Savage Awakening 533. Man vs. Dragon (IV)

Haxorax’s mouth was drawn like a wild animal’s, his breaths ragged.

“It’s the first look we’ve gotten at the Prince all week,” said Jake Land. “Though I’ve never seen him like this.”

“Something’s not right here—” was all Mox managed to growl.

They had no time to linger on it.

Haxorax’s head jerked up. They all saw the moment he caught sight of Zane. The way his pupils constricted and his eyes cracked with veins like a frozen lake shattered.

Then he howled. His Universe swept the surface, an eruption of rising sun.

“What might!” said Jake. “That Universe Expansion alone could stagger an Empyrean.”

“The rumors were true, then,” said Mox gruffly. “They’ve gone and made a monster.”

The Prince stood there in full draconic humanform. Horns bared, scales rippling down his chest, his arms like a suit of sun-gold armor. Claws gleamed to hand, and his wings unfurled, blazing with the glory of his Law. 

Zane had gotten his Chains out. His Asura runes began to burn—his physique reacting, bracing against the threat. 

Haxorax crouched, face twisted madly. His legs wound tight. Solar Wind Law flooded his wings. 

“Here he comes!” roared Jake.

The Prince’s wings beat once, and he was gone.

In his place—ghostly golden afterimages and a trail of furious Law.

Stormwings. The Prince’s signature movement Skill, one that granted his whole being an immense tailwind of Solar Wind Law. Haxorax pounced so ferociously there was no time to even mention it.

The Prince was already on his prey.

Claws wound back, teeth bared in a primal scream.

Haxorax slashed.

Three blazing lines carved through reality, a perfect fusion of dragonflame and Creation.

“The Godripper Claws!”

Zane vanished under a scar of black-edged gold.

A split screen showed Reina looking like her heart might beat out of her chest, Dya, who couldn’t even look, and Patriarch Azure Flame with the smile of a dragon who’d already won.

Then the explosion burned away…

The Patriarch’s face froze.

Those three lines still lingered in reality. But they ended at a single point.

Zane stared back calmly behind a wall of chains.

His legs had nearly buckled by the looks of it, and they still strained to hold back the Prince. He’d been forced back half a dozen feet, and the skid marks left in that star-core spoke to the force he’d had to take. But…

“He’s blocked it,” said Jake.

Haxorax screamed and threw another wild slash. This one tore even greater scars in reality. Just its aftershocks could shatter continents.

Still Zane stayed standing

“He’s really gone and blocked it! Zane fans can breathe a sigh of relief. Your man’s found a way!”

Haxorax tee’d off, slash after slash after slash. Now he was starting to chip away at the defenses, ripping down chain after chain… but Zane showed no signs of going down. 

The Prince even blasted out a pillar of scything dragonflame. Zane took the bulk of it right on his Chains. 

He came out with little more than surface burns. 

“The raw physical force, that’s one thing,” growled Mox. “How in the nine hells is he eating three-shard golden dragonflame for breakfast?”

“Don’t look at me, partner.”

Reina breathed a sigh of relief—she finally let out a smile. Thalia laughed. She pointed and whispered to the Frost Saintess Cassia, whose mouth hung open.

“Wait just one second.” Mox frowned heavily, focused on the moment of impact. And sure enough, right there, just as dragonflame and Creation met chain steel…

Something raged against it.

“Is that—?” said Jake. Then he laughed. “Just where did he get all that!”

***

A few days ago…

Over the past three months, Zane had been training, testing Skills, and grinding up a shard of Destruction. But there was one thing he’d never stopped doing: working down his vast cache of dreamsteel.

Now he munched down one last stack.

He quite liked the taste of dreamsteel. It was one of the sweetest steels he’d ever tasted. He was starting to get a little tired of it, though, by the end of this latest binge. But there was nothing for it.

That Aelin girl was right. In his present state that Empyrean jump might just take him to his limit, and then some. Especially against a dragon like Haxorax. Most experts who’d weighed in—and everyone seemed to have an opinion, according to Reina—thought it just couldn’t be done.

Even some Zane fans doubted, just a little.

Will was enough… until it wasn’t. The Slayer fight had been eye-opening for some. There was only so much even Zane Walker could do against an absolute difference in raw might. He acknowledged that. 

To match Haxorax, he’d simply need a far stronger power base—something he’d talked over at length with Reina.

The ranking change, he didn’t care much about. But it was true he hated the idea of getting beaten down in front of her, exhibition or not.

In that way, he supposed, there was an element of pride here after all.

He was most of the way through the stack when he saw the notification kick in.

Friend of the System III 99% -> 100%

System Store, Section II, has been unlocked.

He rubbed his hands.

Neat.

Time to bridge the gap. With that, Zane went shopping for power-ups.

A few options were immediately available to him—things he’d caught glimpses of already.

Origin Lodestone (O)

Origin-grade Lodestone mined from the core bedrock of the Universe, for use in weaponry, armor, or physique. Extremely rich in Space Laws. This is a steel-type item. Limited supply. Cost: 30 Credits per block. 

It was a stone that looked like a miniature galaxy.

Space Laws weren’t much use to him. As for the steel aspect, the only thing he could see himself using it for was his physique.

At Fourth Form Asura, every Level would make a serious difference. There was just too much extremely high-grade material invested not to. A few Levels might be enough for the physical edge he needed right now. 

The other side of that, though, was that every physique Level was hard to come by. Months of peak Divine steels hadn’t made much of a dent. Maybe some Origin steel would make a difference, but not in the time he had left. 

And besides, physique Levels were best gained by working out too—“stoking the furnace,” as the Barbarian Sage liked to put it. Fights or weights would work, and he didn’t have either ight now. 

There was also the fact that the Barbarian Sage already had a cache of Origin steels ready to go. No need to spend his valuable System Coins if he wanted to physique-grind.

He did get the feeling, just looking at that Lodestone, that it'd be quite delicious.

…That wasn’t enough to convince him.

He moved on to the next item—Aiwe’s Manual (O). 30 Credits. 

Apparently this thing contained some of Aiwe’s notes from when he was originally constructing the System, along with assorted journal entries marking important new updates—the ‘Dungeon update’ and ‘Store update’ had their own chapters, along with ‘known errors’ and various ‘Patch notes.’ It promised deep knowledge of the System’s inner workings. 

He could see why someone really into the System weeds would get value out of this—finding new loopholes to exploit and all that.

It was a bit of a shame there were no ‘preview’ or ‘sample’ features on this thing. You had to sink in 30 Credits on a knowledge gamble. Zane resolved to suggest the feature to Aiwe the next time he saw the man.

He figured Noughtfire might get a kick out of this thing. Not the kind of thing that would help him take down a dragon prince, though.

Next up was a technique called the ‘Nine Star-crushing Slashes.’ It went for 50 Credits, a number that’d made him do a double-take. His 10 Million Year Bone had only been 35 Credits.

An incomplete technique purported to be the remnants of the Star-crushing Archon’s infamous ‘Thirteen Slashes.’ The System has evaluated this remnant at Rare Origin grade. Key effect: every slash is 99% stronger as well as 99% greater in size… when the Star Crusher moved, galaxies shattered. 

Maybe that was just the case with these extremely high-grade Skills—the costs started skyrocketing. It was the first Origin-grade Skill he’d seen in the store so far. He found it quite intriguing.

It sounded rather like his Red Giant Storm, with how it stacked. His storm was a great deal more cumbersome, though; it locked him in place as he executed it. He could slash a lot faster than he could spin a storm.

He wasn’t sure his Storm’s effects stacked as hugely as this, either. If he started out with an all-out slash, and kept on going…

He wasn’t about to do all that math in his head. But it’d be pretty broken by the ninth slash, he felt. The size of it, even more than the raw power, was what sparked his imagination. If a top-tier Empyrean or even stronger really went for it, and it stacked 13 times… that galaxy shattering thing might not be an exaggeration.

He wasn’t sure what it was with the number nine, either. It kept popping up in these high-Level techniques.

In any case.

If he mastered this, he was pretty sure it’d put him over the top. But yet again, time was an issue. There was also one line at the end— 

Requirement: 1 Plate of Destruction

He wasn’t sure what that was, but he was pretty sure he didn’t have it.   

He might take another look at it later.

Then he came across—

100 Million Year Bone of the Titan Rhinoceros (O)

The icon for it showed a set of hooves. He stopped on that for a good few minutes.

…This one was pretty self-explanatory.

He wasn’t even sure what that kind of upgrade meant. He was pretty certain there wasn’t a single 100 Million Year Titan Rhino bone left in the whole galaxy. The only species that might have that kind of bone was the True Dragon—and even then, they’d have just one at most. 

If he got a 100 Million Year Bone he had no doubt it’d put him over the top.

It would’ve been extremely tempting, save for two things. First, he was already maxed out on Bones at Minor God. And second, the thing was 200 Credits.

Nowadays video games didn’t have the same draw on him anymore. Not when he could go about in real life, doing pretty much the same things. But back when he used to play them, there were certain items called "chase items"—items that were a ways away. But once he got them, they’d make his build.

It was good to have things to strive for.

The last item that caught his eye was the simplest. Something he’d had in mind since long before he’d unlocked it.

Fistful of Pure Destruction

Value pack: 3x Shards of True Destruction. Limited stock. Cost: 22 Credits. 

…This was definitely the one.

He’d relied on Destruction to bridge power-tier gaps before. He figured it’d come in handy again. 

He clicked it without much more deliberation. 

Three shards floated down on a bed of gentle System-blue light, wrapped with a little piece of yarn. These shards of jagged glass, edges slicked pure white… He’d held a few Shards in his time. He always found them quite beautiful. Right, somehow. They just felt like Destruction made physical. 

He appreciated the Store wrapping it up too. It was the little details, he felt, that made the customer experience.

He was just about to start crushing them when he looked back at the Store.

The icon was still there. It hadn’t grayed out.

He blinked.

…Could he just…?

He tried buying another. Gave it another click.

Sure enough—another three shards floated down.

He looked at his account.

Credits remaining: 115

“…”

Zane started spamming.