|| SYSTEM RESPONSE ||
[? Gate Link Established (????-)?]
[?? Time Dilation Initiated (°ロ°)]
The hum cut out. Birds froze mid-flight, a frog hung suspended in the air, even the ripples of fish stilled. The world locked in the moment after impact.
Nico took that as a sign to jog out of the center.
|| ! SYSTEM WARNING ! (?Д?;) ||
[?? Core Guardian Detected (? ??_??)?]
[Give it some time to awaken from its slumber~ ??-?-?? ?z?z?z]
On cue, the world resumed.
Trees tore themselves from the soil, roots twisting as they anchored into new configurations. Mud hissed as the basin swallowed its own water in heavy gulps, draining until only a hollow expanse of stone and muck remained. A rumble rose beneath it all, churning the mud into oscillating waves.
Black tendrils of mana erupted from the basin in a sudden bloom, tearing through water and silt alike. High-pitched screeches accompanied the clots of writhing mana, the sound of friction: slick surfaces sliding against one another. Both Lycans winced, ears folding back. The shrieks made their skin itch with vibration, burrowing past the epidermis to settle along the nerves.
The chaos drew inward, coiling tighter until a shape began to assert itself. A tail unfurled as a torso surged from the silt, gouging a deep groove across the basin floor. Its head breached in tandem, joints locking with sharp snaps that disturbed the ears. The creature came to rest at the center, half-formed and motionless, black water sliding down its frame like oil.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED ||
[? Lycanthropy | +30% agility +40% dexterity]
The alchemists’ forms shifted: limbs compacted, posture curved forward, fur extruding from skin as clothes dematerialized with the transformation. Now battle-ready, the two canines dashed to a dry patch of ruin— and seated themselves. Politely waiting for the dragon to finish forming, to ensure the core did as well.
The guardian rose, both grand and grotesque: a dragon forged from decay and ruin. Moss and stone clung to its frame, forming crude scales along its hide. Even half-submerged, its form towered over the ruins, blotting out what little sky the rift had. Gnarled roots hardened into blackened bone, locking together as its ribcage. Mana swarmed inside the cavity, circulating dark light through its body.
One emerald eye fixed on the Lycans, its fractured iris murky with turbulent shimmer. The other socket lay empty, weeping a slow sludge of mana and rot that dripped into the water below.
“Seems like the rift’s best attempt at a dragon,” Nico observed.
“It did a good job,” Kai said, praising the rift’s creature design.
Mana tendrils flexed through its limbs, acting as muscles that tightened and faltered as the dragon dragged itself forward. Each step crushed the land, flinging waves of mud and debris across the basin, forcing the fox and wolf to vault clear of collapsing ground.
The rift fought to keep pace, struggling alongside the alchemists, stitching the shattered earth together only for it to break again beneath the guardian’s weight.
A hoarse, broken sound bellowed from the dragon as it lashed its tail in a wide arc.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED ||
[? Gale Step (A)| "wind jump"]
Nico fired a gust beneath his paws, leaping clear of the sweep that tore through a row of drowned pillars and ground them to dust.
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Riding the momentum of its tail swing, the dragon lunged for Kai, hurling its full weight sideways. Kai had already frozen the ground beneath him. He launched himself backward in a burst of fire, leaving the creature to crash headlong into the blaze. It floundered there, thrashing within the heat, toppling trees and throwing swaths of swamp in every direction. Flames ate through the roots along its limbs, burning them down to brittle carbon until they snapped outright.
Its weight gave out, pitching the body forward. Seizing what strength it had left, the dragon snapped its jaws wide—
|| SKILL ACTIVATED ||
[? Gale Step (A)| "wind jump"]
The second gust came weaker than before, but it carried Nico just far enough to clear the strike. The jaws slammed shut where he’d stood only a moment earlier. The impact’s shockwave ripped through the swamp, shaking the mangroves and dislodging rubble from the ruins.
The beast staggered. Its movements grew erratic as its body warped at the edges, mana leaking through splitting seams. There was something almost pitiful in the way it swayed.
“The dragon isn’t using any mana,” Nico said through strained breath. He regained footing on a tilting slab, eyes fixed on the distortion spreading across the guardian’s frame.
“I don’t think it can,” Kai replied, steadying his claws to trace an inscription midair. Azure energy rippled through his fur, timed with Nico forcing another surge of mana into the swamp.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED ||
[??? Thunderburst (A)| "lightning aoe"]
Lightning veined through the marsh, weaving a net that seized the dragon’s joints as electricity burned through its sinews.
Meanwhile, the wolf sprinted the perimeter, freezing the water around the dragon and, in the same breath, flash-boiling it. The sudden inversion of temperature collapsed the swamp in an implosive vacuum, pinning the creature in place. Deep fissures carved jagged seams through the basin as the terrain drew inward.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED ||
[? Jetstream (B) | "compressed air"]
Gathering what wind was left, Nico condensed his mana into a single jet that shot forward, piercing the dragon’s ribcage where a heart might have been.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED ||
[火 Superheat (A) | "boiling w/o the boil"]
The air current pinched into a single spark, then explosively burst in golden fire. The shockwave speared through the dragon’s core, light erupting from the orifices of its skull—nostrils, jaw, and eye sockets aflame—consuming its remaining emerald eye in a flash. Pressure built faster than it could escape. The skeleton shattered; root, muck, and mana hurled outward in the blast.
The canines bounded across the platforms in quick dodges through the debris. When the detritus finally settled, only a faint glow remained above the surface: the rift core, pulsing like a heart beating alone.
Nico blinked in quick succession.
“Well… that’s nice. For it to not even use an elemental breath.”
Kai sighed. “How considerate of it.”
The fox trotted toward the light. His touch alone was enough for threads to begin unraveling from the core, stretching across the swamp. What remained of the dragon evanesced as drowned mangroves and willows heaved themselves free from its body. They tore upward from the mire in a thunder of muck and stone, roots unraveling in cadence with the core.
Kai injected mana into the mud churning beneath them. In a bloom of blue mist, the waterlogged muck froze and solidified, forming a stable platform for the canines as the land corrected itself. Water flooded back into the basin and burst outward in an iridescent spray. The droplets dissolved into ambient mana the moment they touched the earth.
With the last of the rift stabilized, they found themselves standing on a stone-paved road framed by a canopy of trees, simple in its demeanor. Nico touched some bark to confirm that only reality remained.
Beyond the treeline, the ground sloped into prominent hills. A city of earth and steel nestled against them. Old wooden dwellings, blanketed in moss and flowering vines, leaned into the terrain at ground level. Above them rose geometric towers of steel, each fitted with mana generators that layered the city with a persistent hum.
Market stalls crowded the street in lively disorder. Carts creaked, vendors called out, and the air carried the scent of damp bark and fresh growth. Viridfolk moved through the crowds, skin textured with moss or bark, blossoms unfolding in their hair, leaf-blades bobbling like antennae. Orifolk brushed past with wings half-folded against the press of traffic. The city bustled on, heedless of the layer of distortion the Lycans had just peeled away from its edge.
Kai spoke dryly steps from the border gate, “You can portal in now.”
“Thanks,” Nico said, “but I’ll walk.”
The GPS chirped back to life on cue with—
|| SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ||
[You have arrived at Tellur. (?ゝ??)]
I went back to standardized the skill formatting (and gave up pretty fast lol). I'm thinking the skill rank is based on 2/3 mana consumption + 1/3 complexity.