Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 413: A Nice Journey...

Thalion steered the skyship downward until he could spot the mountains below him. Now in his human form, he would still be unable to notice someone with his relatively low perception, but with his blood vision he should be able to see anyone trying to get close.Thalion noticed something else once the mountains came into view. They were all growing mightier in one direction, which hopefully also meant that this was where the great storm lay. It was a fifty–fifty guess, but he wouldn’t get a better estimate than that. He decided to head toward the largest mountain and, with that decision made, let the skyship speed up while also rising again. Now that he knew the rough direction, he didn’t want anyone to see him.

From time to time, he would need to check whether his course was correct, but the journey would take hours anyway. In the meantime, he wanted to work on his soul—and to silence the Sanguis Impera, he began placing metal plates on the main deck. Hopefully, they would be enough to stop the red crystal from burning through the skyship. If one of the plates started to melt, he would simply put both the crystal and the plate into his spatial ring and repeat the process with a diffrent plate. The skyship would repair itself, and even if it didn’t, a bit of burned wood wouldn’t make much of a difference. At some point, he would probably lose the skyship anyway, so a scorch mark hardly mattered.

The moment the crystal was placed on the plates, they began to warm, and the snow melted instantly. He was soaked now, but it didn’t bother him nearly as much as it would have back on Earth. The heat was also bearable, and with the Sanguis Impera content to burn its vines, Thalion could focus on fortifying his soul and perhaps improving his essence blood as well.

These stages were massive, so he had time. With his current leaderboard points, he didn’t need to hunt or gather anything besides the grand treasure. Even if the entire trial came after him, he felt completely relaxed, working on his soul and enjoying the peace. It probably wouldn’t last long, but until then, he would savor it.

Most others would likely come to the same conclusion and move either higher or lower in search of treasures. As for beasts or other lifeforms, Thalion hadn’t seen any during the short moments he had spent observing his surroundings.

After a good amount of time had passed, Thalion switched out the metal plates beneath the red crystal. When the Sanguis Impera retracted its vines, the sudden heat made Thalion wince. He then transformed into Eagly and shot downward. The skyship continued on its course while Thalion simply checked whether the direction was still correct before returning. As Eagly, he was far faster and more mobile. Additionally, he was much harder to spot and had higher perception. The chance of being scouted was far lower than if he had descended with the skyship.

After a quick observation, Thalion noticed that he needed to correct slightly to the left, but otherwise everything looked fine. It was fortunate that these ships were far easier to steer than the sailing ships back on Earth. After making the adjustment, he placed the red crystal back onto the metal plate and continued empowering his soul.

Every few hours, Thalion repeated the dive to correct the flight path. It seemed he was heading in the right direction, because the air steadily grew colder. Eventually, he could even see his own breath. The cold didn’t bother him much. As Eagly, it could get uncomfortable, but in his human form he only noticed the temperature change faintly, especially with his bloodline. His essence blood was practically on fire—it would take a long time for him to freeze or truly feel the cold.

From time to time, he spotted other trial takers running or flying across the mountains below, but none seemed keen on flying high through the clouds. Instead, many of them entered caves along the mountainsides. They could have been hideouts or something similar, but Thalion wasn’t sure. It seemed worthwhile, given how many people he saw investigating those tunnels.

Regardless, Thalion stuck to his plan. The grand treasures would be his. Everything else, he was willing to give up. A fair trade.

Time passed, and the air grew colder the farther he traveled. Eventually, it became difficult even for Eagly to dive downward, as his wings began to shiver from the cold. Thalion found it interesting how strongly the cold affected him, even with his regeneration. He had expected his healing to counteract the cold once it began affecting his muscles, but that wasn’t the case.

After a little over thirty hours of travel, another dive proved especially difficult. Thalion’s wings were now shaking violently, and descending and climbing again had become extremely taxing—to the point where he considered switching to another form. He had already tested his other forms in the cold, and while they felt the temperature, it didn’t hinder them nearly as much.

It was just as his eyes landed on a massive mountain ahead—rising far higher than any surrounding peak—that the attack happened.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Thalion didn’t feel even a sliver of danger as a half-meter-long ice spear struck the crystal embedded in his chest. The impact was so strong that all the air was forced from his lungs, flinging him through the air like a ragdoll. Thalion lost only a small portion of his health in the entire process. He had been lucky—the spear had hit the crystal. Otherwise, it would have gone straight through his body, and that would have been close to a kill shot.

His danger sense remained completely silent, which unsettled him deeply. Until now, it had always warned him. How was it not reacting?

Thalion reacted quickly and tried to flap his wings, attempting a sharp curve to avoid a follow-up attack—but that was when he noticed that his wings wouldn’t move at all. Cold spread outward from the crystal into his body, freezing him completely, and panic surged as he began to fall like a stone.

First of all—why hadn’t he been warned? There hadn’t even been a strange feeling beforehand. And second—why was the cold spreading like this? The most disturbing part wasn’t that it was spreading, but how. The power was flowing through the crystal in his chest. The storm crystal was filled with wind and lightning; no energy should have been able to enter it, let alone spread through his body.

A sluggish question passed through Thalion’s mind—should he shapeshift or not?

Damage always transferred between forms, and he couldn’t remove the ice lodged in the crystal. The ice should have had little effect on his human form; his bloodline should have been strong enough to counter the cold. He had switched forms while injured before and had never feared losing one.

But this was different.

He was constantly fighting the cold, trying to force electricity through his body while activating all his skills, but far less happened than it should have. Some skills didn’t activate at all. That was when Thalion realized he had to risk losing Eagly to survive.

He was still hundreds of meters above the ground when he made the decision and triggered the shapeshift skill.

Nothing happened.

Thalion fell several more meters, and real panic set in. He tried to take out an escape token—the last good one he had bought in the tutorial. That failed as well. He kept falling. His skills were locked or heavily dampened. Instead of the powerful lightning storm that should have erupted around him, only a few weak sparks danced across his feathers.

Thalion’s mind raced.

An attack that wasn’t recognized by his title and could suppress his skills—this screamed . Someone with an absurdly powerful bloodline.

His eyes scanned the surroundings as he desperately tried to fuel his skills with mana, to make happen.

Then he spotted the attackers—and confusion hit him all over again.

Two elves stood on a ledge carved into the side of the massive mountain. One was a tall woman; the other was a young girl. The girl was happily smiling and jumping up and down while the woman tried to calm her.

Their skin was a pale blue, as if antifreeze flowed through their veins.

The real anomaly, however, was the girl.

Whenever Thalion focused on someone using his title, he always felt , even if it was faint. But from the young girl—who was currently cheering—he felt nothing. To his title, she didn’t exist at all.

The second strange thing was the adult elf. When Thalion concentrated on her, she felt genuinely happy—no greed, no hunger, nothing of the sort. For someone who had just taken down the first place on the leaderboard, he had expected something far more predatory.

Through the howling wind and his sluggish thoughts, Thalion couldn’t make out what the girl was shouting at the older elf. The woman simply nodded while the child bounced excitedly in front of her.

Then the girl turned around, looked directly at Thalion, and stretched out a hand.

The next moment, Thalion felt as if a giant hand had grabbed him.

It seized his form itself, icy energies freezing him from the inside as he was dragged toward the girl. The initial jerk was violent enough that Thalion would have winced—if his beak hadn’t already been frozen shut.

“So that girl must have a super-powerful bloodline, and by the demeanor of her and the older one, it doesn’t look like they’re trial takers,” Thalion thought while trying to use . It worked no better than his other skills.

The question now was: what did the girl want from him?

Thought after thought raced through Thalion’s mind as he drifted toward the girl. In the end, he came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter anyway. He couldn’t move nor use his skills. Being this powerless didn’t feel good, but it was probably just part of life in the system. There was always a bigger fish, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time could be fatal.

Thalion couldn’t even say what he would have done differently. The snowfall was still heavy, and even with his high perception he wouldn’t have seen the attack coming unless he had already been looking in that direction. That his title hadn’t worked was simply terrible luck. Being more careful wouldn’t have changed much. He had already been cautious, only diving down far enough to adjust the ship’s course. The risk had been minimal. Hiding completely or steering blindly couldn’t have been the solution either.

“Well, at least the little fellow is happy,” Thalion thought, a mix of amusement and sadness washing over him as he accepted that this was likely his end.

The way the two interacted gave him the impression that the girl was at least somewhat alright in the head. To be fair, with elves you could never be sure, but that was the feeling he got as he was pulled closer—close enough for what he expected to be the killing blow.

Instead of killing him, the girl grabbed him by the neck, flipped him onto his back, and in the next moment his vision was swimming as she jumped up and down.

“Look, look! It’s so beautiful—and it even has a crystal in its chest! Please, can I keep it?” the girl pleaded, bouncing excitedly.

Now not only Thalion’s vision blurred, but his thoughts did as well.