Hello, it's been a while. Over three months since the last chapter... I was planning on uploading one or two chapters a week but I got super busy and stopped uploading. For the last few days I've been much more free than before but I lost all my motivation to write new chapters. I'm still unsure if I want to write more chapters or not but I will give it a shot again.
***
Caster, despite having become an awakened only recently, would give even the strongest of Masters a run for their money.
Well, maybe not anymore.
There was a reason why he was the strongest divine aspect user despite having an incomplete aspect.
It was his cores.
Sunny as an Awakened monster was able to keep up with Masters. But what do you think would happen if a divine aspect user was a titan? Being a titan was Kieron's biggest advantage. It made him many times stronger than even most Masters.
Of course, now he was only a monster. He had to spend a lot of his cores on his grazes for the mission to eradicate mordret. Speaking of which, the mission can't even be considered a success. After all, Kieron fell asleep after the fourth wall went dormant due to the fight because of recieving too many injuries. This had caused Caster to reawaken and take back the control of his body. Which, as a result led to Caster waking up to a weaker body than what it used to be.
But not even his titan self could have defended what this gate was unleashing.
After the first round of dormant beasts, the second round ended up being awakened beasts and monsters.
Hundreds of them.
Caster used the remaining awakened and fallen shards in the book of books to get rid of the huge numbers with just lightning.
It saved him soul essence and stamina. He felt it was worth it.
By the fourth round, fallen beasts alread started emerging. Usually in category 2 gates it takes around 10 minutes to start unleashing fallen abominations, and in category three gates around five to six minutes.
But what if fallen abominations start emerging by the third minute?
'We're totally fucked. Don't tell me, this is a category four gate? I can not defend this. We don't just need masters, we need saints! Multiple saints!'
Swinging his blade, in a clean stroke he beheaded another fallen abomination.
'No! No! This can't be happening. Is this the restoration phenomena of fate? It wants me dead! Totally dead! Fuck.'
According to the statistics that Caster had studied, this would be extremely abnormal for even the worst category three gates. But perhaps because of the severity of the situation, he tried to avoid the worst case scenario in his mind. He was in disbelief.
'No, let's calm down. There is no guarantee that this will escalate to a category 4 gate. No! No way that happens! It must be just a very abnormal category 3 gate. Yes, that's it!'
That was not to say that category 3 would be easy to defend by any means. For Caster, who is around the strength of a low to mid tier Master right now, as he only had two cores, fighting against a corrupted devil is not feasible. But fighting against corrupted tyrants, terrors or worse... titans?
No chance.
Him being a low to mid tier Master is only in terms of pure strength. Considering the abilities Caster has, it is safe to say that even the strongest Masters can not defeat him. However, issue is going againts corrupted tyrants or terrors is not feasible for any master. Forget an awakened with two cores. Sunny as an ascended tyrant was brutally outclassed by a corrupted terror.
Its utterly impossible for him to do anything to them.
Worst case scenario, the entire area is wiped clean.
Caster had little doubt that he'd fall to these abominations. Because of him having Mordret's true graze he knew that he could always just teleport away using the water that is spread all over the plaza.
But the situation was extremely dire.
All he could to was battle out one fallen abomination after another.
[Your soul grows more knowledgable.]
[Your soul grows more knowledgable.]
[Your soul grows more knowledgable.]
'There's just too many of these beasts!'
The battle progressed at a steady pace, Caster maintained the front, Alyssa, Gemma and the rest of the gold reapers maintained the second line that dealt with the stragglers.
Due to the new graze and evolved grazes, Caster was having an easier time fighting the group of enemies. After all, the more enemies there are, the stronger he gets.
Welthe's evolved graze, after getting merged with laylah's graze, had three abilities. Siphon, an evolved version of Drain and Strengthening. It allowed Caster to drain the strength of a group instead of just one person and put that drained strength into another group, or if he wanted, he could overload a person (himself in most cases) with the strength of many, making him almost invincible while fighting against many more enemies.
The second ability was Debilitation. It allowed Caster to debilitate someone's mind and senses. It was a simple ability, but if used well could be devastating in combat. Especially if it is used smartly to catch the enemy off guard. This ability didn't make the victim blind, just disoriented and unable utilize their brain properly. The effect is simple but significant.
The third ability, probably the best one out of the three, damage relocation.
It allowed Caster to relocated damage from anyone to anyone or anything. For example, if Caster breaks his finger, he could relocate that damage from his finger to the ground. The ground would shatter for maybe a few inches.
Undoubtedly, in this battle, siphon would prove to be the most useful.
Caster had lost track of time at this point, he was just too tired. Wave after wave, stronger enemies just kept on coming out.
At some point, his enemies turned out to be corrupted abominations. If not for transcendent memories, he would have been having an even harder time against them.
He wanted to first focus on the fallen beast, monsters and demons before fighting the corrupted abominations, but the battle ended up not allowing for it.
He had to leave most of the weaker fallen to Gemma, Alyssa and the rest. Among the weaker awakened that came to the gate break, two already perished to them.
Still, Caster's situation was the most dangerous. He was dealing with multiple corrupted beasts, a fallen devil and a fallen demon at the same time.
'Please, gate guardian, just appear! Please just be a corrupted devil at most!'
Caster had lost track of time, but even still, the longer a gate continues to proceed for, the stronger the gate guardian would be, wouldn't it?
He wasn't keen on fighting a corrupted devil either, but he knew that he could at least stall for time against it. But if a corrupted terror appears? Caster would most likely immediately die.
Coming back to the present situation, his body was at its limit and his reserves of soul essence were running dry.
Reflection!
Catching the abominations off guard, Caster teleported behind the fallen devil and just barely, he turned the situation around by killing it in that time frame. He was able to catch them off guard since they walked out of the gate after Caster stopped using the teleportation due to too much essence expenditure.
He was still surrounded by three corrupted beasts and a fallen demon. But his situation had gotten better as he broke free from the deadlock.
[Your soul grows more knowledgable.]
He was barely staying alive due to siphon and damage transfer.
The endless amounts of awakened and fallen abominations, that the others were dealing with now, were still being of help in strengthening Caster, allowing him to be able to keep up with the stronger abominations at least. Even if just barely. The other awakened benefitted greatly too, having to deal with weaker monsters.
Feeling blood streaming down his face, Caster briefly glanced toward the distant participants of the battle, then back at the gate.
And then, he shivered.
Something had changed.
Something was... coming.
In the darkness of the Gate, a new silhouette appeared.
A moment later, all the beasts that surrounded him froze, and then howled triumphantly, as if to welcome the new creature to the waking world.
The Gate Guardian had arrived.
Caster stared at the Gate, momentarily paralyzed by dread. Then, he snapped out of it and fought through exhaustion, rushing to kill as many abominations as he could before the Guardian came out of the Gate.
He had an inkling that after, there would not be an opportunity to pay them any attention.
He had to take a risk to defeat the abominations on him, it ended up paying off even though he almost lost his arm.
[Your soul grows more knowledgable.]
[Your soul grows more knowledgable.]
[Your soul grows more knowledgable.]
[Your soul grows more knowledgable.]
Damage Transfer!
The damage his arm took was immediately shifted to another abomination that immediately perished to it, not being capable of enduring that transfered damage.
Siphon! Siphon! Siphon!
Caster took a risk and Siphoned strength off of abominations three times, lowering his reserves of soul essence further, but it allowed him to gather more physical strength, and most importantly, vitality. He was starting to lose strength in his body, he needed more vitality.
He glanced at the nightmare gate again.
From its impossible depths stepped the roughlt five meter tall giant. It walked on two elongated legs with dreadful grace, its skin was rough black, absolutely terrifying to look at. Its face, if you could even call it that, was split by glowing violet fractures that pulsed at fixed intervals.
'I-Impossible... we're dead... that is a terror!'
Corrupted terror!
Unimaginably stronger than current Caster.
Absolutely no way Caster could do anything to it.
Forget touching it, Caster wasn't even confident in running away from it even if he amplified his strength multiple times using Siphon and using Aquired Haste at maximum power.
'Think! Think what you can do! You can't die just yet, you just barely got your body back from him!'
But it was off no use.
Once the gate guardian descended fully, it unleased a powerful mind attack, the pulsing cracks in its face was no longer pulsing, but rather constantly glowing bright purple.
The attack immediately affected all of the awakened at the scene.
Only Caster was able to somewhat resist the affects due to his attribute [Apostle of eternity] giving him a certain amount of protection against mind and soul attacks.
'No... I-I can't fall asleep... I will respond to the call if I do...'
He couldn't think of any plan against absolute strength, and fell for the gate guardian's attack. Despite him handing on for a few seconds, in the end it didn't matter at all.
'Ah shit... I c... can't resist this! What do I do? What do I do?'
Reflection!
He used Mordret's true graze's ability and transported his physical body into the mirror realm through the water that was spread across the battle scene. The water acted as a medium for the reflection and allowed him to temporarily survive.
The issue was that he was almost out of soul essence, and while staying inside of the mirror realm wasn't continuously consuming his essence, it still meant that he couldn't leave this place. The moment he leaves the mirror realm, he'll fall asleep and be sent to the dream realm, away from any anchor most likely.
The situation was at a standstill, but the terror soon figured out how Caster was hiding. So, the terror led the other corrupted abominations to get rid of all the water nearby.
The situation kept getting worse for him. He could see no way out of this quagmire of death. It was an inescapable mess.
He had to take a risk!
Reflection! Reflection! Reflection!
Caster continuously teleported from one water way to another, finding his way to the corrupted terror through the water and lept out of it at last, right behind the terror.
Siphon!
With all his remaining might, all his soul essence drained, Caster swung at the terror with his long sword.
But he didn't feel the attack at all.
The terror fully dodged the sneak attack!
Caster didn't know what were all the abilities that this terror had, all he knew was that it had mind related abilities.
And that's exactly it. It likely has an ability that allows it to sense killing intent, which allowed it to swiftly dodge the attack.
Caster fell into despair. His only chance was this.
The terror, swiftly let out a terrifying roar. The roar itself was an attack. It nearly caused Caster to fall unconscious.
He was sent flying with just the shockwave of the roar, colliding with everything in the way.
His tall figure was pathetically sprawled on the ground when an abomination attacked him, piercing his heart and nearly killing him.
At his current state, he could at most survive for five seconds.
Just barely hanging onto his life, Caster used Damage transfer and transfered the damage to the abomination.
It was a fallen abomination which got injured but did not die to the transfered damage.
Of course, that's just to the transfered damage. Its ugly head could be seen rolling on the ground a second later.
The Corrupted terror launched his mental attack again as the brilliant purple glow reached Caster's eyes.
Causing Caster to lose his strength again.
'Don't fall... D-dont... fa...'
The last thing he saw before falling unconcious, was the scene of one of the abominations tearing apart alyssa's unconcious body.
Even as he fell unconscious, he took another abomination down with him.
[Your soul grows more knowledgable.]