Pandora Unchained - a Cultivation Progression Fantasy

Movement skill first, thought Sorin as he allowed Madness to infiltrate Adder Rush and change its straightforward attack patterns. Adder Rush was a skill modeled after the movement of serpents and was naturally a swift but winding technique.

Though Sorin was loathe to give up on its swiftness, his opponent left him no choice; he urged the technique to change and incorporate more flexibility and unpredictability into his movements. This greatly reduced the number of attacks he suffered in the short term, buying him further time to adapt to his opponent.

I'm not going to win this by remaining so defensive. Next up is my fighting style. His fighting style, admittedly, was the worst part of his arsenal and consisted of martial arts he'd been taught as a child adapted to fighting with daggers.

The infusion of Madness into this ingrained knowledge instantly made his fighting style riskier and more experimental. Though Sorin's sudden increase in risk tolerance took the dryad by surprise, she immediately capitalized on the openings he provided and landed a dangerous blow near Sorin's heart.

Sorin struggled on the verge of unconsciousness as his vitality stores took a deep dive. Lorimer, sensing his peril, dove in to intercept the follow-up attack but, in doing so, suffered a gruesome injury to his neck that forced him to retreat from the battle entirely.

This only bought Sorin seconds, but thanks to the growing amount of life force being siphoned from the dryad, he was able to hold on. This isn't good. I need to optimize this process, or I'll be dead before I figure this out.

With his life on the line, Sorin decided to risk his most valuable asset, in his estimation: Ophiuchan Simulation. Sorin urged Madness into the skill and was unsurprised when the Divine skill resisted intrusion. The constellation was not built for non-medical simulations and wouldn't lower itself to simulating combat.

Yet Madness was persistent, and its distortions were difficult to deal with even for divine entities. Wasn't combat a matter of the human body? And wasn't combat between two or more individuals simply a complex interaction between two living bodies, human or otherwise?

Ophiuchan Simulation began to twist as the technique diverged from its divine nature. Madness assimilated with the technique until, finally, something snapped. The golden halo that accompanied the ability suddenly took on a dark hue that matched Sorin's tarnished God Light.

Sorin's movements immediately began to change as the simulation, now cooperative, incorporated his body alongside the dryad's and began analyzing their fight patterns. By considering the previous data, Sorin adapted his fighting style in real time and began meshing his dagger attacks and spear attacks with his movement technique, Adder Rush.

Altering a divine technique provoked a severe backlash, but Sorin endured the encroaching Madness and performed additional computations. I was right. The battle would have ended in a loss, and now, I've brought the odds up to 33%. Not nearly good enough.

Though Sorin's attacks were finally hitting, and his poisons were spreading according to plan, the dryad's staying power was too great. If he wanted to increase his chances, he needed to upgrade how he delivered poison in the first place.

First, I'll corrupt Hand of the Medicine God, thought Sorin, realizing that he'd grown increasingly comfortable with the notion of corruption. It works well with poisons and potions and for medical and offensive purposes, but there's no reason it shouldn't work for corruption as well.

As before, the divine-tier skill twisted as Sorin infused Madness and Violence into the technique. The golden aura accompanying the technique took on a tarnished hue as Hand of the Medicine God took on characteristics of amplification and chaotic variation, which could be applied to just about any poison.

Sorin then took this a step further by corrupting Grove Keeper's Touch and increasing its compatibility with corruption. He then aligned the 'matrices' associated with the technique such that Grove Keeper's Touch and Hand of the Medicine God could be used jointly.

A pounding headache assault assaulted Sorin and once again nearly forced him into unconsciousness, but Sorin bit his tongue and unleashed one last round of attacks. By using the unpredictable and risky nature of the evolved Adder Rush, Sorin was able to simultaneously stab his dagger and short spear near the dryad's heart and using Hand of the Medicine God and Grove Keeper's Touch, he delivered an unprecedented load of poison directly into the dryad's circulatory system.

Sensing the threat to its existence, the dryad burst apart into a flurry of petals and attempted to reform itself. It did this again and again but eventually realized that the poison in its body and reached a critical level. Its demise was imminent.

The dryad was clearly a cut above the previous floor bosses because as soon as it realized it was losing, it adopted a tactic that had yet to be seen in the second-level catacombs: it fled towards one of the many rifts that remained from Charles and Melinoë's tampering.

No, you don't, thought Sorin, pursuing his target into the ruined city. He became a hunter in the wilderness, stalking his elusive prey. The dryad attempted to enter several small rifts, but every time, Sorin rebuffed it and forced it to change course.

Eventually, the dryad arrived at a large rune and fissure that was larger than the rest that Sorin couldn't prevent it from entering. But the opening was small, and it couldn't immediately pass through.

"You want to run?" said Sorin, lopping one of its arms off. "As if I'd allow that."

Cornered and unable to defend itself, the dryad let out an ear-piercing screech. It was a spiritual attack that, while negated by Sorin's S-Tier Ring of Mind Ward, delayed Sorin long enough for the creature to widen the rift and draw in corruption from the other side to heal itself.

Unsure of whether he could claim the entire dryad, Sorin started hacking away at a piece of the creature. Large stacks of firewood and sawdust began to pile up beside the rift as the regenerating dryad forced itself through.

The sawdust and wood were rich in corruption, and Sorin could feel it slowly transforming into a clump of wish fire. This gave Sorin an idea. "You know, it's not impossible to let you live," he said to the dryad. "We could strike up a deal."

The dryad ignored his words and continued its efforts to tunnel through the layers, so Sorin hacked away at it and watched on with interest as corruption flooded from the bottom and continuously renewed its flesh.

It seems I inadvertently discovered a loophole in the design of the catacombs and the floor's trial. Melinoë first exploited this loophole by empowering the creature and allowing them to retreat to deny me a reward. But now, I find myself in possession of an opponent that's stuck between the pseudo-three-star level and its original powers as a three-star demon.

The opportunity was too good to pass by. Sorin stopped laying on additional instances of poisons and focused solely on amputating as many pieces of barky 'flesh' as possible. And the dryad, sensing his intentions to delay her death, grew more vigorous in its attempts at escaping, thereby widening the fissure and increasing the amount of corruption seeping into its body.

Unfortunately, Sorin miscalculated. The dryad eventually reached a point that seemed to trigger the floor's challenge mechanism and judge the creature as defeated. Chunks of flesh rapidly transformed into a sphere of wish-fire, which immediately transitioned between its colored stages and reached the silver stage.

Not nearly good enough, thought Sorin, refusing to pick up the sphere. He continued hacking away at the dryad, producing additional material for the wish-fire sphere to absorb. And since the wish-fire sphere was still growing, the challenge was technically ongoing, thereby delaying Sorin's return to the upper levels.

It wasn't long before the sphere turned gold. Forces of teleportation immediately began to settle on the area.

Madness, work with me! said Sorin, grinning wildly. He lopped off the creature's head and chopped off its arms. He tore off its legs and ripped out its still-beating wooden heart.

Every time the forces of teleportation attempted to carry him away, more wish-fire was added to the orb, signaling that the challenge was not yet complete. This was reinforced by the effects of Madness that distorted his surroundings and delayed the teleportation effect even further.

Sorin soon amassed enough material to upgrade the orb from its original light gold color to a deeper gold, then a dark gold. Eventually, the sphere turned slightly translucent, at which point the forces of teleportation increased drastically. It became clear that he would be transferred out of the catacombs in the next few seconds.

"Sorry," Sorin said to the creature, seeing that his time was up. "I lied." He viciously plunged his hand into the creature's rotting body and reached towards the only other critical point that remained—its core.

Weakened as it was by Sorin's poisons, the dryad was unable to resist. Its core was ripped out from the rift and forcibly pulled into the second-level catacombs, where a wave of wish fire immediately incinerated it.

This resulted in a final stoking of the wish-fire orb, pushing it past an invisible threshold. The sphere's golden color transformed, producing a wish-fire sphere that was neither gold nor black but alternated between these opposing colors simultaneously.

"Thank you very much for your assistance, Melinoë," said Sorin, grasping the orb. "I'll be sure to pay back the favor." A high-pitched laughter sounded throughout the second-level catacombs as Sorin and Lorimer were forcefully whisked away.