Chapter 297: Acceleration Gale

“...supposed to happen?” Windgiver’s voice was laced with [concern] as I pulled free from my prison of scale-flesh, leaving the glowing strands of what I’d been behind, but there was nothing to be concerned about - not anymore.

“...happens every time, I’m pretty sure. I wouldn’t worry about it,” not-Needle answered him.

As soon as I pulled fully free from the remnants of my old scale-flesh, a tension that I hadn’t even realized existed loosened from between my scales. It shed itself, fading away like the threat of the very thing it represented.

Ephemeral. Fleeting. False.

A heavy hiss escaped me, strong enough to challenge the steaming hiss of the ore-flesh beast.

…I supposed it wasn’t that strong. Unthinking though it might have been, the ore-flesh beast’s hisses were among the most powerful I could ever imagine. Still, it felt that strong.

I’d needed that.

With another hiss, this one significantly lighter, I looked toward Windgiver. The Coreless was staring at me with [hope] and [anticipation] now, though there was a slight smattering of [worry] filtering through our connection.

I, however, wasn’t worried.

The new Coreless and their ore-flesh beast were impressive and powerful, but that hardly mattered. The Great Core truly was the most impressive and powerful of all, to have such a perfectly timed offering prepared. I could only imagine that the Windgiver had been guided by the Great Core, to have defeated a Lesser Core so easily.

It meant that I was on the right path. I only needed to continue slithering forward, and the Great Core would see me through.

I simply needed to persevere. Whether I succeeded in this life or the next - or the next, or the next, or the next - the Great Core’s victory was inevitable. As the Great Core’s Champion and sole creation, assuring that was my duty.

Invigorated, I finally activated [Acceleration Gale] for the first time. Its description within the thought-light, like all of my other Core Skills, was both simple and vague. Another test from the Great Core, I thought. It wouldn’t do if I was simply given all of the answers.

I needed to prove myself worthy - and that started with understanding [Acceleration Gale].

Elsewhere in the many-nest, there was a spurt of [terror] that quickly transformed into [rage] and then [terror] again.

Though it made my scale-flesh itch in distress, I ignored it. There was nothing I could do about it except to learn how I could use the new ability that the Great Core had given me. I focused inward, searching for the wind that now existed within my scale-flesh.

I found it immediately. It was hard not to; [Acceleration Gale] wasn’t like the natural mana that formed the rest of my abilities. It was a Core-based ability. It was something greater. Like [Chrono Fire], [Verdure Parasite], [The Golem’s Fading Heart], and [Transient Reanimation], it was above them - even if the Cores that the abilities came from were repulsive, the abilities that they provided me were perfect laid over my being, like new scale-flesh after a much-needed shedding.

In a single moment of concentration, the air started to shift around me. It was gentle, and I barely felt a thing. I thought, maybe, that the Coreless surrounding me began to move almost imperceptibly slower. It was hard to tell.

I urged the wind to move faster.

To accelerate.

It did - and my world accelerated with it.

[Acceleration Gale] started to tear at the air around me, threatening to push me forward with its strength. It made me want to move, to go faster and faster until nothing in existence could ever hope to catch up. Faithful slowed, the noises they made to one another becoming an even more incomprehensible drone than ever before. I looked around, a second skin of wind wrapped tightly around my scale-flesh, and observed the world around me.

It was trapped in a mire of slowed time, slithering forward at a pace that even the slowest of bad-things might have managed.

It was familiar.

I concentrated, pulling at an ability that I hadn’t used in a while. [Traveler] activated, even as the second skin of [Acceleration Gale] continued to flow around me, and the world around me sped back up again.

Traveler: You have flowed through time, and it has flowed through you. You gain the ability to more freely flow through time distortions, and are able to greatly reduce their effects on your form at will. (Provided by: Ouroboros, [Chrono Fire])

I released my hold on [Traveler], allowing my personal world to accelerate once more - and the world around it to slow in comparison.

I kept [Acceleration Gale] active as I tried to decide what to do; what I didn’t keep doing was remaining still. I couldn’t, even if I tried. [Acceleration Gale] was the ever-forward motion of time shaped into a rushing wind, and I was caught within it. In a normal fast-spot, like those created by the Great Core in our original nest, I could have remained still. In this one…

…stillness didn’t even exist.

Wind moves ever forward, time slipping alongside it - and now, I did as well.

I slithered in tight circles, thinking about what to do. In the embrace of [Acceleration Gale], I had time. It wasn’t enough to be completely unbeatable; I felt maybe three times faster than before. Still…

That was a lot.

Enough, I thought, to do something interesting.

I just didn’t know if I actually could.

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I’d seen the ore-flesh beast. I’d seen the strength of the enemy Coreless. It didn’t matter how fast I could move or how quickly I could strike. Fangs failed against ore-flesh; that was simply how it was. Even the accumulated [Death Boost] from [Soul Fragment XII] probably wasn’t enough to change that, though it might come close.

[Acceleration Gale], though, was something new. I didn’t know its limits yet. Its secrets were still hidden away, scurrying through mysterious tunnels and between darkened wall-cracks.

I searched for them in the time that I had, air whipping up into a frenzy around me. First, it extended from where it’d been; from a second skin of wind that tightly wrapped around my scale-flesh, the [Acceleration Gale] infested the air. It urged it forward, accelerating it onwards, until that air became one and the same with the [Acceleration Gale] that wrapped around me.

The newly changed air, the greater [Acceleration Gale] that had been created, brushed against the nearest of the Coreless. Windgiver froze, looking around in [confusion].

“What in the Skies…” he muttered, holding out a hand to catch the [Acceleration Gale] that streamed around him.

He wasn’t slow anymore; as soon as the [Acceleration Gale] stretched over him, I’d lost the advantage of the fast-spot that I’d enjoyed. Or, rather, Windgiver had gained it as well.

The rest of the world was as slow as ever. A little slower, maybe. Increasing [Acceleration Gale] in size had increased its power. It was a sticky boulder rolling down a dust-covered hill, accelerating even as it gathered more debris with every rotation.

I focused more, and the [Acceleration Gale] infested the air around it again. It stretched out, reaching the place where the-female-who-was-not-Needle stood. As soon as it did, she began making noises at Windgiver and pointing in the direction of the slowed world that rested outside of [Acceleration Gale]. I ignored it, still focusing on finding the limits of the timeborne wind.

It infested.

It grew.

It accelerated.

Before I knew it, the entire area around me was under the effects of [Acceleration Gale]. I couldn’t even see far enough now to judge how powerful the fast-spot had become, but I knew it had to be strong.

Because there was a clear difference between the emotions of the faithful within [Acceleration Gale] and those without.

The ones within the fast-spot that was [Acceleration Gale] passed through the connection to me normally. It was obvious that many of them were [confused] or [curious], but the emotions themselves seemed normal. It was the ones that existed outside of the fast-spot that were different.

It took significantly longer for their emotions to fade or change.

I looked around with a hiss, taking in the sight of the accelerated faithful. There was an easier way to test the effectiveness of the larger version of [Acceleration Gale]. I took it.

[Traveler] activated again.

In an instant, the faithful began to move faster than I could easily keep up with. I stared at a few of the nearest, trying to compare their speed to that of the Coreless’ usual.

It was something like four times faster than usual, I eventually decided. It wasn’t a huge difference from [Acceleration Gale]’s strength when it only wrapped around me, despite being unimaginably larger in size. It also wasn’t something that I could control, I noticed, trying to rip away the effects of [Acceleration Gale] from one particular Coreless and completely failing.

If I used it this way, then everything caught within it would be just as accelerated as I was. Enemies, too - they would grow horrifyingly quick within the flowing wind, ruining the entire advantage it brought.

It wouldn’t be something I could just extend towards the faithful as they fought against blasphemers and bad-things. Not in a way that gave them a real advantage over the Great Core’s enemies.

I hissed in thought, deactivating [Traveler]and bringing myself under the power of the fast-spot again.

It took a little while, but I eventually realized something. The plant-flesh around me was being affected, too - and not just in the quickness of their movements. Because this was time, not speed. I pulled at the nearby plant-flesh with [Verdure Parasite], each invested with four times as much speed of growth as they normally would possess - and then deposited that potential in the plant-flesh outside of the [Acceleration Gale].

It worked.

Suddenly, I could feel the plant-flesh I’d directed that potential to grow faster than it normally would have, as if I’d pulled from four times the amount of plant-flesh than I actually had.

It wasn’t the answer to the strange Coreless and their ore-flesh beast, but it was another way to slow them down while I thought things over. I began to extend the [Acceleration Gale] again, stretching it out further to encompass more nearby plant-flesh, and transferred their potential to the plant-flesh that rested in front of the still-moving ore-flesh beast.

With the ore-flesh beast beginning to slow, and [Acceleration Gale] only accelerating, I turned my attention towards the faithful again. It seemed like they’d understood that something strange was going on; it would have been hard for them not to, with the way that the first among them to be caught within the [Acceleration Gale] would have moved so quickly compared to those who were still outside. Now, though, there wasn’t really a way for any of them to tell that they were still being accelerated.

Not except for Needle, it seemed like.

“The transportation artifact is still looking slower than it should be. Whatever the Little Guardian was doing to speed things up, it seems like we’re still inside of it.” I wasn’t sure what it was that she said, from high up on her perch, but I figured that she could probably see outside of the range of the [Acceleration Gale] enough to realize that she - and all of the surrounding faithful - were still inside of it.

“The effect is still growing,” she remarked again.

Ignoring the bouts of [surprise] and [awe] that spread through the faithful, I began to twist light into shape. With [Acceleration Gale], I had more time before the Coreless and the ore-flesh beast became a problem that my fangs couldn’t hope to pierce.

We needed to use that while we could.

Around me, plant-flesh rose in droves. It sprouted faster than ever, accelerated by a wind that began to stir throughout much of the many-nest’s massive cavern. Roots slithered across the ground, plunging into the cracked stone of the ground, seeking a place to anchor themselves against the howling gale.

A fair few broke themselves against it, plant-flesh failing against solid stone and hidden null-water, but there was always more to replace them.

I pushed, flexing my will harder than ever before in an attempt to keep up with the simultaneous activation of multiple Core skills. [Acceleration Gale] and [Verdure Parasite] intensified once more. The wind stretched further behind me, enveloping another swathe of the many-nest - and, more importantly, the plant-flesh faithful waiting within it.

My head-scales pulsed with agony.

I hissed uncomfortably, pushing through the pain of stretching my Core skills to new limits. Normally, with any other skill, I would have simply run out of mana. But Core skills were different. The Great Core gifted them to me in return for defeating its lesser counterparts and, as part of that gift, provided me with a portion of their strength. Of their dominion, but better - because it was altered by that of the Greatest of Core’s.

The mightiest dominion of all.

Inside of me, the pressure grew. It pressed against my head-scales, grinding away at my sense of self - as if I were trying to squeeze too much of the Great Core’s perfection into a body that had yet to fully deserve it. My scale-flesh burned. Still, I continued - and even as I did, the seed buried within my mind-nest quivered violently, tiny roots scraping against my thoughts as though eager to burst free.