The World's First Monk (OCs, Isekai, LitRPG, Fantasy)

[Sahqoreyth]

Chapter 43: The Root of Ruin




Final Boss Room - The Rotfang Depths
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Drake didn't have time to grasp how fucked they were. Dagorath simply attacked. The Monk's divine eyes read every stat related to the spells the unhinged God shard cast in an instant of their arrival. The first was Time Stop. Ninth Tier. Cast as one of his immediate and legendary skills, similar to what Ungoliant had. Rose and Elowir froze in place, while Drake remained unaffected. The insane shard of a murderous God, pointed directly at him with a grin that could've rivaled the Joker's.

The Chronognomon still let him move, but he just wasn't fast enough compared to stats that high. Gods constantly gained experience, but even they hit the level curve eventually. Still, almost twice what was considered the mortal 'maximum' of two hundred was more than enough to outpace the High Human Monk. Drake activated the Chronognomon, as Dagorath fired his spell.

Ninth Tier

Disintegrate

Instant cast
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Dagorath's arm flared before Drake remembered he could've flicked the spell into nonexistence. But that would've required a shift in stance, and he'd burned his free and only action on turning his belt on. More than that, the mask was showing him things. Things from the past. An image of Dagorion, clad in the very mask now on his face, stormed by him towards Aeluinor but Drake didn't see what happened next. Time normalized as the obelisk the Chronognomon spawned appeared, nullifying the Time Stop in the circular area.

Elowir reacted the quickest, and acted first, using one of his own instant, legendary skills. He drew on the corrupted roots of his species' ancestral home, raising them into a layered shield that Disintegrate burned through. This close to the source, this caused massive disconnection to large parts of the Dungeon.

"Blades of Shielding Light!"

Elowir and Drake's eyes shifted, as their Light Sage got involved. Three ghostly facsimiles of the God's Paragons appeared in a trio before them, blades held downwards as a barrier of Laurelin's light encased them. Much like a certain card from a certain King of Game's dueling deck, the blades would protect them from damaging attacks for about fifteen seconds.




As the Disintegrate was blocked and Rose raised a period of much needed invulnerability, Drake finally acted. His Patron had quietly warned him against using Quivering Palm on this Dagorath. Given the level disparity, he'd been counting on that, but she assured him he had what he needed to survive this fight. Thus, he followed Elowir's lead. The Art of Doing Nothing emphasized that when one did actually do something, it mattered. Thus, Drake reasoned, they needed to separate Aeluinor from the overpowered God shard. That made his target, the roots.

The Monk stepped with the wind, as he opted for his Hidden Blades, and the earthen version of Harmonic Edge. He manifested the focused earth Ki around the magically enhanced orichalcum. They would stun what he hit, and apply bleeding damage over time. If what he hit was weak, like a vine, that effect would simply tear through it with each second that passed.

He clocked Dagorath watching him as he combined fire with earth on his blades, and spun through the ancient Ki-filled vines. He knew as soon as he stopped, Dagorath would strike, thus he raised his hood and activated his mirror as he finished his extreme gardening. Exact copies of himself appeared this time, hoods up and smirking confidently. The God shard responded by opening an equivalent number of glowing orange holes in reality above the Monks, but they slammed shut, as Elowir Counterspelled the Meteor Swarm.

Dagorath's response was just as quick. He burned an extra action on trying to Counterspell the Counterspell, and failed against the ancient Balance Druid's spellcasting proficiency. The shard's face shifted to a snarl of irritation, and he simply used yet another legendary tier action before casting something called Enuncia: Murder at the Vireolith. It seemed to ignore Rose's shield since it wasn't classified as physical or magical damage. Rose was ready though, and with something new. Something she'd created on her own, after listening to her Monk explain how he punched magic into not existing. She'd essentially created a caster version of that same principle, magically disrupting the flow of the caster's Ki, and thus also their magic. Since she manipulated Ki as often as he did, Drake had encouraged her to attempt it. Original spells and skills weren't unheard of, but the system rarely created fixed, reusable options for them.

Some, like Drake's Serious Punch, formed after an individual used the same combination enough times, while other examples included skills that changed to suit the user, and depended on how they had been used previously.




The mad shard of the God of Monsters shuddered with rage as once again the annoyingly competent 'heroes' defied his power. Before he'd even realized it, he'd burned through each of his extra actions, but he knew that with time, he would overpower them. He would recover those time-defying actions rather quickly, and Mortals had much harsher limits.

Drake had his clones activate Fury of the First Dragon, and then each one used Duel in the Heavens at once. Dagorath parried every single strike, as his body had the supernatural speed to react with his God tier eyesight. But Drake only needed one hit. Eight clones struck eight times each, but only two managed to actually break past Dagorath's defenses, and land a hit. The first did little damage, but the Buff's effect worked even on Gods, and sent him flying towards the direction Drake wanted.

The second hit sent him down, straight towards the Chronognomon's obelisk. Dagorath was fully capable of reading what it did, but it seemed he hadn't bothered to until he was about to crash into it. The Phantom Dagorath desperately stopped himself in the air inches from the obelisk, but as he turned, Elowir struck.

Natural magic boomed as the ancient Balance Druid unleashed his flurry of spells. Multiple Starfires hammered Dagorath forward towards the obelisk, and the final follow up rapid-fire Star Surge spells pushed him into touching it. His back sizzled with raw time magic, and the obelisk flared an ominous orange as it forcibly removed the shard's health and power. Not with damage, but by making the overall pool smaller. It also lowered his stats, magic, and even his level. Drake surmised that this was mainly due to what he was. A disparate shard of a God that'd been separated for millennia at this point. Against a 'normal' monster, it usually stole health points that he could then redistribute, but seeing this he now wondered if it reacted differently depending on a monster's type.




This too, was a plan of Vincent's, to deal with something vastly stronger than them. Ideally it would involve more party members, but it worked because it was simple: Drag the big bad evil thing into the time obelisk, then hammer it. Hard. Being drained applied a pretty gnarly Debuff, one granting all attacks against the drained creature ten percent more damage. Dagorath's level rapidly fell as the obelisk drained him from where his back had touched it, and yet, though he was not a God, he had the stats of one, and managed to pull himself off the obelisk, collapsing on the ground. Roots connected to him on the dungeon floor, and he managed to right himself, but the damage had been done.

The ordeal brought him down to level ninety, and he faced the trio, disoriented as his body tried to compensate and adjust to the sudden loss in stats. His ghostly nature also added to this stun window, as the system stuttered, trying to compensate for what the stats of a drained shard of a God tier entity would have. Even monsters were not designed to go above, and then back below, one hundred.

This pause gave Drake the opening he'd been waiting for. Vincent and the others had apparently been ambushed by the Vanwi once they'd stepped into the portal, but they still had backup.

"FAAALKOOOORRR!"

The massive white and black Luckdragon appeared behind the Monk Hero, and the dimensional echo's eyes widened, and flared with fresh crimson energy. For the first time, it spoke. "Im…Impossible! That was MY design!" Drake was glad for the reaction. He hoped upon dying, the real God of Monsters would see what a proper dragon actually looked like from this shard's memories.




Drake smirked. "There is nothing new in the Multiverse. And everything is Canon." He looked up at his Luckdragon. "All I have, I give to you! Falkor!" He designated the recipient of the energy the obelisk had stored, as was his right as the one wearing the Chronognomon. The aura of gathered energy surged into his draconic familiar. "Obliterate." He pointed at Dagorath, who hadn't noticed Rose and Elowir moving to shield what was left of Aeluinor in the face of a dragon superior to anything he could hope to create.

Falkor swelled in size, and strangely, the room expanded with him. Vines shifted, earth moved, and Drake had the sense that they were rising through the earth around them. Vaguely, he realized Laurelin was doing it, and he sensed her nearby, but far, far above them. Falkor burned every drop of his designated power on an intense torrent of golden dragonfire that completely tore through Dagorath as Drake further empowered it with firebending. He tried to shield himself, but the actual power level of Falkor's attack, using all the energy they'd stolen, was in the hundreds according to Drake's eyes.

When the light faded, nothing remained of the God of Monsters' ghostly shard. The obelisk crumbled into dust, and Drake noted the rather long cooldown time on the belt's activation had begun. The system dinged, and Drake grinned, as Falkor rumbled in approval. The system gave them so much experience that it boosted them to ninety. Actually, he noted, halfway through ninety. Still, the remaining gulf to ninety one was…soul crushingly larger than what he'd barely had time to mentally adjust to after Muraeneth and Ungoliant. By his measure, another Final Boss would only give him a single level, and barely get him very far into ninety two. Seeing these numbers confirmed what he'd suspected of the people he'd met and seen over that level one hundred threshold. There was a method of grinding he was as yet unaware of.

They'd definitely been lucky with this dungeon run, since Ungoliant and Muraeneth had given what their true levels were worth, plus their minions, and as he calculated that he hadn't gotten a full four and a half hundred levels worth of exp from Dagorath's shard, he'd still had more than Chronogrin. He was in the home stretch now. Ten more levels, and he'd finally know what all the hype about one hundred was.




As far as what he gained with it in terms of skills, Invisibility, from his Way of Shadow choice, was now Greater Invisibility, and his eyes widened as he got what seemed like the culmination of his original Path of Elements. Elemental Avatar, which would turn his body into, theoretically, any element he could bend.

As silence reigned over the space and Aeluinor pulsed, Drake went quiet, as the past image of Dagorath returned. He recognized what the murderous God had done now. Feamatie. A failed attempt, on a divine creature that was never meant to permanently die, such was its design. Barring direct damage to its core, Aeluinor was effectively immortal, though its petals had been intended to eventually shed and regrow.

The attempt shattered the young Dagorath into three pieces. The strongest retained its body and power, but Drake saw an aura of negative energy infusing him. Pure cosmic evil. A darkness born of Arda. It quickly moved to consume the shard of Dagorath, but that shard, in that instant looking very much like the son Laurelin deserved, had further split himself, into an all too familiar mask, leaving the phantom Dagorath defenseless, and mostly mindless.

The true God of Monsters infused it with darkness, and attached it to Aeluinor before departing, and Drake noted that it was Aeluinor itself that had hidden the mask in that moment. As the corrupted shard twisted the grove into what would become the Rotfang Depths, corrupting its natural guardians, the mask eventually vanished, swallowed by the system as it was classified as loot, and eventually, it was successfully looted by the elves. Though not even the strongest Identify could reveal the true importance of the artifact.




Drake exhaled, and the mask willingly fell off his face. He caught it, and stared at it as his sight narrowed, his clothes shifted back to their proper white and gold trim colors, and the power boost it granted faded. Even Prismrend returned to being a staff. He flinched, as he felt Rose's hand. Sound returned to his ears, as he realized he'd been so drawn in by the mask, he'd stopped hearing completely.

"Drake? Are you…alright?"

He smiled, genuinely, and that seemed to relieve her worried ear tilt. "I am. I'm great, in fact…this mask…might just be holding the real Dagorion. Or what's left of him." He explained what he'd seen, as Elowir listened with quiet interest, leaning on his staff for support. That fight had taken more out of him than he was letting on, but pinning the shard to the obelisk had been quite clutch. Another few rounds against that kind of absurdly unfair God tier action economy, and they likely would've died.

Shouting cracked the silence of the glade, as the rest of the Annihilators appeared through the once more present portal. "Tanks, deploy secondary shielding skills! Healers, ETA on your barriers! Continue backwards movement!" Vincent had kept them alive and in formation, but as the last Annihilator came through, Aslan, at the tip of the spear, what followed next was one of the as yet unseen Vanwi. Yet, Drake noticed immediately something was off.




They weren't…attacking, exactly, they were shambling forward. Menacingly. But to Drake's eyes, it looked like the system currently did not know how to classify the risen adventurers. Or their entrapped souls within their sap-covered bodies. But they weren't appearing as hostile, and the Annihilators had since stopped attacking them. They fell back around Aeluinor, as Drake brought Vincent and the captains up to speed. All around them, the Vanwi formed a softly groaning, rather foul smelling horde, and behind them, came the Thalanir.

Those who would have been Vireoliths were still very much hostile, yet they seemed hesitant to advance through the throng of Vanwi as walking forward meant crushing beings they had considered to be allies with their massive feet. Unable to advance or order the Vanwi to move, they ringed the edge of the horde, eyes burning with rage at the adventurers. Several started grabbing various rocks or loose branches to throw at them, but they soon ran out of ammo.

Before anyone could retaliate, the ceiling was ripped off. Like the top half of a broken egg shell, something was lifting centuries of dirt and vines and plant matter up, and off. Drake chuckled, as the dirt fell largely on the raiders. He'd sensed Laurelin nearby, but looking up, he hadn't quite realized she'd been literally present, and in a big way.

She was gigantic. Golden, incorporeal, and yet tangible enough to make out her features. Drake assumed this was closer to her true form as a Goddess, or at least, a form she'd taken during the genesis of this world. One of her blazing golden eyes flickered at him as he met her gaze, while every other sentient present, including the monsters, knelt in reverent awe.




"Drake. I must borrow your body, for this…and it will have consequences. I apologize, but…it is necessary for what must come."

He understood the underlying 'threat', but he wasn't enough of an obstinate jackass to ask what would happen if he refused her. He was her Paladin, after all. "I offer myself freely, Goddess. Whatever you need."

He felt her appreciation, as a sliver of her divine essence flowed into him, and for a moment, Drake had a hard time telling his thoughts from Laurelin's. He tried not to instinctively panic, and instead focused on the goal…which was, unsurprisingly, Aeluinor. In perfect synchronicity, the Goddess raised an open palm, and Drake did the same as he floated above the hemorrhaging plant. He could see it properly now, the torrent of Ki that the shard's absence had left. An ancient wound that had too long gone untended.

With a pulse of gold that radiated from the Monk, the pistil regrew, untainted, and the orange-tinged vines ran with gold, before fading into a natural, healthy brown. The pulse ran through the entirety of the Rotfang Depths, melting the raider's frost, and regrowing Aeluinor. Vines wrapped up and around every Vanwi and Thalanir present, wrapping them in pulsing golden coccoons, likely what the Nimrathil were always meant to look like. The system marked them all as allies, as the Nimrathil changed them, and Drake could tell it would take some time before whatever they would become next, would emerge.

After what felt like moments to Drake, Laurelin lowered their hands, and the possession was ended. Drake just felt…calm, in the wake of her leaving. They'd come together to accomplish something important, he was sure. It wasn't all that different from what he and Falkor did. As he examined himself, he didn't notice any negative effects or debuffs. But as he met the eyes of his Annihilators, he suddenly understood what Laurelin had meant by 'consequences'.




As an atheist on Earth, he knew that look in far too many of their eyes, and it made a chill run down his spine. He recognized it instantly, as it had been disturbingly common among those who claimed to be Christian, yet blindly, devotedly, and unquestioningly obeyed MAGA and every antithetical action they'd taken, funded, or otherwise supported at Dear Leader's behest that directly went against the teachings of their Christ.

It was blind, religious zeal. Absolute faith in the figure before them, in the wake of watching him perform a literal miracle as the hand of their Goddess. It didn't matter that here on Arcadia, there was a good reason for their dogmatic faith, hard evidence before their very eyes, to say nothing of the good he'd accomplished with her powers. He was acutely aware of how divine figures could be twisted by the powers that be. Ancient Rome had possessed a deep and accurate understanding of 'the Mob' and Drake had studied it in his past life, amazed that so many people could buy a story that, to him, had always seemed like yet another fairytale with truly shit tier lore. He expected Arcadia's version to be much more competent, and subtle.

He was going to have to get a jump on this, and Florian would be the key to making sure whatever Arcadian society turned him into, it ended up being beneficial to the masses.




"Drake." Laurelin's voice in his whirling head ceased the chaotic trains of thought. "This moment…is a turning point. And about as far as my foresight of future events could go. Aeluinor has a gift for you, in addition to the Final Boss Chest, of course." Drake's eyes shifted, and he chuckled as he saw Falkor already wrapped protectively around it, as no small number of the Annihilators stared at it with undisguised hunger.

"What you choose to do with this gift…alters many things. You can now speak with plants as easily as you can with animals. I will leave you to converse…I must comfort these poor souls around you, for they have a choice to make too." He felt her matriarchal concern for them, but he knew they were in good hands. His brain was buzzing around her mention of prophecy, and choice.

Very much aware of his raider's eyes upon him, Drake floated to the base of Aeluinor, and knelt, speaking softly. "Heyyy there…how're you feeling?"

Despite having the new spell, a free cast that lasted until his next long rest, ready and active, the plant did not respond with words. He'd been expecting something like Critical Role's Sun Tree, or Henry Crabgrass. What he got was a series of images, slow, deliberate, and tinged with…exhaustion. Aeluinor understandably had mixed feelings towards him. It recalled his ice, his warping of its pathways, and the reverberations he and his raid had caused each time they killed a minion of the dungeon. Then, most recently, and, he noted, painfully, the eradication by fire of the divine energy tumor that had been controlling and warping it for millennia.




A moment passed. The raiders shifted restlessly, but Vincent and Rose were keeping them from ruining the moment with their loot lust. As if to emphasize their point, Falkor, now at a level ninety dragon's size, placed a heavy claw atop the ornate elven-looking Final Boss Chest.

Aeluinor offered nothing more, and seemed ready to sleep and recover, to make use of this much needed uncorrupted Ki and resume its primary function. "I understand your exhaustion, and you have earned your rest…it's just…Laurelin said you had a gift for me. Or something."

The grove literally groaned, but Drake finally got actual words.

"A change…of race…an altering…of self." Another, lengthy pause. At least thirty seconds, but Drake waited through all of them patiently. "Choose…wisely."

Drake swallowed. Yea, a race change would do it. His immediate choice went to High Elf, but he needed more information. Laurelin's implication and tone made him wary. A simple shift from High Human to High Elf should not be consequential enough to warp timelines.

"Can…can I ask what races are available?"

Aeluinor went quiet again. For one minute. Three.




Finally, it responded. "The templates…that populate the Multiverse…are within my skill to recreate. Mother…has gathered many." A trickle of amusement flowed from the exhausted flower. An image of Drake himself, mocking Dagorath's shard as Falkor charged up the death blow. "Everything…is Canon."

Drake's eyes widened. "So…so if I said Vulcan…" Aeluinor hit him immediately with images of him with those pointy curved ears, longer eyebrows, and permascowl. Many of the images had him in his robes, more precisely folded and presentable, aboard what looked suspiciously like the deck of a starship. His mind whirled. Any race. Any race in the known Multiverse. Yea. That…that would fracture timelines. He tested a few more potential choices.

Tyrannosaurus Rex. He saw a comically large dinosaur moving through Kung Fu forms at the head of an army of what looked like mostly Lizardmen in Monk Gi.

Sylvari. He saw a plant version of his face, confident, smirking, as he faced down Tharvoss with Prismrend in hand. In that one, his robes had turned plant-like as well, blooming with crystals akin to Prismrend's.

He tried something more vague. Yoda's species. Yet, sure enough, he saw himself as a baby Yoda, which made sense given he was, at most, just over thirty, comically flipping about battlefields full of giant monsters, kept alive by his absurd proficiency with the Force. The only limits seemed to be Gods, or entities on their level, like an Elder Dragon of Guild Wars 2 or a Titan out of Warcraft.

Spoiler

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"Oh…this…this is going to take a minute. Rest, Aeluinor. When I next speak with you, I will have my choice."




Drake was unfocused, for what came next. He didn't even properly process what he got from the Final Boss Chest, let alone what everyone else had. Even though he and his clones had passed it all out. Pretty much everyone had at least one Artifact Tier weapon or armor piece now, and many of the drops were amulets, rings, or other such trinkets that typically restored health on activation or improved their regeneration. Vincent was already calculating how much less stress the healers would have to deal with now, but Drake was too distracted to do more than grunt in surprise. There were just too many choices, and, he realized, this choice affected more than just himself.

He eventually explained things to Rose, as she and Tala admired their new, matching, extremely-useful-for-healers boots that'd been more like extra drops from the chest, but still ridiculously strong given it was a Final Boss's. As in the Wallow, everyone had gotten a class-specific item, but after that, everything else was fair game.

The two blondes shared a look as he finished. Rose spoke first, taking his hand. "No matter what you choose, you'll still be you, Drake. And I will still love you. Scales, fangs, and all." He smirked, as he realized she expected him to become a dragon or something, like Falkor.

Drake gave her a look. "But this affects our children too, Rose. I appreciate that, I do…but be realistic. You don't want a half-Elf half dragonthing any more than your father will." That, made Tala chuckle, mainly because he was right. If he'd been a beast race, Vaelithar Valcrest and his wife likely would've objected more strongly to Rose's choice, but Elves and Humans had intermingled since the dawn of society, and more than a few saw their species as special or somehow elevated above the others because they were the God's favorites.




Rose shook her head. "He's already accepted you, and even if you become a…Tyranno…whatever, that won't change. As far as our children, I…" She paused, and wilted, and Drake and Tala shared a look as she got real. "I don't care what they look like Drake. So long as they're yours. But I do want them to have a father…and I worry every day…every time we get stronger and closer to going to Tharvoss…that Dagorath will just rip you apart when you face him. If one of his insanely powerful underlings don't manage to do it first." She met his gaze again, and his heart lurched as he saw tears forming. He'd had a feeling something had been bothering her. "Just…pick something that will bring you back to me, alive, and I'll be happy. And…there are ways to change, later. If you have to. I…just want you to survive what's coming."

He gently grabbed her face, wiped the tears away, and kissed her. Then he stared her straight in the eyes. "I will. And this…gives me the best chance of doing that." His mind was made up, now.

On the part of Drake's nerdy ass, he had essentially narrowed down his choices to two, given that his main goal was surviving an encounter with a God, and not becoming so radically different from the local Arcadians that he was no longer seen as one of them. And both of his choices would keep him looking Human. His first pick, had been a Viltrummite. Extremely durable, super speed, flight, strength, capable of space journeys, and all without the societally ingrained Fascistic Eugenics rhetoric and galactic-wide hate that poor Mark Grayson had to contend with. Imagining one of them with actual Martial Arts, the abilities he already had, was just...severely cool.

But thanks to Rose, his choice was cemented. He needed to be ridiculously overpowered, if he wanted to make it back to her intact from his encounter with a hostile God.

He knelt before Aeluinor again. The massive blue petals edged with gold rustled in acknowledgement of his presence.




"Aeluinor. I've made my choice. Kryptonian."

A Nimrathil pod rose up and around him from the ground, and the last thing Drake heard as he went unconscious was the hysterical giggles of Laurelin in his head, though they quickly grew fainter. He smirked as pod fluid surrounded him. It seemed his Patron was on board, and given her skill with prophecy, he was glad she had no immediate objections to introducing, potentially, a lineage of superbeings to her planet. Like Kal-El before him, he fully intended for his line to shield Arcadia for generations to come. Assuming they inherited his power.

As darkness took over his sight, he paused in mild panic, and wondered exactly what kind of sunlight Arcadia even produced. It had always seemed like a yellow sun's to him, but he regretted not asking one of the architects of the planet how exactly that worked, before making his decision. It was probably fine. Sunbeam was a spell, as was Sunlight, though that was more of a skill used by high level Farmers. They'd both appeared to be of yellow origin, and with that comforting thought, Drake fell into unconsciousness.