Fearing what he was about to see, Rory examined the Chrysalis as information appeared on the visor of his helmet.

  Ashworm Chrysalis

  Level: ??

  When an Ashworm reaches maturity or is otherwise forced into a premature metamorphosis, it retreats into a chrysalis formed of its Spiritual Body, utilizing the entirety of its remaining vital energy from its Ashworm stage. If an Ashworm is forced to pupate prematurely, the Chrysalis will rapidly accelerate its metamorphosis to ensure long-term survival.

  Rory didn’t need further prodding, instantly firing an explosive arrow into the Chrysalis. As the description implied, the Chrysalis seemed unharmed, but Rory knew better. Thanks to Apostolos, Rory had some understanding of Spiritual Bodies. They weren’t ‘truly’ invincible; they just appeared that way while the reserve of anima -the conversion of durability and overall vital energy- remained. For a monster with as much durability and overall vital energy as the Ashworm, even with only an eighty percent conversion efficiency to anima, the Chrysalis would be damn near unkillable without extreme attack potency.

  Thankfully, extreme attack potency was exactly what Rory had on his side for the time.

  I’ve got to kill it now before whatever is gestating inside has a chance to emerge! At the very least, I must burn through as much of the anima sustaining the Chrysalis as possible. Chances are whatever emerges will be weakened if I do.

  Another arrow already knocked, something caught Rory’s attention from the corner of his eye, movement in the sand to his left. Glancing over, Rory noticed what appeared to be wind rippling across the dune.

  “Wait,” Rory said, skin suddenly crawling. “There’s no wind down here.”

  So, of course, that was when, from the sand, hundreds of worms began lurching out at him, ranging from only an inch or two long upwards to two or three feet.

  “Oh, fuck off!” Rory yelped. He’d never been a fan of small, wriggly things like worms or maggots, and this was right up that ick valley.

  The arrow he’d intended for the Chrysalis was sent off course as he was forced to change target. Exploding, it instantly evaporated several of the tiny ashworms. In return, Rory was thrown from his feet, the force of the explosion almost directly in his face.

  God damn it!

  Scurrying to his feet, Rory had to temporarily drop his bow as a three-foot-long worm landed squarely on his chest, its head lunging toward his visor and latching on with a sickly-sounding pop.

  Attached to his visor, Rory saw a tongue-like appendage lash out and grab his visor -because, of course, the ashworm had a prehensile tongue- reminding Rory of an alien probe you’d see in a movie.

  Nope, nope, nope. Fuckkkkk that.

  Without even thinking about what he was doing, Rory grabbed the worm and tore it apart as he ripped the creepy creature off himself. Grey ooze sprayed over him, but thankfully, his luck came through for once. The blood was ordinary, with no acidic or otherwise worrying properties.

  Freed of the worm, there were only more worms on their way.

  Alright, new plan.

  Bow and arrow would be too slow to handle all the pests. Needing a moment to breathe, Rory threw his hands out like an umpire declaring a base-stealer safe.

  The plentitude of baby ashworms leaping through the air -how they leaped was a mystery to Rory- suddenly found themselves repelled as a barrier sprung into existence around Rory, like a thin glass ball.

  Think!

  The barrier wouldn’t last long; it wasn’t great against physical attacks, and the worms were, unfortunately, quite physical.

  He hadn’t brought his macahuitl along; Rory hadn’t considered a world where a battle of physical strength was ever in the cards against a tier-six.

  How was I supposed to know a swarm of baby worms would appear!?

  His bow was essentially useless. First, the bow couldn't keep pace against a swarm of weak monsters like the baby worms. The second issue was that the bow was meant to be used only against a single chosen enemy. Switching targets could potentially unravel the entire thing. Hell, the only reason his armor wasn’t failing was they’d come to attack him as he was battling his chosen target; he couldn’t switch off the armor like you could choose to simply not attack with a bow.

  No bow. No melee weapon… Wait!

  Quickly reaching into his quiver of arrows, what Rory pulled free wasn’t an arrow but a tough-looking chord. It was nothing more than a backup string for his old bow; bowstrings were far less durable than the bow itself, after all. It had always been his policy to have a backup just in case a monster managed to target and wreck the bowstring. The odds were low, but they hadn’t been zero.

  I’m not sure I have any better ideas; the only other thing I can think of is getting stabby with my arrows.

  Pulling the tough chord free, Rory held it between his hands for a moment, closing his eyes and focusing as intensely as possible.

  I’m not great at this stuff, but really, all I’m doing is imagining it as more. I’m not strictly changing it.

  Drawing and manipulating pneuma into the chord, Rory was inspired to utilize Essence Spark in tandem with his raw pneuma manipulation. Channeling, Rory instead focused his newly acquired Lattice affinity on the chord. Within a moment -and a pounding head later- the ordinary-looking chord suddenly glowed a light blue, the surface refracting light as it landed upon it.

  That’ll have to do!

  As far as impromptu weapons went, the hastily fashioned whip would have taken the cake as the most out-there creation. Grabbing one end of the crudely fashioned whip, Rory cracked it once as he tested it. It made an audible crack, performing exactly as he’d hoped.

  It was perfect timing, given that the barrier collapsed not half a second later; the entire ordeal had taken less than ten seconds.

  “Come at me!” Rory shouted as the whip slashed through the air, slicing through worms with abandon. The baby ashworms were far from tough monsters; Rory suspected that they ordinarily would never be seen outside the relative safety deep within the dunes in this life cycle stage. Given they were inside a single cave and not some massive desert, the worms didn’t have a choice to do anything but sacrifice themselves to buy time for the Ashworm within the Chrysalis that had likely been their progenitor.

  Rory felt a rush of satisfaction as the whip continued slashing through the horde of oversized but manageable worms. Beginning to feel confident, he even risked a quick cackle.

  So that was when things took a turn for the south.

  Somewhere within their worm brains, they realized they could no longer hurt the man swinging a whip around with reckless abandon, so they changed tactics. They continued to leap toward Rory as they had before. It wasn’t until they reached the range of his whip that they swelled with energy for a split second before exploding in a wave of gore and magic.

  Taken off guard by the first worms exploding, Rory stumbled back a step.

  Which was ultimately a mistake. The single misstep cost Rory another split second, resulting in even more worms sailing through the air and piling upon him.

  Oh no.

  Aware of what was about to happen a split second before it did, Rory activated the burning and barrier gems within every piece of armor containing them as he curled inward as best he could.

  Before he was buried in a massive explosion, it seemed as if every worm opted to explode in a chain reaction of gore and ash-based magic.

  Several seconds of deafening silence passed as the explosion resided. Left in its wake, Rory was within a large crater, worse for wear. It was thankful the baby ashworms couldn’t have been more than tier three amongst the strongest of them; the energy within their body was individually only enough for a distracting explosion, but together, they’d created something far more damaging.

  Standing up from the center of the newly made crater, sand and ash seared together in a molten mass, Rory hurt everywhere. It was thankful he’d been as fast to react as he had. The dual gem activation had massively enhanced his armor’s physical durability, protecting his fleshier body.

  Which was to say, he still looked like he’d been on a beach during a tornado, his entire body sandblasted and burnt.

  But I’m alive.

  Limping his way toward where the Chrysalis stood alone in a field of corpse stone, Rory awkwardly raised his bow. Knocking an arrow, he fired it into the dark Chrysalis. Again, he repeated the process, managing twelve arrows before the Chrysalis quivered.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Either it’s out of anima to sustain the Spiritual Body, or-

  A crack ran down the cocoon as a rush of power poured out.

  -or it’s hatching. Shit.

  The entire cocoon split apart with a final shake as Rory was tossed nearly a dozen feet away. A wave of power pressed down upon him, and instantly, Rory knew things had taken a turn for the terrible.

  Needing to see what he was up against, Rory looked toward the top of the ash dune. There, lazily floating in the air, was a giant moth the size of a man. Compared to the size of the original ashworm, it was beyond diminutive. Still, the raw aura radiating out from it alarmed Rory. Examining the monster, Rory froze.

  Reaping Ash Coscinocera-Famished

  Level: 61

  Born from the Chrysalis of an ashworm, the Reaping Ash Coscinocera is a bringer of smoking erosion and death. Forced to pupate before true maturity and further forced to emerge early from its cocoon, the Famished Reaping Ash Coscinocera is devoid of nearly the entirety of its potential strength.

  “And it’s still level sixty-one even when reduced to the near absolute max,” Rory murmured, a sinking feeling in his gut. “God damn,”

  The wise choice would be to flee. That much should have been obvious. Glancing at how much time he had left on his unstable gear, Rory was shocked to see he’d burnt through thirty-six minutes worth of his total hour.

  And it’s only been five minutes since I started. Tops.

  He hadn’t fully realized how much energy he’d been forced to burn through to damage the Ashworm enough to pupate and withstand the brunt of its big attack. He had less than half of his remaining time, and the same monster had just finished undergoing a metamorphosis and increasing in level by one.

  The smart choice was to flee.

  “In the words of a once great actor,” Rory said, frowning at his own stupidity. “I ain’t hear no fat lady sing.”

  Sighting the floating moth, Rory took a deep breath before releasing the bow string.

  The good news was…. Well, there was no good news.

  The bad news was that the arrow never even reached the monster. As it reached thirty meters, it flared in a sudden blaze, scattering into ash almost instantly.

  The worse news was Rory had fully lifted all restraint on the output of his unstable gear. Still, the arrow hadn’t been able to pass through the eroding aura generated by the oversized moth.

  And the worst news was the moth finally seemed to notice Rory. Turning to face him, it began to sweep its wings forward, a gust of eroding air blown toward him. If it hadn’t been for his eyes, which had been highly trained due to his work with Gem Crafting, Rory doubted he would have noticed things within the blown breeze.

  Countless flakes, imperceptibly small scales from its wings.

  Good as his eyes were, they weren’t that good that he could make out details of the scale flakes. Making the safe guess that they were extremely dangerous, Rory began to sprint with all his speed out of the way, running a large loop around the ash dune as the Reaping Ash Coscinocera continued to blow its terrifying scales toward him.

  As if to prove a point, when Rory ducked behind some of the temple’s remains that its prior form had smashed apart, the scale flakes that landed upon the stone began to sizzle and carve tiny tracks through the stone.

  “Erosion, and just ordinary sharpness. Wonderful,” Rory panted. His body was seriously beginning to hurt. He’d maintained an immensely boosted physical state for longer than he should have.

  At my rate of physical investment, this is what, one and a half, two, maybe even two and a half tiers worth of physical attributes boosting?

  Rory struggled to remember times his entire body ached as much as it currently did. Maybe a few times during his time on Aelia when he’d really overdone it. Aside from that, his only other memory of such aches had been when he’d managed to snap two tendons at once when screwing around in the gym as a high schooler, a lesson for not ego-lifting.

  Focus!

  Rory’s attention snapped back into focus. His mind had wandered due to the sheer exhaustion he was forcing his body to endure. Staying focused and not slipping into a waking daydream was a struggle, well past the limits of his body.

  His little whip gimmick wouldn’t do anything; it had only been useful against the ashworm grubs because of their low tier. It wasn’t just his whip that wouldn’t work; his arrows didn’t have the punching power to pass through its aura without-

  Oh. Right. Barrier gem.

  Truthfully, he’d forgotten about the gems within his bow. Peeking out from his rubble cover, Rory saw the moth freely blowing more of the eroding wind toward the temple’s ruins, the erosion effect of the wind and the sheer sharpness of the scale flakes quickly reducing what remained of the temple to ash and dust.

  “Gotta... keep… moving.” Rory forced himself to stand, forced his body to ignore the growing aches as it internally screamed as he ran as fast as he could, the moth turning its continuous wing beats to follow his path. Gaining as much ground as he could, Rory paused momentarily to turn and release another arrow at the moth. Unlike the last arrow, it managed to make it at least halfway through the moth’s aura of erosion, the barrier effect shielding the arrow.

  Almost!

  The issue with ‘almost’ was it only counted for horseshoes and hand grenades.

  I need to get the arrow through somehow!

  Try as he might, Rory couldn’t think of an answer. So strong was the condensed aura of erosion around the moth that even a full-powered arrow clad in a maxed-out barrier couldn’t punch through before it burnt up. The enhanced blood weave was already pushing its maximum output, burning through what remained of its usable time like water down a drain. He didn’t have any special skills that could assist in his arrow punching through, nor was his skill with pneuma anywhere close to good enough to attempt to counteract the moth’s aura.

  The only thing I can do at this point is to retreat. It is better to live to see another day than die and end it all here.

  Preparing to flee, Rory paused. His brain tickled as if whispering to him, and he knew he should flee.

  But.

  But Rory didn’t want to. It wasn’t some faulty belief in himself, a sudden surge of courage, or dedicating himself to a noble cause.

  He simply didn’t want to.

  I’ve spent something like six or seven damn years to reach A6! And I’m going to back out now? Take my consolation prize of a standard ascension?

  “Nah,” Rory shook his head, stubbornness winning out. “Screw that.”

  Stupidity, pure and simple. Any other time and Rory knew he would have fled without a problem, he didn’t concern himself much with his pride, but he’d worked way too damn hard to get here.

  Some people have pride, ego, a just cause, or other great motivations.

  Roy had a head as hard as stone and a stubbornness to match.

  “New plan,” Rory’s mind began to whizz now that he’d decided he wouldn’t flee. “I need to get an arrow to punch through. The way I see it, that moth is obscenely dangerous, offensively speaking. Still, it can’t have much left in the tank from a vitality standpoint.”

  When it had just been an Adolescent Ashworm, the monster had a titanic pool of vitality and durability, its primary defense as it never bothered to dodge. The trade-off of such a defense was that by the time it was forced into its Chrysyalis state, it had already taken immense damage, leaving far less vitality and durability to convert into anima. Forced into chrysalis form, the conversion to anima wasted another twenty percent of its life force.

  Then, while in its chrysalis form, Rory had managed to pound it with more than ten unrestrained arrows.

  Which means?

  If Rory could get some arrows to land, he had no doubts the moth would fall like any other monster.

  So, I need to get the arrows closer.

  It was the same problem as before, yet now Rory had an idea since he’d decided he wasn’t planning to flee. If he couldn’t get the arrows to survive the flight through its aura, why not fire them inside?

  Was it stupid?

  Immensely.

  Effective?

  Yet to be seen.

  Ehhh, good enough for me.

  As much as Rory’s body hurt -it felt as if his body was screaming as it was torn apart like taffy- Rory put it aside. Not because he was that pain tolerant, but he’d come up with the rather clever idea of processing that pain in a secondary train of thought and then put that train of thought to the side. As long as it never switched to his primary focus, he could force himself to continue moving well beyond the physical limits of his pain tolerance.

  “Going to absolutely pay for that later… If there’s a later.”

  Rather than sprinting around the moth at an unchanging safe distance like a moon orbiting a planet, Rory began testing his patience as he slowly drew closer like a penny rolling down a funnel. As much as he would have loved to charge the monster directly, he couldn’t afford to take the direct force of its beating wings. If he was going to close in, he had to do so from outside its attack angle.

  Rory neared the Coscinocera closer and closer, like a predator circling its prey, until at last, he felt as if he could stick his hand out and feel the aura directly, the moth struggling to keep up with the sheer speed of his heightened attributes.

  Had Rory been in a sounder state of mind, he would have noticed that the enhanced blood weave cuirass he wore had been forced to adapt, the metal riblike protrusions he’d added to the base blood weave had stabbed into himself like the overgrown tusks on a boar would stab into their own head. Even the metal ridges on his blood weave legs had begun stabbing inward as they sought more and more essence to sustain the expeditious rate he burned through the blood weave.

  Almost there.

  Racing one last loop around the giant moth, Rory dashed behind it before surging forward within thirty meters. For a moment, he was reminded of a scene he’d seen in Lord of the Rings, a favorite of his grandparents. Defending their keep from the forces of evil, a Uruk-Hai had managed to blow up the gates of the valiant defenders by charging down a short gauntlet even while assailed by a rain of arrows.

  Rory didn’t consider himself amongst the forces of evil; he’d made a point of not going down the route of a dark lord after all, but Rory did quite understand the feelings of that Uruk-Hai. Entering the range of the moth’s aura, it was like Rory had exposed himself to enemy fire. It felt as if a sandblaster set to max had been turned on him, his flesh instantly torn and shredded asunder.

  Gritting his teeth, Rory activated the gems of his armor as they flared to life. The searing, eroding aura lessened, but it wasn’t enough.

  More!

  He pushed more essence into and through the gems, his time rapidly depleting. He had less than five minutes, and each second was vanishing fifteen seconds at a time. All it took was basic division to realize he had less than twenty seconds remaining.

  Making it to within ten meters of the monster moth, Rory dropped to one knee as he activated one last key function: his helmet’s gems and their inscriptions. The aura that tore him apart lessened even further as the effect of the helmet activated, a null zone projected outward. Drawing the bowstring back, Rory released an arrow. With only fifteen seconds remaining, the arrow slammed into the back of the moth, skewering the beast before exploding within its body, the monster shuddering and convulsing violently.

  Reacting, it turned to face him as the brunt of its scale flakes and erosion wind bombarded him; even the projected null zone did little under the combined force.

  Even if Rory wanted to flee, he’d passed the event horizon. The only way through was forward.

  Drawing another arrow, Rory no longer felt pain.

  Mainly because he’d been absolutely scoured of his pain receptors.

  Twelve.

  Another arrow flew forward, slamming into the moth from the front, as another explosion happened within its body. Gouts of shiny grey blood sprayed out from its body as the moth paused its wingbeats, unable to continue for a moment.

  Nine.

  Rory was confident he was still firing arrows upon the Coscinocera, but he couldn’t tell for sure. His mind had retreated inward to a dark, isolated place, a barely remaining thread of awareness the only indicator his body was responding to his commands by sheer force of will.

  Seven.

  Arrow.

  Five.

  Explosion.

  Three.

  Arrow.

  One.

  Explosion.

  Rory knew his armor had failed at that point; the countdown had finished. It was only intuitively that he knew as much as there was nothing for Rory to see or feel; he was a dimming light in a dark void. Floating there, even that began to fade as Rory could only hold out hope for one shot.

  I really hope Apostolos gets me that Revival Gem quickly.

  never annoys anyone in any boss fight ever, and the 3rd phase was basically the "depending on how quickly you dealt with phase 2 will make phase 3 harder or easier"