They worshipped it, an inherently flawed being; an amalgamation of the Nomad’s mistakes. Centuries later, their wholehearted belief in its absolute was met. Their world died, crumbling to nothing more than ashes, left to drift the eternal void.

Entry three of the Primordial Tablets.

**

Two weeks passed by in a flash, fuelled by an avid assortment of slaughter and looting. By now, the jeep had long run empty on fuel, forcing the duo of Brock and Harry to continue through the desert on foot. Occasionally though, they’d bring out the vehicle from the spatial ring to savour the privilege of air conditioning.

Also, the seats made a great resting place, at least in comparison to everything else out around them.

Strangely enough, the rumblings had yet to cease and instead only grew stronger and stronger. Brock had long shed the notion of it being due to earthquakes and accepted a more likely theory. Something was following them. Both were yet to see any physical sign other than the tremors, yet Brock knew he was right.

Hopefully, they’d be able to tackle it when it finally decided to rear its ugly head.

That aside, the two of them had been through a series of trials and tribulations in the passing days, with Harry having finally hit level 30 only days prior. Alongside that, his repertoire of toxins was slowly growing in size. Aside from the potent petrifying toxin he had gained from breathing in the basilisk’s poison gas, the teen had also managed to acquire both a powerful necrotoxin and even some sort of lightning-based one, aptly named an Electrotoxin by the System.

The latter he’d gained from eating a sparking mushroom. Now even the plants in Australia are trying to kill us.

From what Brock understood, it made you spasm involuntarily as it fried the target’s nerves, and had an effect that seemed to disrupt attempts to use any sort of Technique or Augment. He would know as he was the one who’d found the mushroom in the first place. I just wanted some roasted shrooms, man…

It wasn’t overly deadly perse, but it gave more than enough of a distraction to whoever was affected. When that wasn’t him, it had given the knife user more than enough openings during combat to shred through enemies.

On a side note, it was clear to both of them that the toxin was obviously the work of the System and its casual defiance of the basic laws of science.

As for himself, Brock had steadily climbed all the way up to level 17. It was a far cry from the 30 he had wished to hit before he took on the Bandit, but they hadn’t seen all that many powerful monsters since the basilisk. That wasn’t to say he didn’t gain a significant power boost, however, but they both knew it was far from enough.

His newly acquired Ethereal Shackles had proven time and time again to be immensely useful in combat and even complimented his own fighting style greatly. His relied on quick precise strikes, weaving in between attacks and dancing to the rhythm of his own tempo, akin to an overpowering beast, brutally rendering any attempts at gaining the upper hand worthless.

The ominous Technique allowed him to further pursue that avenue of combat by locking down his opponent’s movements and buying a much-needed distraction from his own. Hell, he’d even used it to grab the limbs of beasts when they tried to attack, rendering the blow useless as it was pulled straight to the ground.

Of course, the effectiveness of it varied depending on the relative power of the beast it was used on, but even when they had fought another Sand Wraith, this one at the peak of the 40s, it had managed to keep it chained for a bit over six seconds before it had finally broken free.

Even then, that was more than enough time for Brock to position himself, and he had slain the beast almost instantly afterwards.

Its unique ability to crush and melt was left somewhat useless by the innate durability and strength of higher-level monsters, however. At least until he started to invest more in his Strength it seemed. Which he did. He had dumped half the points from his levels into Strength and the other half into Intelligence, empowering his Technique even further on both fronts.

That act alone had boosted his Strength near 100 and his Intelligence over a whopping value of 250, thanks to the significant bonuses of his Titles. Brock found it truly strange - although certainly empowering - to think that his singular Intelligence stat on its own was higher than all of his stats combined when he had first ‘awakened’ to the System.

Either way, he was feeling colossally stronger.

He did wonder what the hell had forced him back then to pick the Technique, but he found that dwelling on it appeared to give him a headache. That, of course, only made him further concerned, but he tried to avoid thinking about it too much.

In other news, upon reaching level 25 a few weeks back, Harry had begun projecting his aura outward like Jordan had, which was a very interesting thing to observe. It was certainly a bit weaker than the angry asshole’s, but they knew power would come with time and combat.

Harry also noted that his level 25 Technique seemed to use his aura as the catalyst for its function, which Brock had found to be oddly interesting. It made him debate whether it was reaching level 25 that made aura projection possible, or if gaining the Technique was what made it possible.

Should have told Harry to try it before he got the Technique…

Overall, they had been enjoying their time in the outback to the fullest, spending each moment bettering themselves physically and mentally. Well, Harry had at least. Brock not so much. Even if the scalding heat of the sun was minimal, it still left him wanting to blow his head off with a double-barrel shotgun.

So he could shoot himself twice.

He’d made no further leeway with his Augment apart from a few percentage worths of increase during the time period, despite allocating a few hours a day at minimum to pondering on it by Harry’s suggestion. He had been pursuing the concept of his flame being akin to a beast, hungry and desperate. It had to eat to survive, constantly fighting for survival.

He figured that it was a rather dark idea behind it, but his Ascendancy had already stuck with the grim theme so he thought it wouldn’t really matter regardless.

“Do you think we’re ready to fight the Sky Bandit yet?” Harry spoke out to the side, idly kicking a small rock along the sand, “it’s been like two weeks already…”

Brock looked over from the supposed ‘road’ and glanced at his friend, silently considering his words. It really didn’t take much consideration, “Patience young padawan. We still have two weeks until the deadline. There’s no rush.”

Harry cocked a brow, “What’s a ‘padawan’?”

“Harry, I’m going to kill you.”

Despite his ability to ‘joke’, Brock felt his stress mounting. He had no idea where they were even meant to find the damn bird. They’d been scavenging across the outback ceaselessly, zigzagging around what they thought was the general location of Alice Springs, and they hadn’t even caught the barest traces of the monster’s aura.

Considering the apparent scarcity of the beast, he wasn’t sure if two weeks would even be enough to locate it. Shit…

If he didn’t find it, kill it, and return by the time the month was up, James’ fate would return to uncertainty. He knew Jordan wasn’t dumb, but he was impulsive, regardless of his brother’s value to the town. Brock shook the thought from his mind, deciding it’d be more fruitful to ponder on other things.

He had tried asking the System about its location, but when it liked to respond with [Earth] there wasn’t much he could glean apart from the fact it was a dick.

While they had been very talkative, especially Harry, during the earlier parts of their trips, the two had soon taken solace in silence, elaborating on their own individual ideas and concepts. The silence was companionable, and Brock could tell even the chatterbox beside him was enjoying it somewhat. It was… rather calming to just be quiet.

They continued their unspeaking trek for another hour before Harry stopped and his brows furrowed, “Do… you feel that?”

Brock looked over in worry at his higher levelled companion, knowing his senses were far more acute than his own. He made to ask about what he was feeling but paused when the ground began to rumble underneath him. It was rapidly climbing in intensity. Oh, double shit on toast.

He instantly knew exactly what was approaching them. The same thing that had been for a long while.

“Fucking RUN!!!”

The older man snatched the teenager by the arm and put all his 200 or so Agility to good use, tugging him along at speeds greater than 70km an hour. While Brock could clearly feel the tremors closing in behind them, he was clueless as to the power level of it. He could vaguely sense an aura hidden beneath the earth as it closed in on them, and all he knew was that it was far above anything he’d fought before.

“It’s underground!” Harry cried against the lashing of the wind, barely managing to use his legs to windmill and keep himself from turning into a human flag.

Brock cast a slew of curses in response and attempted to pick up the pace even further, feeling the earth beneath them tremble and shudder as something massive passed underneath them. It seemed like their stalker had finally deigned to show themselves, although he had no idea what that would spell for them.

I think… we might be fucked…

He was left stumped as to what to do next. He couldn’t attack what he couldn’t even see, nor could he avoid that which was invisible. All he could do was sprint for his life and hope its opening salvo missed them.

Harry squeezed Brock’s hand as tightly as he could, making the bones flex and bend, “STOP!”

Abruptly, the man skidded to a stop for several dozen meters, before eventually tumbling backward with his companion as the ground a short distance in front of them exploded. A plume of reddened earth clouded the sky, hiding a monstrously large silhouette within as it rose up and blotted out the sun. The figure was a behemoth in size, easily larger and wider than most modern skyscrapers.

Oh… shit…

Brock’s eyes couldn’t help but bulge as he stared it at, its aura bearing down on them in its full intensity. It wasn’t as powerful as the Sky Bandit’s, but that didn’t mean it was anything to scoff at. It was certainly more powerful than Brock’s own. Hell, it was probably stronger than he and Harry’s combined.

Soon, the dust began to clear, and he was left momentarily startled as his eyes were met by a gaping maw facing him directly. Millions of dagger-like fangs rotated inside.

A single name flickered overhead, signalling that the battle had begun.

[F] Devourer Brood-Mother (LVL 62)

Beside him, Harry swore loudly as the horrifying creature was revealed in all its glory. The being was a gargantuan sandworm, similar to the ones he’d seen before, though they’d been smaller. Far smaller. Usually, they’d find themselves splattered across their windscreen or killed by their hands in the past weeks. The hundreds of eyes that populated its lengths shifted and blinked.

In unison, they shuddered, each slitted pupil locking onto them and regarded them with hunger.

Brock noticed a correlation to the name that Ur’Kahn had called the System, but it was openly clear to him that this and that were two entirely different matters, of entirely different importance. One I don’t care about and the other is about to fucking eat me.

It was faint, but he could also detect an uncountable amount smaller and far weaker auras sluggishly approaching from the direction the Brood-Mother had come. While individually they didn’t seem like they’d pose a problem, Brock estimated there to be thousands of them. That would definitely pose a problem.

If it was just the eye-covered creature before them, Brock was under the impression the two of them could find a way to deal with it. But only if they were given time. Abundant time. By his best estimates, the assumed baby worms would cross the hundred and fifty-meter distance in roughly three minutes, and that was nowhere near enough time for them to whittle down the Brood-Mother and claim victory.

“Hey, Brock…”

Brock placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder, “Yeah mate… we’re totally fucked.”

Desperately, as he watched the Brood-Mother loiter ahead of them, he tried to formulate some semblance of a plan. Oddly enough, the giant worm was making no apparent move to attack them, just acting as a menacing barrier to their path forward. It was a small suspicion, but Brock thought the ‘mother’ might have been offering some ‘prey’ to level up her babies, if that’s what all those auras truly were.

The Brood-Mother did have both ‘brood’ and ‘mother’ in her name after all.

She seemed to be stalling for time until her offspring arrived, something which Brock had no clue for whether it was a blessing or a curse. It was either try to deal with the giant worm now or deal with the thousands of smaller ones in roughly… two minutes and forty-three seconds. Even then, they’d most likely still have to fight the Brood-Mother afterwards even if they survived all the little shits.

At the end of the day, the choice was clear to him.

Brock swiftly accessed his ring and summoned some sort of magazine-using crossbow his brother had tinkered together. It looked powerful, albeit scrappy and the bolts held a gleaming, razor-sharp edge. Against the worm, he was certain it would do no more damage than a toothpick would, but it would be perfect for administering Harry’s assortment of poisons.

“Harry. Necrotic poisons. Now!” Brock threw the item over to his partner and the boy understood him immediately. They had long ago discovered that he couldn’t just ‘infuse’ water with his poisons, but also items. It drastically shored up the effectiveness issue with the diluted liquid poisons.

The only drawback was that the poisons did still lose some amount of their efficacy when being infused, and it had a duration of only about a minute before it faded from the item. But even with that, it was far a far more effective method of using his toxins than what they had been limited by before. In a prolonged fight, Harry would undoubtedly be a formidable foe.

The two glanced at each other and nodded. The youngest of the two quickly infused the magazine and its contents in its entirety, letting it adopt a sickly green and black glow. Without waiting for him to finish, Brock exploded forward, his chain-knife already summoned and infused with the blazing power of his Augment.

It took a handful of seconds before Harry began to loose a slew of necrotic arrows into the monster’s thick hide, some flying too close to Brock for comfort. The Brood-Mother roared out to the distance, and Brock felt it was more a call for its children to hurry up than one of pain. The baby worms definitely began to speed toward them even faster afterwards.

Well, isn’t that just great…?

Quickly, Brock crossed the distance and reached the worm, immediately moving to leap around the displaced chunks of stone and sand it had left littered around its entrance up to the surface. He felt its multitude of gazes settle on him as he let his chain-knife shoot toward it and streak through the air, nothing more than a neon blur of fiery power.

As soon as the blade dug into its flesh and found firm purchase within its tight muscles, Brock recalled his chain with a mental prompt. As though it was a grappling hook, he took to the air and let himself be rapidly pulled toward the beast.

He impacted onto the sturdy frame of the Brood-Mother a few seconds later, narrowly avoiding landing within one of its gooey eyes and being crushed by its eyelids. Desperately, he gripped onto the handle of his weapon, summoning out a second dagger from his ring and stabbing it deep into the hide a little further up. Swiftly, he began his ascent up the beast, showering himself in small spurts of incandescent green blood.

To the left and to the right, bolts flashed through the air and punctured into the worm’s leathery flesh, the swampy sheen upon their shafts fading as it sunk into the meat around it. At a pace visible to the naked eye, albeit still quite slow, the hide began turning a dying yellow colour and sloughing in solidity.

The Brood-Mother seemed to be reaching the end of her patience though, as it began to rise higher in the sky, and let out a savage roar. Brock could feel the earth-shattering vibrations of its call through the purchase he was clinging to, and he looked up, seeing the toothy head loom high above him. It was facing directly at Harry.

For a second, the man was confused at the action. That was, until he sensed a powerful maelstrom of energy begin to build up within the core of the beast. Even separated by the beefy layers of meat, he could clearly feel the power.

And Brock knew instantly that he had seen this happen before. Oh no you fucking don’t!

As he felt the energy start to surge, he gritted his teeth and tore out his main blade from the monster’s flesh. Promptly, it struck down into the gelatine-like consistency of a nearby eye.

Sickeningly, the heated edge cleaved through the optical organ akin to a hot knife through butter, and he felt the sensation of dribbling goo splattering upon him as it showered down the side of its body. Brock resisted the urge to grimace. I… kinda regret that…

The build-up of energy completed and the worm writhed furiously in a priorly unseen display of agony, a watery stream of viscous yellow energy ceaselessly spewing out of its maws and splashing across the landscape. Harry did his best to dodge the attack and promptly continued to fire off bolts, his magazine close to bottoming out.

Brock had to give it to James, the man really knew how to build an efficient mag.

As the energy spew finally ran out of juice and left the sandy expanse slick with thick coatings of corrosive acid, Brock sighed in relief. Most of the landscape was being chewed through by the acid, forming exceedingly large potholes and craters all around, but luckily, Harry had managed to slip past the affected area.

Brock knew that if Harry had been hit by that, he would have had all but a few seconds before he turned to a bloody slush.

The man stabbed his blade back into the monster’s hide and continued climbing. The beast bellowed, and Brock grinned as he knew it had no means to rid itself of him even though it could see him from multiple angles. He met one of the many eyes, and within, he thought he saw hatred.

He ignored it and pressed onwards, hoping that like most creatures, the head was where the brain was held. Somewhere. Though he halted as the Brood-Mother started to move once more, rising far up into the sky. Then, as Brock’s stomach dropped and he realised what was about to happen, the monster reached its maximum height and began to arc downwards.

The winds slapped at the rider’s face and forced him to squint. Despite that, dread pooled in his belly as he picked out Harry running away and right into the area where it was going to land. Panicking, Brock screamed out to the boy, watching him continue ahead.

“HARRY!”

Then, the beast’s monstrous maw slammed into the earth and savaged the integrity of the landscape. A noise akin to the sound of stone being ground down reverberated in Brock’s ears as it continued down without resistance.

Realising that he had only a handful of seconds before he was shaved off into paste by the dirt around it, Brock gritted his teeth. He was entirely unwilling to let it escape with his companion in its grasp, if he was still even alive after that. Fuck… hang on Harry…

His hand smoked once more as he charged his Augment into his palm. Without waiting for it to build up any further, he unleashed the power contained within and let a radiant flame tear through the remains of the previously damaged eye a little way beneath him.

A bubbling white fluid and a foul-smelling mist spewed out of the socket, causing a trembling roar of anguish to echo throughout the underneath of the land. Brock ignored it, quickly dropping down and using his chain-knife as a grappling hook to swing within. He landed on his ass, splattering himself in a puddle of eye goo.

Panting profusely, Brock shook his hands of the steaming fluid and gagged. Behind him, the world outside the socket was replaced by the dark passage of dirt and stone within seconds. His newfound hidey-hole afforded him around a small apartment’s worth of space, but he didn’t intend on using it for long.

Brock stood, hissing out a breath.

His hand was engulfed in flame, illuminating the fleshy cavern in shades of flickering orange, and slowly, he walked up to the back of the socket. The charred remains of an optical nerve hung limply ahead, ruined and without purpose. Blood dribbled from that which smouldered. Trippy…

Sombrely, the man placed his palm onto the nerve, feeling the crispy meat beneath. He grimaced before his Augment flared and tore a hole straight through the flesh, leaving a tight fit of a tunnel behind. Brock glanced within, and hot, humid air met him. He was a bit leery of jumping into the insides of a giant worm monster, but he wasn’t leaving Harry behind.

Feeling the air throb in tune with that of the beast’s powerful organs, he stepped up to the edge of the hole and prepared to descend. I’m coming Harry. Don’t you worry.

He was either going to find the kid, or he wasn’t coming out at all.