Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 885: Great Elder

This entire planet makes me nervous. It’s making my skin itchy, and it feels like I’m not getting enough air to breathe. But as I release the seal on the Ignition Heart and more mana floods into me, it starts to get better.

I wonder if it is part of the way this place has been cut off from the system and what that actually means. If I level up a skill, does it not show here? For some reason, I doubt that. Just as I can use my own mana even here, I think my system will continue. I have a Mana Heart, and I, like everyone else possessing one, have been marked by the system. And as such a person walking on this planet, among the wolves that reject it, I feel like I am dirtying something sacred. They must see me as a spy walking into the heart of their home, carrying the system with me.

I would hate myself as well.

Biscuit wakes up a few times, but only very shortly, always scrambling to look around, and when he notices me, he calms down to doze off again. Though I’m pretty sure the little beast isn’t just sleeping so much as he’s trying to gather himself.

It’s not a good feeling to see him this way, and from the few looks he’s given me, I suspect he is at least a bit annoyed that I went looking for him so early. He can be stubborn and probably wanted to solve it all on his own so we could meet back up sometime after the tutorial.

Well, too bad for him that I am so impatient.

Still, as he dozes off, I cut the tip of my finger, press it against my left pinkie, draw a straight line through it, and then connect the line to his missing paw. This activates the healing mark Lily specially prepared and modified for him, and all that warm mana floods into his body.

This particular mark is, at least according to Lily, a bit special. Instead of trying to use fast healing, it’s been designed to be more gentle in case his body is weak. The healing takes longer, but there’ll be a much, much lower chance of things going wrong.

That also makes me wonder how big a chance there is for something to go wrong with her usual healing marks and why she hadn’t told me about it before I used hundreds of them.

Still walking, I continue to look at Biscuit and think about what I should do. There are risks to bringing him back into the tutorial. I don’t know how the system will react to what he did. I don’t know if the tutorial will accept him back. I don’t even know if Dili will simply take him away and make him a mount for Zant.

It’s something I’ve already been thinking about, and I think I may have spoken about it with Liss. Back then, I’d come to the conclusion that it would be best if he stayed, and she mirrored my thoughts. Just enough time for him to regain what he lost and maybe more besides.

Of course, that was before I found him trapped in that barrier. I was wrong, thinking the little wolfy, as some wolf clan princeling, would be able to take care of it all on his own. The clan seems to either be politically divided or they’re just a bit too similar to the demons, figuring that you can do whatever you want as long as you have enough power.

Or maybe it’ll all snap back into place once we meet this Great Elder wolfy is leading us towards. The Great Elder being his grandfather and also a distant descendant of the currently sleeping Ancient Wolf that once devoured planets. I suspect that the Ancient Wolf is somewhere on this planet too.

Aware of the time limit and the wyvern waiting and prodding me, the little wolfy hurries. A few times, we use tunnels made of trees that bend and weave together, creating a featureless dark pathway devoid of light.

Each time we pass a certain distance into that tunnel, we find ourselves moved to a distant part of the planet, as if it were some sort of warp effect.

Soon we enter what seems like a less rural feeling zones, as other than trees, huge mountains begin to appear as well, many of them with visible cave holes from which wolves lazily observe us.

There are wide lakes, huge rivers, I notice griffins flying through the sky, leviathans on the distant shores, and hydras too. As the land becomes less rural, the monsters start to get much more dangerous as well. I notice a few orbital strikes hitting any monsters that try to get too close to us, but most of them seem to be scared off by the wyvern’s presence surrounding us.

We reach a flatland that has, on each side, huge, gray, sharp, narrow mountains shooting up from the plains, reminiscent of fangs piercing through the ground. At the center of the range is a path that leads through the flatlands, passing between many gigantic statues of wolves, monsters, wyverns, elves, and others that each seem to have been carved from a mountain because of their size.

And at the end is a flat-topped pyramid with steps too big for any normal being to walk.

I continue up by boosting myself up with kinetic energy, and Wolfy grows in size as much as he can, yet even for this gigantic wolf, they’re just too big, and it seems to take some effort as he jumps and climbs over them.

As we make our way, more curious wolves appear at our backs on the flatland, they jump on the fang-like mountains to watch or observe from their caves in the mountains.

There at the top, a wolf is waiting. Pitch black, with golden eyes. Three of them, actually, the third one being on his forehead. On his head rests a crown made of beautiful silver metal with three enormous crystals imbued into it. The middle one is red, the right one is orange, and the left one is yellow.

Resting his head on his paws, which alone are bigger than Wolfy, he watches us make our way up to him.

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He doesn’t say anything, even as wolfy begins to excitedly explain what happened and jump around him. He returns the gesture, gently rubbing his nose against his grandson's as the wolf pup initiates the gesture. Otherwise, he listens, and no other wolves make any move to get closer.

Once in a while, his eyes move as he looks up towards the sky and somewhere beyond it. In other cases, I can see my and Biscuit’s reflection in them as he looks down at us.

The ridiculously enormous wolf won’t even fit into my entire field of view from this distance.

“Very well,” he rumbles. “You shall have your chance. When the moon turns, you shall face Big Fang.”

“Thank you, Great Elder! As for my master-” the wolfy stops talking there under the gaze of that middle eye and steps back. He almost whimpers as he lowers his head.

With almost unfitting gentleness for something so huge, the Great Elder moves and pokes him with his nose. “Don’t forget, even we are bound by the rules.”

He then switches his attention to me, continuing, “Human... you carry the system’s brand. You aren’t welcome in this place. Nor is this shadow of yours, watching from the sky.”

The giant wolf yawns in a lazy gesture and gives his enormous body a stretch, for the first time lifting his head high up, covering me in shadow and blocking out the sky.

"Though the Gray Sun has awoken and the Starless Sky is with us once again, the hour for our Patriarch to stir has not yet arrived. Our clan continues to honor our promise to hold him in slumber. Human-"

(Food?)

The giant wolf halts his words, and at the same moment, his, wolfy’s, and my heads turn to look at the corgi pup in my arms.

(Food! Food!) That voice of a young boy says excitedly. Biscuit’s.

I do not think I’ve ever been happier to hear it.

(Food. Food. Food. Food. Food. Food…) Biscuit begins to shout in quick succession, like someone who just learned to talk or discovered a new word.

As he does so, mana rises up around him through telepathic communication. He pushes through whatever was stopping him before, he bridges any holes left by his pantophagic energy as he reroutes his mana to work properly once again, something I am sure he’s been working on the whole time he’s been dozing off, annoyed by his inability to speak.

Wolfy lifts his head towards the sky and howls long and victoriously, and damn, if I don't almost join him.

“Food!” I say.

(Food!) Biscuit confirms, his tongue lolling out as I shake him in the air.

“You are in so much trouble, you little asshole. Do you know how worried I was?”

(Food Food!) he says.

“I did worry, but I did not bring an entire deer with me.”

(Food?)

“How dare you.” I shake him.

(Friends?)

“They’re safe.”

(Sustenance?)

“I’ve been eating well, and I haven’t been losing weight, so stop worrying about useless stuff like that. Let’s just wait for a moment, okay? We’re guests here, at this nice Great Elder, he’s your disciple’s grandfather.”

(Friend?) Biscuit twists his head and then looks up. And up. And up and up until his head is vertical as he looks at the giant elder. He twists his head a few times as he tries to comprehend that enormous size and even shakes off the confusion a bit, starting to look dizzy as he does.

Then Biscuit turns and looks at his disciple, who, though he is also enormous, is incomparable to that.

"M-master, please, I’ll be that big one day. Don’t look so disappointed..." wolfy almost begs.

“Compassion for your pack is no sin, human. Ignore the affair with Big Fang, his failure was his own, born of an ambition that far outstripped his ability,” the Great Elder says.

I grab and hold Biscuit so he doesn’t try to fly up to the wolf and ask, "But?"

“You and your shadow are unwelcome here. Yet, because your pack member shares a bond with my grandson, I grant you this grace: he may seek to reclaim his lost Pantophagic Energy. If he is meant to reclaim it, so be it. If it consumes him in the process, then that, too, is simply his fate.”

Looking at him, I start to think that in a way, he almost reminds me of Diligence, in other words, he’s reasonable. Maybe a bit too reasonable. I’m not used to the beings around me being reasonable.

"You said your grandson has a bond with Biscuit, but that bond was created by the system, is it not?"

The Great Elder bares his teeth in what looks like a smile. "You and your kind possess little understanding of how the system functions, human, yet you so eagerly embrace your servitude to it. I am thankful that… Biscuit saved my grandson, who was foolishly wandering outside our solar system and nearly lost his life. But understand this: the system does not truly create. It merely takes, copies, evolves, and adapts. The bond it has forged between my grandson and your friend is nothing more than an imitation of ancient, primal connections that existed long before the system ever emerged."

I know when someone’s in the mood to talk, and I know enough to stay quiet so they talk as much as possible, and so I do.

And as expected, he continues talking, “Even subclasses are merely pale imitations of the power held by true gods. The system always attempts to mimic the mightiest beings it encounters, in an effort to create its own pantheon of Rulers. Your passives and traits are simply the stolen mutations and bloodline gifts of native races, adapted and distorted. It suppresses primordial energies and distributes lesser versions to its slaves. The system is nothing but an invader in this universe. Whatever its true purpose and final goal may be, it must be stopped."

"And even you do not know what that purpose might be?"

"I have no answer for that, human. The Fae once knew, but they have long since vanished from this universe. Beyond them, only Pride and Kindness might hold such knowledge, perhaps along with the forgotten Rulers or the remnants of the Empyrean bloodline. Seek your answers from them, not from me."