I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1380: Let Me Pour Out A Bit Of My Soul To You

Northern was a little bit amused. And confused.

From the information he was seeing, Commander Zebelon was far stronger than he’d been letting on. Either there was a reason he wasn’t fighting at full power, or he simply didn’t want to.

Or he was toying with them.

That possibility sat differently. If Zebelon was holding back deliberately, his intention might be to break their will completely. Let them think they had a chance, let them pour everything into the fight, and then unleash his trump card. Most likely his Transient ability.

Northern straightened his back as he studied the information before his face, watching Jeci match the Commander’s strike with efficient brutality of her own. The man acknowledged her with a grin, and she answered it with another blow.

There was a moment, brief and sharp, where Zebelon’s strike nearly broke through her guard. Jeci shifted her weight at the last second, turned the Commander’s force against itself, and sent him skidding back two steps. She was breathing hard. Her arms were shaking. And she was smiling like it was the best day of her life.

Northern looked away.

But after that the battle grew even more tenacious. Both parties were enjoying themselves, and Northern was beginning to think they were enjoying it a little too much. This was supposed to be a war, after all.

Aside from that, why was the Commander that had been sent to fight him not as strong as Zebelon?

’Did I not get a chance to find out because I’m too strong?’

The thought landed strangely. Northern found himself feeling envious towards Jeci and the others who had just one talent and could enjoy battle so thoroughly. They got to struggle. They got to feel the edge of defeat pressing against their throat and push past it anyway. That was the thing he missed. Not the winning. The not-knowing-if-you-would.

’Why do I feel lonely all of a sudden? There’s no reason to feel lonely. I’m sure the Tyrants and Origins of the Underworld are all waiting for me.’

Northern patted himself on the back. Until then though, he was stuck with these boring battles, enjoying the little interesting ones from the vantage point of his subordinates.

While Northern wistfully pondered how much he missed enjoying his battles...

In the depths of the forest where the dark fog of the Tempest Spire ended and the crude wilderness of the northern mountain began, several gates tore open in space. Through them, one could vaguely see the backdrop of mountains against a sunless sky, and the faint outline of a crimson mountain beyond.

From the gates, things poured out.

Vicious creatures of different shapes and sizes. Each of them looked the same yet different. Some were tall, white-skinned things that seemed out of place among the dark trees, but mixed within their ranks walked others with crimson skin and darker shades of hair. Others still seemed to have been moulded straight out of jagged ice, their limbs cracking and reforming as they moved.

Bipedal beasts with crude, darkened skin loped forward on powerful legs, but even among their kind, variants existed: creatures that looked like they belonged in a heavenly garden, if one ever existed beyond the sky, their forms sleek and luminous against the forest gloom.

Monsters with charred skin and circular, hollow gazes marched alongside many who bore ashen skin and pure white eyes that seemed to pierce through the darkness of the forest itself.

All of them poured into the trees, filling the front lines of the forest in an instant.

It was like a conflagration of rifts had decided to invade this part of the mountain and every creature from every realm had formed an alliance.

Not too far from where this scene was unfolding, a family of minor nobles was trying to escape the kingdom through the back side of the mountain. They had hired experienced Drifters to cut a safe path through the forest for them.

There was even a Master among the escorts.

The unfortunate family happened to be passing through when the scenery before them changed forever.

Their eyes flew wide and their legs shook. Never in their lives had they seen monsters come together in such numbers. They trembled, unable to travel any further into the forest, unable to do anything but stare.

Behind them, one of the Drifters took a quiet step backward. Then another. The old man’s wife noticed the movement first, tugging her husband’s sleeve, but by then the sound of retreating boots was already fading into the trees. When the old man, his wife, and two sons finally turned around, there was no one behind them.

The professionals had seen enough to know what this was.

The family looked lost and confused, trembling with fear... until they saw an impossible creature crawl out of one of the rifts.

The creature’s legs were like pillars that fell from the sky. Each one carried brutal power, crashing down on trees and splitting them apart. Its body blotted out what little light reached the forest floor, a vast mountain of part darkness and part frost.

On the right side, the enormous legs were pillars of ice, pale and gleaming.

On the left side, where the forest thrashed and broke, the legs were pillars of shadow. Four of each, eight in total, driving the thing forward with terrible patience.

Following the uncanny spider came a flood of smaller ones that poured from its gate like a torrent of snow and shadows, blanketing the forest floor.

The northern forest of the mountain drowned beneath a flood of monsters of different kinds and variations.

The old man pulled his sons behind him. It was a small gesture, meaningless against what stood before them. His wife gripped his arm with both hands and none of them could look away.

The Twilight Matriarch marched forward at the head of the army, brokenly muttering.

”Talents... fragments...”

Because a young man, not even twenty years old from the vantage point of Tra–el, was hungry to copy one talent. And so he poured out a little bit of his soul to farm some talent fragments for himself...

And also claim the mountains and more soul echoes while he was at it.