Savage Awakening 519. Final Gains

The Sage started stuffing stacks of the stuff into a saddlebag.

“I had to eat enough Divine Profound steel to bankrupt a damned Great Faction just to get through the Fourth Form!” said the Sage. He wrinkled his nose. “You don’t want that kind of grind, lad. Trust me. Never thought I could bore myself powering up, but with the steels we had back then, you had to work decades for every percent, if you can believe it.”

“That does sound a lot,” Zane agreed. There were times, deep in the grind of Nuclear Fusion, when he’d gotten a little bored. He knew what he fought for, so there wasn’t a moment his will wavered. Still, that comment the Sage had made about learning being a physical thing—that stuck with him. If he could find something hands-on to do, rather than sitting down and visualizing or sitting down and eating steel, he’d take that ten times out of ten.

The Sage kept rambling.

“With Origin-grade steel, you’ll run through it like a hammer through molten steel… there’s another neat thing about the Titanform, by the way. They’re not all built the same. The stronger metals you feed your body, the higher grade your body ends up! Makes sense, eh? Soon we’ll be stuffing you full of the best damned metals this Galaxy’s had to offer, so you’d best be damned ready.”

Zane nodded. He wasn’t sure if his digestion could be trained, but he was pretty sure by now he could compete with some of the Conclave’s grand furnaces.

They moved onto the next vault. Lots of random stuff in this one. Heaps of sacred bones and old relics, but most of them weren’t very useful to him. There were gemstones that stored the energy supply of a Great Faction for a year. Ancient tomes full of Divine Profound-tier martial arts. They tossed the most interesting-looking ones in sacks and moved on.

They only ended up nabbing about a third of the vault’s stuff. The Sage thought they should leave a great deal of it for later. Just the act of stuffing bags and looting was quite enjoyable, Zane found, even if a great deal of it might not come to anything.

“I’ve got a feeling the best stuff’s yet to come,” said the Sage.

Zane did find a flower blooming in ash. It was a Divine Profound-ranked Ash Lily; this gorgeous dash of blue amid the waste. He picked it, pleased, and bent some steel around the ash to pot it.

The Sage looked baffled. “You trying being a vegeterian, lad?”

“…It’s for Reina.”

“Now that does make more sense.”

They were coming up to the last few vaults now, and these were actually locked, secured with Corruption spells and human runes alike. Both still ran strong, though their owners had long gone.

This one definitely felt Empyrean strength.

At first, he thought he’d leave it to the Sage. But the Sage just grinned at him.

“Don’t you want to see where you’re at?”

…The old fellow made a good point.

He took out his Axes for this one.

Then he laid in.

It took six bashes to crack the runes. Another five to shatter the Corruption and split the door in two.

The Sage gave him a cuff on the head. “We’ll make an Empyrean-slayer out of you yet!”

They went in and found a blood-colored stone. The Sage lit up.

“Damn. That’s the one thing I was hoping to find all trip!”

That got Zane’s attention. “Really, now.”

It didn’t look more remarkable than any other treasure, but maybe that lack of aura should’ve been a clue.

“That right there’s the last thing you need to break through to the Fourth Titanform,” said the Sage.

Foundation Stone (Common [D])

The thing had no description. Sometimes that was the case for these very high-ranked items. He picked it up, inspecting it closer. It felt warm in his palm, like coals in a dying hearth.

“What does it do?”

“What does it do!” The Sage laughed. “What doesn’t it do?”

A pause as the Sage considered this.

“Well, actually, almost everything,” he admitted. “It does do one very specific thing, though, and that thing’s a real moneymaker. See—Foundation Stones are the things made at the founding of the Universe. These things have been around since the very first Chaos Cycle. There’s a finite number of them. Can’t be created or destroyed. That’s partly why they’re so damned rare.”

“You want ‘em because they’re precisely that: they’re the universe, the genesis stuff. If you can integrate that into your physique… you know how when you take in more steel, you get durability like a treasure? But that’s just physical toughness, the stuff you can touch. Infinisteel, now that’s got seas of Gravity in it! You don’t get that, though, with a basic Titanform.”

Zane got what he was getting at. The Sage wasn’t the clearest explainer at times, it had to be said, but he got the gist. “You’re saying this can make my physique a real treasure,” he said slowly. “Not just as strong as one. I’ll be able to take anything a treasure can.”

“Exactly.” The Sage grinned. “You can forge Concepts into your body, the same way you forge in steel. And that right there… that’s a doozy. Well—just one Concept per Foundation Stone. But that’s a game-changer.”

Zane tried to imagine the implications.

"You look a bit baffled, lad.”

“I’m trying to think how Gravity could work better if it’s integrated into my physique,” he explained. “...Not sure what it does that I don’t already do, though.”

He could see some ideas. Right now, every Gravity Concept he used, he had to consciously throw out, and it wielded quite some essence. It’d be different if it came as easily and cheaply as opening and closing a hand, he supposed… ease of use and cheapness gains, he could see.

Maybe he could make his body one big Gravity core, or something? He supposed he could see the use case. It didn’t sound as transformative as the Sage seemed to be hinting at.

The Sage waved all that off, though.

“You don’t want to forge in Gravity. There’s much better stuff to forge, stuff we haven’t gotten to yet—stuff we’ll get to damned soon, just you wait. Here. Look at my arm, closely now. I’ll pull back a little. Most of the time my soul’s not letting too much leak, so it’s not very visible. You’ll see.”

Zane did.

The density was just obscene. Usually, beings were collections of essence in the Astral Plane, some shinier than others. But the Sage’s body was one solid block of essence. He was sure the grade of it was far higher than any treasure he’d ever seen. Its aura had to be thunderous if the Sage really let loose.

But there was Law there too.

Like the essence, it was packed so dense he didn’t even notice it at first. He didn’t think it could be Law. It was the stuff governing the density of the Sage’s physique, he was realizing.

That Law almost felt like Creation; it was so high-level. It felt like he was a blacksmith who’d only ever worked with common steel, discovering Kevlar for the first time.

“I see it,” said Zane, a little struck.

“That’s Stellar Density right there,” said the Sage. “Density, worked right into the bone. Right down at the most fundamental levels of being. You might’ve heard an old monk or two talking about being in harmony with the Universe, and all that. Now, that’s mostly bull. Especially at those lowest levels—what the hell does an ant know of the Universe? But get high enough…”

He clenched his fist and grinned. “And you can start forging the Universe’s strengths into your own.”

Suddenly Zane was curious. “What’s it take to break that?”

“It’s damn near unbreakable at Empyrean,” said the Sage, grinning. “And I’ve taken a hell of a lot of blows from half-step Overgods and lived to tell the tale! You should’ve seen some of the bullshit that Lich threw at me. Anyway.”

He pressed Zane’s fist closed around the stone.

“You hang onto that. It’ll come in handy very soon, I’d expect. Right now your body’s as close to Empyrean as you can get. But don’t you underestimate that gulf between half-step and Empyrean. The difference a true Universe makes is just immense… common wisdom says only a Universe can withstand a Universe—especially ones made by the prodigy Empyreans. But once you forge a chunk of the Universe into yourself and add to it that ten million-year bone of yours…”

The Sage grinned fiercely. “Good luck crushing that!”

According to the Barbarian Sage, that vault had all the Z-Platinum they’d ever need.

Then the Sage thought about it a bit more and amended that to—“All the Z-Platinum you’ll need until deep into True God, at the least! Maybe even Empyrean. Depends on just how fast you grow. Bit hard to say.”

That made sense. The Sage had a tough time projecting just how strong he’d be at peak True God when he got there. Zane wasn’t really sure either. There just weren’t many folks in history that they could measure up to him.

There was a time that made him feel a measure of pride. These days, he just took it as a fact of his life.

It took them half a day to load all that steel in.

The next vault had another few piles of System Store Credits lying around, which he always enjoyed.

+25 System Credits!

+25 System Credits!

His total was now 129 System Credits.

He was really going to have to splurge when he unlocked that next System Store tier. He was remembering the costs for some of the stuff he’d bought already… a Ten Million Year Bone was 35 Credits.

Then again, the higher tier you went, the greater the costs seemed to grow. Every strength level seemed to come with an increase of severalfold.

Even so, he felt pretty good about the size of his stack. He had to consider the scale of the challenges and the threats barreling toward him. Him, and all his friends…

“How long has it been in here, do you think?” he asked the Sage.

The Sage scratched his chin. “Just about twenty years? Might be a bit more.”

“Got it.” That meant all in all, he’d spent close to fifty years in this grind—maybe a little less. About twenty-five in the Lost Library, getting that first Concept. Another twenty or so here.

He clenched his jaw.

That was half his time gone before the final reckoning. Before The End came, and he’d have to face down the strongest Monsters that had ever stepped foot in Dragonspire.

He knew Malzareth wanted to slay him. Wanted it so badly that the serpent had invested a huge amount of resources in breeding a perfect killer just to end him. So long as that thing was around, putting a target on his back, he knew his friends weren’t safe either. It had tried to kill Reina too… it was something he hadn’t let himself forget for a second, even down here. It was always there at the back of his mind, driving him on.

This run had been a blast. He’d stretched his fighting muscles for the first time in decades here. He quite liked camping with the Sage, chowing down on steels and giant legs of meat by firelight, wiping out undead hordes by day as they trekked through ruin after ruin.

It felt like a dream coming to an end, though. Soon he’d be back in the real world, and the thought settled that familiar weight on him again.

He grinned.

He liked that pressure.

He was looking forward to it. Besides—he quite missed his friends. Two guys on an adventure through ruins was quite the romp, but it did get a little dry at times without Reina.

They picked up a few more tomes in the last few vaults. Lots of other random stuff, all things that might’ve been legendary treasures to mankind an age ago, but stuff they had to toss aside by the armful nonetheless. By then they were running out of sack space. They had to be selective.

The two of them spent a day or so tossing peak Divine Profound tomes in a big pile after giving each a quick skim.

They did end up finding a few fascinating skills. The most intriguing to Zane was one called “Chainstorm Cage”—a peak Divine Profound skill.