(Book 2 Complete!) Tales of the Endless Empire [LitRPG Apocalypse]

Flying was bliss. Perhaps Thalion loved it even more than swimming. Three kilometers above the ground, he rode the winds like a silver arrow, the world sprawled out beneath him. The jungle stretched in an endless green ocean, his base like a restless anthill with people scurrying in every direction. Beyond that, the true ocean shimmered under the strange blue sun, waves rolling like sheets of crystal. From up here, everything seemed so peaceful, so far removed from bloodshed and hardship.

A flock of massive gulls, each wingspan stretching ten meters, wheeled lazily in the distance. Thalion eyed them for a heartbeat, then let them be. Now was not the time for a casual genocide. Instead, he let himself savor the freedom of the sky, the weightless drift of feathers catching the wind. His horns weren't burning with bloodline power here, no constant overload thrumming through his veins, only calm, only flight. For a fleeting moment, he thought: if someone handed him a cold beer, life might just be perfect.

But perfection never lasted. His gaze hardened, and he pumped his wings, gathering speed. Today he wanted more than leisure. He needed to see what this new world held—to test himself against its beasts, and perhaps, if fate was kind, to find an incursion. He would not hunt near the base. Instead, he would glide outward, scanning the canopy below. His sharp eyes missed nothing that moved, though the interwoven crowns of ancient trees kept the forest floor hidden. Spotting a true threat from this height would be luck, not skill. Still, incursions were said to be unmistakable: vast portals anchored by five-meter stones, pulsing with unstable power.

And Thalion was eager. He wanted to test not only his eagle form, not only the tidecaller serpent, but his human self and even the crippled eclipsari. He had barely touched their potential. His human form now carried his bloodline, his strongest and most dangerous abilities. He needed practice before facing stronger foes. The eclipsari, meanwhile, was free from that constant overload, and its elemental powers had fused with the fear pillar. How far could he push it? Only training would tell.

Half an hour passed in the sky. Thalion sighed. No promising targets, no incursions, only endless trees. He had imagined the first day on New Earth would be a storm of chaos, but it was strangely quiet. Aside from whispers of a few lunatics attacking their fellow humans, peace held. The only real tragedy was that Old Earth's cities and architecture had vanished entirely. Not a single stone left. Thalion wasn't sentimental, but the emptiness of it still struck him.

Well then. If beasts wouldn't appear, he would do his own testing. Time to try the crippled eclipsari and his human form. Not just their skills, but the finer details like the armor, the sword, the new upgrades he hadn't even unsheathed yet. Waiting any longer gnawed at him. He folded his wings, leaned forward, and dropped like a stone. Wind screamed past as he plunged through a gap in the leaves. At the last instant, his wings snapped open, pulling him into a controlled glide between branches that could have shredded any slower bird.

It was easier without the bloodline surging through him, he realized. He remembered flying through the jungle in the fifth stage, desperate to help the humans ambushed by elves. Back then, his passive skills and tempest glide had made the journey terrifying, every tree a guillotine waiting to cut his life short. Now, he laughed at the memory.

"Yeah, I dominated the entire tutorial, defeated Ankhet against all odds, only to smash face-first into a tree. That would've been a story for heaven," he thought with dry amusement.

He landed lightly on a broad branch, twenty meters above the ground. The air was thick with the scents of earth, sap, and distant rain. With a thought, his form shifted, feathers melting away as the crippled eclipsari emerged in his place. It stretched, filling its lungs, then bared its teeth in a feral grin. The jungle trembled faintly around it, as though aware that something dangerous had awoken among its branches.

The environment shifted at once, though not nearly as violently as when the bloodline still pulsed through this form. The shadows thickened, the light dimmed, and the air grew heavier, but with his aura suppressed, the weight of it was tolerable. His passive skill, Eclipsari Intuition, painted the world in another spectrum, every detail sharper yet more alien. After a few moments, he caught the first trace of his quarry. He didn't know what it was, only that the whispers of darkness led him to the thunder of massive footfalls on the wooden canopy. Judging by their size, the beast could have been some colossal dinosaur or an elephant dragged out of a nightmare.

The jungle here was strange. The trees grew so close together that one could leap from branch to branch with ease, their boughs intertwined into a living lattice. Back on Earth, forest trees grew tall and naked, leaves clustering only at the crown where sunlight reached. On New Earth, that logic didn't apply. Branches heavy with foliage sprouted just five meters above the ground, and many glowed faintly with bioluminescence, as though the forest itself were alive with hidden fireflies. Vines and flowers twined along the trunks, blossoms spilling faint radiance into the gloom. It reminded Thalion of Pandora from Avatar, an alien paradise that soothed his mind even as his predatory instincts prowled.

The jungle thrummed with life. Butterflies the size of his palm flitted between glowing blossoms, their wings shimmering like stained glass. Once, he passed a family of squat rabbit-creatures, each sporting long beaver-like teeth as they gnawed stubbornly at the base of a massive tree. He ignored them. Yes, they radiated E-grade power, but what were rabbits to him? Killing them would add nothing to his strength, and worse, it would leave a bloody trail others might follow. He didn't want to be remembered as a storm that destroyed everything in its path. No, he wanted to be an enigma.

Spies would surely be watching. Recording crystals circulated freely among the survivors, and he had no doubt that many of his enemies already possessed copies of his duel against the female elf. They would expect him to be the same as before. They had no idea what upgrades he now carried, or what kind of surprise awaited anyone foolish enough to challenge him. A thought that made the corner of his mouth twitch with satisfaction.

As he followed the beast's trail, Thalion's attention drifted inward, to the elemental bound within him. Once, it had been gluttonous, a primal hunger that gnawed endlessly. Now it radiated something far more insidious. With the Fear Pillar fused to it, the elemental had become a malevolent whisper in his chest, a presence that longed to unravel minds and drench the world in despair. Thalion frowned. He would have to watch it closely. Power was worthless if it came at the price of his sanity. Perhaps one day he would need to seclude himself, lock the thing down in meditation and body-tempering, just to ensure control.

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Control above all else, that was the lesson his bloodline had seared into him. Even with his overwhelming arsenal, the duel against the elf had dragged on far too long. He had panicked at the end of the tutorial, trying to finish every project while simultaneously battling her, and it had nearly cost him. From now on, he swore, he would be colder, more calculating. The tutorial had been a sprint. This world was a marathon. He would move deliberately, not rashly.

Still, unease lingered. The elf was beaten, yes, but she would return eventually. And the other enemies he had gained, the vampires most of all, were unlikely to forget him. The thought of the Vampire God made his jaw tighten. Would that wrathful deity grant the Sanguis Impera to another chosen, or feed it to some abomination born of blood and shadow? If they found him, things would turn ugly very quickly. Fortunately, tracking him down here on New Earth would be no easy feat. Or so he hoped.

The footsteps grew louder. Branches groaned beneath a colossal weight. Thalion slipped silently through the canopy until he saw it. The beast was unlike anything he had encountered before: an elephant twisted into something monstrous. Its massive frame was wrapped in writhing tentacles sprouting from its midsection, reminiscent of the Leviathan's grasping limbs. Its hide gleamed a dark green, tougher than stone, and its sheer size dwarfed even the largest African elephants by fourfold. Jagged spikes jutted from its shoulders and encircled its neck like a crown of blades, deterring any predator from biting too close.

This was no gentle herbivore. Even as Thalion watched, the creature dug furiously into the earth, tearing open a burrow with its trunk. A rabbit squealed as it was plucked from the hole, flailing helplessly before being shoved into the monster's maw. Whether the beast crushed it with its jaws or swallowed it whole, Thalion couldn't say. The tentacled trunk darted back into the hole, greedy for more. The cries of the rabbits rose into a desperate chorus, and one by one, their voices were silenced.

Verdaphant Level 97

That was a dangerously high level, but Thalion felt no fear. In fact, excitement curled in his chest. This beast would be a true test. His speed and lethality against its raw power and endurance, an even match. The Verdaphant's sheer size alone suggested a battle of attrition. Creatures like it usually carried absurdly large health pools and terrifying regeneration.

That only made the encounter more tempting. A drawn-out fight meant time to experiment with his new abilities, especially the sinister fear aura now coiled inside him like a second heart. If the Verdaphant lacked strong mental defenses, that aura would gnaw its mind until madness set in. That was the beauty of mental skills, Thalion thought. Armor and thick hide meant nothing if the mind betrayed its body.

He circled quietly through the canopy, observing the monster from different angles. Over thirty more rabbits had been plucked screaming from their burrow while he stalked, vanishing down its trunk into silence. The carnage wasn't wasted. Thalion's eyes caught the truth behind the Verdaphant's bulk.

Its legs and trunk were bulging with corded muscle, strong enough to snap trees like twigs or crush bones to powder. A single hit could end him if he slipped. Worse, the tentacles he had first mistaken for growths of flesh were in fact vines gnarled, thorn-studded, and brimming with unnatural life. They writhed faintly even when the beast was still. Could it be harboring a parasitic plant inside, like the Sanguis Impera? A passive skill, perhaps? Or something darker entirely?

Enough speculation. The rabbit genocide ended now. Thalion blurred forward, claws lengthening into hooked talons of shadow. He struck at the front leg, his Shadow Claw tearing at the joint. The blow landed true, but without the empowerment of his bloodline, the damage was pitiful. His claws carved no more than shallow furrows, barely five centimeters deep, the festering darkness clinging to the wound like rot. Not nearly enough. He cursed under his breath and leapt back just in time as the Verdaphant pivoted with startling speed.

The forest trembled as the beast trumpeted, a blast of sound that cracked like thunder. It wasn't merely a roar but a weapon, raw force designed to shatter bones and rupture eardrums. Branches snapped overhead, leaves spiraling like dying embers, and the air itself quivered with the shockwave. Only Thalion's instinctive retreat spared him from being flattened. The Verdaphant fixed him with a baleful stare, its verdant eyes narrowing with an intelligence more dangerous than hunger.

Thalion bared his teeth and let his aura bleed free. Darkness spilled outward, a veil that dimmed the world and thickened the air. He had always liked the way it looked, but now it was more than spectacle. The malevolent presence of the elemental surged with it, saturating the jungle with malice. The Verdaphant froze, startled for just a heartbeat. Whether it was shaken by the oppressive aura or merely by the sudden shift in atmosphere, Thalion couldn't tell. The moment passed as quickly as it came. The beast shook its massive head, and power rippled through its hide until the very air vibrated. It had been holding back, too.

The shallow scratches on its leg closed as he watched, the festering darkness burned away by sheer vitality. Its flesh knit seamlessly, erasing the damage as though it had never happened. A tank's defenses paired with high passive regeneration, an infuriating combination. Thalion licked his lips. If it truly was a passive skill, and if he could rip it from the Verdaphant… oh, that would be worth every drop of effort.

Before the beast could charge, Thalion summoned shadows behind it. Umbral Spire. A spear of midnight surged upward, driving toward the vine-wrapped midsection. It wasn't the overwhelming three-meter spike his bloodline could conjure, but it carried respectable force. The spire punched through the writhing vines, but when it struck the Verdaphant's hide, it embedded shallowly, failing to pierce deeper. The elephant didn't even flinch. The vines, however, writhed awake in fury. One seized the shadow-spike like a living whip, yanked it free, and hurled it to the ground where it dissolved back into darkness. Beneath them, the wound closed almost instantly.

Disappointing. He had hoped for more.

For a heartbeat, Thalion considered shifting into his human form. In terms of raw destructive potential, that body was unmatched. His blood thorns alone could counter the Verdaphant's regeneration, draining it faster than it could heal. The beast would be a perfect test for his new powers. But no, he shook his head. Not yet. This fight belonged to the crippled Eclipsari. A battle to push the form's limits, to draw out the elephant's hidden skills, and to leave both of them scarred from the experience.

And for the Verdaphant, it would be a battle unlike any it had ever seen.