Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 405: Greetings, Fire Stage—Let the Burning Begin

Thalion was a bit perplexed. These two were starting to get quite annoying behind him. The situation became even more uncomfortable when they finally reached the ground and could no longer descend any further.The two immediately caught up and started talking while Thalion tried to think about where they would appear in the next stage. This was the lowest point in the stage. To be fair, earth mages might be able to dig even deeper, which sparked the question: would they appear on the surface or underground in the dwarven tunnels? If possible, Thalion would prefer to start underground—where all the treasures were.

"Hey! Who do you think you are? You can’t just run around and steal someone’s loot!" the young woman complained, landing on a root in front of him. She had to be very young to still not understand the basics of how this new world worked.

"This isn’t some simple quest where everyone grabs what they like. This is war and normally, I kill everyone for their loot. You two were lucky that I’m already in first place. Now leave us alone, unless you want to die," Thalion replied coldly.

It hit the young woman like a slap. She stumbled back, staring at him in shock before the man quickly grabbed her and jumped upward with her.

Even if the two weren’t strong enough to threaten him, Thalion didn’t want them giving away his exact location to another party. He had gained another two million points from the seed, plus the five-million-point bounty. These two weren’t useful at all, and with his bloodslaves, it was best if they stayed far away.

Speaking of his bloodslaves—their condition was excellent. All the insects that lived on the trees had taken flight, which made them easy targets during the descent. The bees being far too slow to catch up helped tremendously.

Now he only had to wait until the stage ended and they were teleported to the next one. There was quite a difference from how the earlier stages had ended. At the beginning, the land appeared inside the zone of nothingness, but now they were simply teleported away, leaving no trace of the former safe zone. Thalion anticipated that the ascension to the next stage would be similar.

There was still some buzzing above, but most insects had vanished behind the approaching zone of nothingness.

"Should we kill the two? They are a risk," Veylana suggested, her voice thick with bloodlust.

Something in that question made Thalion perk up. He couldn’t place it, but something was changing with Veylana and he received a faint warning from his title.

Veylana was by far the strongest of the five and a specialist in mental skills. Could she be regaining control over her thoughts and the hunger?

No… not the hunger, that made little sense. But Thalion could feel that she no longer viewed him the same way she had right after being turned. He would need to keep an eye on her.

"No. In the next stage we’ll move very quickly, and with the height difference between us, we might end up in different tunnels anyway. Fly up and feed on the insects. I need you as strong as possible when we enter the next stage," Thalion said after thinking it through.

His bloodslaves leapt upward and disappeared quickly. They still had a few hours until the stage ended. In the meantime, Thalion wanted to take a look at the fruit he had stolen from the girl. He had enough points, and normally he wouldn’t care about such a treasure—but the Sanguis Impera was very interested in it.

The longing wasn’t nearly as strong as when he had plucked the golden seed, but it was still significant. Since he had already upset the Sanguis Impera once, he hoped to ease some of the tension with this little gift.

He pulled the fruit from his spatial ring and let the Sanguis Impera do its thing as several vines shot out to consume it.

Thalion had considered asking the girl a few questions. She was definitely some sort of plant mage, judging by how she manipulated the branches, but he didn’t want to share any information. No one needed to know he had such a strong ally. Most chosen likely already knew, but there was no reason to also inform everyone.

Those two certainly didn’t hold Thalion in high regard and would sell that information the moment they met another group. Until the civilization stages it would be difficult—most other teams would simply kill them, but once kingdoms existed where murder was punished, selling information in exchange for treasures would become very realistic.

No, no—best if they both went their own ways. Stealing the fruit from the young woman shouldn’t be too much of a loss for her anyway.

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During the next hours, Thalion practiced more blood control and tried to learn the basics of some new ritual skills from the scroll. A few hours weren’t enough to make much progress, but he still looked forward to being teleported to the next stage as the first place in the treasure hunt.

When the stage ended, they were teleported to the sixth stage and appeared in a massive cave. The man and the young woman didn’t appear in the same area. The cave was over thirty meters high, and in the middle ran a stream of lava that radiated intense heat. Thalion had never seen lava in person before, but he guessed this was something special based on how unbelievably hot it was.

Besides the lava, there was no one else in the cave.

It was also interesting that the lava changed to the color of his bloodline flames just moments after they appeared. What was new, however, was that it drained over ten percent of Thalion’s mana. Normally the passive didn’t cost mana—or at least, Thalion had never noticed any drain before. Sometimes he used mana to intensify the flames, but changing their affinity had never cost anything until now.

Maybe it was because of the intense heat of the lava?

Either way, Thalion would have to learn to control his divine passive skill now, or he’d run into trouble running out of mana just by walking through the stage. It was the same problem his bloodline slaves had with their passive skill that constantly consumed mana. He wasn’t able to shut his off either.

Until now, there had never been a downside, but now it was almost game over in this stage.

At least Thalion had an easier solution than his bloodline slaves. He didn’t need to turn the skill off; reducing the range was enough. If the range was only a few centimeters around him, the mana loss was no threat at all. Thalion had already worked a bit on controlling his passive before, but he had never made much progress. He also hadn’t thought it was high priority—until now, the only negative effect he’d noticed was that torches on walls would shift color when he got close.

And ever since he acquired his curse, the flames would also apply it. That could make it dangerous to stay near people—especially fire mages. If they summoned a flame while he was nearby, they could get infected by the curse, which Thalion definitely did not want.

So maybe it was a good thing he was now to learn to control his passive skill.

There was another problem: the lava actually felt hot. If the volcano was as hot as the lava, then he could forget simply diving inside—and inside a volcano there was usually a lot of lava.

Yeah… he had been far too confident when it came to this stage and how easily he would obtain the treasure.

"Scout the area. I will be standing here," Thalion commanded.

Four bloodslaves instantly shot into the tunnels in search of prey. Veylana lingered for a second, staring at him, before she followed the others.

Thalion didn’t like where this was going, but for now she was still too useful to kill outright. At the moment, he had more urgent problems—and they were hot as hell.

<--

"This is problematic," Ethan sighed as he checked the leaderboard after entering the sixth stage of the treasure hunt.

Ethan had been holding back his position on the leaderboard by spreading parts of his loot among his team. Better not to have a huge target on his head while still staying visible on the board to honor his patron. Yet now the human he needed to capture was in first place and not just barely. In fact, this was so far above everyone else that nobody even had a chance to catch up normally.

The two million had already been insurmountable… but now he was at over eight million points, making it almost pointless for anyone else to gather more.

He also had no idea how the man had accomplished that.

Ethan had fought the entire time and gathered everything with a full team, but a million points was already far above what he could have imagined possible in such a short time. Thalion was making everyone look incompetent.

In the last stage, Ethan had high hopes—forests were a natural hunting ground for a ranger like him. But then came the warning… and with it, the bees. The bees barely gave any points, and with so many of them, he had to run, ruining the stage for him and his team.

Whatever Thalion had found pushed him to over eight million points and even gave him a five-million-point bounty. Whoever managed to find and kill that man would take first place instantly and then only needed to hide.

There were only a few ways left for Ethan to catch up if he didn’t manage to find Thalion:

either find one of the big treasures worth massive points,

or hope the system made it impossible for Thalion—or whoever killed him—to hide.

The safe zones were already becoming more scarce with every stage, so maybe in the last stages they would all be forced to share only one or two.

"From now on, we won’t gather materials. We will put as much distance behind us as possible and find this man or other trial takers. I want to eliminate the others on the leaderboard. Killing a beast or gathering materials gives a few hundred to maybe a thousand points if you’re lucky. Killing someone on the leaderboard can give up to fifty thousand," Ethan concluded to his party.

Everyone was still alive, which was quite the accomplishment and also a bit of luck.

It had cost him dearly, too. He had used three of his antidotes to keep his teammates alive.

"Then where do we go?" Kael asked.

They stood on an open plain with many volcanoes in the distance. The air was as hot as fire, and fiery storms rolled across the dead landscape. It didn’t look like there was a single treasure or anything valuable nearby.

Ethan scanned the surroundings with a skill that let him see far beyond normal limits, powered by his ridiculously high perception. The first thing he noticed was that the firestorms were elementals—probably one of the worst matchups for an archer. His poison wouldn’t work, and unless he hit the cores, those elementals wouldn’t care about his arrows at all.

The mountains would offer a better vantage point, but he preferred moving in the open rather than toward the volcanoes. There couldn’t be any life near them, and he doubted most chosen would move in that direction. He needed to be where the prey was.

"We will move away from the volcanoes. With our high perception, we’ll see our victims first. Prepare yourselves. These fights won’t be easy at all."