Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 432: The Alliances Take Shape

“Okay, I understand why you did it, but this fellow would have been a wonderful blood slave,” Thalion said to the Sanguis Impera, not too sad that the assassin was dead. In the next stage, he would have to join a ship crew on the sea, where a blood slave likely wouldn’t be welcome anyway.Black blood was slowly dripping from his mouth as the poison continued to ravage his body. He had never felt this bad from a single poison before—and the thing was still going. Over the next hour, Thalion swallowed a lot of different antidotes he had picked up by killing others or looting the massive warehouse. He had no idea what most of them actually did, but as long as they helped even a little, it would be fine.

There was no way he would die from it, but the fact that his human form—with all its vitality and the Sanguis Impera—had been pushed this far by a single infusion of poison was insane. Hopefully, not more enemies had such potent poison in their arsenal.

While healing, Thalion replayed the fight in his mind, thinking about what he could have done better. In fact, it had been quite a weird fight—fast, brutal, and intense. If he had messed up even a single move, he wouldn’t be alive right now.

What bothered Thalion the most was that his domain hadn’t really helped him in the fight. Yes, the vines had made it easy for the Sanguis Impera to kill the assassin, but the main reason he had conjured the domain was to deal constant damage. The assassin, however, hadn’t cared in the slightest. If he encountered more assassins like that, he might really be in trouble if his domains didn’t work as intended. He also had no real way of blocking those strikes.

Pulling out the golden fruit had been the saving idea. Good thing it had been so precious to the assassin. That the assassin had been so angry at the kingdom and spilled everything about its plans was just perfect. Now Thalion didn’t need to go on another mission.

He would have liked to visit the capital and go on another shopping trip, but that was too risky. Just to be sure they wouldn’t be able to track him, he took out the map and token he had been given and threw them over the edge.

The island would have been perfect to wait out the trial and do some cultivation, but if Ryan returned, they might start searching for him. Depending on how accurate their tracking was, that search would bring them to this island sooner or later.

Thalion already had the required points for this stage. Now he only needed to find a safe place to wait for the next one. He had a lot on his mind. His human form could go deep into fire body-tempering, while Eagly could do the same with cold. He also had the perfect crystals for each element. The Sanguis Impera could join in as well, though the poor plant was probably still heartbroken after Thalion had put the fruit of the golden lotus back into his spatial amulet.

He needed the six million leaderboard points to advance to the next stage. Just to be on the safe side, Thalion would keep the fruit until the trial was over. Who knew what the rewards of the final stage would be—and how valuable they might be. At this point, Thalion wouldn’t even be surprised if the grand treasure of the last stage was worth more than thirty million leaderboard points.

Speaking of leaderboard points—the others were catching up. The First Daughter had already earned two million additional points. The Second Daughter had gained the same amount, putting her in third place right behind her sister. Thalion guessed they were probably doing missions together, which was worrying.

It was currently the end of the first day, and they still had plenty of time to catch up. Besides the six million points from this stage, Thalion wouldn’t gain any more here—at least, that was the plan. The others in the top ten had only earned one million points so far, meaning they had completed one major mission or two of the five-hundred-thousand-point missions. They still had a lot of time to close the gap.

It wasn’t an immediate danger that Thalion would lose first place, but it was very clear where things were heading. After this, there were two more stages, and both would reward even more leaderboard points—while the competition would become far more dangerous.

Frankly, Thalion had been very lucky. In this stage, the king had issued a no-kill order, and Thalion had been paired with a Chosen. Even if Ryan was a typical arrogant brat, he was powerful. Without him, Thalion would have never gotten close enough to the lotus.

In the next stages, he likely wouldn’t have such luxuries. If Thalion remembered correctly, he would need to join a ship crew and sail out to find the grand treasure of the stage—some buried elixir—while fighting off everyone else who wanted it. The problem was simple: whoever got that treasure would almost certainly take first place.

If Thalion got it, it would give him a massive advantage going into the final stage, where everything would be decided. The first thing he planned to test was whether he could use the Tidecaller Serpent and simply swim wherever he wanted—without relying on a ship at all.

The blood slave had already shared a few rules. One was that flying over the ocean was basically impossible, while another stated that you could only hold your breath for a minute underwater.

Technically, he should be fine as the Tidecaller Serpent, since he didn’t need to hold his breath at all. The advantage of being able to move freely through the water—where most others weren’t even able to enter—was almost too good to be true. Thankfully, there was still time until the next stage, and he could do a good amount of cultivation until then.

Upgrading his essence blood, strengthening his soul, and body-tempering were high on the list. Thalion hoped it would make a difference. His strength as an F-grade was kind of ridiculous when you took into account that he had just defeated a few-hundred-year-old assassin who was almost double his level. Only two more stages after this one, and he would be there.

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After healing up, Thalion took to the sky as Eagly, moving away from the kingdom and toward a few islands marked as abandoned and uninteresting due to the lack of good natural treasures. For Thalion, this seemed like the perfect place. He also needed trees to form a blockade, just in case someone came close to the island. There was no need to risk anything.

The first two islands had tall trees, but Thalion wasn’t happy with how few leaves they had. The third island, however, was the jackpot. There were no trees, but there were caves—which was even better for Thalion. The tunnels weren’t empty, though. Some kind of snails lived there, or more accurately, they lived there until Thalion arrived.

After a short adventure with the Crimson Eidolon, all the tunnels and wide caves were cleared, and Thalion made his way down to the cave farthest from the entrance. It was quite large, with a ceiling over ten meters high and a total length of more than twenty meters. All in all, it was a pretty nice place.

After cleaning the slime off the ground with the crippled Eclipsari by turning it all into darkness, he took out the large fire crystal and began working together with the Sanguis Impera, which was happy to continue the session. When it came to getting stronger, the plant was an even more extreme outlier than Thalion. He really should start taking pointers, Thalion thought, amused.

Now, with the knowledge from cold tempering as Eagly, he had a rough guideline for what to do with heat—and it worked perfectly. The Sanguis Impera was also doing much better now after he explained how it worked. Thalion wasn’t sure if it fully understood him, since a few vines still turned quite dark during the process.

The time in the cave was great, and he made amazing progress. After a whole day of fire tempering and some improvement to his blood, Thalion switched to working on his soul. The crystal the Tidecaller Serpent had swallowed was already so far digested and integrated that it wasn’t twisting his soul anymore.

During meditation, the days passed quickly. The next time he checked the leaderboard, three days had already passed—halfway through the stage. That the First Daughter was already at ten million leaderboard points was not good at all. The others in the top ten were close behind, and the only one who wasn’t progressing was Thalion.

He had fulfilled the requirements for the next stage and wouldn’t risk his life needlessly right now. At this point, Thalion was simply too weak to do something on his own, and since he had also left the kingdom, he had no idea where any treasures even were.

Still, a bit of peace and cultivation was exactly what he needed after all the fighting and risks. The only issue with body-tempering was that you needed good materials or the perfect environment—otherwise, progress would be hella slow.

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This stage was far more to Eric’s liking. A team event where they did their best to finish the mission as quickly as possible. His team was also hella brutal.

There was Ethan, the Chosen of Aeta. He was a ranger with extreme mobility and high speed while not lacking any damage output. In fact, Eric had never seen a single arrow destroy stone like it was a sheet of paper, with shrapnel flying everywhere.

Next in the party was Felix, the Chosen of Eryndor. This mage had rained destruction on everything that came close. Still, Felix wasn’t one of those mages who tried to keep distance from his target and often even dove into close combat.

They had a few more humans in the party, but compared to the Chosen, they were irrelevant. Three Chosen of such high caliber were enough to deal with any E-grades they had encountered. Those humans were generally happy that they had earned twelve million leaderboard points in the past days—which was more than any of them could have hoped to achieve.

It was a bit weird how they got the leaderboard points. Eric had anticipated that they would automatically appear on his screen, but instead, they always had to travel to the treasure chamber, where they received natural treasures worth one million points. Currently, they were waiting to get those points so they could return to missions faster. It always took so long to have the treasures handed over, and losing over an hour every time wasn’t something Eric wanted to pay.

At some point, they started sending the others to retrieve the treasures from the kingdom. Most missions were about acquiring a powerful natural treasure, which was super easy for their team. They just landed and killed everything in their way. No one was even able to put a scratch on them.

Those large army fights were also good training for what would happen on Earth. Their patrons already knew each other and had informed them about the other Chosen and the alliance they needed to build against the elves, orcs, and vampires. It seemed there were far more Chosen on the new planet than the gods had initially thought.

Not all participants in this trial were from the new planet, though. Due to the high entrance cost of the trial, most had ignored it, waiting for the second or third one. Eric could understand that reasoning. Some were still F-grade or simply not very strong, and the competition in an event like this would be far above the norm.

To be fair, in the larger stages, trial takers often didn’t encounter each other. Besides the prince and an orc Chosen Eric had killed, there hadn’t been any others. That had changed in this stage. The biggest advantage wasn’t just that they could group up, but also that they were allowed to stay in those groups until the end of the treasure hunt.

Until now, grouping up hadn’t made much sense. There hadn’t been strong opposition, and the treasures hadn’t been worth many leaderboard points anyway. How Thalion had managed to accumulate so many points was still a conundrum to Eric.

Ethan already seemed to have a problem with him and wanted to make it a goal of the alliance to find this human—on Earth or in the trial. He had voiced his concern, dislike, and sheer anger toward Thalion multiple times already. For now, Eric had kept quiet. He didn’t have a problem with the man so far, and he owed him for saving his life in the fight against the prince.

Eric had also received new information about the prince, stating that the creature wasn’t from the new planet—which would make things a lot easier. Not that the other Chosen were weak, but that prince had been on an entirely different level.

On the negative side, it seemed that the contenders in second and third place were from the new planet. Felix had already told them about his encounter with the First Daughter. Eric had a very high opinion of Felix, and if he said he had barely managed to escape that monster, Eric took his word for it.

Judging by how leaderboard points spiked with every stage, the treasure hunt was coming to an end. Sooner or later, they would have to fight it out—but with this team, Eric was confident. There were even more Chosen expected to join the party before this stage ended.

Eric was looking forward to what would happen in the next stages, because their enemies were also grouping up.