Behemoth [Primordial Titan Cultivation/LitRPG]

Cyril leaned close to the strange door, resting the tips of his fingers against the metal. A small jolt shocked him; he jerked his hand back, more from surprise than pain.

A warning? A test? A harmless electrical charge that had randomly built up over the ages?

Eyeing the door with suspicion, he crouched and inspected its base. It appeared to have fused with the cavern, rusted metal blending seamlessly into the stone. As if it was a natural extension of the wall. This particular aspect of its construction indicated that it had been created from magic--perhaps through a technique similar to his Transmutation.

Cyril's jaw worked side to side as he considered his options. There weren't many. If he wanted to follow the marble of smoke's directions, there was only one way forward. Well, I could make my own tunnel. An absurd thought intruded into his mind: a vision of him burrowing through the earth like a wyrm. He immediately dismissed that option as being cursed.

That forced him to inspect what may have very well been the most obvious trap of all time.

Outside of the inherent mystery behind its existence, the door didn't appear interesting. No trace of spirituality flickered in its depths. The dappling of rust looked natural, as far as Cyril could tell. His grandmother's spear was proudly displayed upon his family's mantle, and its ancient iron head bore a similar red-brown crust.

There was a simple method to investigate the material without much risk. It had the additional benefit of allowing him to experiment with his newest boon.

Just create more of it.

He examined the imprint the Transmute Cantrip had left upon his soul once more, making sure he had properly memorized the handsigns and channeling method to draw out its full potential. Satisfied, he roused his core. Earth qi surged throughout his body and gathered in his hands.

As he had expected, touching the door had fulfilled the requirements for the material to be added into his list of possible transmutation options.

Transmute:

Dirt (base)
Sand (base)
Stone (base)
Rusted Iron (?)

He struggled to circulate his qi according to the proper rhythm. The flow of energy felt sluggish, resisting his efforts far more than it had during his initial experiment. Inefficiency could be excused when playing with a handful of sand; the mysterious rusted iron required his full attention.

Gritting his teeth, he forced his qi to flow in contradictory rhythms, praying for it to settle into the perfect confluence. The strain from the clashing energies set his arms trembling. After a minute of failure, miniscule cracks began to form along the delicate pathways in his hands.

He cursed to himself. Behemoth's presence had solidified his soul and reforged his body into a more suitable Vessel, but he still had his limits. He'd never heard of any other Early Condensation cultivator capable of handling so much qi without permanently damaging their spirit.

You're not invincible, he reminded himself.

While the rhythm of his qi still wasn't perfect, it would have to be good enough. Any longer and he would end up crippling himself. Shaking his head, he released Transmute into the wall, willing a patch of the stone to convert into Rusted Iron (?).

Nothing happened. A small vortex of Earth qi flooded out of his hands, and the wall absorbed all of it. The stone remained completely inert as more and more qi drained out of his core, feeding the insatiable beast. Though Cyril didn't want to fully deplete his energy in this unknown place, he was transfixed by the sheer inefficiency of the Transmutation.

Father would just shake his head if he was here, he thought. Damn, I miss them already.

Finally, just before his core ran dry, the faintest gleam of metal bloomed beneath his finger: a single speck of iron.

Laughing at the absurdity of it, Cyril caressed the spot of metal with his thumb. He applied a little pressure. The iron refused to budge.

Biting the tip of his tongue, he increased the force behind his thumb until his full strength was behind it. Cracks appeared in the surrounding stone, but the fleck of iron held fast. He stopped exerting pressure, concerned he might collapse the tunnel around himself if he kept it up.

Despite his initial disappointment, Cyril was intrigued. Low quality iron would have crumbled to powder under the amount of stress he had exerted.

He settled back into the lotus position to meditate. While he loathed delaying his pursuit of the Wyrm, he needed to refill his core before exploring uncharted territory. For the next thirty minutes he forced himself to remain in place.

Since Transmuting the base materials into one another exhausted a negligible amount of qi, he repeated his first experiment as he meditated. A handful of sand shifted to dirt; dirt hardened into stone; stone dissolved into sand. Over and over. Each new cycle smoothed over some of the inefficiencies in his technique. After a few minutes, it felt effortless, and he allowed his mind to wander during the exercise.

His immediate thoughts turned toward the rusted iron door. It appeared inert to his spiritual senses, but given how difficult it was to Transmute, it must have been a relatively high-grade metal. Despite the corrosion, it leaked none of its internal energies--at least, not at a level that he was capable of perceiving.

Still, outside of the small shock it had given him, the door didn't seem too threatening. He was more worried about where it led.

Ultimately, it was all pointless speculation. He instead turned his thoughts to his recent battles, hoping to glean some insights as he waited.

Looking back, his fighting style left much to be desired. Much of it was brute force through overwhelming displays of qi. Satisfying, but he would suffer in longer engagements due his wastefulness.

He did plan on improving his control, but after a certain point the effort would yield diminishing returns. His ability to manipulate the Dominions of Knowledge and Sun had already been refined to the limit. In order for all aspects of his soul to benefit, the optimal next step would be to advance his core. Evolving it to Middle Condensation Stage would improve both its quality and capacity, allowing him to invest far more power into his techniques.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Once his qi reserves were replenished, Cyril exhaled and stood up, facing the door.

No more stalling, he thought.

He grabbed its simple handle with as much respect and friendliness as anyone could reasonably imbue into the gesture. It was warm and coarse with rust. The door slid open at the slightest touch, its hinges creaking.

Cyril sent his Flicker inside and amplified its luminosity. Beyond was a room that looked as if it had once been used as a long-term campsite. It was spacious enough for one person to live comfortably, provided they weren't driven insane by the solitude.

A small shrine had been erected in the center of the room. Over time it had collapsed in on itself, and the effigy of its god had shattered into an unrecognizable mess. Off to the side, a pile of tattered cloth and rotten wood were all that remained of a cot. About thirty paces away, an identical door hovered within the far wall.

Cyril had to admit his curiosity had been stoked. Had the Wyrm actually traveled through here? He glanced at the marble of smoke, eyes narrowing, curious if the woman-ifrit had snuck a sliver of her consciousness into the tracking spell. Was she misleading him? What would be the point? She could have killed him back at the temple if she had ill intent.

Though he disliked it, the thought spawned a seed of doubt in his heart.

Frowning, he walked into the campsite and looked around. Up close, he could confirm that the entire room appeared to be reinforced with the same iron as the door. Less rust marred the surface, though splotches appeared here and there, like clusters of moss creeping along the walls.

Impressive. How far had the creator of this area ascended, to fashion a temporary hideout out of such costly material? It was possible the person had been deeply attuned to one specific metal, but even if that was the case, they must have been a near-mythical practitioner of the Dominion of Earth, renowned throughout the desert in their time.

Cyril circled around the room. In one corner, he found a few bronze scales scattered near a charred ring on the floor. The spot where the prior occupant had cooked and eaten his meals, he guessed--including roasted sandwyrm.

His stomach growled, making him painfully aware of how close to starving he was. Now that he was aware of it, he found it impossible to ignore the pit of hunger in his gut. After having charred a few of the monsters himself and finding the scent disturbingly appetizing, it was difficult to judge the stranger's palate too harshly.

He wasn't that desperate. At least, not yet.

The rest of the room was barren. It reminded him of a basic cultivation cave, stripped of most of its treasures and foci. Easy to imagine the prior occupant hunting down wyrms or other monsters throughout the region, then retreating to this area to rest.

Maybe they had been an opportunistic explorer, plundering the lost city. For relic hunters, the desert was almost lucrative as the ocean, as long as one was able to withstand the harsh environments.

So, he could deduce that the cultivator had been a practitioner of the Dominion of Earth--or, at the very least, Metal. It was impossible to tell what other affinities they possessed, all evidence long ago dissipated under the grinding pressure of the earth.

Darkness was the only other major element present this far underground. Dark/Metal wasn't the most common synergy, but it was no more bizarre than the innate combination of Sun/Knowledge that Cyril possessed.

Cyril shook his head. The mystery was somewhat interesting, but irrelevant. He made a mental note to look into whoever this person may have been. Though the room appeared as if it had been abandoned for hundreds--if not thousands--of years, the previous occupant may very well still be alive somewhere. Old monsters had a habit of sticking around.

Before he departed, Cyril decided to touch everything in the room to see if Transmute could learn any new materials. The decomposed cloth from the cot provided nothing, but Cyril's eyes lit up when Rotten Wood (?) appeared on the list. His greed stoked, he tore through the rest of the scraps. No more luck.

As expected, he couldn't replicate the old wyrmscales near the scorch mark either. He did end up depositing them into his coinpurse after they resisted all of his attempts to bend or scratch them. They were at least as durable as the rusted iron, meaning the person had harvested them from a sandwyrm stronger than Cyril's own nemesis. And the prior occupant had apparently eaten that one for dinner.

A disturbing thought, on multiple levels. This wyrmhorde must have once been far more troublesome back then. It had been culled down near to nothing, and the current infestation had probably sprouted from one of the survivors. Impossible to say how many generations had passed since.

The other disturbing part was the violation of taboo, though sensibilities may have been very different back then. To his people, the idea of consuming an Ascended, sapient creature was akin to cannibalism. Killing them was fine under some circumstances; eating them was not.

The final task in the room was sifting through the collapsed shrine. Hands clasped together, Cyril offered a silent prayer, asking for forgiveness for desecrating the site. Then, he carefully deconstructed the pile. The pieces looked like they were made from marble, but nothing new popped up in his Transmute list after he handled them.

Cyril muttered a much longer prayer this time, offering his justifications and assuring the unknown deity his intentions were pure. Then, he took the tiniest shard he could find and deposited it into his coinpurse.

Like the prior occupant, the spirit the shrine was dedicated to had properly left the material plane long ago. If not, it probably wasn't overly concerned about this particular site. Better safe than sorry, though. Some of the ancients were rather fickle.

Certain he was wasting his time, Cyril continued his methodical rearrangement of the shrine. To his surprise, once he had cleared the detritus off the side, he discovered a few conjoined markings on the floor where the shrine had stood. He brushed aside the light coating of dust and marble powder to better appraise the symbol.

His soul shuddered as he beheld the entirety of the uncovered rune. He recognized nothing about it, but its power transcended the need for comprehension. Cyril found himself disconnected from his body, his consciousness trapped in an immobile block of stone and flesh. Unable to move or close his eyes, he was forced to stare at the mesmerizing symbol.

It seemed to grow until it consumed the entirety of his vision, the entirety of his focus. Nothing existed beyond the rune. It looked simple, as if a child might accidentally stumble upon its form while drawing random lines, but a hidden complexity revealed itself the longer he looked.

Nothing about the rune resonated with his nature. While it felt like he was caught in a divine trance, the truth began to seep through. The rune was more of a curse than a blessing. It intended to take the malleable prince and reshape him in its image. His path would be supplanted, his Dominions corrupted. He could do nothing but watch.

Cyril had always considered himself the most sensible of his family, able to control his nature better than the others. The contrarian, the questioner, prone to logic instead of emotion. In truth, it simply took longer for him to get fired up, and when it happened, he exploded.

Pure rage overwhelmed all else. His panic, his helplessness, his sense of violation, all of it was washed away beneath the intensity of his burning soul. Who asked for your shitty Inheritance?

Within him, Behemoth shifted, awakening from whatever trance it had been lost in. Its attention was like the weight of the world pressing down on his soul, but it was almost pleasant, like the affection of a domineering parent. The Titan didn't seem particularly upset over the rune. More disappointed than anything. It radiated strength and certainty, stabilizing Cyril's soul with its mere presence.

Its lofty nature blended with his all-consuming anger, and Cyril's rage became transcendent.

Sensing the tides had turned against it, the rune shuddered and shrank in his vision, retreating until it was no more than a few markings etched into the floor. Cyril smashed his fist into it, his righteous anger barely appeased by the rune surrendering. Again and again, he punched the ground, the room trembling from each impact.

He only stopped when the offending section of the floor was reduced to a small pit. No sign remained of the offending rune. Blood trickled down his hand, knuckles red and raw.

He breathed hard, rationality slowly reasserting itself. Half-enraged, half-enlightened, he swore an oath to himself: no matter how long it took, he would figure out who had constructed this room.