Gaius Antonius Omake #73 - The Day of Fate, Part 2: Prophecies and Finish Lines
A thin, elegantly curved eyebrow arched derisively, punctuated a deeply unimpressed face. "That's it?"
A grotesque green and black centipede the side of a human leg lunged at Gaius, who scoffed and launched a snapping front kick, blowing the bug's head off. Several more centipedes, creeping around under rocks and in crevices, cautiously eyed The Seeker. Apparently they thought they were stealthy.
Gaius swept his senses over the opposition thoroughly, as they prepared to strike from countless angles. A few dozen insectoid Spirit Beasts, physically a bit larger and stronger than the ones in the first chamber. Twenty-six in the First Heavenstage, six in the Second. They probably backed up their numbers with a paralytic venom, to take down larger prey with more advanced cultivation with pack hunting tactics. He supposed that, for a fresh-faced Legionnaire, this could be threatening.
Gaius breathed deeply, extruding tiny flowering branches from his skin all over his body. With a sharp exhale, he bathed the chamber in a spherical blast of soul power, instantly killing every living thing more complex than an amoeba.
The chamber hosting the fourth challenge of Gaius' journey was decidedly more colorful than the last three, with vibrant green moss, mushrooms in various sickly shades of brown, yellow and red, and even a few scrawny trees, feasting on the dim light of the False Sun Crystals up above. Several dead centipedes which had been clinging to the ceiling fell to the ground with heavy thuds, and one of the trees fell as its roots gave way, all strength gone from them.
He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. On one hand, Gaius knew that he should be grateful to have such little difficulty starting out, since each floor would inevitably be more intense than the last. On the other, it felt a bit like he was stealing, getting such great resources with negligible exertion.
Striding to the center of the chamber, Gaius came upon a raised dais with a large chalice in the center. The contents, a dark red liquid that smelled like iron, were easy to guess at. "That's the reward?" Gaius asked with a deeply skeptical look. "Drinking that would be Blood Path, wouldn't it?"
Hesitantly, Gaius brushed his fingers against the cup. It was made of blown green glass, dyed the color of oxidized bronze, just barely transparent enough to see the liquid inside. Sculpted onto the surface was a relief of an ancient hero - he couldn't recall which one - conquering his enemies with a scepter of fire.
"But then, it's set aside specifically to reward us, isn't it?" Gaius mused, picking up the chalice and swirling the contents around. Slowly, he unsheathed his dagger and dipped the tip into the cup, then cast a detection technique. Nothing fancy, just a handy skill he'd picked up from Lipita for discovering shapeshifters. Vibrations travelled down the blade, into the blood, and then back up and into Gaius' hand. The frequency was much lower - if it wasn't the same as the one he'd transmitted, and thus not the same species as him.
"Damnit, if it's not human blood, don't make it look so macabre." The Seeker sighed, raising the glass to his lips. "Bottoms up, and the Devil laughs." With a few eye-watering gulps, Gaius downed the thick, sticky, pungent liquid, swallowing about half before he had to take a break, coughing and retching. Collapsing against the wall, Gaius carefully placed the chalice down beside him and began to cycle.
As expected, it was extremely potent. The Mid-Grade spirit stones Gaius had grown accustomed to paled in comparison to whatever the hell shed this. Given there were seemingly no other ingredients beyond the blood itself, and the blood itself wasn't even that fresh, it had to be a Nascent Soul of some kind. Realizing this, Gaius grinned and forced down another gulp, feeling as his body's qi saturation grew denser and denser. "Nascent blood? Never had a Nascent anything. What a treat…"
Closer, closer, ever closer. Gaius' body felt tighter and tighter as his qi packed in more densely. Cycling grew slower, and a dull ache rang out across his whole body. A sheepskin filled to bursting with wine, he poured in yet more, feeling more alive than ever with each passing moment. Scylla, too, took in more energy, siphoning a portion of Gaius' own gains. Where it went, Gaius still had no idea; her cultivation base remained frozen at the Twelfth still, and the qi she cycled was instead drawn endlessly into her Beast Core, where it was locked away beyond even Gaius' senses.
The blood didn't go down as easily as the Carrion Bat cores, and so Gaius had no choice but to sit there and cycle for hours after hour, Scylla doing the same in her tank. Before the pair knew it, another two days had passed. No need to be hasty - those who went in behind Gaius would never cross paths with him, even if they went past him. These caves were not something so pedestrian as a single linear path. Overlapping, impossible spaces compressed a colossal anthill-like structure, vast enough to dwarf any metropolis, into what seemed like one path. Gaius' Floor 4 was unlike the Floor 4 any other entrant in the current wave would pass through, and the same would go for every other floor he saw.
As Gaius digested the blood, the Cloud Caves provided. As if this place was not willing to drive away an entrant through hunger or thirst, moss grew wherever Gaius sat, and spring-water collected in puddles. Even insects, mice and other tiny animals, freshly killed, would pile up in corners as The Seeker slept. None of it was appetizing, but it all went down just fine, and gave him all the nutrition needed to keep going. This peculiarity was something Gaius knew about going in: he had packed only fifty ration tins, using them not to keep himself alive but to mark his progress. With each completed floor, he ate one tin, and in doing so he counted his conquests.
But soon, with the newly gained qi settled in his body, Gaius knew it was time to continue, and descended to the next floor.
——
If the fourth floor had been a disappointment, then the fifth, as Gaius would soon discover, would wildly blow his expectations away.
Descending into the new chamber, Gaius came upon a long corridor, some ten feet wide and one hundred feet long. Relatively small, perhaps meant for a singular combat encounter. More of those cylindrical totems jutted from the floor in neat rows, and the dark stone was otherwise unadorned, aside from moss and False Sun Crystals all over the walls. Midway through the corridor stood a single obstacle: a tall, thick oak with a knot in the shape of a human face in the center. The droop of the eyes and mouth and the thick lines in the bark around the eyes gave the impression of an old man, and the voice which followed only reinforced that idea.
"The challenger arrives! Step forward, so that I may know the one who stands before the scales of destiny today." The tree said in a booming, gravelly voice, branches shaking with every word.
Gaius eyed this strange Floor Guardian warily, casting his gaze this way and that. It wasn't long before he spotted the shredded corpses of several Deep scattered around the tree's base, which only made him more confused.
Undeterred, the ent continued to announce itself in pretentious fashion. "I am the Well-Wisher, he who dwells in places of power. Come forth, young man, and test your mettle. He who passes my test shall be the Inheritor!"
Gaius tilted his head quizzically, thoroughly unimpressed. "Awfully self-important for the fifth Floor Guardian, aren't ya?"
"Floor Guardian?" the Well-Wisher sneered with disdain. "I obliterated those wretches, who you see around me, for daring to bring forth force of arms against their better. I come to this accursed place of my own accord. There shall soon be a great awakening, and I must find the Inheritor."
Probably bullshit, thought Gaius. Still, things here were off enough that he could not completely dismiss the ent's claims. "So, this 'Inheritor', what gave you the idea they'd be in here?" He asked, balancing an equal amount of skepticism and curiosity so as to not anger the mysterious being.
The ent scowled and let out a booming, wordless scoff, yet this gesture of minor frustration carried enough force to nearly fling Gaius into the wall. Gritting his teeth and digging his feet into the ground, Gaius skidding back nearly ten feet before regaining his balance.
"Fool; did you not listen? I dwell in places of power - physical space means nothing. I have been in the Cloud Caves, and on the peak of Turtlebone Mountain, and the Yuan Secret Realm, and at the base of Kind Zhao's Anvil. I grow upon the head of the Elder Dragon named Seven Cresting Shadows, and my leaves are flung by the eternal storms which lash the coast of Lesser Xing! I do not know who shall claim the prize I hold, or where they dwell, only that the time is near."
Okay, now that was interesting, Gaius thought. Nothing on the fifth floor should have had enough power to force him so far back, and certainly not so easily. It would take at least a Foundation level beast to do so, and for it to be so effortless… the tree was a Five-Pillar at bare minimum, and Gaius' complete inability to even sense its cultivation base suggested it could be much higher.
In conclusion: even if the ent was lying, which it might not be, it was completely inappropriate for it to be the fifth Floor Guardian. Time to brown-nose a little bit, then. Gaius pressed his fists together and bowed deeply, as deep as the barrel on his back would allow, and affixed a look of solemn respect onto his face. "Honorable Well-Wisher, forgive my lack of faith. I was only confused that you would consider me, a Qi Condensation, for your test."
"It has to be Qi Condensation." Well-Wisher clarified as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Only a raw and unformed being can take up the mantle of Inheritor. Now, step forward and take the test."
"Thank you for this opportunity. If you so firmly insist, I will." Said Gaius, walking up to the ent, until a furrow suddenly appeared in the ground in front of his feet, some twenty feet out. He stopped, thoroughly shocked; he hadn't even felt a thing coming. Either that technique, or ability, or whatever it was, had been too fast to even detect, or, more frighteningly, it had been completely hidden from even The Seeker's senses.
"It is simple; touch me. This field cannot be crossed by a Qi Condensation; it grows denser that closer you get, until it grows far beyond what even a Thirteenth Heavenstage's body and soul can breach. Do the impossible - if you cannot even manage that, then you are not the Inheritor."
The instructions delivered, the Well-Wisher breathed in deeply, then began to vibrate. The air around the ancient tree resonated, the very air seeming to solidify and thicken before Gaius. The stone below their feet began to crack bit by bit, and Gaius' teeth started to hurt as they were forced to grind against one another.
Gaius' qi lit up like a bonfire within him as he layered half a dozen body arts atop one another, making himself into a moving fortress. "Just walking? Alright, I can do that…"
Five steps in, and Gaius was starting to eat his words. The endless shaking made his guts feel as if they were being churned like butter, like he was going to melt into goop. Given the length of his stride, thirteen steps in total would be enough to cross this distance. The sixth and seventh steps were completed, and then Gaius' ears began to ring.
The pain was indescribable. Not in the sense of being unimaginably painful - Gaius had been in all manner of various agonies in his years - but in the sense of being a whole new kind of pain. He was literally being shaken apart, as if this damned tree were trying to separate every cell in his body from every other cell. Eight steps, nine steps.
Blood began exiting Gaius' body through every exit it could find. Nose, eyes, ears, all produced a steady drip of red. The Seeker tensed all of his muscles to the limit, struggling to not be thrown off his feet. The vibrations, previously directionless, now radiated out from the Well-Wisher in waves, seeking to push away whatever came neat. The ent's face was mostly impassive, but held the slightest glimmer of interest, now that Gaius had come so far. Gaius made the tenth step.
The ringing and shaking redoubled, and the pain sunk all the way down to his bones. Despite his best efforts, Gaius simply couldn't get any farther. Three steps from the tree was the limit of his body and qi's endurance. He gritted his teeth, activating several more body and soul arts at once, and took another agonizing step.
His hand was only three feet away now just two more steps! Grasping fingers writhed desperately, vainly hoping to brush up against their goal. There had to be a secret, he thought. Some way for a Qi Condensation to reach this damn thing. After all, out of all Qi Condensation, how many could have even reached as close as Gaius had? There was no way it could be a matter of brute force!
Finally, Gaius' body gave in. His feet slipped just a little bit, and he was bodily flung backwards, bouncing and tumbling across the ground from the sheer force of the tree's repulsive field. When he came skidding to a stop, he was almost all the way back at the entrance.
Ow. Now that was a shield, beyond anything Gaius could hope to create, as he was now. Rather than let the demoralizing failure sweep him up, he pondered how anyone was even supposed to beat that test. Three times more strength and four times more qi density; by Gaius' estimation, that was how much stronger he would have had to be to pass.
What a load of horseshit. No one in their right mind would put a test like that before a Qi Condensation. No, he hadn't come up short; it had definitely been a lie all along.
"Urgh, you gotta be shittin' me…" Gaius groaned, lying motionless and staring up at the ceiling above. "Qi Condensation can't break that. You're insane, Well-Wisher."
The ent gave a mighty harrumph, smothering The Seeker in another gust of air. "How crude. You hold respect when you hope to win, and once that hope is dashed you take it away."
"Oh what do I care?" Gaius sighed, sitting up and rubbing at a quickly-forming lump on the back of his head. "You bait me into your prank with stories of a legend, then make me face an impossible test. You're not holding an ancient secret, you're just a Floor Guardian from farther down, here to bully me."
"You do not believe because you do not carry the requisite capacity - for an ordinary one, that was as far as any could hope to get. In any case, you fail." The bearded face concluded scornfully. "It seems you cannot be the Inheritor, but your strength and will are commendable nonetheless. Take this consolation prize and begone!" As if to punctuate the declaration, the tree's face opened its mouth wide, and a bright white light shone from within, bathing Gaius in the glow. Immediately, his thoughts grew sharper, his muscles felt more responsive than they had in years, and his meridians practically sang in joy, so full of energy and health as they now were.
The light faded, and Gaius got back to his feet, practically a new man. He stared at his hands, turning them end over end and marvelling at the suppleness of his skin. He ran his fingers through his hair, sighing with joy at the lush, bouncy feeling it had regained. All the damage from years of negative psychic buildup had washed away, leaving Gaius feeling healthier than ever before.
"You seem in high spirits. That is good." Well-Wisher said, nodding his approval. "Better to take solace in what you have achieved, than to curse your own weakness. Not everyone gets to see me, you know; I only test the most exceptional talents. Now go!" The tree concluded, pointing to the exit with one of its branches.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up old man." Gaius snorted with a dismissive wave of his hand, but nonetheless did as the tree said, muttering as he descended. "…bet you I could kick this Inheritor's ass, fucking judgemental shrub…"
——
The sixth floor was surprisingly small. A grove of trees about a hundred feet across was all that stood between Gaius and the exit, by which some sort of carving marked the ground. Whatever it was, Gaius couldn't make it out through the trees, which he supposed housed his enemy.
Steadying his breathing, The Seeker crept into the little grove, casting his senses out for any sudden noises, strange smells or sources of killing intent. It didn't take long before he was alerted by a violent shaking of boughs.
An ape, green-eyed and white-furred, snarled at Gaius from above, jumping from one tree to another as it slowly circled him. It was nearly six feet of powerfully corded muscle and ferocity, raring to bring the full extent of its might against anyone who stood in its way. Gaius cast out his senses, but found no other spiritually-endowed organisms, moving or otherwise. "Single combat, then?" He asked the ape with a smirk, cracking his knuckles. "One powerful enemy, guarding the prize."
Like a coil being undone, the ape launched itself at Gaius, clawing at him with bloody-minded ferocity. Undeterred, Gaius held his hand up to greet the beast's, and locked their fingers together. Screeching rabidly, the ape swung a fist unerringly toward this impudent human's head - only for its fist to be caught as well.
"The Sixth Heavenstage is the gateway to greatness." Gaius continued, pitching forward and squeezing both hands with all his might. "At the Sixth, you've surpassed what most so-called Immortals will ever achieve. You must be proud!"
As if to shut up this haughty challenger, the ape pushed back, planting its feet and opening its closed fist to lock fingers with Gaius' other hand. It was an even match; the ape's cultivation may have been far below Gaius', but pound-for-pound, humans have the least baseline strength of any Great Ape by far, especially grip strength. For what seemed like an eternity, the two remained locked in that test of strength, muscles tensed at the edge of their limits. "You're not a Spirit Beast either, I can't sense a beast core in you. You attained this power on your own, by eating the weak. How you got from the forest to the desert I couldn't say, but you're definitely strong."
Little by little, the balance shifted. The bronze in Gaius' muscles and bones grew denser, his heart rate climbed to an unnatural speed, and a golden light began to glow from beneath his skin. The ape's knees begin to buckle as its grip faltered and its arms shook. Unwilling to admit defeat, the floor guardian surged forward, mouth opening wide to bite out a chunk of Gaius' neck.
"But here's the thing!" Gaius exclaimed, grip growing even more powerful. The phalanges of the ape's hands broke in half, forcing the ape to its knees. Immediately, roars became whimpers, and it tried to pull away. "Humans have these things called techniques. Even a Ninth Heavenstage could out-muscle you with Body Arts. You should stick to bullying Sixes, but instead you got in my way!"
With that, Gaius let go, and the beast immediately backed away, standing upright and cradling its broken hands. Before it could attempt anything else, Gaius drew his new dagger and flung it. The Celestial Bronze passed through the beast's chest like it was made of butter, then blasted straight through two more trees and embedded into a fourth down to the hilt. The ape collapsed, dead.
A moment of silence passed, as Gaius contemplated his work, then sighed. "...too much?" Within her tank, Scylla burbled, thoroughly unimpressed with her partner, prompting Gaius' eyebrow to twitch. "Look, I'm anxious. I wanted to bully something now, while I don't have to be serious!" With a lazy wave of his hand, Gaius pulled the dagger back and began to clean it. "You're so fussy about everything; it's not like he's gonna tell his friends about it now. More importantly..."
The Seeker walked to the end of the chember, where a blood red array was carved into the ground. Kneeling down, he pressed his palm to it, prompting a larger series of scripts to light up in a complex geometric pattern some fifty feet across. The dead ape began to shrivel, turning into an emaciated husk as its blood and soul was ripped out and siphoned into the array, making it glow brighter and fully activate.
Wait. Was this it? Was this enough to make it, right now? Gaius checked the qi content of the array, then his own condition. Given the current amount of compression, the tipping point was very close indeed. With the huge bounty stored here... "This will do it. This will do it, won't it!?" He laughed. How could he not laugh, having arrived after so many years. Gaius' loud, booming, piercing laughter bounced off the cave's walls over and over, and tears rolled endlessly down his face. "Thirteenth! Thirteenth! The mythical Thirteenth Heavenstage is mine!"
Quickly, so as to not waste a single iota of the energy contained within the array, Gaius set Scylla's barrel down and entered a meditative position. The trance came to him easily, despite the giddy feeling in his belly, thanks to the experience taught by endless repetition and practice.
This would be the last time Gaius ever performed Qi Condensation-style cultivation, and that thought made him feel strangely melancholy. Each Great Realm cycled differently, of course, because the mechanics of their advancement were different. All of them absorbed and compressed qi within their bodies, but toward a different purpose. Thus, any Sect worth its salt had different cycling techniques for the different Great Realms. Gaius would be performing a different method in the future, one which his instincts would have to adapt to. This cycling trance would be his last time with the method he had used since he was a boy. Resolving to savor the experience, The Seeker got to work.
The remaining distance to the Thirteenth Heavenstage came easily. With only a little bit of his body not fully saturated, the qi entering his system rushed easily into that spot, hardly needing any direction at all. For over three days, his body remained motionless, growing maddeningly closer to that beautiful goal.
Just as Gaius began to wonder if he had done something wrong, if he was being held up by a bottleneck unthinkably close to the end, he crossed the threshold. It was more violent, more extreme than any crossing since the First Heavenstage. The Tenth was also comparable, but where that surge of energy had wracked Gaius' body, this wracked his entire being. Muscles spasmed until they nearly tore, individual hairs grew out, then fell out, what felt like every meal he'd ever eaten was vomited up, and sweat poured endlessly from every inch of his skin.
The impurities were not expelled in concentrated form, because the remaining amount was just so trace. For hour after hour, Gaius' body expelled every ounce of liquid, and he greedily drank down the water provided by the cave no matter how bitter it tasted. He quaked, stomach clenching, steam rising from his pores, brain alight with thought and reflex in ways it never had been before.
But slowly, bit by bit, Gaius regained control over his body. When he stood again, splashing his naked body to clean it as well as these caves could allow, he marvelled at just how light he felt. This was the strength of the Thirteenth? Gaius threw some experimental punches, and they came out quicker than any he'd ever thrown before. The way he moved, it was as if he weighed only one hundred pounds!
"I want to break through…" Gaius muttered, looking down at his hands as if he'd never seen them before. At just the mere mention of breakthrough, tiny sparks of lightning crackled around a few of his fingers, warning him of the extreme retribution he could bring down at any moment. "I wanna break through I wanna break through I wanna break through…" The muttering grew faster and more frantic, as the glee of what Gaius had done filled him up. Now screaming in triumph, he raised both fists high above his head as if he were lifting a championship belt. "I can break through at any time I want! I made it! Scylla, Mother, Father, Maria, Zeno, Amaranth, I MADE IIIIIIIT!"
A flash of white became a flash of many colors, and Scylla's evolved form whacked him upside the head with her tail. "Get ahold of yourself or you'll summon the lightning! Don't lose your mind, we have seven more floors!"
Gaius took a deep breath, reaching out to pat Scylla's big, scaly side. "That's right. Seven more. Sorry, I got a little too excited. Just seven more."
----
Damn, this is going slower than I thought it would. That's six floors down... out of forty. This will be quite the undertaking, but that's what I get for wanting to make every floor feel unique and not just skip through a bunch of them. For this one, I wanted the highlight to be "Gaius stumbles upon a stage in someone else's Hero's Journey." For every Chosen One, there's a hundred promising folks who don't make the cut, and I wanted to poke fun at that notion.
The Well-Wisher is bearing a Heavenly Treasure, and has the ability to grow through any sufficiently large patch of soil in the Third Sea, through spatial magic. He can't literally be everywhere at once, though he can monitor quite a few locations at a time. As the old ent says, he's creeping around in 'places of power' searching for a Qi Condensation who can pass his test, since he can sense the Great Era coming. Basically, he's a living MacGuffin that a new Good Seed could use as their Cool Thing if they want, or maybe Occi will use him in someone's fate text. If no one claims his bounty soon, I'll give it to an NPC.
As for the other two floors, nothing too insane happens aside from Gaius finally reaching the Thirteenth Heavenstage, which he's understandably giddy about. Can't wait to play around with that for the short time he's there. Just seven more...
