Chapter 612: What Strength Means

Raghi grunted in pain, straining to keep his arm in place. His elbow was being ground into the stone below so hard that his bones ached, but he held out a little longer. Of course he had no chance: the invader slowly and surely pushed his arm back until Raghi let himself collapse.

"Hah!" The invader burst to his feet, raising his arms skyward like he was a champion, and the others hooted and laughed.

On the ground, Raghi cradled his sore arm and there was no acting involved there, it hurt badly. Obviously he had lost - the invaders had twice his strength in fully phased form. This wasn't the first time they had beaten him in arm wrestling: the invaders never seemed to tire of proving their strength over a much larger man and took pleasure in humiliating him.

It was a role Raghi took on gladly, because while they were overpowering him, they weren't hurting anyone else. He had seen other men have their arms snapped in half because they locked into a position where their opponents used their full power. There were tricks to losing with his arm intact without appearing to forfeit and making the invaders angry.

"Cheer up," one of the men said, pulling Raghi to his feet. "Maybe you'll win next time!"

"I think he's getting stronger," one of the others said, with a bit of an unpleasant laugh.

Shaking his head with a rueful smile, Raghi pulled back, still cradling his arm. Having spent weeks with these invaders, he thought he understood them: they were normal men, beaten down by the world, who had suddenly obtained great power, and they reveled in it. They weren't mindless barbarians, they just wanted to stroke their egos and be showered in gifts and praise.

How different was he from them, really? Raghi remembered many bitter thoughts while he had served under Fhazi Lantrian, including some dark daydreams, before Kai had helped him escape that life. He wanted to believe that if he had obtained such an over-powered fantasy, he wouldn't have used it like this.

Over time Raghi had become an accepted part of the invaders' court, if it could be called that. They recognized him by sight, even the five most dangerous ones, and didn't think much of him. That gave him the opportunity to examine them in greater detail, which he hoped to survive to take to his allies.

Yangix and Jonijix were the two most dangerous, and growing more so - their Power didn't increase even a single point, but they were developing new ways to use their abilities. Other than that, they couldn't be more different. Yangix seemed to view himself as a benevolent tyrant, arriving to elevate the benighted peoples underneath him. By contrast, Jonijix seemed to think of nothing but base lusts, and it was fortunate that everything else kept him distracted, or he would have done much worse.

As Raghi went back to the shack he slept in, he glanced toward the main square. Jonijix was harassing an Earth Union woman who had a false smile plastered on her face and it made Raghi's blood boil. She wasn't so similar, truly, but she still reminded him of Juray. Whoever she was, she didn't deserve to be abused like this, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do.

Not far away, Budajix hurled down a carafe of wine and the explosion of clay distracted everyone, followed by his verbal explosion. Raghi had been watching the man and he seemed to be bitter and angry. He was trying to get drunk, but even the strongest wine didn't seem to have much effect on him, so he was perpetually upset. Combined with the raw power of his punching technique, he was the most likely to kill a servant... or Raghi, because he wouldn't have any more chance if one of those hit him.

It looked like no one was going to die today, because the servants rushed in with more alcohol. Raghi turned away to find the others.

He didn't see any sign of Fodajix, the lead invader that he knew least about. The man didn't have any dramatic powers, but he seemed to have some sort of reinforced body. Of course, Raghi couldn't harm a single one of the invaders, but Fodajix would be able to resist attacks even from others who could use phases, which made him dangerous to elites who tried to hit hard and fast.

That left only Quorthix, who bothered Raghi in a different way. The man seemed to have ancestry from some different species and the abilities it granted him were hard to pin down. He also seemed more driven than the others, restless and searching for something else.

And then, as if summoned by his thoughts, Quorthix appeared beside him. There was something wrong with his movements, just a little too graceful, and his skin shone unnaturally. Before Raghi could move, the other man had an arm around his shoulders in a parody of camaraderie.

"You know a little about strength," Quorthix said quietly. "Where are these stronger fighters coming from? I've seen a few with some real grace, a little power. Do they have finer clothing and weapons?"

"I d-don't know the details." Raghi's stutter wasn't an act, it was nerve-wracking to have someone who could easily kill him that close. "But they're mostly from other continents. People from Rosemount and Cloudspire have... always been stronger than us."

"Yes, it seems like you're the Deadlake of the Deadlake. Pity." Quorthix snorted and let him go, then pulled away before Raghi could say anything else.

Should he have tried to say more? Raghi didn't seek their attention, since that was a huge risk, but whenever he saw the opportunity, he tried to subtly push them toward the other continents. The only thing he could do to protect everyone was redirect the invaders, but so far it hadn't worked.

Would it work on Quorthix? The man's motives were hard to determine, other than that he didn't seem satisfied with the wine and women that the other invaders had grown accustomed to. He sought something greater... if he needed something phased, he might not be any happier on the other continents, and Raghi wasn't sure what he would do then.

The next day, Raghi felt better - he was getting stronger, even if the difference was trivial to the invaders. He ventured out to see what else he could do, whether he could protect even a single person or nudge the invaders onto a different path. But to his surprise, he saw that the invaders were packing up, taking their favorite pieces of loot as if they intended to travel.

"Move out!" Quorthix yelled. "There's a land further south with some real treasures, these pathetic fucks are just too weak to fight the monsters there. Trust me, you'll forget all about this garbage soon enough!"

Where could he have gotten ideas like that? Raghi looked around and saw the Prince of Pebbles standing not far away, having been fully accepted as a traitor to his continent. He was sending the invaders... south? Surely he wouldn't be so petty as to send them to Goralia, where they would be just as dissatisfied with everything.

No, Raghi realized, he wasn't thinking like an elite. If they went south, they would be headed to the Frontier and the wasteland beyond the wall. What on earth was the Prince of Pebbles thinking?

.

..

.

Over the course of days, Kai flexed all of his relevant essences, refining and developing them for the upcoming merger. One of his choices for a new strength technique was more than obvious, but he also worked on the essence he'd earned in the incursion, since that was one of the few that could possibly match up to a dragon.

By the time he needed to rest after several days and nights of intense training, he knew exactly what he wanted to do. Kai didn't need the direct rest normally, but he wanted to be at his sharpest for this. He pulled a hovering ship from his spatial ring and set it up so that he could get a little sleep.

He woke up in the middle of the night, wide awake despite the darkness all around. As many times as he'd seen the ocean at night, it was eerie now, a shifting dream world of black and the deepest blue. With no sounds, not even birds or monsters, the world was still, and Kai realized that it was time.

Even though he no longer needed the visualization, Kai shifted into a mental world of his soul, returning to the dark island that represented his monstrous essence. The spiritual ocean around that island seemed to mirror the real ocean, dark and serene. He walked through the statues embodying his power until he came to the oldest, and set his hand against the Direboar's flank.

"It's been a long time," Kai said aloud. "In a way, you started all this."

Maybe talking to the statue was pointless, but it felt appropriate. The Direboar had been the first strong monster he had ever fought and the first monstrous essence to enter his soul, even if he hadn't understood at the time. It was even possible that the Direboar had triggered one of the first changes in him that had led him to being rejected by Goralian society, tumbling into his path to monsterhood, and somehow returning as the savior of Deadwaste.

Of course, it was stupid to feel sentimental: the Direboar had been a purely malicious creature that tried to eat him. But the strength he'd taken from it had made him more than human, and without it there were many fights he couldn't have won. He felt nostalgic to think that this essence was falling behind, even if it was inevitable: that ability had been built from a single gamma-ranked monster, nothing more, so it was finally time for it to be consumed for good.

"Everyone ready?" Kai asked, and two more statues slid through the sand to join him.

The golden dragon was the second, a new statue that had gained detail and substance as he refined the power. And the third was the Deepclaw he had fought in the incursion - its strongest characteristic had been its raw strength, so it would be foolish for him to use it for a claw improvement or a tunneling ability or something absurd.

<

Direboar's Strength - XV (omicron)

Deepclaw's Power - V (epsilon)

Dragon's Strength - V (epsilon)

>

Considering the three essences with spiritual sight, he had Direboar's Strength at omicron rank and the other two at merely epsilon. Yet, with the instincts he'd developed through feeding so many monsters to one another within his hunger, he knew that the Direboar was actually the essence that was going to struggle to keep up. The Deepclaw and the golden dragon were good counterparts, but if he merged them mindlessly the Direboar might dissolve in the process.

That power still represented dense strength from years of training, so Kai didn't want to abandon it. He searched through his soul for other essences, particularly ones that had been with him for a long time. Soon he settled on the Bloodtrap - that had been a vampiric plant he'd consumed on Rosemount, but over the years he had never really found a good use for it.

Funny to think that he'd absorbed that essence so long ago, before he was even married. Not as old as the Direboar, but old enough, and strong enough.

So Kai fed the Bloodtrap to the Direboar, giving it a surge of new vitality. Before that faded, he forced all three powers together and then consumed them all, fusing them within the crucible of his hunger until they became something new.

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Dragon's Might - I (alpha)

>

So many powers replaced with a single essence: Dragon's Might. It had begun at the alpha stage, hinting at its potential in the future, but the instant Kai placed it into his soul his eyes widened.

Those eyes opened in the real world, the vision of an island blown away by the power he felt surging through him. Even at alpha rank, Dragon's Might made him almost as physically strong as Direboar's Strength had at its maximum, but it was more than that. The power had a spiritual layer as well, letting him impact the spiritual as well, and he knew it would be a terror combined with Famished World. In fact, it combined better with all his abilities, even stamina or speed, subtly enhancing them with new synergies.

His physical body was responding as well, his muscles rebuilding themselves into a new form. When he tested the Savage Heart, parts of his body grew black scales along with the usual armored plates. It made sense that this resonated better: he had absorbed the Direboar by accident when he knew so little, hadn't even accepted the monstrous side of himself. Now that he was unified, he could do so much more.

But there would be time for that later. Kai took to the air and surged toward Deadwaste with a dragon's roar echoing in his soul.