As Zane trekked through the Plains, he came across a muscled obsidian menace. A Void Mamba. Its crescent fangs tore reality in thin hissing lines, and Zane had heard the venom of their strongest—their Nest Kings—could trouble even Rhinos.
But the beast he met was not their strongest. The thing only had one Bone. It wasn't much trouble—it barely got him under 75%.
After that, the Blast Eagles and the Sun Lion eyeing him gave him a wide berth. He had a clear path to the Dragon's Teeth Peaks.
The Plains were broken up into giant floating asteroid chunks. He hopped between them as though they were lily pads, following the paths of an icefall—a winding river going upstream, rising into waterfalls as it bridged asteroids before continuing its long, winding journey. Higher and higher he leaped.
The biomes shifted suddenly here. It wasn't like on Earth, where things might have gotten rockier and rockier until he looked around and suddenly there weren't any trees anymore. At some invisible line, the floating islands simply stopped being Plains islands. They took on the shapes of dragon's teeth.
Each was a little jagged pyramid of dark gray stone and buried steel. Electric-white crystals cropped up all over, crystals that crackled with an inner lightning. Peak Tier 5 and Tier 6 Laws seethed within. They exploded at the slightest touch.
He forged on, treading carefully. The beasts were starting to change too, he noticed. There wasn't much heavy anymore, like a Rhino or Elephant. Instead, most things here were either lithe and lean, or endowed with big wings.
The first things he saw perched in the distance were One-Eyed Vultures; they eyed him suspiciously. But these were lower down on the pecking order.
By the time he'd gotten a few bounds in, a dozen stronger auras had locked onto him.
It seemed every time he entered new territory, he had to show where he stood on that pecking order. Show whether he was predator or prey. Or else something might decide he looked tasty.
He kept bounding up, launching off jagged pyramid-island after jagged pyramid-island, each a little mountain building up to the vague shape of a vast, shattered mountain.
It wasn't long before the first beast took a crack at him.
𝔽𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕝 𝔾𝕠𝕒𝕥𝕞𝕒𝕟
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟝𝟠𝟠
A beast with a goatlike head, complete with ram's horns, and thick human legs. It dashed down from the peaks, shrieking its fury, brandishing a bone cudgel carved in the shape of a skull.
It seemed intent on braining Zane with it.
The trouble is, this beast had decided to engage him in a straight melee battle.
This tended to be a very bad idea.
The cudgel slammed down—and he caught it clean in one fist. Felt the shock of it rippling through his palm, dissipating into his bones.
There was some Law there—something to do with heavy shattering and earthquake tremors—but Zane had eaten so much steel by now it'd take a hell of a blow to move him.
The goatman tried unleashing its domain, a crashing wave of earth-Laws. But Solar Flare burned right through it, bringing its attack to a rather sudden halt.
It had a moment to blink at him.
Then Zane gave it his answer.
He rammed a Solar Flare Punch into its chest with enough force to tremble the whole asteroid.
The goatman hacked out a gob of spittle, slitted goat-eyes widening.
Then he roared, wound all the way back, and uppercutted the beast straight into the stratosphere.
He saw its body explode up like a rocket—hurled at rocket-like speeds, sustained on the force of the blast. It trailed smoke for a mile or two, tracing a pleasant arc, before it vanished in a wink.
It'd live. That fellow was small fry—not worth his effort. He wasn't much interested in taking down weaklings. But he hoped he got the message across.
He looked around at the nearby peaks.
A few Emperor Eagles were perched there. They looked kind of like bald eagles to Zane, only bearing majestic silver crowns. They gave him a long intense stare, but in the end, they didn't come after him; they soared off after weaker prey.
He'd gotten his point across.
It was a good thing, too.
He didn't want to tire himself out before the big fight. He caught a glimpse of that Emperor Eagle diving. It screeched, folding its wings. It seemed to become a lance of silver light, immaterial; when it moved it hardly disturbed the air. Like it was teleporting—yet also arriving with momentum. It ripped through a Vulture below with devastating force. The two went tumbling, crashing through a chain of tooth-islands.
Zane, meanwhile, kept on ambling along.
The rest of the way went mostly unbothered. There was a different code in these Wilds. A different way of life. To live here was to accept being constantly hunter or prey. It did more than temper the mettle of a beast; he figured it'd change how you thought about life and death.
Most beasts here went for broke. Fought with all their heart; none took any day, any fight, for granted. Beasts did everything hard here.
Even the Titan Rhinos, who were pretty chill by nature, it seemed to Zane—their attitude toward life and death stood out to him. It was rather like his own feelings about it. For the Rhinos, it simply meant joining their ancestors; joining the Great Herd. They wouldn't want to die, of course. But they didn't take it too hard.
Most Rhinos he'd heard were more concerned with how they went out—fighting—than whether they went out.
It was pretty astounding the amount of Gods' blood that spilled here every day. He watched the Emperor Eagle soar off, shrouded in golden essence-light—the essence of the Vulture it'd just taken down.
The other side of it was true, too, he thought. Die fast, and grow fast too.
He thought about how long folks like Chief Nog or Shaman Guri had been around. Or the Barbarian Sage, now he thought of it.
It took a special kind of beast to make it that long in the Desolate Wilds.
He leaped over an abandoned nest and kept going.
The fragment was growing hot in his fist.
He kicked up the next island-mountain. He was getting near the clouds now—a darkening carpet of mists; lightning crackled in the distance, clawing at nearby peaks, sending stone showering in displays of raw power.
He was getting close. He could feel it.
The trail of Corruption grew stronger by the second. The fragment got warmer still, but he hardly needed to pay attention to it anymore.
He could sense his quarry in the Astral Plane. He had the scent.
He followed it, breathing heavier, bounding between mountains in a swift zigzag.
He was nearing the peak of the whole of the Dragons' Teeth Peaks now. Air was in short supply here, and those exploding crystals had gotten as big as human heads. They studded the ground all over.
Then—right up ahead, on the highest tooth-island, he saw it.
Giant lumps of very pale flesh, stitched together into a figure nearly as big as the island it stood on, like an albino Frankenstein's monster. Breathing quite heavily. Ugly jagged runes were carved down every inch of its flesh, except for a shaggy oily head. Its hands were big enough to crush a skull in a fist.
Chains wrapped those hands. Prisoner's chains, largely broken but still clinging on in places. Chunks of them trailed its legs too, remnants of the things that bound it. He saw deep holes—scars—where stakes must've been. Scars on its wrists where cuffs might've been.
Most striking, though, was the pillar of steel still inside of it. An enormous spike spearing it all the way through, running through its back—piercing right where its heart should've been.
If it bothered the Scourge Prince at all, he didn't show it.
Even from this distance, Zane could sense a towering immensity of aura, of vitality, streaming out of it.
Come to think of it—it was a lot like how Zane felt to other creatures.
Only Vitality wasn't quite right. It felt like vitality, but off somehow. In the way a taxidermied animal, seen up-close, doesn't feel quite like the real thing. There was something of the soul that was missing from this hulking Monster.
Its flesh gave Zane a weird feeling. A strange mist rose from it and the Astral Plane, neither hot nor cold. Something other, drawing from somewhere Beyond.
It was feasting on a nest with eggs the size of grown men. They were all cracked and oozing. Nearby lay the corpse of a Lightning Dragon, discarded—once a peak Minor God beast, now crushed almost beyond recognition. Pummeled, judging by how badly it'd been mashed. Its neck had been broken by what looked like a single hand.
𝔾𝕙𝕠𝕝, 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕓𝕚𝕕𝕕𝕖𝕟 𝕆𝕟𝕖 (𝕄𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣 ℙ𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕔𝕖)
𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟝𝟡𝟠
The Monster had two Monstrous Bones—one of them a 100,000-year bone, and a strong one at that. The other a 10,000-year bone.
That, combined with the Bloodline radiating off of it…
He could already tell this thing would be on another level from anything he'd ever faced.
He smiled just thinking of it—and stepped up to the fight.