Nothingness. I didn’t understand the composition of this voidstuff, but I knew how to get rid of it.

Pure, unadulterated power.

For what seemed like an eternity, I became the searing sun of my own cosmos. Piece by piece, I uncovered the hidden skies of my inner worlds and filled in the Nothing with my arcane applied knowledge. Like painting over black, I poured concentrated Dao through the filter of my eroded soul right back into the source, creating a loop of recovery. The shape of my core returned to its original health and I looked upon the work with pride. There was a new layer of definition to the space, courtesy of my latest burst of attention. This would strengthen the effect of my Dao in general.

Survival in the System always came with a reward. Still, I would have happily given other people the chance to take the pain and distress I had just been through, or had put myself through in the past. The fact that I was still alive was less skill and intelligence than dumb luck. Regardless, my impending death felt much further away by the time I stopped. The next issue was how to leave.

On cue, a burning comet shot into the sky, a trial of green and blue glitter following it as the molten rock blasted towards me. I welcomed it with open arms, positioning myself to meet my saving grace. She hit me hard, which I supposed I deserved. The tiny fragment of myself and the part of Naea she had fired into my core careened down to the world of the Dragon where our laughter and sobs mingled until we managed to calm down.

“Hey, little bug,” I smiled and cried. Naea’s healing magic opened a path from my soul to my body, and rejuvenated the broken form I was struggling to maintain. Truly, I wasn’t whole without her. Once my arms had appeared, I wrapped them around her tightly, her head laying on my chest.

“Stupid big ogre,” she whimpered, hitting her fist against me. On the shores of my inner world, we lay for a time. Her thoughts flowed into me and our split story merged once more.

Then I woke up.