306 The Forest Dungeon V : Power

When they say underground city, what do you imagine, is it a vast metropolis with huge sky scrapers and numerous technological and magical advancements. Maybe at one time this city was just that, a metropolis of glorious and impressive nature, now; all it was a bloody ruin it filled with monsters that could only have come out from the most screwed up nightmare. I was standing in front of the ruins of a city, and within those ruins was an army of monsters the likes of which I've never seen. And my target, seems to be a sort of crystal like man who was standing on top of a pyramid, overlooking the entire army.

The crystal man had two sides, half his body seemed to be made of ruby, blood red and sinister in it's color, and the other side was black, like obese obsidian. There was an aura from him that I have felt twice before, and that was from when Adein had given Nefisat's crystal to me, back when she was just a remnant of a dungeon core. And also from Soren himself, when he too was the dungeon core in charge of taking care of the monsters being bred underneath Ethernalia Leonis.

This was a dungeon core, but from the look of things, it was not as if he had two sides, it was more like two cores were actually joined together, as the black core seemed to be female in make up; with narrow eyebrows, full lips and long swaying hair. The red part was exactly what you would expect a man to be. Angular jaw line, side burns, and wide nose. Two dungeon cores one body, like the were conjoined twins and were just born this way.

But I didn't know what step to take next, to get to that dual dungeon core I had go fight an army of all the monsters I've faced so far, and this time many of them could actually fly. Normally given how powerful I already am, it would not be much of a problem for me to face an army of this size. But when said army has the ability to drain all of the power and strength within my body, then you would know that things were no longer as simple as they seem.

If I was going to hit these things, I had to do it in one fell swoop, and as such I had to bring to bear every ability, and skill I have in my arsenal, even those I've not even had the pleasure of using before. It's been quite a while, but I think it's about time I knew what my stat page looked like.

NAME:KAEL COR

• LEVEL 0: (0/100)(300M +)

• AGE: 20

• RACE: DHAMPIR: VAMPIRE/ DRACONIC NATURE SPIRIT

• RANK: SHADOWER: LEVEL:9/10

• CLASS: DRAGON KING(RUNE MASTER) +

• REALM: WEAVER(15THCIRCLE)/MIND(4THCIRCLE)

• STAT POINTS: 0

• STRENGTH: 990: TIER 9

• AGILITY: 900: TIER 9

• PHYSIQUE: 960: TIER 9

• MIND: 373: TIER 3

• SOUL: 511: TIER 5

SKILLS: PASSIVE

• [AURA MANIPULATION: LEVEL 1] ADVANCED

• [ROYAL AUTHORITY: LEVEL 1] BASIC

• [NATURE LORD: LEVEL 5] BASIC

• [SOUL LORD: LEVEL 1] BASIC

SKILLS: ACTIVE

• [WEAVE: LEVEL 6] ADVANCED

• [SANGUINA'S CRYSTAL: LEVEL 2] BASIC

• [COMBINE SKILL: LEVEL N/A] MASTERED

BLOODLINE SKILLS:

• SOUL GUARDIAN: (1/1)

• DRAGON BORN

• SOUL MASTER

SPELLS:

• RIPPLE SHIELD: CIRCLE 0

• PROJECTION: CIRCLE 0

• SOUL BIND: CIRCLE 0

RACIAL SKILLS:

• ALLURE(VAMPIRE)

• BLOOD MANIPULATION(VAMPIRE)

• AURA(VAMPIRE)

• TURN(VAMPIRE)

• SHADOW WALK(VAMPIRE)

• DARKNESS (VAMPIRE)

• SCALES(DRAGON)

• SOUL FLAME(DRAGON)

• GOLDEN FLAMES OF JUDGMENT (DRAGON)

SOUL RUNES:

• [BREAK/SHIELD/PUSH/PULL/HEAL/DREAM/SUMMON]

POWER CREST(II):

• [COMMUNICATION/SENSING/MINOR TELEPORTATION]

• MISSIONS: 1

I'm sure the army of monster in front of me already noticed my presence. But none of the could imagine how incredibly stupid I felt right now, or maybe it wasn't really my fault. I've been so damn busy taking care of wars and saving the Nephilim that I had completely neglected my personal growth, even to the point of not using abilities I knew I had when the situation called for it. Plus I was a complete level zero, with all of the experience I've gotten from the war being stored to help me level up when I was ready. But I had completely ignored the change to my stats page ever since my Awakening, and I might have paid quite a significant price for that oversight.

I couldn't start leveling up now, not when there's a fight right in front of me. And to be honest, that phrase left a bad taste in my mouth, because the idea of leveling up means that truly my entire life here has been nothing but a game, Earth's game. And it was becoming increasingly annoying to keep playing it, but either way I guess it was about time we got this party started.

I activated my bloodline skill dragon born. It's the very skill that gives me half draconic features, and increases my current strength by a factor of two. Though it's a mode I'm unable to sustain for very long, as I've discovered in past battles, that the transformation was quite taxing on my body. The process of completely and magically rewriting my genetic make up, giving me the ability to gown horns, a tail and scales on my body; was definitely not simple. The amount of energy needed for that alone would kill a vampire at the Nosferatu rank.

As soon as I finished the change, I called out my armor, and watched it cover my entire body. My armor was looking a lot different than normal, the normal dark blue, red and golden scheme was completely gone, instead I was decked head to toe in a black armor that made me look like a villain out of a fantasy movie, which if you think about it, is quite similar to my situation. The only explanation for the color change would probably be that the armor had recognized the darkness in my heart, and had changed to match it. After all the armors Malek made, grew with their users, and it changed and adopted according to their users state of mind and character.

Whatever I'm going to do to get past all this monsters, has to be powerful and shockingly so. I had to get rid of them in one fell swoop, and that was something I'm sure I was more than capable of doing. I had really powerful and primal energies flowing within me, and I have learnt how powerful those energies could be when they're pooled together. I've not really learnt how to combine them properly, but that was mainly because I lost access to the Ether and Mana, and I've not been in too many situations where it is required for me to combine all those energies and cause a scale of destruction capable of completely restructuring the lay of the land.

But I was ready, after all what was that saying; there's no time like the present. I looked at Soren and gave him the signal to move back a bit, away from the blast range of the carnage I was sure was going to come raining down at my commands. While there are many skills I've not used before, even a soul rune too. The ones I'm about to use right now, is about as powerful as I could get without fully mastering all my abilities. But it should be enough, I hope it's enough. I've learnt the hard way about how powerful these creatures are, and a head on fight with these sheer amount was nothing more than suicide, no matter how powerful I am.

I weaved the rune for break on my sword, infusing it with soul energy as a massive rune circle showed up over my hand, with the draconic symbol for break glowing a deep red right in the middle of it. And then I sent my mental energy info it, and the sword began to vibrate. Buzzing softly as the energies within began to combine and clash with their improper union. But this was not the end, I was only just beginning.

The next to join was my Aura, that was easy, because right now I was feeling all sorts of messed up. There was anger, fear, anticipation and a great amount of spite. All those emotions pushed out into my sword as it's original blue glow turned grey and then black.But energies were not the only thing I would be using, I was also going to be using a variation of elements that until a few moments ago, my ignorance didn't let me know I had them. The first was my soul flames.

I don't know the head or tail of this dark blue flame that rushed down my hand and intertwined with the black energy currently bubbling on my sword, but I knew it was powerful. Because the moment it was added into the already volatile combination of energies, the glow on my sword grew brighter, and my hands started burning, peeling off my bones, and was in turn regenerated just as quickly only for it to burn off and heal again, causing me pain as the vicious cycle of birth and rebirth played out on my hands. There was one more element I could add to the mix, but at this point I knew that I had reached and gone last my limit for the amount of energy and elements I could combine. Any more and I would just destroy myself instead.

I grabbed my sword with both hands and flapped my wings, taking myself higher until I had a good enough vantage point where I could see all of my opponents. There were thousands of them, and each and every single one of them had broken into a run, or taken flight, heading straight for me with murder in their gaze. I wanted to attack, but I felt so exhausted, it was taking all my attention to focus my energies and keep wings flapping so that I could stay airborne. I couldn't lift the sword to slash it at the incoming wave of enemies, I was much to tired and drained.

With every second that I hesitated, they drew closer and closer until I gritted my teeth and just let my wings go. As I fell from the sky, I muttered the strength to swing my sword at the incoming horde, watching as a beam of black and blue energy flew forward, like the blast from an atom bomb. There was a loud explosion, but at this point I couldn't really tell what was happening next, only that I lost consciousness before I hit the ground, and then the world went white.

*BOOOOM!!!!*

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Soren could not even keep his balance as he was swept away by the power of the blast. It might be too late to say it, but his master had made a mistake. This attack of his was too powerful, too destructive. So much so that it had completely leveled the underground city, turning everything to rubble, and blowing up the rocky ceiling above the city itself, exposing it for the first time ever to the outside world.

Soren watched as all these happened powerless to stop it, he watched helplessly as rocks upon rocks fell on the body of his master burying him alive beneath the earth. Soren could feel him, and he could feel his life force grow weaker and weaker and then flare up like a flame with kerosene doused on it. There used to be ruins of an old city here, but as Soren shook himself from the debris, stretching the joints of his golden body he realized that there were no ruins anymore, just one big giant hole on the ground.

Soren was in awe at the scale of destruction laid before him, it was as if someone had decided to scoop out a huge part of the earth, leaving behind a hole three times the size of Ethernalia Leonis. All that was left was dust and rubble, and his master was still buried under all of it.