That Which Devoured the Precursor

John had Gnome construct a fortress.

It was not a good looking thing. In fact, most of it was invisible. The entrance jutted out between beach and jungle, leading into a large underground complex that had been filled with berry bushes that would survive for a few days in the lightless space. Much of it was there purely for the psychological benefit of the people. The simple truth of the matter was that, if the fight ever did get to them, the bunker would at best delay the inevitable.

“We have done what we can,” John said, once the area was sealed. “Time to do what we must.”

Rave nodded grimly. He led the way, leaping into the jungle. She was quickly behind him, as were the elementals who manifested in order to follow and keep checking for ambushes. There were none. Izha was playing for time, which gave John some hope this was not going to be as difficult as first anticipated.

It might very well be the case that he had outgrown the expectations of the creature while it had laid its preparations. That was the optimistic way to look at it. Pessimistically, Izha was just playing with his food or, maybe, it did not matter to him what happened in the end.

The last one was the most terrifying to John, because that made Izha absolutely unpredictable. With Tiamat, he was at least certain she had the goal to spread, which subjected her actions to a degree of reason.

Moving at Abyssal speeds, they made their way to the edge of the territory Izha had guided them to several hours earlier. The primordial Lorylim continued to nourish itself on the sap. John attempted to Observe the creature again, but that only got him a glitching window that constantly shifted in colour and size. He closed it before he could give himself a headache by looking at it.

This thing was older than the conception of modern magic. To it, even titans, creatures that barely anybody was aware had ever been real, would have looked like a modern invention. When it had reigned, Earth would have looked different from space.

It almost made John feel bad that he was going to kill it. Something this ancient, this powerful, this filled with knowledge that was so removed from all they had conceived, to kill it was just a terrible waste and yet there was ****. ‘I wonder if the people that hunted dangerous predators to extinction felt similarly,’ John thought.

“So, what do we do now?” Rave asked.

“We’ll open the fight with a bang,” he told her. “Might as well take advantage of its **** inertness.”

“Alrighty… so you want to do the big attack or should I?”

“We’ll do it as one,” he answered. “You, me and Salamander. One big nuke to get us the advantage. On your mark.”

“Alrighty.” The clothes covering his first fiancée flared golden, then were replaced with Illuminare. John also switched to his battle clothing. Salamander hovered above, the usual pre-combat smirk absent from her face. “A solemn reign, for the few that rise up high…”

John’s mana dropped, matching the tempo of his Starfall with that of her chanting. Salamander raised a hand channelling destructive power into a sphere of fire and earth, boosting its might even further with her Unleash.

“…and we all fight…”

John tensed up, waiting for any reaction from the primordial Lorylim.

“…let our worlds collide!”

A silver comet of arcane might and an apocalyptic meteor both slammed into the ground before them. Both came a moment after the five slashes of light by the feline Lightbearer sliced and scorched their way through the jungle before them. Wood dried out and caught fire in an instant, turned from vital plant to kindling by powers beyond physics.

The overlapping shockwaves of the impacts bent and shattered trees. For a hundred metres around the impact site, everything was turning to ash. For two-hundred more metres beyond that, the devastation ran its course, petering out towards the edges, and leaving behind a crater of glass, ash and dust.

All was still in the lifeless forest.

“It’s-“

The mere beginning of a warning left Gnome’s throat, before a dozen grey roots broke from the floor all around them. Sharpened tips stabbed at their bodies, impaling Gnome outright. Sylph and Salamander fled up into the air, the roots splitting and growing, fanning out into more stabbing tendrils and mushroom caps the size of houses that released a fog of spores into the air.

Siena and Gnome fended off further the tendrils coming for them and Undine, while John and Rave did the same. Light blasted from their palms. For Rave, it was her natural Innate Ability, for John, it was having Stirwin equipped, giving him access to a light blast after every time he expended mana for his own spells. Something that he did as liberally as he had to.

Fending off the primordial Lorylim was eery. No chatter, no skittering, not a single sound from it, only the byproducts of breaking the soil with the body within it. Titanic teeth, or perhaps calling them thorns would have been more accurate in this mawless iteration, rose in a ring around them.

“Relocate!” John ordered.

Magus Step showed everyone what direction he had in mind. He did not want to get stuck in a cage, the spores raining down on them from above. Already the air was starting to tinge grey and lifeless.

They moved from the cage of thorns just in time, continuing to run and slice away at tendrils that spawned in their path. They ranged from thin as a hair to thick as an arm. John pulled out the Mandala Sphere as they ran, ready to deploy it for an extra intel gathering point.

It joined Sylph and Salamander in the sky. The two were constantly turning tendrils into ash with thunder and fire, but it wasn’t enough. Energy stored in the invisible body beneath the surface continued to nourish immense mushrooms to continue to grow in size. Grey and black caps sprouted, grew taller, then grew table mushrooms from their pale stems. Bulbous lesser fungus rose in their shadow, an entire ecosystem of decay rising in response to the damage done to it. Mycelial roots filled the sky, an outgrowth of the no doubt much larger body below. Clusters condensed into runes.

A shockwave went through reality. John felt as if his soul got displaced from his body. He spat blood suddenly, a pounding headache ravaging him, invoking memories of… of THAT thing that lived in Nia’s eye.

The implication made his head swim, but he had no time to concentrate on it. He jumped back to his feet. An un-hum now carved itself into his ears. He had preferred the silence. The anti-sound grew more pronounced with every second until Salamander burned away one of the runes with a meteorite. The network disruption ended the charging of the second wave.

Gamer’s Body fixed his bleeding nose a moment later.

“We have to keep moving!”

“No need to tell me, tiger!” Rave answered. One of her eyes was bloodshot, showing the damage the quarter elemental had sustained from that pulse.

All of the elementals’ HP had concerningly dropped as well. There was no greater priority than to make sure that this spell did not happen again. If setting up runic networks like that was an ability the Lorylim had lost because they mixed with Tiamat, John was almost thankful that it had happened.

“Shit!” Rave cussed and wiped at her bleeding eye.

John decided that this was as good a time as any to pull a ripcord.

The mark on Rave’s lower stomach shone brightly enough to be distinct through her bodysuit. The same was true for the other haremettes around, marking the start of the Harem Party Overclock. In an instant, the now shared Gamer’s Body fixed up all individual injuries. HP was still going to be a concern, but injuries would not be.

“Is that a good use of that?” Rave asked, the moment she realized what had happened.

“It doesn’t have-“ That was all John managed to say, as a gargantuan bulb near them suddenly burst. A grey wave thick with spores flowed towards them, an aerosol so thick it almost behaved like a liquid. John placed three Unstable Arcana in its path. Silver waves burned away at the spores, neutralizing that threat for now.

It was a treatment of a symptom, nothing more. The landscape continued to develop with every moment. Spores turned into mould that devoured entire trees within seconds, turning them into yet more spores. The cycle was playing out with every second in every square metre, spreading further and further on this island. Through the Mandala Sphere, it was like watching a Raid boss progress through its mechanics, yet this was nothing like it.

This creature was not bound by a set of pre-programmed mechanics.

John only realized they had been guided into a trap when it was already too late. Their constant movement came to an end between two cliff walls. Pre-carved sigils lit up, white energy rising from lead grey mycelium. Intense gravity slammed down on the lot of them, pressing them into the ground, then turned to the side, then to the other, making them bounce around like playthings.

A double Starfall burned through the greater sphere of roots the primordial Lorylim had built around them. The first made the way, the second crashed into the western wall. Symmetry ruined, the gravity magic went haywire, flinging them across the space. Sylph flew as a tornado around them, guiding their aerial trajectory.

Roots whipped around them at sonic speed. For all their efforts to block, Salamander and Gnome were taking chip damage and even Siena could not entirely keep up. Even with Aclysia and Beatrice around, they would have struggled to beat this creature, and that was only what John considered of its current capabilities.

Izha had definitely not locked them in with a hurdle. This was a deadly threat.

Under the cover of grey spores, another runic network was completed. John only found out when lightning suddenly crackled all around them. ‘What are the limitations on this?’ the Gamer asked. He could not know. This was beyond any kind of runic magic he had ever encountered. It wasn’t even part of the same magic system he knew. If it had been, harnessing the Nirvana for it should have been impossible.

Sylph took hold of the lightning and split it around them. It was an immense effort, diminishing her mana to nothing and even tapping into his. Her hands reached upwards, then parted, and with that the electricity was bent around them.

A pillar of hardened chitin rose from the ground below. John warned Sylph as quick as thoughts could travel, but that was too slow. In an instant, the arcvolt elemental was skewered, her essence scattered and **** into the temporary **** of an elemental.

‘Shit!’ John finally landed. He was somewhere on his own, separated out. The ground was even less safe than the air. He could not see his ankles in the dense carpet of spores. The soil itself had been replaced with a weave of mycelium, oddly bouncy under his step. Arc Rays blasted away at the tendrils that rose to injure him. Particle Skin flashed around his ankles, preventing others from gripping him.

John clenched his teeth. There were more Overclocks to activate, but if he did so, what would he have left when he made it back?

‘Doesn’t matter if I do not make it back,’ he immediately thought, running his mind through what was best to use here. Simultaneously, his mind worked through the situation around him. He checked where he was, where he would be, and then he realized another path.

A round maw lined with thorns suddenly rose within the centre of the battlefield. It stretched and stretched upwards at an absurd pace, pulling up with it the entirety of the topsoil. In one moment, it caught the Mandala Sphere above. The defensive and offensive enchantments on it activated on reflex, bursting the orifice, but it simply regenerated around and crushed the Gamer’s Extension. Suddenly, he was only in one body.

The maw opened up like a flower made of carapaces and fungal disks. The topsoil around it looked almost like a veil, worn under a crown of thorns. New mushroom bodies rose, stalks and all, creating an asymmetrical mound, a living hill of grey and black and white, a monument to the sins of a fallen precursor empire.

John was stunned for a moment. That sense of lost majesty he had felt before came to him stronger than before.

A wave of heat and light told him exactly where Rave was fighting. Her claws burned through a wall between them, scorching one of the seven smaller mushroom pillars that surrounded the central body at even intervals. Seven pillars, seven walls. Through Salamander’s eyes above, it was seven dots in seven lines.

“Tiger!” As a stream of light, Rave arrived by his side, hair as golden as the noon sun. “What’s the plan?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “That’s more than I thought it would be… but we are dealing damage!” He **** any sense of desperation into the background and concentrated on the visible marks Rave’s last Babel Phrase had left behind. Under mycelial layers, regular soil and stone still existed. This massive body was still limited. “We lost Sylph, but we can still do this.”

The primordial Lorylim took that as a challenge.

Dozens of tendrils appeared around them, surfacing from the rising ocean of spores. Undine and Siena activated their emergency teleports, to be at his side when all four of them fought against the constant stream of attacks. They ceded ground rapidly, always in an attempt to prevent the tendrils behind them from weaving together an attack that could encircle them for good.

Until, finally, there was nowhere left to go. John’s back hit the wall, a short cliffside that had survived what had happened so far. Before he could even offer a prayer, the tendrils before him were suddenly stopped by a golden shield.

“Be not afraid, for it is decreed you deserve my aid.”

The once burning voice only scratched slightly in his ears. It was even and beautiful, like the unalloyed gold of the shield she had created. John turned his head to see her. A six-winged angel, her body radiant and naked, featureless like a mannequin except for a pair of lime green eyes. Her white hair waved like a liquid candle flame and in her hand she held the cross of the conquistador.

“In nomine Christi,” she recited. “In the name of the saviour, in the name of the goddess, the abomination shall be slain.”

Lucifrena had joined his side.