LEVEL 0 IMMORTAL

Inside Elias's Lumina Space, the changes were accelerating.

The pools were not full; they would never be full, not truly, not when they were placed inside an infinite container, and he would only be able to know his progress by their spread, which was now a thin film of lumina that was expanding.

At this point, his Lumina pools had spread to 699 meters, and there was a faint sense of completeness growing inside of him. Elias was anticipating what came next, as he plunged deeper into the tides of bodies.

Thousands fell, and Elias no longer counted the numbers, because even for him, whose mind was fully focused on comprehending everything that was happening around him, that analytical part of his mind that was focused on numbers simply went numb.

His Lumina Pools, under the endless trickle of vitality entering his core, finally reached 700 meters, and a faint groaning sound emerged from his Infinite Oceans as all of his Lumina Pools began to boil, and 45 purple orbs rose from his Lumina Pools to join the first 45 orbs he had gained when he reached the Fury Forge level, now there were 90 Miracle/Damnation orbs waiting for him to push into any Attribute of his choice.

He was still a level 0 Fury Forge, but technically, he was at level 2, since his level would only rise if he spent the orbs and upgraded his stats, but for now, Elias was holding back on spending any of his stats, keeping them for the sake of an emergency.

If there was ever a time he needed more Vitality, Stamina, strength, or Agility, then at a moment's notice, he would be able to push all of these points into those stats to break the situation.

Other Siphons may depend on their legacy and would rapidly use their points to strengthen themselves, but Elias's Elder Talent gave him the opportunity to hold back on his points and grow in a manner that few could match.

He did not know what he needed to do to complete this trial, but he acknowledged that he might need to spend these points before all of it was done. Still with the vast amount of enemies here, he would not be surprised if he reached peak Fury Forge level before the end of this trial.

However, what was most concerning to him was his vein completion level, since he would not be fully completing the hidden achievement of this stage if he did not reach a hundred percent, and Elias would not be reaching the Mist Phantom level unless he did this.

Vein Completion (Void Scripture): 1.536709% → 1.97035%

Vein Completion (Art of Stone): 2.07% → 7.89%

Vein Completion (Crimson Vein): 35.008% → 36.17%

The forging of his flesh was growing, even slowly accelerating as each spawn added more than the last. Each kill fed the void that he was becoming more deeply, as he felt all of his legacies growing, almost as if they were waking up.

Inside his Lumina Space, the fragments of souls on the white sands were multiplying.

A hand. A foot. A piece of a skull, scattered across the sand like pieces of a puzzle that had been shattered and would never be put back together. The souls of the spawns were incomplete; what remained was not enough to be a person or a memory. Just fragments and echoes.

But they were something, Elias thought, and something was better than nothing.

Elias was moving step by step, but despite his advantages, he was not invincible, and that was because of the fact that the weight of these creatures was their greatest weapon.

Being slammed by one of them would mince flesh and crack bones, and because there were thousands of these creatures, they would be able to crush a block of profound iron into a sheet.

It was as if his body was a piece of metal, and the spawns were hammers, and despite the fact that each spawn, in comparison to his strength, weighed almost nothing, when thousands of them were pressed against each other, their weight expanded into dozens of tonnes, and it was that weight that was breaking through his defenses.

They were hurting him despite the fact that he was made from stone, and with their numbers, some of them began to slip through the gaps of his defense.

A spawn's claw found the gap between his pauldron and his cuirass, and it dug deep into his stone skin before it was crushed to ash, but he had felt those claws scrape against his ribs.

Another spawn bit into his leg, its teeth grinding against the greave, finding what should have been the soft spot behind his knee, but it met nothing but stone, and its teeth did chip out some part of skin.

A third wrapped its too-long limbs around his helmet, trying to twist his head off, and a blood whip tore it into a hundred pieces.

The number of spawns blasting past his defense did not end, and even if they were chipping out tiny pieces of his stone skin, their numbers were great, and his Vitality dropped. 6,778 → 6,500 → 6,200 → 5,800.

But his regeneration was not normal; the flesh that had been sealed along the lines of the Crimson Vein, his flesh that had been turned to stone by the Art of Stone, and the void that lived in his chest, they all worked together, enhancing his passive regeneration into a new level.

The wounds closed more quickly than they should, and any bleeding was taken by his Blood Lash, increasing his offensive strength and his flesh that was now stone, knit together as the stone remembered where it had been broken.

Blood-Forged Flesh converted the damage to stamina. The more they hurt him, the longer he could fight. He was a thing that grew stronger the more it was wounded, and the spawns could not kill him, but they did not stop trying.

He could now see the pit ahead like a wound in the earth. Spawns poured from it in an unending stream, their bodies tumbling over each other, with their red eyes burning in the darkness.

Elias stopped walking.

He had been advancing for what felt like hours, though it could have been minutes. His shield was dented beyond recognition, but it still held, and his regeneration was working on the shield, repairing it back to its previous state, since now that it was made from stone, his body saw his shield as a part of itself.

His blade had been shattered and reforged a dozen times, the swarm responding to his will, giving him new weapons as the old ones broke.

His blood whips had been cut, regrown, cut again. His stamina was low, but it was not empty. His vitality was wounded, but it was not broken. He was still standing.

He looked at the pit and readied for the final charge, and the spawns went crazy.

Previously, only thirty percent of the spawns were focused on him, and the rest were focused on the candidates in the central square, and now that number was being flipped, and Elias would not know at the moment that he had just saved the lives of most of the candidates because of this.