After a slightly awkward skill fusion, Aki decided to get some coconut water, his friend having her own strange fruit to drink from, though he didn't ask what it was. She finished first though, and looked at him with a lot more seriousness than while she was teaching.

"So why the sudden mood and need for choking?" Septima asked with a straight face.

He didn't say anything, just shared a system notification.

[Congratulations on becoming the ruler of a new government. As your rule spans the whole zone your administrative privileges will be increased.

Due to privilege level and allegiances, you are tasked with eliminating the hidden alfar settlement and it's inhabitants, who have consorted with dangerous entities.

If they are not eliminated before a week, the next phase of integration will begin with added hunter-killers and a survival scenario.

If eliminated, your domain’s resources will receive another upgrade.]

"Oh. But didn't you, OH… maybe we could find someone else to do it?" She winced, reading and re-reading the notification. The system didn't want the cultists only, it wanted a subjugation or purge of every elf inside. Children and elderly would need to be executed by his hands if he was unable to convince the population of prideful and snot nosed fucks.

"I'm already the coldest person around, and the unsavoury tipes I let live aren't stone cold either, they'd resent me for the order and might become unstable. No, the only thing I can do is think of a quick way to do it and bring several orphans back, though i doubt i will be able to save all." He sighed. She caught his hand and he squeezed, but he got up and left the coconut behind without more words, mentally calling for Lea while leaving the building.

One of the advantages of having become a town was that they now had their own dungeon, so he had been looking forward to training in for a few more months, but this needed his immediate attention.

While he didn't have coordinates to go and storm the place, it didn't take a genius to figure out which part of the zone was previously occupied by elves, as it had rather unusual technology, a whole lot of black lines that seemed like neon and tall buildings with strange but smooth designs.

Now, if every citizen had some kind of railgun pistol and the military something even worse, they could have probably survived with minimal interaction with the system, though there most certainly were skill for using firearms and plasma weapons as the system didn’t discriminate against science or magic.

According to Ling Huang however, all elves were under the impression that they could and should rebel against the system, as if their government still worked and sent direct messages to every chip of every citizen about how vile the whole nexus was, because apparently that’s what had been happening for a couple of months before this whole thing hit their planet.

Something had warned them about the system and roped them into their side. He would not be taking too many chances, but hell if he’d let himself just slip into genocide mode so easily.

As he asked Lea to fly around and look for spots that seemed far too calm, Aki started to meditate by stabbing his chest and carving it. The damage was minimal really, but the pain remained the same. Now he just needed to use his higher stats to resist both the curse and the pain.

....

[Congratulations! You have completed the Wise path (250/250)! +10 to Wisdom. +1 to wisdom per level. Thought speed and reaction increased by a tenth. A tenth of the wisdom score now also contributes to your mana pool.

Congratulations! You have completed the Focused path (250/250)! +10 to Focus. +1 to focus per level. All mana using skills are ten percent more powerful. A tenth of the focus score now also contributes to spell stability.]

It took some time for them to actually find the camouflaged place after hitting some four different areas that seemed to be empty decoys or perhaps field camps, and several more hours yet to infiltrate and ready himself.

He’d cast so, SO much, that his total amount of mana he’d sinked into this was a few times over the amount he should even have thanks to the amount of potions he downed and transferred energy from summoned mosquitoes, taking from the surrounding vegetation. He’d learned several skills, advanced a spell and his sneak and gained a grand total of around four hundred skill points. The end result was not pretty, but it sure as fuck was going to be effective.

“People of whatever the fuck this town is called! I have come with a task from the system to subjugate this settlement, so I have kidnapped most children in order to force an agreement. Send a representative to firm a binding contract and hand over whoever has sworn themselves to the entity outside the system for elimination, the rest of the populations will be treated as normal citizens under my rule afterwards and integrated into the efforts to survive the integration. You may resist for the next three hours to better understand your circumstances if need be, but I will not be directly killing anyone, though I warn that excruciating pain will follow such behaviour. Failure to comply with the terms given before the end of the three hours period will result in the beginning of a siege and a series of spell bombardments. I will point out however, that even if you refuse to face reason, I will be taking the infants and children young enough to be reeducated back with me, but I assure you they will not be harmed. Your choice is whether you will be there to allow for your culture to survive together with your kin or if it dies with their generation. And by the way, your time has begun since the first shot fired against my person.”

Even as he coldly explained this through a simple amplification of how far his voice could be spread through the air, Aki was under focused fire by several weapons. Their bullets were all made to pierce armor apparently, having already gotten used to the system assisted endurance, but they still hit like little stones being thrown by a slingshot to him.

This was actually impressive considering how his heightened focus and wisdom allowed him to fortify his armor with his basic flow of mana, plus help it un-bend from the hundreds of small projectiles hitting him, plus the fact that this was likely the same reaction he’d have had were a professional sniper to shoot his head at optimum distance, but from bullets coming from assault rifles and what seemed like a couple of miniguns.

Really, he could see the plasma beams being charged, all around their perimeter, but it was taking more time than it really should thanks to him tapping into their power line for energy as well, converting it into mana just as easily as vitality from the plant life and allowing for him to maintain the image of an unkillable monster that floated right in front of their main gate.

Sure, they were also sending missiles his way at first, but those he just sent scattering with some of their own bullets or even sharp stones on the ground. The cursing elves even tried to send a shit ton of missiles without any other projectiles because of that, but he just made them detonate in the air until they stopped sending them altogether and began blasting him with what seemed to be plasma cannons, as their shots had a lot more of an impact but left no shell behind.

It was around this point that he decided that his armor had outlived its usefulness in this conflict, as it had started to melt and break at a rate higher than he could fix without damaging it permanently. Also, taking those blasts of plasma head on did wonders for his fire and shock resistance, the later being something new he’d realised he did not yet have.

Several more skills were leveling like crazy, but mostly it was his underdeveloped resistances. As the bullets started to come again despite the artillery not ceasing, he decided to try and strengthen his skin not just with mana, but by flexing specific muscles and reinforcing the points of impact to catch everything so that there wouldn’t even be more than some bruising to his body.

It still wore him to the point that he had to heal himself despite his defence, but it was more because of bruising than from having several small holes being made to his whole body, so it was already something good enough for him as at this rate he would become able to sustain the situation indefinitely before their ammo ended, though he was pretty sure that many of the soldiers he'd knocked out with exponential increases to pain sensitivity had been coming back and taking the place of the maddened civilians that seemed only slightly worse off than their seemingly trained military.

His own pain was, of course, ridiculously high, but this much was fine considering what he was doing, so he just relaxed most of his body and focused on controlling the important parts, as there was no need to count to know when the three hours would be up.

After all….. *BBBBBRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM……* … The whole place would become a magma crater thanks to the inscriptions he’d made all around. And now he had just made around two hundred children into orphans.

With the amount of young people passing the tutorial, he had expected the elves to simply more easily wield when they noticed that they were hopeless when it came to defeating him, but he’d also made sure that Lea would be intercepting anyone trying to escape through the exits he had not closed, knowing full well that there was a possibility that his power would not be enough to convince them before the time was up.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the purple mass of screaming tentacles in the middle of the lake of lava he'd just created had been influencing the elves much more than he'd thought.

Despite the earth splitting and popping like blistering skin, bleeding molten rock and burning the air all around because of the sudden increase in temperature, he did not think that the attack that had killed a few thousand people was going to be defeating this wannabe shoggoth.

He was sure that it was getting damaged though, as it's whole body was frantically secreting a purple goo that was shielding it from the magma by seemingly trying to turn it into… purple magma? Anyway, it didn't seem to hurt it.

Luckily, it seemed that impacts and fatigue could still affect it somewhat. The system sent him another task, to hold the thing in place while reinforcements came, but he had not drawn several times his maximum mana from the dead to just hold it back.

He did not move from his spot and nothing in particular seemed to be happening, yet there was a moment of silence before the monster started roaring in fear this time, lashing it's tentacles on the lava and trying to move as it splashed around in liquid rock, it's burning blood seemingly even better at corrupting it's surroundings as soon it started to waddle it's way through a river of purple in the middle of a bassin of orange and black.

It didn't have much time to swim away without interruption however, as the strident skee of his fire bird came followed by jets of gray flame, causing the mass of tentacles, goo and red eyes to lash out and slow down to try and swat away this nuisance.

"Whatever this is supposed to be, I has a shit ton of vitality, but it's also isn't alive. Also, if the sound of the air parting around it's tentacles is any indication then I can only barely survive one direct strike." Lea was worried, as she had also received the same notification and eyed the level tag of the flesh and goo construct, the indigo interrogation marks accompanied by a 80.

Maybe if she was alive and at full power she'd defeat it after much struggle, but now...

"Bath it in lava and slow it down. If it doesn't die after I'm done we run." He replied, focusing mostly on the small purple ball forming in front of him, a howling screech of wind starting to form around it as every moment had it fed by even more of the mana flowing out of Aki's body, it's collor darkening still despite having quickly become black already, the surroundings warping and seeming to be sucked up

On the other side of things, the would-be phoenix felt her soul shudder as she looked at the attack. Her instincts hadn't been useful for some time already as she had been a peak existence in her planet, and undeath had made them weaker as well, but seeing the slimy mass of tentacles had awakened those, and they screamed at her to run from it.

That compressing star in a blackening sky made them go completely insane and told her she was already dead…

“I’m already all bones though.” She laughed, diving like a bullet towards the magma as her flames dissipated, narrowly passing through the tentacles and gobbling down two souls on the way as she coated herself on vitality and blazed with vigor and green again.

The temperature rose, she drank in despair and cooled her bones, swimming much like she flew on air as the environment propelled her forward for seemingly no reason but that it was supposed to. Rolling her whole body to the right, she lifted a wave of infused magma towards the monstrosity even as she dove deeper to avoid it’s attacks, finding a source of childish glee in the whole exchange as she changed course and flipped the whole mass of tentacles over, splashing over it’s goo-y wrongness and sending it reeling back as she was filled with vitality from her enemy’s suffering and her contractors efforts to fuel her, life sparkling and burning to sustain her as aether flowed through her soul as something changed.

She had been a bringer of life, a reserved fighter and a venerated existence, but fuck she’d been lonely. That needed to be shared.

The molten rock fell from her, burning to ash and embers flowing like a wave towards her target with a flap of her wings, even as she ignored several notifications and her vissage changed. She was having more fun with this fight than with almost anything she’d done in over a century, the embrace of existence itself to her ideas and emotions was simply so much greater than with her original image that they could simply not compare.

She’d changed, so what if her image was different now?

As the ash started being corrupted, she couldn’t help but grin with her golden eyes. If the ash simply hurt it then it’d steal life, but having it incorporated into it’s being? That’d be like breathing poison that’d neutralize vitality before disappearing. Different trials took different tools, but they would always be paid.

Dodging several whiplashes, she spread her wings and sucked in the life surrounding her. Even the most distorted and vile had their end, and now she would be the one to bring it forth. The scratches she made corroded over instead of bleeding and the ratio between aether and vitality she took from Aki started to tip further and further towards the former.

Life had an end, and that gave it meaning. Death was necessary to create renewal. To allow for the ashes to fertilize the soil, the energy of one feeding many, to allow new possibilities and meanings to live and show existence it’s glory. And she would be the flame that connected one end of the cycle to the other.

She hadn’t even noticed it, but she’d been on the edge of truly extinguishing already, what with the poison, the burns and the barely missed blows. This was fine too though, adversity was the best catalyst to accelerate growth. Being closer to the ideal would only bring out more of her power.

Wouldn’t it be fine to simply extinguish herself in a blaze to take down this entire zone though? So much growth would…

‘The egg would die, and that little shit isn’t even going to be given the chance to drive you mad? Every moment has meaning, every memory is a step that can hardly be skipped forward without giving something up. So humor me, why are we bringing this fucktard down dear?’

“Because it’s a disgusting threat to my baby! FUCK THE CYCLE OF LIFE! FUCK DYING! I WILL STAY AND BE HAPPY!!!”

Immediately exploding in white flames, blue eyes stared down the stunned entity that was about to kill Lea as her black feathers wielded sparks that burned existence itself.

“Well said.” Monotonously said Aki as he collapsed the flaming axe in his hand, dropping down a newborn star/ giant blade into the monstrosity with a full bodied swing, melting it’s insides with a burst of pure heat and conviction that ate away at it’s fear, doubt and willpower.

Anyone looking from outside would have said that it looked like a star was suddenly born where the monster had been, the expanding mass and energy of such a magnitude that it set everything on fire while blasting away anything in the space it would be occupying with prejudice only a natural disaster could display.

There was no one around however, or they’d see the charred figures that were blown away together with the minuscule bits of the tentacle amalgamation, their half dead forms betraying the sight of grandiose they showed moments before.

Then again, both were smiling like no tomorrow.