The "heart" of the Blight was a wound within a wound. At the base of the colossal fallen tree, where its roots had once clawed deep into the lifeblood of the world, the corruption had gathered into a pulsating nexus. The earth here wasn't just barren; it was inverted. A shallow depression, roughly ten feet across, glistened with a slick, oily substance that reflected the fading light in rainbows of sickness. Fungal growths like malformed hands reached up from its edges, and the air above it shimmered with a heatless, violet miasma. The sound was the worst—a low, sub-audible hum that felt like decay resonating in his teeth.
[Blight Convergence Zone Identified.]
[Analysis: High-intensity corruption field. Life-force negative. Arcane resonance chaotic/disintegrative.]
[Warning: Host biological integrity will degrade at approximately 2% per minute of exposure. Protocol integrity may also be compromised by entropic interference.]
The Elder's plan was insanity. A tactical nuke made of contradictions. Chen Mo stood at the edge of the sickly clearing, the wrapped mace in one hand, the Sovereign's Tusk in the other. Behind him, he could hear the distant, organized chaos of the elven defenders taking positions, the sharper, angrier shouts of the approaching Watchers, and the crackle of torches being lit. They were out of time.
"System," he whispered, his mind racing. "Clarify objective. 'Deploy' the artifacts. Does that mean just throw them in?"
[Objective Clarification: Proximity and activation required. 'Sovereign's Tusk' is bonded. Its presence and the host's intent act as one anchor. 'Sunstone Mace' requires catalytic activation—its purifying energies must be released, not merely contained. Physical contact with the Blight core by the Sunstone is the most probable trigger.]
So he had to go in. He had to touch the heart of the rot with the one thing the Protocol would steal from him in 23 hours.
He looked at the mace. The leather wrapping seemed pathetic now, a bandage on a star. He had a choice: run into the elven line and let them handle their own war, or step into the nightmare and trust a calculus of annihilation penned by an ancient elf and a parasitic alien system.
Alena appeared at his side, a borrowed bow in her good hand. "I will cover your approach. The Watchers are at the tree-line. They will see you."
"The Blight-Caller?"
"He is with them. He hangs back, his staff raised. He is… singing to the rot." Her voice was thick with disgust.
Chen Mo took a deep breath, the air tasting of loam and a sickly-sweet decay. There was no more time for strategy. Only action.
"Cover me for thirty seconds," he said, and before he could think, he moved.
He sprinted across the open ground towards the Blight nexus. Immediately, shouts erupted from the forest edge.
"There! The Stone-blind! He carries the light!"
A crossbow bolt hissed past his ear, thudding into the soft, corrupted earth. Another clipped his tunic. He didn't zigzag. He ran straight, a mad dash towards the center of the disease.
An arrow, fletched with green feathers, took the crossbowman in the throat from the shadows. Alena. More elven arrows flew, drawing shouts and screams from the Watchers. A skirmish erupted in the gloom, but Chen Mo's world had narrowed to the ten-foot circle of hell in front of him.
The hum grew louder as he approached, vibrating in his bones. A wave of nausea hit him, a deep, spiritual wrongness. His vision swam. The system alerts flickered, static bleeding into the blue text.
[Biological Degradation: 1%... 3%...]
[Warning: Sensory input corruption.]
He reached the edge of the oily depression. The fungal growths seemed to reach for him. With a final, desperate heave, he swung the sinew-bound mace in an arc and flung it, not into the center, but onto a thick, pulsing fungal mass at the depression's edge.
The leather-wrapped mace landed with a dull thud. For a second, nothing.
Then, the clean, amber light of the Sunstone burned through its bindings as if they were paper. A beam of pure, golden radiance lanced out, striking the slick, violet heart of the nexus.
The reaction was instantaneous and violent.
The Blight didn't recoil; it shrieked. The sub-audible hum became a piercing, psychic wail that made Chen Mo clap his hands over his ears, blood trickling from his nose. The oily substance bubbled and thrashed, lashing out like a wounded animal. Tendrils of violet energy snapped from the ground, trying to smother the mace's light. Where amber met violet, there was a silent, tearing conflict—not an explosion, but a violent nullification. Patches of the Blight simply ceased to be, leaving behind bare, dead earth, while the Sunstone's light dimmed noticeably with each clash.
[Arcane Cascade Initiated. Contradictory Authority Conflict Confirmed.]
[Localized Reality Instability: 15% and rising.]
"Now, the Tusk!" he heard Alena scream over the din.
He looked at his bonded blade. Its smoky, obsidian-core pattern was swirling actively, as if stirred. The Protocol was interested. He didn't throw it. He stepped forward, into the zone of conflicting energies.
Agony. It was like being dipped in acid and ice simultaneously. The Blight sought to unravel him, to turn his flesh to mulch and his spirit to dust. The echoing backlash of the Sunstone's power felt like a cleansing fire scouring his insides. His body was the battleground.
He raised the Sovereign's Tusk. And he didn't just hold it. He focused every ounce of his will, his desire to survive, to consume the threat, into the blade. He thought of the Protocol's core directives: Survive. Ascend. Explore. This rot was the enemy of all three.
The blade began to drink.
It wasn't the Blight it consumed, nor the Sunstone's light. It fed on the conflict itself, on the raw, disintegrating magical energy released by their clash. The swirling pattern in the blade glowed a fierce, hungry blue-white. The system interface in his mind went berserk.
[Protocol Engaged: Direct Energy Harvesting.]
[Material Debt Contract Field acting as conduit. Diverting chaotic mana streams.]
[Harvesting Efficiency: 38%... 45%... Unprecedented yield!]
[WARNING: Harvested energy is corrupted/entropic. Refinement impossible. Directing to... emergency Protocol sustenance.]
The Blight-Caller, a hunched figure in red robes at the tree-line, suddenly staggered. His discordant song faltered. He raised his staff, its tip a jagged shard of the same violet substance, and pointed it directly at Chen Mo. "The Void-Thief! He steals the feast!" His voice was a scrape of stone on stone.
A concentrated beam of pure Blight-energy, darker and more solid than the ambient corruption, lanced across the glade towards Chen Mo.
There was no time to dodge. But the Sovereign's Tusk, now thrumming with stolen power, acted almost on its own. Chen Mo swung it in a desperate parry.
The blade met the beam. Instead of deflecting it, the Tusk's hungry edge bit into the stream of corruption. For a second, it held, vibrating violently, drinking the potent energy. But it was too much, too fast. Cracks, glowing with the same vile violet, spiderwebbed across the bone-white surface of the blade.
[Artifact Integrity Compromised: 60%... 40%...]
[Catastrophic failure imminent!]
"NO!" The denial was primal. The Tusk was his. His first true tool. His anchor.
On instinct, he did the only thing he could think of. He pivoted, using the cracking blade to deflect the remnants of the beam away from him—and directly towards the Sunstone Mace, still blazing in the fungal mass.
The corrupted energy, already destabilized by the Tusk's bite, splashed over the Sunstone.
The amber light flared, brighter than the sun, in one final, defiant burst. Then, it imploded.
There was no sound. A sphere of absolute silence expanded from the nexus, swallowing the psychic wail, the battle cries, everything. Within that sphere, light and dark performed a final, suicidal dance. The Blight-core vaporized. The fungal growths turned to ash. The Sunstone Mace shattered into a thousand dull, grey fragments.
And at the center, Chen Mo was thrown backwards as if by a giant's hand. He landed twenty feet away, skidding through dirt and moss. The Sovereign's Tusk flew from his grasp, clattering against a root. It was still in one piece, but the cracks were deep, its light gone. It looked dead.
The silence broke. The violent hum was gone. The oily depression was now just a crater of sterile, scorched earth. The heart of the Blight was gone.
But the cost was utter.
[Crisis Event: 'Glade's Fall' – RESOLVED (Partial).]
[Primary Objective Status: Blight Convergence Zone Neutralized.]
[Secondary Objective Status: Host Survival – Confirmed (Severe Magical Trauma).]
[Rewards: 1000 Protocol Points Awarded. Protocol Clearance Level +1 (Now Level 2).]
[Catastrophic Losses: Bonded Artifact 'Sovereign's Tusk' – Severely Damaged (Inert). 'Sunstone Mace' – Destroyed. Material Debt Contract terminated prematurely due to asset destruction. No penalty incurred.]
The messages scrolled, clinical and cold. He had 1000 PP. He was Clearance Level 2. And he had nothing. His weapon was a cracked stick. The mace was dust. The debt was gone, but so was the treasure that paid it.
Across the glade, the battle had stalled in the wake of the magical cataclysm. The Watchers looked confused, their guiding corruption severed. The Blight-Caller was on his knees, clutching his staff, which now held only a faint, dying glimmer.
Elder Nythril's voice, weary but firm, rang out. "The rot's heart is stilled! Drive the defilers from our woods!"
The elves, rallying with a surge of hope, renewed their attack with fierce intensity.
Chen Mo didn't move. He lay on his back, staring at the strange, tangled canopy of the ancient forest. He had done it. He had saved the glade, or at least its chance to fight. He was alive. And he felt emptier than he had in the slave cart.
A shadow fell over him. Alena knelt, her face smudged with soot and blood, her expression unreadable. She looked from his broken blade to his face. "You broke the world to save it," she said softly. "A very human thing to do."
She helped him sit up. His body felt hollow, bruised not just physically, but in his very spirit. The system was busy, new notifications about unlocked Level 2 features blinking, but he ignored them.
The Blight-Caller was being dragged away by two elven warriors, his staff snapped. The remaining Watchers were in full, disorganized retreat, harried by arrows.
It was a victory.
As the elven healers emerged to tend to their wounded and the stunned quiet of aftermath settled, Elder Nythril approached. He looked older, diminished, but his eyes held a new, sharp respect as he gazed at the scorched crater and then at Chen Mo.
"The sun is gone. The void remains," the Elder said. "But the rot is purged. You have paid a price, Void-Walker. The Glade owes you a debt. Name it."
Chen Mo looked at the inert Sovereign's Tusk. He thought of the grasping Protocol now humming at a new level inside him. He thought of the vast, terrifying world beyond these haunted woods.
"I need," he said, his voice a dry rasp, "a forge. And someone who understands the bones of the world, and the things that grow between them."
He needed to fix his blade. And he needed to understand what, exactly, he had bonded with. The crisis was over. The real work—understanding his place in this world, and the true nature of the Multiverse Growth Protocol—was just beginning. The foothold had been a rock by a river. The next step would be built in the heart of an ancient, wounded forest, with elves as his reluctant hosts and a broken artifact as his only key.