One month.
That was how long it took Eden to learn and master Wall of Force in the horrendous environment that was the Forgotten Layer of the Abyss.
Back in Faerun? Just a bit over an hour. The party had not even come out of the Creche yet. And by the looks of it, they might take several more 'months' to come out.
[Wall of Force (3rd Circle): Create a three by three meters invisible wall of force, blocking both the physical and ethereal plane, stopping all physical matter and energy. Immune to damage up to Tier I (II), and anti-magic. Can be instantly destroyed by Disintegrate or similar spell. Lasts for 2 (10) minutes. Cost: 350 (90) MP.]
It was very powerful for a 3rd Circle spell, and even though the wall created was not very large, being three meters by three meters, it was still enough.
But while him mastering Wall of Force was undoubtedly good news, they had been soured by Abraxax's current state.
It was worsening. The madness was taking over.
Honestly, holding out for a month had been impressive enough already. But now, his mind was reaching its limits. From time to time, he would lose himself in battle, or suffer sudden bursts of battle craze while they were recovering.
The day before, he had lost an arm to a Shator Demodand, and four days ago an eye and a horn to an Ancient Deep Crow. Both nasty beasts, but both had occurred because Abraxax stopped listening to reason and fought for too long.
Abraxax knew it too, but there was nothing to do.
"We should check it out."
Eden did not have to see Abraxax to know what he was talking about. For a couple of weeks now Abraxax had been talking about the black hole. He wanted to go check it out, thinking there might be their way out there.
Eden had shot down the idea until now. This time, however, he replied, "Okay."
Abraxax's surprise carried over their telepathic link, something he had learned meant his grasp on his telepathy was slipping, and asked, "Really?"
"Yes. I intended to check it out anyway, and I might as well do it with someone else." The obvious implication being that Abraxax would soon not be there anymore.
Abraxax said nothing to that.
Once they had rested enough, the two of them left their Corpse Castles- the name they had given to their temporary habitats. Although, recently, Eden had been particularly involved in working in barrier techniques with his Cursed Energy.
To this day, he had only treated it as something secondary because the only use he saw out of it was for Domain Expansion, and that was quite far away.
However, they had crossed path with Gorellik quite a few times in the past month, and his domain had given Eden some inspiration. Although barrier techniques like a Curtain could usually only affect those with Cursed Energy, maybe there was a way to change them.
Maybe his increased talent allowed him to see new opportunities, or maybe he was just being delusional, but if Eden could get something that allowed him to sleep in something else than Corpse Castles, he would at least give it a try.
But that would be for latter.
The black hole was obviously not a true black hole, since they would have long all been dead had it been one. Still, even with True Sight, Eden was unable to see what it was exactly from a distance.
As they got closer to it, the pulling force it exerted on them increased, but having spent a month down here, they had long grown used to it.
Interestingly, as they got closer to it, the number of demons and such decreased rather than increased. However, the average level of strength also increased. Still, Eden gave most of them a single glance, avoiding them the best he could.
Of course, this was still the Forgotten Layer; they could only go so far before a demon decided to aggro them. It happened to be a Balor. They pretty much all had similar attributes, differing by one or two. Since he always had True Sight activated, as it lasted for four hours when cast, he did not even have to activate Analysis to see the status of a being. Simply slightly focusing on them was enough to prompt it.
And when he looked at the status of this one, he paused in shock.
[Name: Chare'en]
[Title: Demon of Overwhelming Rage]
[Perks: Tier II, Demonic Strength II, Body of Hatred II, Abyssal Flame II, True Sight, Magic Resistance II, Death Throes, Fire Aura]
[HP: 1200/1200]
[MP: 1200/1200]
[Strength: 80]
[Agility: 35]
[Physique: 60]
[Intelligence: 60]
[Wisdom: 39]
[Immunity: Fire II, Poison II]
[Resistances: Cold II, Lightning II]
[Weaknesses: None]
He knew that name. Sure, Balors were similar to one another, but they all had different names. Names that had started blending in together after the fifth one he met. Same for all others monsters really.
But this one he would not forget, simply because it was not only the first Balor he met, but the first creature in this place. Chare'en, whom he had watched explode himself after getting killed by Gorellik.
He very much did not look dead.
"Smitten by the Balor? I'm not one to judge."
Eden kept a straight face, saying gravely, "I know that Balor. I saw it die."
He checked the number of souls attached to him. He did not know the exact count, there were too many for that, but there did not seem to be any missing.
Abraxax's smirk was wiped off his face, and he said, "That explains things then."
Eden looked at him, and the Pit Fiend elaborated, "Too many things. Even if this place had existed since the creation of the Abyss, since everything is always trying to kill each other, it doesn't make sense for there to be a seemingly infinite amount of demons."
Abraxax narrowed his eyes at Eden, or rather at the souls attached to him, which he could see thanks to his natural True Sight, and added, "You are messing with the cycles here. The demons you put down stay down, since you can't reincarnate without a soul."
Eden shrugged, shadows appearing around his fists as he intercepted Chare'en, driving his fist into his gut as he said, "Not like that'll make a difference."
Abraxax joined him, and with the two of them, dealing with the Balor became easy. However, as always, the problem was not necessarily the demon himself, but rather the commotion their fight created, as more were drawn.
"Abraxax! We need to leave!"
However, the Pit Fiend was busy smashing everything that dared to come near him with his mace, his face adorned with a manic smile.
Frowning, Eden reached Abraxax's side, and leapt on top of him; grabbing him by the horns as he screamed in his ear, "Wake up motherfucker!"
That only got Abraxax to try and grab him, so Eden dropped down, and punched him in the kidneys.
Abraxax grunted in pain, wheezing as he got back his clarity, "Bitch that hurt!"
"How vulgar. We need to go."
Abraxax held his side, and looked around, giving a strangled laugh, "Did it again huh."
That was the thing about the madness of this place; it was insidious. Everytime Abraxax had an episode, he would not be aware of it. To him, he was behaving the same way he always did, his brain convinced there was nothing wrong.
That would explain the somewhat scuffed souls he had been getting so far. If the demons down here had been reviving for tens of thousands of years, all the while having their mind ravaged by madness, it explained their state.
Some of the demons tried to stop them, but the majority were too busy tearing into each other to care about the two of them retreating.
They did not stray too far from the fight though, which allowed them to avoid any further fights as all demons were drawn to the larger chaos. One might think that madness was completely random, but in his time in the Forgotten Layer, Eden had learned that those affected by it always sought the most amount of beings they could inflict suffering upon as possible.
As the two approached the black hole, it started looking less like one, their True Sight allowing them to see more than they should. They also noticed that fewer demons appeared the closer they got, until they reached the very center of the layer.
To the naked eye, there was nothing but a sphere of pitch darkness. True Sight revealed something very different however.
There was a hole. It went through not just space and time, but reality itself, the fabric of the Universe, had been punctured. However, to call it a hole would be wrong. Instead, it was more of a tunnel, with a space between the two sides of the hole.
One side was the Forgotten Layer of the Abyss, the other something so alien it was impossible to describe with words. Even as he was looking at it, Eden had no idea how to describe it. It was and it wasn't so many things at once, it went beyond all logic and reason.
The distortion of time and space did not come from the puncture in reality itself, but was a manifestation of that realm bleeding into theirs instead. Something no mortal mind should be allowed to see.
[Immunity to Psychic damage discovered!]
This made Eden pause. Accompanying this notification were several attribute checks. This new Immunity was obviously tied to his Talent, and it had only appeared now because this was the first time he actually took Psychic damage. He had long suspected he would have a degree of resistance to it, though Immunity made it even better.
What Eden found more interesting though was the presence he could feel inside that tunnel, hidden but very much glaring at him.
Looking at all this, Eden felt a constant pressure on his soul, attempting to affect him at all time and failing to do so.
Abraxax had no such defences.
Turning to look at what had become his friend, Eden saw him staring mindlessly into the puncture, his gaze lost.
He grabbed him, and threw him as far away as possible. Abraxax was large, but with how lost he was, he offered no resistance, allowing Eden to throw him out of the sphere of influence of the puncture.
Landing harshly against the ground, Abraxax was hardly hurt, yet he did not rise. Worry filled Eden as he rushed to his side, strongly slapping him as he yelled in the little infernal he had learned, "Wake up!"
But Abraxax was not responding. He only stared into space, lost.
Eden was not given the time to properly inspect him either as demons started swarming towards them, as they had left the No Man's Land around the Puncture.
His worry turning into rage as the demons started targeting Abraxax, Eden swiftly created a Corpse Castle for Abraxax, shielding him from the attacks, before returning to the Puncture. Even in their madness, the demons did not follow him there, continuing to fight one another instead.
The Puncture looked ominous, and the space on the other side of it so alien it could break the mind with mere sight.
Eden could see something else however. A potential way out. It was obvious everything wrong with this layer came from the Puncture, so the way out might be on there as well. Of course, worst case scenario, there was the other world behind the Puncture, but it looked like a death sentence, so unless staying in the Forgotten Layer meant sure death, Eden would not venture there.
But inside the Puncture, he had felt something. Someone. And as he returned, he felt its gaze on him once again.
The smarter thing here would be to continue doing what he had been doing, and use his Wall of Force to learn Wish. The most basic function of Wish was to use spell of a lesser Level. Plane Shift, which allowed one to teleport between planes, and which supposedly could be used to escape this place, was a 7th Level spell. Ergo, Wish should allow him to escape the Abyss.
But, perhaps for the first time since he had entered Dreamland, Eden found himself thinking in someone else's interest. Risking himself for a literal devil might be dumb, and honestly, if he heard of someone doing what he was about to do, Eden would probably laugh at them, but an undeniable bound had been created between himself and Abraxax.
One of blood, slaughter and madness, but a bound nonetheless. So, he entered the puncture instead.
There should have been nothing inside, it was only a small pocket of space between two dimensions that had been bloated up after all. And yet, there was something inside.
Chains visible only to Eden's True Sight, metaphysical in the sense that they were made of energy rather than matter. They did not attack to a body either, but to a great mass of swirling darkness.
Eden had been unable to see it from the outside, but now that he had entered, he could feel that the gaze from earlier had come from this roiling blackness. It had a status, too.
[Name: Tharizdun]
[Title: The Chained God, The Elder Elemental Eye, God of Destruction, God of Madness]
[Talent: ?]
[Perks: Tier III, Limited Magic Immunity I, Regeneration, Body of Chaos III, Domain of Destruction, Aura of Madness]
[HP: 2430/2430]
[MP: 3480/3480]
[Strength: 80]
[Agility: 90]
[Physique: 90]
[Intelligence: 120]
[Wisdom: 100]
[Immunity: Cold III, Lightning III, Fire III, Poison III, Acid III, Bludgeoning III, Slashing III, Piercing III]
[Resistances: Thunder III, Magical Bludgeoning III, Magical Piercing III, Magical Slashing III]
[Weaknesses: Radiant III]
A series of guttural sounds came from the darkness, but even with Comprehend Language, Eden did not understand any of it. Going by its moniker of God of Madness, he was pretty sure the problem came from Tharizdun rather than his spell.
The darkness broiled towards him, but in the end was unable to do anything, the metaphysical chains holding it completely killing its energy. The god of helpless.
And looking at it, Eden was suddenly reminded of the side missions he had received upon arriving at this layer.
[Side Mission (Escape the Abyss): You were cast down to the lowest layer of the Abyss by the combined power of the Dead Three. Escape from the Abyss before the end of your main mission.]
[Side Mission (Conquer the Forgotten Layer of the Abyss): You somehow found your way to the lowest layer of the Abyss, where beings are to be forgotten until the end of times. Corrupted with madness, all of its inhabitants seek to destroy. Tame this layer of the Abyss, becoming its Lord.]
When he had received them, Eden had dismissed the second one, because it sounded more like a waste of time than anything. But now, things started to make sense.
The mission described the demons of the Forgotten Layer of the Abyss as being corrupted with madness, strongly suggesting the God of Madness would be central to this layer. Maybe controlling this layer had to do with killing it.
Killing a God with his current attributes would normally be impossible, but Tharizdun was chained, incapable of all forms of movement or attack, as far as Eden could tell.
So, he started by firing a Dismantle.
The invisible blade cut through the darkness, which took a moment to react as it started quaking in place, the darkness covering up the hole that had been left. More importantly, its status showed it had lost some HP, which rapidly recovered as the darkness filled up.
Eden was not stumped by this.
"I cast Wrath of the Dead."
Bright shadows wreathed Eden's fists, and he leapt at Tharizdun, punching away at the darkness, reinforcing every attack with Cursed Energy. Just as expected, the god could not absolutely nothing as Eden hit it over and over again.
Each of his strikes was not only magical, but were also accompanied by radiant damage. It might not be classified under weaknesses, but considering it had resistance or immunity to nearly every other kind of damage, it might as well be.
Every attack dealt 150% healing deficit of whatever radiant damage he dealt, so if he dealt 100 radiant damage, 150 HP would be blocked from healing for 5 seconds. This did not stack, but if Tharizdun regenerated past that healing deficit, it would be applied again.
Quickly, the mass of rolling blackness diminished in size. It was large, but finite, and as Eden reached the end of his cast of Wrath of the Dead, meaning after five whole minutes of uninterrupted hitting, Tharizdun also reached its limits.
Tharizdun was a God, granted, but anything with a health bar was killable, and 2430 HP might be a lot, and those resistances were something as well, but in the end, its HP was finite, and the limit was hit.
But as its HP dropped to 0, things did not happen as they should have. Eden did get a soul, but it was not Tharizdun's. It was a random demon's instead.
Eden clearly saw what happened as well. Tharizdun's soul did appear, but it remained tethered in place, while a soul flew out from the Abyss, replacing Tharizdun's to join Eden.
Moreover, the darkness instantly reassembled around Tharizdun, the God reforming in a moment, all of his HP restored. Eden stood transfixed for a moment, before muttering, "I cast Wrath of the Dead."
He once again started pounding on Tharizdun, this time bringing its health to zero a little faster as he did not hesitate in the least.
Yet, this time as well, when its HP reached zero, the soul of a random demon flew over to Eden, and Tharizdun reformed, with a faint, distant laughter coming from the broiling blackness.