Monarch of the Calamity Beast

Chapter 3: The Echo Desert and the First Hunger

Ash coated the back of Kaelen's throat. He swallowed dry, tasting burnt thatch and scorched copper. He dragged his heavy boots through the stony dirt, leaving the smoldering remains of Eldermire behind.

He didn't look back. There was no point. The Aegis Theocracy had burned his home to the ground, so he had slaughtered their High Priest in return.

Kaelen pulled his collar up against the biting wind. The faces of the surviving villagers flashed in his mind. Not their faces before the holy fire, but after.

When the Aegis knights had cornered the local children, Kaelen had stepped into the flames. He took the searing light across his back to shield them. But when he butchered the knights, the villagers hadn't thanked him.

They had looked at the black, inky blood dripping from his arms with pure terror. They looked at him like he was a disease.

"They view you as a plague," Malakor rasped. The ancient entity's voice vibrated directly at the base of Kaelen's skull. "Humanity is rot. Leave the dead limb behind."

"Shut up," Kaelen muttered, wiping soot from his temple. "I don't need your advice."

"You crave their approval. It is a weakness."

"I crave power," Kaelen snapped, stopping in his tracks. He stared out at the Wasteland of Echoes. The sky was an infected violet, pulsing heavily with toxic Aether radiation.

He pushed away the memory of the ungrateful villagers and summoned his interface.

[System: Stage One Void Assimilator.]

[System: Level 4.]

His absolute affinity for the Void was a twisted mockery of the holy light he had once revered. He had five unallocated attribute points from his slaughter in the town square. His current stats hovered sharply in his vision.

[System: Strength: 28 | Agility: 32 | Endurance: 25 | Perception: 20]

His body already felt alien. The essence he had ripped from the High Priest sat heavily in his gut like a swallowed stone. He could feel the dense Void Aether pumping sluggishly through his veins.

He willed three points into Agility and two into Strength.

[System: Attributes Allocated.]

[System: Commencing physical restructuring.]

The reaction was immediate and violent. Kaelen dropped to his knees as a shock of glacial cold spiked up his spine. His muscles seized, microscopic fibers tearing and knitting back together far denser than before.

He spat a mouthful of acidic bile into the gray dust. He stayed on all fours for a moment, listening to his own ragged breathing. His joints popped like firecrackers as he slowly pushed himself up.

He opened and closed his hands. The compressive force of his new grip made his tendons ache with raw, explosive tension.

[System: Skill Unlocked - Shadow Step (Level 1).]

[System: Merge into darkness to traverse space up to 10 meters. Consumes Void Aether and stamina.]

The knowledge of the skill unpacked in his brain instantly, locking into his muscle memory. Kaelen wiped his mouth on his sleeve and kept walking. He had no time to waste.

The Echo Desert opened up before him. Deep drifts of gray volcanic ash replaced the stony dirt. Massive skeletal ribcages jutted out of the earth, curving toward the toxic sky like decaying monuments.

He walked a mile into the ash drifts before his breath hitched. The sharp, nauseating stench of sulfur and rotting meat cut through the air. A strange, threatening heat prickled the back of his neck.

Kaelen stopped. His hand drifted to the hilt of a rusted dagger he had looted from a dead Aegis knight.

He stood between two towering cliffs of black glass. Pebbles clattered down the left cliff face. Then came the unmistakable sound of heavy claws scraping against hard stone.

Three Scythe-tail Prowlers crawled headfirst down the vertical drop. They moved with jerky, unnatural speed, their ash-gray carapaces clicking loudly. They were the size of dire wolves, exposing wet, skinless red muscle beneath their segmented armor.

They had no eyes, only a circular, rotating maw of translucent teeth. Heavy bone scythes tipped their long, whipping tails.

"Scavengers," Malakor hummed in his mind. The entity's amusement made Kaelen's teeth ache.

Kaelen drew the rusted dagger. He knew the brittle metal wouldn't do much on its own.

One of the Prowlers shrieked like a scraping pipe and launched itself off the cliff. It hurled through the air, jaws spinning, aiming straight for Kaelen's throat.

Kaelen didn't flinch. He let it come.

[System: Shadow Step Activated.]

The world snapped into a bleak, freezing gray. Kaelen felt his physical body lose cohesion as he plunged into the Void. A fraction of a second later, reality slammed back into place.

He reappeared three meters to the right, his boots digging firmly into the ash.

The Prowler snapped its jaws on empty air. It crashed hard into the dirt where Kaelen had stood a blink ago.

Before the beast could orient itself, Kaelen moved. His boosted agility pushed him forward faster than a human mind could process. He channeled his Void Aether down his arm, coating the rusted dagger in absolute blackness.

The blade vibrated violently in his grip. He stepped inside the Prowler's guard with zero hesitation. He drove the weapon straight into the side of the creature's thick neck.

The brittle metal should have shattered on impact. Instead, the Void aura ate through the heavy carapace like highly concentrated acid. The blade sank deep into the beast's wet, red muscle.

Kaelen violently twisted his wrist and wrenched his arm back. The brutal motion tore the creature's throat wide open. A sickening crunch echoed through the canyon as tendons snapped.

Thick, neon-blue blood sprayed across Kaelen's boots. It hit the ground with a violent hiss, burning small craters into the ash. The Prowler collapsed, thrashing wildly for a second before going completely still.

Kaelen dropped the dagger. The corrosive blood had melted the hilt into a useless, bubbling lump. He shook the burning blue liquid off his knuckles without a wince.

The remaining two beasts hit the ground running. They didn't hesitate, splitting apart to attack from opposite sides. The left one whipped its tail low to sever his legs, while the right lunged for his chest.

Kaelen dropped his center of gravity. He threw his left arm down, catching the incoming bone-scythe with an open palm.

The impact was like catching a swinging hammer. Pain shot up his shoulder, but his reinforced bones held perfectly. He wrapped his fingers around the scythe, locking his grip like a vice.

Using the beast's own momentum, Kaelen pivoted and ripped the Prowler off the ground. He swung its heavy body like a club. He slammed it directly into the trajectory of the leaping beast on his right.

They collided with a heavy, wet crunch. The second Prowler panicked, its spinning jaws clamping down on the first one's exposed shoulder. Both beasts crashed to the ground in a tangled, shrieking heap of limbs and spraying acid.

A hollow, pulling sensation bloomed in Kaelen's chest. It was a deep, physical thirst for raw Aether.

He stepped forward. Black, freezing flames ignited around his hands, absorbing the violet light from the sky. He waded directly into the thrashing knot of monsters.

He grabbed the skull of the top Prowler, his fingers finding the weak points in its segmented armor. He pressed his thumbs in deep and pulled with explosive force.

Bone cracked loudly in the quiet desert. He ripped the beast's head clean off its neck.

Blue blood coated his forearms, smoking against his skin. The Void within him automatically neutralized the acid before it could burn his flesh. Kaelen felt nothing but the hollow ache in his chest demanding to be fed.

The final Prowler bled heavily from its side, trying to scramble backward. Its eyeless head darted side to side. It finally realized it had made a fatal mistake.

Kaelen followed it. His shadow stretched impossibly long over the gray ash. He crouched beside the trembling beast, his face an emotionless mask.

He drove his hand straight through the center of the creature's chest. The black flames melted away the bone and muscle in an instant. He rooted around inside the hot, wet cavity until his fingers brushed a hard, vibrating stone.

He ripped it out.

It was an Aether Core. The size of a large plum, it pulsed with frantic, raw energy. The Prowler instantly went limp and died.

Kaelen stood up slowly, staring at the glowing core in his blood-soaked hand. The thirst in his chest was screaming now. He brought the core to his mouth and parted his lips.

Dark mist spilled from his throat, wrapping around the crystal. The gem crumbled into fine, glowing dust. Kaelen breathed it all in.

A wave of euphoric, burning heat rushed down his windpipe and branched into his veins. It pushed away the cold and the pain. For a brief, intoxicating second, there was only absolute power.

[System: Low-Grade Aether Core Consumed.]

[System: +450 EXP Gained.]

[System: Level Up Imminent.]

"Not enough," Kaelen said coldly. He watched his skin actively absorb the residual monster blood, cleaning his hands.

"They were just scavengers," Malakor noted dismissively. "Look north. Past the desert."

Kaelen lifted his chin. In the far distance, towering over the toxic clouds, the Obsidian Mountains cut into the sky. He could feel the heavy, oppressive pressure of true Calamity Beasts radiating from those peaks.

If he was going to tear down the Aegis Order, he needed more than the scraps of scavengers. He needed oceans of power.

Kaelen stepped over the melting carcasses. He set his sights on the black peaks, his boots crunching rhythmically in the ash. The long, bloody hunt had just begun.