Chapter 28 – A stony problem

Saying that the forests of Beholder's Eye are known to man would be a huge overstatement. Hunters have explored most of outer forests, but dark forests and even more so inner forests are dangerous territories way too large to find all their wonders and oddities. Not to mention how much of them are known to wider public. And most of those oddities are rare evolutions of monsters.

Inner forests in particular, even more so than dark forests, are hard to map out because of their structure. The first layer of the forest is made of huge entwined roots, vines and... branches of smaller vegetation pierced by huge trunks and with round, twisted tunnels of varying width between them. Some of them are largely overgown and some look freshly made, and most definitely not made this way by the trees alone but by something else. The second layer, which is a few tens of meters above actual ground, is the 'surface' layer, with the trees' roots and smaller plants making a sort of floor where other parasitic plants grow futher into the sky. And the last two layers, tree trunks, colossal straight columns at least five hundred meters tall and tens of feet wide, with the last layer, their leaves, blocking large part of the sunlight.

The second layer, at first glance covered with grass, which in reality are the long, tough leaves of the plants below, could be called the main level since it's where most monsters roam. The smaller ones that rely on stealth or speed can often be found in the tunnels below, but most of the powerful gold monsters will be up there. Or, apparently, not really.

I slam my foot down and crush the skull of another Stone Aberration in the shape deceptively similar to a Beisvart while Levia spins gracefully in the air and cleaves a smaller one resembling an ape, but looking like two individuals combined with four legs and four arms, in two. Next swing of my leg and a small aberration resembling something feline and a wolf combined is sent into the air in two parts while its intestines are ejected separately and sprayed on another approaching beast.

Fuah, that's gross, even with my newfound resistance to gore and blood. Why is it so weak? I know it had little mana compared to others, but I barely hit it with enough power to kill weaker silver monsters. And despite that it was still a huge overkill.

"They must have been created a short time ago!" Levia shouts. "Some of them are way too weak for inner forests!"

I jump to her as she makes a headless corpse out of another small ape-like thing and on the way slam my gaunleted fist into almost too slender humanoid abberration, snapping it in two with ease.

"My thoughts exactly." I reply when I land on her side. "Their strength is completely inconsistent. Like were thrown out of a randomizer." I say a bit more quietly and freeze for a moment as I realize that my analogy seems so matching it's almost too matching.

I mean, you will never find two same aberrations, right? The fifty or so around us, half already motionless, are at best somewhat similar to each other, but even then their strength varies. It's like... it's like spawning a highly diverse herd of monsters in some games. The problem is, it's VOW, not some random game, and every single thing here has either logical or magically logical explanation. And the most obvious...

"Something must be spawning them. Or creating." Levia says gravely and I finally turn to her for a moment as the aberrations are circling us and not attacking for some reason.

"Something strong, right?" I ask with a straight face and she blinks a few times with a sneakily growing grin, then folds over herself in a fit of joyous laughter. I giggle at that, smiling wide.

"Ye-, yes!" Levia finally says after a few second as she raises her head and looks at me with mirth. "Something strong! Strong enough for my little Helia to have fun." I blink once. H-how she called me!? My little Helia!? That's... that's unfair! I love it!

I lean forward and press my lips to hers, barely restraining my smile from turning into an uncontrollable grin, and I feel her smiling into the kiss as well as she leans back a bit. I look into her eyes for a long while and see the mirth and happiness in them turning into a bit of a shock and surprise as I bite her lips lightly and pull back. "Your little Helia will need a bit more than that to be satisfied, but I will indeed have fun." I sniff, though I can't stop some of my giddiness from leaking out, and slap away a small Stone Aberration stupid enough to jump on my back.

I grin wide seeing her getting embarrassed as she likely gets what I'm on and about, or maybe she has her own spicier interpretation, and glance at the monsters circling us. "Let's clear this rabble so we can find the main dish, alright?" I ask with a small smirk and she nods vigorously, starting to rotate the huge scythe in her hands.

"Of course, dear." She says with a grin and shoots forward, her three meters long scythe spinning in the air as if it had a life of its own. I don't wait till she starts severing one monster after another, but flare my wings and shoot out in the opposite direction, bringing my gaunleted fists onto the aberrations, starting by blowing away the stony bird head of the closest one.

I then spin on my toes and slam my foot into another one trying to attack me from the side, breaking its spine and sending its long, scaly shape spawling into the air. The fight lasts for a few seconds of carnage, during which around ten monsters are sent into the air either in pieces or with crushed pieces, till I notice something that makes me stop in my tracks for a moment.

The mana density in inner forests grows at higher rate than before and where we are with Levia there is already over twice the mana on the edge of the island. Along with that grows monster's strength, but it's not really consistent for a number of reasons, for example that sronger monsters tend to live longer and grow even stronger. But the long shape slithering in my direction has still higher mana density than I anticipated, being even denser than in Elena's body. It is, considering its width of a whole meter and length in tens, quite a lot of mana.

I whip my leg outward, kicking away two kinda stronger aberrations, and sharply turn around to the approaching snake, because it's the only thing I can see the monster as. Long, round, with triangle head and scaly body, merely it's also stony in this case. Interesting.

The snake approaches me suspiciously slowly at first, as if trying not to catch my attention, but the moment I turn around and look at it it lunges forward. Damn, it's fast! I jump to the side quickly, barely avoiding jaws larger than my upper body that snap loudly half a foot away from me. It's faster than the Beisvart despite being incomparably larger. It's a monster sitting firmly in gold territory, around mid gold if I had to guess, though I'm not certain.

The monster whips its head in my direction just after initial miss and I duck down and kick upwards into the lower jaw as it passes above me, but the hit has little effect on the aberration. Its head jerks upwards and something crunches and caves in under my fingers, but the monster instantly slams its jaw down, caving the ground in where I was a moment before.

I backflip a few times and land on the ground, looking warily at the monster that coils on the ground and looks at me, hissing. That's... something. I wasn't doing my best here, but this fight is incomparable to that with Beisvart with the snake able to force me to the defensive to some extent.

I look back and notice Levia finishing off the smaller aberrations and glancing in my direction worriedly, but also with amusement. I grin at her and she grins back as she cleaves a monster behind her without even looking at it.

I notice with my magic sense as the snake bolts to my side and sharply turn around to see it starting to circle me. I raise my eyebrows in surprise. Seriously? How is it supposed to help?

I'm thinking like that till it's halfway to circling around me and mana starts building up in its body, collecting to it's side, and the scales on its side are pulled up, revealing meaty tentacles of flesh. And ugly. Blergh. It's not just what it is, but it's... disgustingly similar to rotting, dripping with various fluids flesh, and yet my magic sense tells me there is nothing wrong with its body.

As I'm looking at the monster with distaste the mana in its body starts twisting rapidly and... something shoots out of the tentacles. Some liquid, acid maybe? What is it hoping to achieve here? I quickly make a film of demonic flame over my body that burns every drop of liquid that would land on me, and the monster lets out an ear piercing shriek without any warning as it bolts away from me in what appears to be terror, twisting its body much faster than when it was attacking me.

I blink, looking at its figure that stops a few tens of meters away. It turns its head to me and looks up into the sky, then... shoots brightly glowing something out into the sky. Just as this something explodes in a wave of mana not two seconds later, the snake collapses onto the ground. I run forward to get in the range of my magic sense and I stop sharply in place as I see it... dead. Its core isn't working and is now forming the mana stone.

I turn to Levia with questions in my eyes, but she has similarly astonished expression. "Um, what the fuck?" I ask and she shakes her head.

"No idea. Did you do something?" She asks in response.

"I used some demonic energy to block its acid." I muse. "So it must be related to demonic energy, right?"

"Probably." Levia nods, walking up to me with her scythe dissolving into nanobots and flowing into her body in a swarm. "I'm more concerned about the signal though. Whatever it meant, I don't think I want to know the recipent." She glances at me worriedly.

"Yeah." I nod, smiling lightly. "Should we run ahead? Or are we going back? I have a bit over an hour still." I narrow my eyes when directly behind us I notice weird mana movement with a hint of... something else.

"Do you want to fight whatever received the message?" She asks back with a smirk.

"That's a good question." I say slowly, looking up into the sky. "Isn't it, whoever is standing behind us and thinking it's good manners to peep on girls?" I ask, drawing the words out with spite, and see the humanoid shape on the edge of my magic sight flinching visibly. It appeared here around five seconds ago, most likely by teleportation of some sort, and hasn't moved since. Its mana density is, to be frank, incredible. Well almost twice Elena's, so I assume its sheer physical strength to be at least three or four times mine. And there is something else hidden deep inside, though not infused in his body, much more powerful than mana, the same that accompanied the teleportation. How... exciting.

I turn around to look at the visitor and raise my eyebrows at the obvious resemblance to Stone Aberrations. He, because I now see it's a he, appears to be a slender man of around six feet in height with gray, rough skin. He is wearing only a... kind of loose skirt around his waist, reaching to his knees, but has gray, spiky stones covering most of his body apart from private parts and thickest on his chest, back and arms.

He has... very smooth face. As much as his body resembles that of a human, his face does only in the outline, because it's only that much. An outline of two round sockets, each holding a dark blue yet almost shining eye, and flat nose that appears as if you stretched flexible fabric over a human nose. Add to that contrasting with the whole image thin, curved upwards slit that is its mouth and a lot of thin backward growing spikes on its head and you have the whole image.

Oh, as a side note, his eyes are right now open wide in surprise, though his mouth is shut tight, seemingly expressionless.

"Anything to say?" I ask provocatively as Levia spins around warily and immediately drops into battle stance. I don't, but only because my Energy affinity makes any stance... practically unnecessary, and it's just not visible that I'm in reality wary of the enemy.

The guy's face finally shows an expression as she seems to smile widely, starting to speak slowly. "Well, never would I have expected you to spot me." He pauses and bows lightly, making me furrow my eyebrows. Get to the point, man. Not even ten seconds and he's already starting to annoy me. "I am called An'Ghnor, it's a pleasure to meet you." He says with his grin only growing.

"I'm Helia." I say coldly. "What's your business here?"

"Oh, why so cold-." He begins.

"Oh, I'm quite hot, if I were to say." I interrupt him with growing irritation. This guy is starting to seriously piss me me off for some reason. "If anything, you're the stone cold. So get down to business or drop the pretense. Either is fine with me."

His eyebrows finally furrow and he lowers his head barely noticeably, but he still continues in his too amiable tone. "Very well. Do you pursue power?" He asks.

I raise my eyebrows at that. Like, seriously? And he's gonna offer us power now or something? "Depends." I glance at Levia and see her shrugging. "Probably not in the way you would want us to." I answer An'Ghnor, as much as I don't know if I should really acknowledge his name.

The guy doesn't really react to the suggestion we're not interested in whatever he has for us. "Well, in any case, I have a deal for you. I have seen you fight and I would like to offer you two a source of greater power." I immediately feel incredible, somewhat prideful anger erupting inside me.

Greater power!? Greater than mine? There is no greater power than me, fool!

I squash the anger immediately, though I guess some of it still ends up showing on my face because the man flinches a bit. And yet, heh, whatever he has in store is, in fact, quite weak. While it's much stronger than mana, ten times or so, it's still a far cry from Levia's Nihility, not to mention my Primordial Energy.

"What power?" I spit out. "Like how you make Stone Aberrations?"

"That's..." His smile falters for the first time. "The Servants are the results of inferior rituals that have nothing to do with the power I have and you would receive. What you would get in exchange for a small favor to us is the rule over space, likely on even higher level than I have considering your capabilities."

"Then would you mind showing it, An'Ghnor?" I spit out, twisting his name into an insult and making him furrow his eyebrows.

"Of course." He nods with a smile plastered to his face and extends his arm forward. "Please watch carefully."

So I watch carefully, beginning by acceleration my perception of the world by a few times, additionally making sure it is a few and not a few tens of times. The energy from inside him flows out onto his hand, and I now notice it feels like... like stretchy fabric. It can bend, it can be stretched, and it kinda feels to be shifting continously with other dimensions as its parts seem to just be replaced by other.

"Aether." I hear a voice in my head and my heart leaps in strange happiness as usual when she speaks. "It is the fabric of the world, brought out of the constraints of matter and energy." Shiva says with her divine voice. "In other words, it is what builds the space-time continuum, its very base element and what gives it energy to resist interference."

Oh, okah. Energy, so another toy for me to play with. Thanks, Mommy~!

I grin mentally and focus back on the fight. I see the Aether twist somewhat and I sense a small tear appearing to my side. An'Ghnor extends his other hand and it suddenly appears in the tear, but to my naked eyes it looks as if it was disappearing from one place to another. Huh. Fancy tricks.

I snort in amusement and the man, just opening his mouth to say something, frowns at my reaction. I turn to Levia with a smile. "Did you see it?"

"Not really." She glances at me. "I only see with naked eyes." Well, naked eyes is a bit of a stretch in her case, but I get the meaning. She can't see Aether.

"Well." I turn back to the man who looks at us with kind of silent shock. "I'm not really interested. Do you intend to drag us by force?" I raise my eyebrows mockingly, but he surprisingly smiles.

"Of course not, that would be rude of me." He says and I notice something forming out of Aether behind my back.

The man keeps babbling something, but I stop listening to him. Instead I drop my eyebrows in contempt. You know, this guy gave me a fantastic idea. Why shouldn't I try to teleport my demonic energy? For example inside his body? That's for later though. Before that I need to get rid of him, and that's something... exciting. First lemme just annihilate his Aether forming something behind me. I wonder if I can manipulate Aether with my Energy affinity, or does it not work this way? I haven't tried it with mana yet, but it won't hurt to try.

I grasp the Aether mentally, for a lack of better word, and command it to disperse. It... obeys, surprisingly quickly at that, but it appears somewhat unconvinced, there is significant resistance. It disperses slowly and erratically, as if still trying to do something else. Hm, I wonder how I could control it better. That will be for later though.

First is the guy who makes a confused face and furrows his eyebrows in another attempt to make something behind my back work, forgetting to keep babbling. I disperse the Aether once again and his expression grows into comical bafflement.

"Are you done?" I ask with a somewhat excited grin and he looks at me with confusion that soon morphs into shock and finally fear.

"What did you do!?" He almost shouts in high voice, but doesn't wait for my answer.

I see the mana in his body flowing forward and accumulating in his outstretched arms, somewhat... changing a bit on the way, starting to feel more destructive, as much as child's toy can feel destructive, and a beam of concentrated energy shoots out a moment later in my direction. I snort and command the mana forming the attack to disperse, and it... breaks apart abruptly, swarms around and shoots out erratically in all directions. Holy~ shit, what was that?

I guess the stony man has no answer for me since he makes a horrified expression and the Aether in his body starts swirling rapidly. Oh, no no no. You're not teleporting away from me.

I flare my wings and shoot out forward, igniting my fist and creating a heavy gaunlet around it, and when I'm around halfway to the man his face starts changing into pure terror and desperation, but unfortunately his concentration isn't broken. I can easily see that his reaction speed is significantly lower than Elena's. I wonder why is that.

His spell or whatever he is preparing isn't fast enough to activate before I arrive and I pack all my strength and my will into a fist flying straight into his stone-covered chest. I see it caving in in slow motion, each snap of the stone plate a distinct sound to my ears, making a melody of breaking stones, bones and tearing flesh. Beautiful, and yet how disappointing. How weak.

Suddenly the whole world seems to spin and I feel awful pain in my legs, thighs specifically, and my left wing, and I crash into something hard headfirst. I fall onto floor that feels like stone and damn my head hurts. Fuck, what the hell happened?

Gimme demonic energy to my head and heal it... and done, I can think straighter. I raise my head and open my eyes I have closed at some indefinite point and see gray stone floor below, very poorly lit I have to add. Fuck, something is missing. I feel emptiness in my chest.

And then I focus on my magic sense and freeze, realizing four very important things at the same time. First, my legs from half my thighs down are gone and my left wing is missing like third of its length. That's... easily fixable, but still kinda concerning. Second is mana density, which is... a few times that on the outer edge of inner forests. Around four or five, if I had to guess, but with difference as large as that I can't say for sure judging solely on my memory.

Third is a body laying on my side. It's the stony man that was with us back in inner forests, or, uh, his parts. There is the head, arms and a lot of smaller parts of him in a growing pool of blood, but it's visible at first glance there's a lot of mass lacking. And, well, he was with us back in inner forests, because I have absolotely no idea where we are right now.

Or, correction, and that's the fourth realization, I have no idea where I am as Levia is not with me, and it's her I am missing. Hopefully she is still in the same place and wasn't thrown across space to somewhere. Damn it. I have no idea if it's good she isn't in the same danger I probably landed in or if it's bad she's not with me. No, on second thought, it's definitely the latter. This fucker took me away from my Levia!

I feel anger boiling inside me, but I suppress it for now since I need to be calm right now. And kicking him wouldn't help my situation. To sum things up, the guy teleported somewhere, where somewhere can be practically anywhere on Beholder's Eye or maybe even on some other island, and I guess some sort of malfunction in his spell took me with him, save for my legs and part of my wing, and finished him off if my hit turned out not to be enough to kill him.

Well, well, well. Let's begin by writing to Levia. Legs can wait.