"So it can be blocked head-on?"
Estrella awkwardly put away the dragon-blood stone, forcing a smile. In all recorded climbs, everyone either dodged the ironstorm or dove into a nearby heaven to hide. Marching into it behind a shield was unheard of.
Orson just nodded and pushed onward. They cleared the Fiftieth Heaven in short order. Every kind of rule-born hazard swept down on them in turn, morphing into black flame, waves and rolling stone, and each in turn was smashed apart by brute force.
Past this tier, anyone grinding strength here was a regional powerhouse. Nuhachit yelped, "No way, that’s the old War-owl chieftain! I thought he died!"
"Bullshit. I was in seclusion, not a grave." The wiry middle-aged man bristled, and Nuhachit bared his teeth in a grin, bowing fast.
"Whoa! The Python-Jiao seer. A commander-tier legend from two centuries ago!"
Darulunina and the others were stunned as hermits crawled out of the rock, alive fossils of the Fireborn. Each one was a living legend.
"So the heavens past fifty grant merit," Orson murmured, noting one man’s commander rank. Estrella explained: after the Fiftieth, the demon "echoes" became corporeal. Merit could be earned, though the merit shop was still cursed. Mostly you could swap merit for raw stats and titles.
"Corporeal echoes?" Orson frowned. If Fire God could create demons, why need adventurers or divine weapons at all? Let demons fight demons. That didn’t add up.
As they climbed, strong awakeners flocked to the staircase. Nuhachit’s purse grew fat. What should have been solemn pilgrimage had turned into a parade.
By the Seventy-eighth Heaven, they even picked up a King rank. He called himself DoomBringer, white hair trailing the ground, a living skeleton. He bore 4-Shift, his aura like a dying ember. No one knew his origin. After long, spidery pauses, the truth came out: he was a disciple of the Sunforge Sacred Executor. His end was near; he wanted to see his master one last time, and would follow Orson up.
Orson barely reacted. Let Nuhachit collect the fees; he would do the lifting. But the Sacred Executor now gnawed at his curiosity. A man who had a King for a disciple should have breached God long ago.
"Front... the front..."
Just shy of the Eightieth, DoomBringer lurched to a stop, raising a trembling arm to block Orson. Panic worked across the parchment skin.
"Easy, elder. Breathe. Take your time," Nuhachit said, propping him up before he coughed himself to death.
After a good while the words came back to him. "I have been there."
"You reached the Eightieth?" Orson’s eyes narrowed. If he’d gone that far, why turn back?
"Space... undying ones. Heresy. Kill," DoomBringer hissed, glaring into the mist above.
"Eternal?" Orson blinked. He’d never heard the name. It took ages to piece the rest together. A hundred years ago, something took root above: machine life calling itself the Eternal. They were nothing like awakeners. No magic, no arts. Yet their combat strength was beyond reason.
A tech-path civilization’s relics, then. It tracked. The galaxy was wide. Not every world had been pressed into Infinite Dimensions. One thing was clear: the so-called undying were trapped here too. Just like him, they’d come to the Sacred Mountain for a way out.
"That can’t be right. The Eightieth Heaven is guarded by the Sky-Eagle Emperor. You only pass if you survive him," Estrella protested.
Orson glanced at the map the Wolves had gifted him. Their best scouts had only charted a fraction of the Eightieth; an eagle’s talon marked a region at its edge.
"Dead. Slain," DoomBringer rasped.
Gasps rippled through the crowd. A quasi-God-tier homage beast, reduced to meat. The camp’s bravado bled away, replaced by the urge to turn. Plenty of oddities found their way into The Sunforge World along with adventurers. But an Eightieth Heaven slaughter that included a quasi-God? These machines were something else.
A few demanded refunds. Nuhachit hugged his pack like a mother hen. "No refunds. Complain to the chief. He calls the shots."
They fell silent and looked at the excavator himself. Compared to a faceless machine, he was the nearer terror.
"You’ll get one shot in your life to go where the stories end. You’ll give that up?" Caelum called out.
Throats worked. They’d grown up under the Mountain’s shadow. Even if they didn’t dream of breaking the cage, they dreamed of kneeling in that temple. The words landed hard.
Orson wasted none. Whether they came or not, he was going. He and the Sacred Executor were both 6-Shift. The man had walked the mountain for ages; trading blows might peel back layers, give him a truer grip on sixfold form. And there was the "god-lord." By every rumor, that man was above as well, dragging youths up the mountain to punch through the seal. Whatever that scheme was, Orson wanted eyes on it.
He carved onward. The thunder of stone never stopped.
They crested a bulge of black rock. White script unfurled in the air: Aerie of the Dragonhawk.
"What is this...?" Darulunina surfaced, fingers closing around a strange lump. She twisted it free. A broken metal arm.
Orson surveyed the field. It was a ruin. Pocked ground, piles of metallic rubble, neither stone nor gold, just wreckage. In the middle lay three butchered homage beasts, blood glassed over into crimson crystals. One was a golden raptor with a dragon’s wingspan and a skull pulped to paste.
"Dragonhawk Emperor Drakhan," Estrella whispered, stricken. The empire’s champion had once failed his trial here and brought back rumors. To see the Emperor’s corpse here was something else.
Scattered among the dead beasts were the bodies of more than a dozen awakeners. From their positions and the churn of earth, they’d fought shoulder to shoulder with the totems. All for nothing. Not a full limb among them.
The Eternal had been thorough.
Orson lifted a metal shard and called a pane.
[ Ascendant Will · Machine Construct · Fragment ]
[ Properties: Unknown ]
No element. No mana signature. DoomBringer was right. They belonged to a different ecosystem.
"This can’t be real. It can’t. Our totem, the Glassfire Red Basilisk, how could it die here?" a Fireborn with a salamander tattoo choked, staring at the lizard-like homage beast’s body. The Fireborn revered their totems like gods. To see one slain was an unthinkable wound.
Orson glanced at his chest. He wore a tribe mark as well. Did that beast die too—
The ground ticked. Faces drained. Every metal scrap twitched.
A severed steel leg stood up, then, to their horror, began to hop on its own.
Orson raised the chaos blade and then lowered it again. He wanted to see what the trash planned to do.
Within moments, the junk swarmed and knit itself together. Ten, twelve figures rose, a little over three meters tall. Jointed limbs, narrow torsos, heads faceted with sensors.
"Fireborn mechs?" Orson muttered. The long, whip-thin limbs were unmistakable. He pinged a pane.
[ Extermination Executor · Type V ]
[ Awakened Will: Eternal ]
[ State: Sunforge Biome Mimicry ]
[ HP: 200,000,000 / 400,000,000 ]
[ Skills: Scanning... ]
A line of red light shot from one unit’s head, sweeping the line and stopping between Orson’s brows.
Before he could move, a voice rattled out, harsh yet familiar.
"Awaken: Flame Dragon."