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Savage Awakening 518. Z-Platinum

Added 2025-08-03 01:30:02 +0000 UTC

Zane always found that post-fight haze quite rewarding. Everything just felt brighter and warmer. He felt his heart slowing down at last and knew he got all the stuff he wanted to do done. The stuff being a great deal of smashing, of course.

The bones of the Founders lay scattered at his feet, smoking gently.

They must’ve been humanity’s last line of defense, the very best the First Men had to offer, once…

It didn’t really hit him until he was standing over them just what he’d managed to do.

It felt like a shame they’d had to fight under these circumstances. And they’d fought well, just like he figured they’d fought in life when the Monsters showed up at their gates… they’d given their lives to the defense. He could respect that.

He’d have to find a little time to give them a proper send-off before they left.

Then came the hit of battle essence.

Level up!

Essence Level 590 -> 597

He blinked. He supposed he had done quite a bit there. He was getting pretty close to maxing out at Minor God.

He did a quick rundown of where he stood. There was his Asura Titan’s Body, at Tier 8, with Prime Blood. His level was nearly maxed. He had two Red Giant Concepts in the bank too: Nuclear Fusion and Stellar Gravity. Not to mention four shards of Destruction, and he was well on his way to a fifth.

He was pretty pleased, all in all. Things were coming along nicely.

His belly rumbled one more time.

Friend of the System 74% -> 76%

Shard of Destruction 66% -> 78%

The last of the Dreamer’s Core in his System burned away. Friend of the System was a slower grind. But that Shard of Destruction looked like it was just a few weeks away at most.

Skill up!

Red Giant Smash VIII -> IX

He’d really started leaning on the hammer of late. He always favored it, but these days he was stacking level after level on his smashes. He hadn’t found many half-step Empyreans who could take more than a few of his hammer-blows. He was quite curious what the Skill would look like, maxed out.

There were still strong use cases for his Axe and his chains. He still had that Daybreak Horn on the back of his mind, for instance—that seemed like it’d make a strong Axe Skill if he could adapt it…

Lots of stuff to work on. Quite a few on the verge of yet another power-up.

The Sage came over, smoking a little, but otherwise looking in as good humor as ever. He looked about as hale as Zane had seen him. He suggested checking out a proud, gilded building not far away.

Just then, Zane’s belly rumbled. “…I just ate,” said Zane.

The Sage laughed. “That was quite a beating you put on there! I’m not surprised.”

That reminded Zane. “How was the Lich, by the way?”

He was quite curious how that’d gone down. It was always a treat to see the Sage in action.

He hadn’t been too worried when he saw them throwing down. He’d always felt like the Sage could handle himself just fine. He’d never seen the old fellow troubled.

During the fight, he’d been too busy getting battered by Founders to investigate much, though.

“Pretty good! Can’t complain, really,” said the Sage. They made their way on over. The Sage cracked a grin. “…Think I might just have a few more good fights in me than I thought.”

“…Nice.”

“I’ll have to tell you more on the way back.”

The treasury looked to be some kind of bank. Maybe the grand bank of the First Man empires, back when those were still around. It looked remarkably intact. It’d just managed to stay out of range of most of the battle, though it sported a few dents on the roof. It looked a great deal better preserved than the dwarves’ stores.

“I wonder why they didn’t sack it.” Zane did wonder if it was some kind of trap. It was hard to imagine anything that could threaten them at this point.

They stopped at a shiny vault door. The Sage gave him a bump. “You want to do the honors?”

He gave it a good ol’ smash.

He nearly blew the door off its hinges.

He was just preparing to give it another good whack when the door swung open of its own accord. He blinked.

“…Was that unlocked that whole time?”

“Ah, well,” said the Sage. “Guess it makes sense. That lich was squatting in that castle like it owned the place! Might be it just treated it like home base. Probably just took the vault for its own.”

It checked out. No point in locking it if there was no one left to steal from it, Zane supposed. No one until they came along and cleared the place out, that was.

They headed on in.

They’d entered a long hall with giant heavy silver doors on either side, fitted with equally giant wheels to crank them open.

The first vault they came across was rife with Dreamsteel, and no ordinary Dreamsteel either. They came in pristine cubes, each as big as a hay bale.

Cube of Dreamsteel [Mythic+ (D)]

The Sage whistled. “Bet it all came from the dwarves. Those Monsters took the best they had and hauled it all here… hellsthat’s a lot of Dreamsteel! And the grade of it… it’s got to be some of the finest Dreamsteel in the whole damned Galaxy! Might be the finest you’ll find out there. That’s got to be all you’ll need to get to that next tier of your thing, I figure.”

“The System Store,” Zane informed him.
“You kids and your new power-up tracks. No such thing when I was coming up, I’ll tell you. Back when we wanted a legendary power-up, we had to go do a whole damned quest for it! Took ages.”

The Sage eyeballed the steels. “That’s not fitting in an Interspatial Ring. Give me a minute, will you? I’ve got just the thing.”

He sped off. Zane plopped himself down and ate some Dreamsteel as he waited. It wasn’t long before the Sage was back, Fluffy in tow.

Fluffy was so happy to see him she did a barrel roll. This squashed the few castles left standing in the human kingdom.

She’d been quite bored guarding the entrance. Not much had showed up in the twenty-something years that had passed outside. The Sage said he’d found her terrorizing a few local Meteor Goats.

He hopped down and started unhooking the giant sacks strapped to her sides.

“Throw ‘em on in!” said the Sage, chucking a few at him. “There’s plenty of space.”

Zane did. He started stuffing in steel by the armful. He also took the chance to chew on some, just to get a taste. He was surprised. “This really is good stuff.”

Dreamsteel grade made a surprisingly big difference. This peak Divine Profound stuff was progressing his Friend of the System several times faster than even the Dreamer’s Core’s steel. He’d been grinding away at the next System Store tier unlock for what had to be nearly half a century now in real-time. But with this stuff… he was sure it’d be less than a year away.

They headed on to the second vault, both feeling pretty good about what was in store. They found more steels. The Sage thought there might be some Sunsteel or Infinisteel for them, just much higher grade.

Then they hauled open the door.

The steel they found in there came in hammered-out sheets. It didn’t even have an aura. It just looked like normal steel. Only it was incredibly clean, incredibly simple, and incredibly dense—the color of deep space, and understated, matte tone.

But the moment the Sage laid eyes on it, he did a double-take.

Then he laughed.

“Nuwa’s wrinkly bum-cheek! Is that what I think it is?”

Zane wasn’t sure what it was with these Steelheart Conclave exclamations. They always seemed to be quite unflattering to this Nuwa lady. He also wasn’t sure what the Sage was so excited about until he looked deeper.

Z-Platinum (Common [O])

He’d only seen that O before a few times ever, mostly in the locked sections of the System Store.

“Origin-grade!” The Sage held up a sheet, and even he seemed to find it no easy thing picking up a slab of it. He grinned at his own reflection—dim, but perfectly clear.

“That’s the damned stuff, alright… You thought Dreamsteel was rare? Origin-grade steel… I figured that stuff was extinct in Dragonspire! Who would’ve thought it was hiding down here?”

The lack of aura fascinated him. That, by itself, was a kind of aura, Zane felt. Was there so much of it he couldn’t feel it? Or did it wrap all the way around the spectrum—the strongest stuff just didn’t show?

The Sage was kind of that way, now that he thought of it. Noughtfire too. You couldn’t feel any aura off of them most times. That straw-hat janitor fellow he’d seen on Noughtfire’s mountain too. Zane would eat that straw hat himself if he really was just a janitor.

He turned his mind back to the present, where the Sage was going to town.

He took a bite of Z-Platinum, swallowed, wiped his mouth, and said cheerfully—“That’s Origin-grade, alright. Hells—it’s the first steel I’ve found in… what, damn near half a million years I can use!”

He wagged it at Zane. “A big chunk of the reason I wanted out of Dragonspire back then was that there just wasn’t enough fuel left for the Titanform. Who would’ve thought…”

He marveled at the sheet.

Zane made to take a bite too. It was just a thing he did with new metals nowadays.

“Not yet, lad,” said the Sage. “Can’t process it yet. Just won’t be able to integrate it, even with a Third Form like yours. Z-Platinum’s stuff that was formed at the birth of the Universe, and it’s never changed since then. You’ll need some damned special stuff to forge it into yourself. Stuff you don’t get ‘til the Fourth Form.”

“Ah.”

“Good news is, you’re damned close as it is! Get there, and we’ll get you pounding sheets of these things by the dozen.”

Zane nodded. “Give me a few weeks.”

He took that chance to get started. A few minutes of munching later, he’d filled himself up with Dreamsteel.

Lately, it felt like he’d started down an avalanche of power-ups. It was still going, even now. His hope was to keep it snowballing for a while.

If he could just run it through, right until he avalanched straight into Malzareth…

…He had to admit, he quite liked the thought of it.