Path of Dragons-Chapter 57Book 8: : Adaptation

The ground rumbled with charging soldiers, each one armed with a shield and spear. At the head of their wedge formation was Elijah, glowing with green fire and brandishing the Verdant Fang. Ethera flowed within him as he held multiple spells at the ready. Across the battlefield were millions of monsters, each one malformed and mutated beyond the scope of recognition. Tentacles waved, multiple mouths slavered, and limbs of differing lengths interrupted their smooth gait.

Yet, there was power there, and in each and every one.

Elijah was counting on it. After all, he wouldn’t get much experience from weaklings.

The clash came a second later, and Elijah brought his scythe down with ruthless fury. It sliced through two monsters, bisecting them both in a single attack. Elijah spun, leaping over a tendril of spiked flesh before bringing his bladed weapon around in another sweeping attack. This one was met with more resistance than should have been possible. It was as if the monster had suddenly increased its constitution by hundreds of points.

Perhaps it had.

It was an expected turn of events, though, and Elijah immediately switched gears, thrusting his hand out and using Storm’s Fury. Lighting lanced down from the sky, bringing nature’s wrath with it. The monster – which looked like someone had crossed a crab and a wolf – had no defense against the magical attack, and the lightning reduced it to a smoking corpse.

That’s when the rest of the soldiers fell upon the monsters, stabbing with their spears and keeping the creatures at bay with their shields. The first wave of monsters quickly fell before the might of the front line, but the second proved entirely impervious to the soldiers’ attacks. Following Elijah’s lead, the Vey’thaalians adjusted their tactics, and the Sorcerers in the backlines unleashed a wave of magic that fried rank after rank of the creatures.

But the next volley was entirely ineffective.

That was the problem with fighting these monsters, Elijah knew. When Eres had first described their adaptability, Elijah had thought the Vey’thaalian was exaggerating. However, it only took one foray into the battle for him to establish that Eres was telling the truth. Normally, it only took two attacks before the monsters started to adapt. Three, and they would cement that adaptation into nigh invulnerability. Certainly, it was more than possible to overcome that with unsurmountable differences in power or numbers, but their adaptive defenses made fighting them a nightmare.

The only reason the Vey’thaalians hadn’t already succumbed was because they had managed to create viable tactics to counter the creatures. To that end, they cycled between different damage types. One volley from their mages was fire-based, and then the next might use ice. All the while, the frontliners would keep the monsters at bay and protect their less durable comrades while using their spears to ensure the creatures needed to expend ethera to adapt to physical attacks.

It wasn’t a complex solution, but organizing the strategy required a tentative balance. One wrong move, and they’d lose the rhythm and become overwhelmed.

Even if they did everything right, ethera was a limited resource, and the sheer weight of numbers arrayed against them would eventually wear them down. When that happened, they had no choice but to retreat.

Elijah was counting on that as he fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the frontliners. He knew he wasn’t doing much good, even if he did manage to kill a few monsters along the way. But then, the call for retreat sounded, and everyone began to backtrack toward the small gate from which they’d charged.

The monsters were not sapient, but they were intelligent enough to recognize patterns. And they’d experienced this tactic enough to know what was coming next. Even as they threw themselves forward with renewed fury, the mages atop the wall unleashed their most potent attacks.

These were the best of the best, with classes specialized for high-damage, high-cost magical attacks that could decimate entire battlefields. However, there were far too few of them to affect any meaningful change in the status quo. They could cover the retreat, though, and they did that quite effectively.

As dozens of powerful spells blistered through the atmosphere to splash down amidst the horde of monsters, Elijah used the distraction to shift forms. He adopted the Shape of Venom, then lost himself among the retreating Vey’thaalians. They were too distracted to even see him, and the monsters had lost sight, so he had no issues with slipping beneath the Guise of the Unseen.

In moments, he’d slipped back among the horde, unnoticed and unseen.

By the time the barrage ended, the monstrous horde had been absolutely devastated. But as Elijah had seen the three other times he’d ventured out, there were always more to come. In fact, he was counting on just that. Far away, he saw the gates close, leaving him all alone.

At last.

Still, Elijah crouched on the slope of a crater created by one of the spells, waiting for the tide of monsters to wash in. And they complied with his wishes, flooding the area. In less than an hour, it was like the short battle had never happened. The monsters’ numbers were unending.

Which was why they were perfect fuel for his progression.

Elijah wasn’t particularly averse to what some of his contemporaries referred to as grinding. He’d engaged in just such a practice on more than one occasion in the Trial of Primacy. However, he usually found that it required perfect conditions to be effective. One of those was that the enemy needed to be irredeemable monsters. Elijah refused to target beasts or guardians for nothing but experience. Certainly, he would hunt for food, but that was a normal part of the natural balance. Hunting for progression was something else entirely, and he abhorred the very idea.

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And if he ever saw it happening, there was a good chance he would revisit some of the feelings he’d felt when he’d discovered that the hunters had killed the bear guardian so long ago. He had enough control to keep himself from murdering those people, but he wasn’t opposed to using intimidation to keep them from ever even considering doing it again.

And if it came down to it, if someone was truly irredeemable and unapologetic…well, the world might just be a better place without such people.

In any case, the second requirement for grinding was that the enemy needed to be incredibly numerous. Like the wraths back in the Trial of Primacy. Or the very monsters that currently surrounded him, which was the backbone of his current plan.

Still, Elijah waited a few more minutes before he got started. His first step was to use Lurking Swarm, which conjured a multitude of phase spiders. They didn’t immediately pounce. Instead, they awaited his mental nudge before descending on a monster. The creatures had no defense against their particular brand of venom, and despite the fact that the spiders were quickly shattered, the damage was already done.

That’s when Elijah followed their lead and pounced as well.

He didn’t initially use Envenom. Instead, he used the power of his jaws and the strength of his claws to rip through five monsters in quick succession. But by the time he hit the sixth, he discovered that it had adapted, hardening its body until his attacks became almost entirely ineffective.

Elijah switched to Envenom at that point. Because of their nature, the monsters could only adapt to one thing at a time. That adaptation didn’t come without a cost, though. Not only were they forced to expend ethera to bolster their defenses, but they also grew weaker against most other forms of damage. Due to that, his venom ripped through the thing without issue, practically melting it in the space of a second.

By that point, Elijah had attacked five others. He used Flicker Step when he could, cycling between Envenom and the power of his physical attacks.

Only then did the adaptation shift to something else.

The creatures were wholly reactive, but the way they reacted was dependent on the situation. In this case, they’d established that their defenses were insufficient to meet their needs. If they kept going the way they were, Elijah would just whittle them down. So, they changed gears.

The adaptation was signaled by a physical transformation. The relatively bulky creatures slimmed down, their limbs elongating as they adopted faster and more dexterous forms.

In the space of a couple of minutes, the tides had turned, and Elijah found himself on the back foot. In the Shape of Venom, he was incredibly quick. But the transformed creatures were even faster. The only reason he managed to keep ahead of them was because of his frequent use of Flicker Step and the effects of his Sash of the Whirlwind.

Still, Elijah pushed it as far as he could, eliciting more and more changes. As the speed of the monsters continued to mount, they dropped excess weight. Bits and pieces of bone and flesh fell by the wayside until, at last, Elijah knew he needed to adapt as well, or he’d end up at an extreme disadvantage.

It was time for the second phase.

Elijah initiated the transformation into the Shape of Thorn, knowing that the short delay between one shape and the next represented his most exposed moment. Sure enough, the monsters seized upon that vulnerability, ripping into him with tenacious ferocity. He screamed in pain as their sharp claws tore through his flesh. Hundreds of them, all at once.

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But then, his transformation completed, and he activated Unchecked Growth. At the same time, he used Domain of Vines. However, instead of using his increased Regeneration to fuel the growth of more roots and vines, he chose to widen the area of effect.

It wasn’t easy, and it took every ounce of control he could muster. But foot by foot, he spread the effect as wide as possible. In the end, it reached a diameter of almost four-hundred feet.

And then, he let them loose.

All around him, thousands of plant tendrils burst forth from the ruined ground, snaked around any monster in the immediate area, then squeezed. Their sleek, lightweight forms had no defense against such an attack. They were built for speed, not durability, and they couldn’t adapt quickly enough to avoid their inevitable fate.

Elijah couldn’t help but grin as he felt hundreds of monsters die all at once. At the same time, his increased Regeneration fueled his own healing. More monsters flooded in, adapting on the fly to better endure the onslaught. However, even those creatures had limits, and they failed to sufficiently evolve before Unchecked Growth ran its course.

In that time, thousands had been killed.

It was barely a drop in the bucket.

Elijah used Thornbound Legion, and a thousand thorny mites manifested all across his body, then leaped free to burrow into the flood of monsters that had replaced the dead. Instantly, they slowed, and Elijah used that to his advantage, laying about him with reckless fury. With his high Constitution, he could endure their attacks – after all, they’d put their evolution into defending against the thorns, so they were bulky and slow – so he didn’t have to fear much in the way of reprisal.

At least until they evolved.

After a few more minutes during which Elijah slaughtered more and more monsters, the creatures developed much more potent attacks that allowed them to cut through his powerful scales. He pushed it as far as he could, but eventually, he was forced to shift into his human form, cast his heals, then adopt the Shape of the Master.

It had taken a little while to adjust his fighting style to the new staff. Using a bladed scythe was far different from using a simple staff, after all. But with Elijah’s incredible Dexterity and long experience, he’d managed to figure it out. He used those hard-won skills – as well as the increased reflexes that came with the much smaller Shape of the Master – to run circles around the monsters.

They grew faster and faster with every passing second, but Elijah wasn’t worried about that. He dipped and dodged, avoiding every attack leveled in his direction. As a result, the charges of his Heart of Fire built quickly until it was entirely saturated. That’s when he let loose with Incinerate.

However, he didn’t just spew the fire without any intent. Instead, he widened it as much as possible. By that point, the monsters had once again shed all notions of defense in an attempt to grow fast enough to hit him. So, they had no shield against the potent flames.

Even diluted across such a large area, the fires were so potent that they burned the monsters to ash in only a space of a second.

When the flames dissipated, Elijah looked around at the devastation he’d caused. Already, he’d killed thousands, but he’d yet to reach his goal. So, as more monsters flooded the area, he used Infernal Plague, manifesting hundreds of fire beetles that descended upon the monsters. The fires did nothing – the creatures had already evolved to be resistant to any flames – but the slowing affliction settled on them.

That’s when Elijah met them with the Verdant Fang, ready to repeat the cycle as often as possible – mixing in spells like Nature’s Rebuke and Eternal Plague – to eke out as many benefits as he could before the creatures stopped giving him experience.