Tales of the Endless Empire
Chapter 194: Skill Testing

A massive, kilometer-wide base descended onto the fifth stage. Towering walls, inscribed with glowing runes, surrounded the structure, humming with raw power. Above the base, several colossal battleships—each over a hundred meters long—hovered menacingly, their weapons primed.

Thalion, Maike, and Kaldrek stood atop his tower, surveying the landscape of the fifth stage. It bore a striking resemblance to the fourth. In front of the main gate stretched an endless savanna, golden grass rolling towards the horizon. To the other side, a dense jungle began abruptly, its towering trees bearing brown leaves, as if anticipating the arrival of winter.

Turning to the left, Thalion noticed distant mountain formations. Oddly, the sky above them was clear—no sign of wind crystals drifting through the air. That struck him as curious. The third stage had been brimming with crystals above its mountains, yet here, there were none. He made a mental note of it but pushed the thought aside. Now wasn’t the time for idle speculation.

Kaldrek and Maike were busy directing their forces. Scouts had already launched small vessels, darting from the base like arrows. Shortly after, larger warships followed, some maintaining their position above the city while others took strategic posts nearby. Their primary mission was twofold: assist the scouts and eliminate any immediate threats lurking in the wild.

And there were plenty of those.

Towering beasts roamed the land, their hulking silhouettes visible even from this distance. In that sense, the fifth stage mirrored the fourth, teeming with creatures reminiscent of dinosaurs and other monstrous fauna. Of course, the smaller predators remained hidden, concealed within the three-meter-tall grass of the savanna.

As the last of the ships vanished beyond the horizon, Thalion shifted effortlessly into his eagle form. With a brief farewell, he beat his wings and soared into the sky.

Reaching an altitude of two hundred meters in mere moments, he turned toward the jungle. From this height, the trees seemed to grow even taller the farther he looked, their canopy stretching endlessly into the distance.

This was perfect.

Thalion needed to test the limits of his new form—especially how well he could fight with only one arm. More importantly, he couldn’t afford to reveal this transformation to Jim or Amalia. Knowledge was power, particularly when dealing with enemies who were plotting against you. And Thalion had no doubt that Amalia and Jim were scheming something.

Of course, he was also planning to kill them. But could you really call it "plotting" when your goal was straightforward murder?

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that no one should witness his new form.

He would have preferred to battle one of the giant dinosaurs roaming the savanna, but that would draw too much attention. Hopefully, the creatures lurking in the jungle would prove just as formidable.

Gliding through the sky, he relished the sensation of the wind rushing through his feathers. His sharp eyes scanned the jungle floor, searching for potential prey. So far, he had only spotted monkeys and spiders nestled in the treetops, neither seemed particularly strong.

He still needed to put more distance between himself and the base.

Down below, bursts of light and smoke signaled ongoing skirmishes between his forces and the wild beasts. Explosions erupted within the jungle, and in the distance, he could see battles unfolding across the savanna.

He wondered how much time he would have to train in his new form.

The search for vampires wouldn't take long—not with how aggressively they were pushing forward.

Thalion flew for another half hour, at one point even catching up to a squad of scouting vessels. They failed to notice him, likely thanks to his passive ability that allowed him to blend seamlessly with the sky.

By now, the jungle had transformed.

The trees were truly enormous, their crowns rising over a hundred meters from the ground—some even higher. One particular giant, likely surpassing two hundred meters, caught his attention. He descended, landing gracefully atop one of its thick, sprawling roots.

The canopy was so dense that it was nearly impossible to spot creatures from above. If he wanted to find a worthy opponent, he would have to search on foot.

The moment he touched down, his form shifted again.

Darkness surged around him as he became the Crippled Eclipsari. Shadows deepened, stretching unnaturally in all directions, while the light around him dimmed as if the world itself recoiled from his presence.

Power coursed through his veins, intoxicating and exhilarating.

His passive skill, Eclipsar’s Intuition, immediately informed him that no powerful beasts were nearby—at least none worth considering. He barely registered the four apes lurking in the treetops to his right.

The ability had a range of roughly a hundred meters, and Thalion was still gauging its full potential. Yet, even as he focused on its limits, he felt something else stirring.

The shadows thickened.

The darkness around him grew deeper, more alive, as energy from the elemental core slowly seeped into his being. Even in its passive state, Eclipsar’s Intuition cloaked him in near-complete obscurity.

And he hadn’t even begun to unleash its full power.

Next, Thalion turned his attention to testing his other skills. The first thing he noticed was the sheer power he wielded over the darkness surrounding him and the shadows cast across the area. They weren’t just passive elements—they were his allies, his tools, extensions of his very will. He could shape them as he pleased.

This was Sovereign of Shadows, his second passive skill, and its power was unmistakable. With it, he could lift shadows from the ground, mold them into weapons, or form protective barriers. It was eerily similar to how he manipulated blood or water in his other forms. With a mere thought, he could bend the shadows to his will, but the moment he channeled mana into them, their potential became terrifying.

However, he quickly realized that this ability had limits. He could only manipulate shadows within his immediate vicinity—either those within his Domain of Darkness or those directly connected to his own shadow or ones touched by his domain.

To test its strength, Thalion gathered the darkness around him, infused it with power, and lashed out with a whip-like tendril, its razor-sharp edge slicing cleanly through a smaller tree to his right. The ease with which it severed the trunk caught him off guard. He hadn’t expected to be able to shape shadows into weapons with such lethal precision. But it was a welcome surprise.

As he continued experimenting, the surrounding area grew progressively darker, as if night had suddenly descended. By the time he finished testing Sovereign of Shadows, it felt as though he were standing in an abyss of pure blackness.

Now, it was time to test Umbral Spire.

This was undoubtedly an offensive skill—one of such high rarity that he had been eager to try it from the moment he acquired it.

Wanting to see the raw, unaltered power of the skill, he first pushed the lingering darkness and shadows aside, ensuring they wouldn’t enhance the effect. Then, with a single command, the skill activated.

A massive, sinister spike of pure darkness erupted from the ground before him. Its surface was jagged, lined with backward-curving thorns that would make extraction near impossible.

Thalion’s remaining eye widened in astonishment. Not only was the Umbral Spire devastating in its default form, but he could also manipulate its structure after summoning it. With a mere thought, the thorns along its shaft elongated, making it even deadlier. It was akin to his Blood Thorn ability—except this didn’t rely on draining an enemy’s life force. Instead, it seemed to consume its surroundings, turning them into pure darkness.

The grass near the base of the spike was already withering, dissolving into black mist simply from its proximity to the skill.

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Intrigued, Thalion dismissed the spike with a wave of his hand, then immediately resummoned it—this time launching it at the closest tree.

The moment the command was given, the spire materialized midair and shot forward with incredible speed, far surpassing that of his Blood Thorn. The impact was devastating. The tree trunk didn’t just shatter—it exploded. The wood around the entry wound disintegrated, turning into dark mist that dissipated into the air.

Thalion couldn’t see what happened beyond that point, but he had no doubt the destruction extended far beyond his line of sight.

Satisfied, he smirked—at least, as much as his current form allowed, his long, razor-sharp teeth glinting in the dim light.

The sheer power of this skill was incredible. Even more so when considering it only consumed about ten percent of his total mana—a negligible cost, given his rapid recovery. And this wasn’t even its full potential.

Unlike his Eagle Form, which had physical limitations preventing him from fully charging his lightning beam, this form had no such restrictions. His body could handle far more power.

Before testing its maximum output, he spent the next half hour experimenting with different summoning techniques. He created spikes of various shapes and sizes, conjuring them from tree trunks, the ground, even midair.

He discovered he could summon multiple spikes at once too.

If he concentrated, he could create a smaller volley—up to twenty spires in total—though they were only one to two meters tall and lacked the overwhelming presence of the standard version. By contrast, a fully formed Umbral Spire stood four to five meters tall and radiated an ominous aura.

As he continued his tests, the landscape around him began to change.

The once-thriving jungle was turning into a wasteland. The ground was darkened, corrupted by lingering traces of his power. The only things still standing were the tallest trees, though even they bore the scars of his experiments.

Thalion’s grin widened.

Even if he wasn’t as proficient in close combat due to his missing arm, he had already become far deadlier than before. And he hadn’t even unleashed the skill’s true power.

That would come next.

As the elemental within him stirred, the darkness around him deepened, thickening like a living entity. Thalion began flooding his body and skills with raw energy.

The spike that formed this time was monstrous.

Eight meters long. Nearly a meter thick.

It materialized in the air before him, humming with raw energy, and then—like a harbinger of death—it launched toward the nearest tree.

The speed remained as terrifying as before, but this time, the spire carried something more. An oppressive aura that seemed to corrupt everything in its path. It flew just two meters above the ground, yet even that was enough to cause the tips of the grass below to darken and dissolve into darkness.

That alone was insane.

The first tree in its path didn’t stand a chance. The moment of impact was instant, silent destruction. The trunk shattered, splintering into nothingness. The spire didn't stop. It carved through the jungle like a spear of annihilation, hitting tree after tree, until eventually, it lodged itself deep into the earth.

When Thalion stepped forward to assess the aftermath, he found devastation on a scale he hadn’t expected.

The spire had torn through ten tree trunks before finally embedding itself in the ground. The area around it was already turning black, the grass and earth slowly dissolving, as if being devoured by the lingering remnants of his power.

Thalion could only laugh.

This skill alone made him more powerful than the Umbral Predator and he hadn’t even reached his limits yet.

Things were about to get very interesting.

The skill was slowly losing its luster as Thalion stopped infusing it with power, but the sheer might it had displayed was already astonishing. This was its full strength, without the amplification from his passive skill, Sovereign of Shadows.

Now, it was time to see what would happen if he summoned it from within a shadow—or the darkness that surrounded him. This time, he wouldn’t hold back. The elemental within him surged with eager anticipation, pouring its power into the process.

Dark energy coursed through Thalion, and the difference was immediately evident in the spike that emerged before him. It wasn’t larger than before, but it was far more condensed, its form radiating a deeper, more ominous intensity.

The moment he unleashed it, the spire shot toward a distant tree with blinding speed—faster than any he had summoned before. The trunk exploded on impact, fragments of wood scattering in all directions, while the aura alone turned parts of it black within seconds.

The fully charged spire was in an entirely different league. Thalion was confident that it could pierce through most barriers—perhaps even the fortifications the vampires had built. With this overpowered skill now fully tested, he moved on to the next.

So far, everything was going exceptionally well. He was now certain that the Crippled Eclipsari was far stronger than the Umbral Predator—even with his missing arm. His new abilities granted him mastery over shadows, effectively turning him into a spellcaster, while also bestowing immense resilience and regenerative capabilities.

His toughness alone had reached three hundred, and that was without factoring in Eclipse Veil, the passive skill that further enhanced his resistance and recovery. But toughness wasn’t his only strength. His dexterity, agility, and sheer physical power were all formidable.

Before testing Shadow Claw and his remaining abilities, Thalion leaped from tree to tree, sprinting effortlessly through the dense forest to get a better feel for his new body.

The difference was striking.

He was faster. More agile. His movements were sharper, more refined. His ability to turn quickly has improved dramatically, making him even deadlier in close combat. If he hadn’t lost his arm, his power would have been near perfection.

He briefly considered testing Umbral Miasma, but decided against itnfor now. Its effects were primarily mental, and the surrounding trees wouldn’t provide an adequate test. He would wait until he faced a living opponent.

Instead, he focused on Shadow Claw.

It felt a bit unnatural to use it solely with his left hand, but in exchange, its power had significantly increased—at least doubled, if he had to guess. The speed of the skill had also improved, but the most intriguing aspect was something else entirely.

He quickly realized that he could extend Shadow Claw beyond just his physical form.

Not only could he manifest it through his own claws, but he could also shape it within his shadows, forming spectral claws from the darkness itself. The only requirement was molding his shadows into claw-like shapes—but beyond that, there were no limitations.

This revelation made him even deadlier.

What did it matter that he had lost an arm when he had so many other means of attack?

Thalion had never felt more confident. His new form was utterly overpowered.

The passiv eating skill Umbral Feast, originally obtained from the Tidecaller Serpent, had allowed him to consume more and digest faster. Now, it had evolved into Umbral Feast. While its core function remained the same, it had gained an additional effect—materials infused with darkness could now be digested far more efficiently. A useful enhancement, and its rarity had also increased slightly.

He would put it to the test by consuming the first beast he slew, using the abyssal tendrils spawned by Abyssal Devourer.

The sheer versatility of his skills was astounding. Each one had multiple applications, allowing him to adapt to nearly any situation.

It was time.

Without hesitation, Thalion moved at full speed, heading away from his base in search of a worthy opponent.