Vraxious-Sanctuary

  Vrax smiled at his progress and went straight into skill evolutions. I’m honestly a bit scared of what the hell I might get offered for the stigmata. So let's start with smite. Because somehow melting people is less questionable than whatever Vurune thinks is fun. Man, my life has gotten weird even by my standards.

  Vrax selected his Smite evolution, and the world around him faded as he once again was thrown into a bird's-eye view of the cloaked man in a forest glade. The man had become more defined than previously; instead of just the suggestion of armor and a shadowy spear, now his armor glowed with the same malevolence as Vrax’s, and he even had the slight quiver of the ever-thirst cape writhing restlessly beneath his cloak.

  My choices are starting to be considered more final. This is the path I am on.

  The man in the glade rushed through tall grass towards a bizarre massive beast; it looked almost like a boar covered in plates of bone that had shoulders as high as the trees bordering the glade. He leapt past its swinging head and tusks. Dashing past the stomping hooves, he landed his spear squarely on its armored body. Then again and again the blows simply glanced aside.

  The cloaked man repositioned to the beast's side and struck again; this time each blow left a brackish miasmic mark almost looking like a glowing pustule on the side of the beast. Stab after stab, the mark grew until it was a piercingly bright storm of power on the beast's side. The man leapt back, and with a gesture, the pustule flashed, and smite exploded out from it in a piercing column that stabbed completely through the armored beast, even slagging the grass on the other side of the glade.

  The beast fell bonelessly to the ground; a person-sized hole hollowed straight through from one side to the other. Its entrails loosely slipped through the massive holes. The glade reset to an overhead view once again.

  Oh…oh my gods. That looks amazing… A smite that I can stack and choose when to detonate would help so much with some of the tough bastards I’m going to have to fight.

  This time the cloaked man sprinted straight towards a Voruk. It snapped and gnashed its massive fangs towards him; every one of its shifting movements was predatory and eerily fast. Suddenly it flashed two of its deadly clawed tails out to snatch him from his charge. The cloaked man didn’t even slow; instead, rot and darkness flowed from him like a shroud. The first tail slapped against him wetly, the claw having rotted completely off before even reaching him. The second he grabbed it, it molded away in his arms.

  The cloaked man closed with the now fearful Voruk. It went to bite Him but stopped short as the mantle of rot still swaddled him protectively, singeing its snout as it even got close. It turned and thundered back into the trees away from its apparently inedible prey. The man dropped the mantle and gasped, obviously out of mana.

  Okay, wow, a full-body defensive aura that will also just fucking melt anyone in close combat with you. The mana costs must be utterly insane if the example vision bothered to show him running out of mana. Really interesting, but…probably not super viable for now, at least.

  The glade reset, and this time the cloaked man was surrounded by three men in loose-fitting tunics wielding longswords with practiced ease. He warded them off from charging with careful stabs, always spinning so his back wasn’t to one for too long.

  Suddenly one charged, and the cloaked man thrust out with a smite, burning an unholy green flame from the tip of his spear. The spear never hit, but the wave of mana splashed across the man, sticking to his exposed skin. It stuck there burning madly, but no smoke rose; instead, the man's skin dripped from bone as the fire crept across him like a corrosive force.

  The cloaked man began dueling one of the other two survivors while the man behind him slowly dripped into a screaming puddle of muscle and bone.

  Uhh...okay, wow, that one's fucked up... So it's just smite, except it sticks around and keeps corroding its way through what it touched. These visions are usually pretty specific; I’m betting it showed unarmored opponents to indicate that this evolution isn’t as good against high resistances.

  Well, the first and the final one are both tempting. I’ll pass on the mantle of rot because honestly, I don’t think I have the mana to sustain it in the kind of fights I’m constantly in.

  Vrax selected the first evolution that let him apply smite like an ever-escalating curse and then detonate it for one get-fucked-intensity smite. Vrax didn’t dwell; he had to get going if he wanted to adapt duchess before the next fight. He started the evolution selection for his stigmata.

  The bird's-eye view this time showed a glade deep in the forsaken lands. Plants quivered and reached out hungrily as the cloaked man skirted around them. He stopped suddenly as something vaguely humanoid peeled itself from the side of a tree. It was a twisted thing made of bark and flesh that approached him with halting steps. Its open mouth nearly dragging on the ground.

  The man calmly raised his hand towards it, and the entire forest around him convulsed; the tree’s animals and plants were all pulled briefly towards him. Then the ground rippled right under his feet like a raindrop had fallen into a still pond. Death crept out from him in a perfect circle; trees dried to petrified husks, and birds fell from the sky all around him as he calmly stood in the center of the devastation. An ever-growing orb of pure life glimmered in his hand, ripped from his surroundings.

  The orb of life slowly flowed into the cloaked man's palm, and his breaths let out a glimmering mist. He moved like the world around him was in slow motion. Every one of his sprinted strides leaked pure rebirth. He leapt from nearly ten strides away towards the now excruciatingly slow abomination. His spear hit it like a falling star, and the world around him exploded with new growth as the condensed life escaped from his body.

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  What the hell even was that? Did he drain his surroundings for a stat boost? That was…a bit confusing, but it does seem powerful. It would certainly help if I was getting my ass beat, but in most cases I would be better off pulling out a critter or five than making myself fast as hell.

  The Glade reset; this time the man stood in a dense stand of willows with vines oppressively creeping across the jungle-like vegetation on the ground. A pack of massive wolves crept from the tangle and began surrounding him. With a wave of his hand, a bubbling portal appeared in the side of a tree, and he slowly backed up into it.

  The view shifted to where the man was now; he was in another forested area surrounded by beasts covered in spines and claws. The flash of fangs was omnipresent. The cloaked man smiled and fondly petted one of the most horrifying shapes near to him and then pointed towards the nearby portal as a wolf cautiously walked through into the cloaked man's domain.

  HOLY SHIT! Does that let me enter the menagerie of predation and try and lure people into it…? Situational as hell, but damn would it be powerful. Ha, I can imagine pushing some poor bastard in. Actually…that could be an insanely effective assassination technique.

  The glade reset; this time the cloaked man stalked through the trees above a party of what looked like adventurers. Nightmare conductors flittered through the treetops alongside him, as well as a looming serpentine horror with six arms that looked very much so like Duchess. He held both of his hands out in a clawlike gesture and twisted.

  The foliage nearby lost some of its vibrance as a dome suddenly sprang from the cloaked man; it was near transparent and a hundred strides around. Inside the dome shadows were deepened and sounds whispered ominously as the edges of the adventurer's psyche. They started fearfully flickering their eyes around at every slight twitching branch.

  Duchess and the conductors descended as the party below began frantically lighting torches to scare away the shadows or stabbing at unseen threats in nearby bushes. The cloaked man watched as his aura drove them deeper and deeper into an inescapable panic, and his fear-based creations pounced on the weakened foes.

  Oh...okay, wow, that’s pragmatic and brutal. I have enough minions that fight using fear; the system actually offered me a freaking fear aura. I don’t even know how to feel about that. It would certainly be effective… Anyone stuck in a dome of terror with duchess and Edward would probably have a fucking heart attack before duchess even ate them…

  Ahh, wow, these are all good, but… I think I could even escape into the menagerie mid-fight if I was getting my ass beat, so I have to go with that one. Vrax selected the second option that let him make a direct portal into his menagerie. He looked at the empty essence lake and his flashing trial notification. That's for later…for now… OH DUCHESS!

  Vrax slipped from his sanctuary back into the room with Torvald and started gathering all the potted plants in the room into a small pile. Torvald turned towards him curiously, a drumstick hanging from his mouth. “What are you up to there….” He mumbled around the drumstick.

  Vrax finished piling up five rather good-sized ferns. “Making a doorway to my menagerie… I think… Anyway, pardon me, I’m going to go make Duchess worse.”

  Torvalds’s eyes widened; he quickly swallowed the mouthful of chicken. “Wait, wait, wait, no need to be hasty now. I think she’s, uhh, perfect as is….”

  Vrax just smiled in response and thrust his hand forward, willing his stigmata to open the way. It worked; the plants liquified and then defied gravity, dripping back upwards to form a bubbling gateway that just hung in the air. “Uhh…Vrax?” Torvald tried. Vrax just dived right through the doorway and straight into the fluffy side of a devourer.

  Well, honestly, about what I expected…. It was much like his sanctuary but smaller; his creations wandered around a wooded area, daisies flinging themselves back and forth, and the thresher was oddly just clutched to the side of a tree, seemingly sunbathing. Duchess popped curiously from behind a tree and scurried up next to Vrax.

  “Ahh, that was easy. So you want to get an upgrade?” Vrax asked duchess. She cocked her head curiously. Vrax pantomimed making her claws longer, then tugged on one of her ridiculous fangs. “What do you want! I have a hundred more mana, and you are my Apex, so we can probably make some pretty big changes!”

  Duchess stared at him for a moment, then something twinkled in her eye, and she mimicked Torvald from months ago when Vrax gave Sunshine its new root system: “Great, you made it worse!”

  “Yes, exactly! What do you want, Duchess!?” Vrax pointed to her claws, then spines, then at the eldritch scrawlings, trying to pantomime confusion. Duchess excitedly bobbed her head like a massive chicken and twirled in place, looking around the menagerie for something. “That was disconcerting…what are you trying to tell me?”

  Duchess froze and stared straight at a Devourer as it glided by. Then she cooed in the voice of a little girl, “Father! Father, tell me the story of the boy who could fly again!”

  “Fuck…you really want to fly? Well sure, I mean, we could give you some wings…” Duchess actually shook her head violently and pointed her tongue towards a devourer insistently.

  “First off, I’m really concerned at how much of this you seem to understand… You want to float? Why? So you can ominously hover over your victims!?” Duchess just stared at him and pointed to a devourer again. Vrax sighed and rubbed his face. I shouldn’t have asked; I should have just made her spit acid or something.

  “Fuck it, come here. I can probably do it as a talent…” Duchess trilled and stuck out her head. Vrax reached out and channeled [Adapt Life]. He had to focus his will to break through her talents' defenses and look at what talents and skills she currently had. Seriously. How much shit do you kill when I’m not looking? Your level is obscene.

  [Duchess Phobos](lvl54)

  Talents

  [Holy Defiler]

  Divine attacks that have increased effectiveness versus creatures of darkness and hunger do not have any increased effectiveness against this creature.

  [Passive]

  [The Unknown]

  Resist all attempts to identify or magically locate this creature; sufficiently powerful effects can overcome this. Failed attempts cause physical backlash.

  [Passive]

  [I Taste Your Fear]

  This creature experiences euphoria and an increase in all physical attributes proportionate to the severity and amount of fear and terror around it.

  Skills

  [Flay The Psyche]

  This creature may multiply negative emotions related to terror with a touch.

  [Mana Cost Moderate]

  [Why Am I Afraid](Apex Addition)

  This creature may cause beings who are not directly looking at it to forget its existence, resisted by mental defenses.

  [Mana Cost High]

  [Tread The Unknown]

  The hungering creatures of the dark recognize this horror as a kindred predator. In areas of extreme fear, you may traverse the dark paths to instantly snatch your prey.

  [Mana Cost High]

  Vrax closed his eyes and channeled with a single purpose, allowing her to fly like the Devourers did. Mana poured into Duchess until finally there was a shift under his hand, and Duchess’s claws left the ground. Then her tail as she hovered just off the ground. Duchess trilled in sheer joy, her bioluminescence strobing madly. Vrax quickly looked at her status while he still had Adapt Life open. One new talent had been added.

  Talent

  [Look Up]

  This creature may fly at a moderate pace in three dimensions or hover. Speed is dependent on ambient fear levels.

  Vrax smiled at duchess “Good girl! Want to go emotionally damage an entire generation of stuck-up paladins?” Duchess nodded violently.