by Dakota Krout
“Not possible. It must be directly controlling relays of some kind. Find the most humanoid being in any group and kill it. That’ll add a ton of strain to the boss over there, and it might collapse the entire structure,” Zed explained succinctly, just as Taylor fell forward on the bear, her eyes rolling back into her head as her overuse of mana came back into play.
Andre came back to himself a moment after Luke slapped him ‘gently’. Arthur calmed down in the same moment. “What…?”
“You two find me monsters to kill. Get close to that Scar!” Luke ordered as he devoted most of his mana to his left fist and made a slashing attack at a group of Scuttlers. The extended - overcharged - mana blade cut through their stone carapaces like butter, but a standard attack from one cut Luke’s bicep open enough that blood began pouring down his arm. “Best defense is defense, blast it! I keep forgetting that!”
He evened out his mana flows, blocking the next few attacks that would have bit in deeply. His punches and slashes needed to remain single-target to make a kill with one blow, and in the following minutes, Luke fought a desperate battle as the chimeras attacked from every direction with repeated, machine-like precision. Arthur roared as spears were used to puncture his energetic flank, and Zed screamed as he saw death approaching.
“There!” the words were practically forced into Luke’s ear as Zed managed to notice a black-robed humanoid a dozen feet away. Luke had moved as soon as his attention was called to the beast, and with a *crunch* the monster was decimated; the top one-tenth of its body just gone.
The orderly attacks fell away, and the monsters were just angry beasts once more. There was a moment where they appeared to have lost attention, and were confused by their surroundings. Luke went through them like a hurricane, and his Sigil let him know that Walking Arsenal had reached level five. “Quantity over quality is fine… just be worth something!”
A slash to his side pulled Luke’s attention to another robed humanoid. The strange part was that the attack had gone into a joint between Luke’s armor, bypassing the protections they afforded him. He looked at the wound, then at the assassin. He could clearly see that the being had a human face, and on that face was a smug smile.
I Have Concerns has detected a new and potent poison! Assessing, assimilating… I Have Concerns has reached Tier 3, Level 1! Assimilating!
“Thank you.” Luke’s heartfelt gratitude made the monster glare and realize that something was wrong. “Without you, I would have had no idea how to level that skill up.”
In the next instant, the humanoid was bisected by Luke’s mana blade, and the Murderhobo had returned to his team’s side. Shrubberies had appeared around the combat Zone, their roots drinking down the blood that was spilling in the central area and keeping the ground firm and solid. Fungus and mold coated the fallen bodies, and Andre was allowing Bloodthistle to empower them to be even faster without needing to provide the mana cost. The residual mana in the creatures’ flesh and blood allowed the plants to chew through the dead corpses at high speed. Andre welcomed Luke back with a nod, then refocused on creating an oasis in this spot before they were overwhelmed.
“On your left, Andre! Luke, behind you, left hand upward slash!” Zed called instructions, getting the others to focus on their attacks. Andre was protected by Arthur, and Luke slammed two charging centaurs together, dropping their broken bodies to put a barrier between him and the rest of their herd.
Over the next thirty minutes, they held their ground against an unceasing tide. A full hedgerow had grown around them, shielding them on all sides and gaining additional defense by incorporating a good amount of the stone that coated the Scuttlers. With the ‘wall’ in place, Luke allowed himself a small breather and checked the notifications that were waiting for him.
Walking Arsenal has reached Tier 8, Level 6!
I Have Concerns has reached Tier 3, Level 4! Assimilating!
“What was in that poison?” Luke grumped at the fact that it hadn’t even bothered to provide a basic hallucination. There was no answer forthcoming, so he continued on his rampage. A group of Scuttlers in front of him detonated into frozen shards, the first signal that Taylor had awoken.
“Welcome back!” Zed cheerfully stated as Taylor sat up. The Bard was evidently loopy from the constant twisting and turning that Arthur had subjected him to. “What brings a pretty place like you to a girl like this?”
“Mana shift.” Taylor was clearly exhausted still, making Luke wonder exactly what had happened to put her in such a state. “All the mana that the Scar has been pouring into the world is getting drawn back to it. Something is about to happen. Something terrible.”
Luke looked to where the ‘boss’ was standing. The robe it was wearing, black with a series of red and gold trims, was whipping around wildly. It appeared that the creature was at the center of a whirlwind, as well as being obscured by a heat haze. It became harder to see the creature over time as the mana became denser… and denser.
“Why are they leaving?” Zed’s question was the first thing that drew attention to the fact that the attacking waves of creatures were stepping back and away. “I wasn’t happy that they were attacking us, but I at least understood that… Taylor… why are they backing away?”
As much as she wanted to be able to answer that question, Taylor could only bite her lip and stay silent. Her eyes were searching for the slightest nuance that would explain the situation. This vigilance allowed her to see the exact instant that something did change near the Boss. “It’s creating a magic circle?”
“What does that do?” Luke shot the question at her sharply.
“Like what I do?” Andre was startled, and squinted in an attempt to see the far-away figure better. “That thing is a Druid?”
“No, it’s… a magic circle, for Mages, is how high-tier spells are cast when you want to use them at full power. Anything above Tier Five requires too much concentration, too many components, to simply cast it. Unless you are just… so powerful. A magic circle appearing means that the spell was cast correctly up to a certain point, then sealed so that the next portion could be cast.” Taylor launched a Flame Lance at a larger group of monsters, though they ignored their dying comrades for the most part. “Each circle that appears around the inner one means another layer of the spell being cast correctly. I only spot two, so… we have a chance to stop it?”
Zed eyed the distance and the army that separated them. “I have a doubt to throw into this optimism.”
“We could try to take shelter and hope that it won’t be able to hit us?” Andre chimed in hopefully.
“I agree with Taylor. Kill our way there before it can cast.” Luke started moving forward, catching the ire of a pod of Scuttlers. Almost casually, he slapped them to death in passing. After he had fought them a few times, he had learned the best way to massacre them. “Is it just me, or are they giving up less Potentia? Zed, you check that, I don’t want to let the Sigil into my head until I need it.”
Zed, happy to have something that he could do, looked into the distance. “Yup… looks like you are getting only about a third of what you were at the start of combat.”
“So, I need to kill three times as many for the same effect.” Luke’s Bum Rush directly at the Boss forced the others to scramble, coming out of the safer area and into the attackers once more. However, the response from the armies was… pitiful.
“Third, no fourth circle is up!” Taylor gasped, working to free herself from the clinging vines. “Andre, make these things let me go!”
“Done.” Andre fired arrow after arrow into the air, and spores and seeds rained down on their foes before exploding into either thorns, Stink-sacs, or simple rooting vines. However, the response was still muted, the creatures barely even attempting to fight their way free. “Something is wrong.”
“Fifth circle!” Taylor recoiled in horror as a massive tsunami of blood erupted out of every chimera they could clearly see, the epicenter being the Boss. Red washed ou
t their vision as far as they could see, slowly settling to the ground. The beasts slowly fell to the ground, tens of thousands of bodies falling to the ground at once creating a strange, unique sound.
Zed looked at himself, then at the dripping blood around them. “Was that the attack? It didn't do anything.”
“No…” Taylor gulped loudly as the blood started streaming toward the Boss. As it moved, the settling of the sea of red revealed thousands of desiccated corpses left behind. “It just killed its own army. That wasn’t the spell… it just used everything it was linked to as a component.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
“Tier seven!” Taylor screamed as they all charged toward the Scar at full speed. A quarter mile was nothing to this group normally; however, they were continually ambushed by straggling chimeras that hadn’t been consumed by the spell. The Scuttlers especially would erupt from the blood and corpse piles, trying to pull Zed down from Arthur’s back.
“Why are they all after me?” Zed screamed as yet another Scuttler jumped at him only to be sliced apart by Luke. Its head bounced off Arthur, and there was enough life left in it to snap at Zed’s leg. He jerked himself out of the way just in time, “Celestial, are these things part eel or something?”
“Snakes do the same thing! They want you because of your Charisma! They ‘feel’ that you are the most powerful, so they want to take you down first! Great job being bait!” Andre called as his vines pulled a charging centaur down and into a seated position. With a shout, mana exploded from him and a hedgerow formed just in time to block a series of lightning strikes coming from lancers. “I’m… y’all, I’m outta mana!”
Luke took a pouch from his waist and tossed it to him. “Take a sniff. Do not drink that.”
As the words left his mouth, a group of Stone Sentries slammed into Luke, creating fracture patterns over the entirety of his armor. Taylor blew them away, and Luke rolled forward onto his feet easily. Andre popped the top of the waterskin and took a hesitant sniff. Angry red blisters appeared all over his face wherever the vapor touched, and his veins started to bulge like he was having a wild heart attack after running a hundred miles.
“Ahh!” Andre dumped mana into the area around him as blood ran from his nose and eyes. An almost electrical storm of mana surrounded the group, causing their enemies to hesitate long enough for either Luke or Taylor to force their way through.
Luke grabbed the waterskin from the mana-charged Druid and snorted. He tossed back the drink like a shot, his armor fixing and the cracks vanishing in an instant. Luke smacked his lips and shook his head at the Druid, “Didn’t take you for a lightweight. Aren’t you supposed to have a massive Capacity?”
“Was that liquid mana?” Taylor took her eyes off the eighth circle that had just appeared in front of the Boss, her eyes almost hungrily staring at the waterskin. “I’d like some.”
“You know what it is.” Luke handed the near-empty waterskin over even as he shook his head. “Not a chance that you can open it. With a low Capacity, that would count as seeking your own death. I bet your mana channels would burn out in an instant.”
Taylor grabbed the top of the skin, but her Sigil chimed and forced her numbed fingers to let it go. “Abyss. Abyss! That attack is about to go off.”
“What is it?” Zed, even at the cost of his life, wanted to be involved. “If we make it out of here, we’re going to have the most amazing story!”
“All I know is that the spell is approaching tier nine. It used the death of thousands as a power source, so the spell has to have something to do with either death, or blood, or maybe reshaping? As a nine, it’s a… country killer. That spell has enough power to wipe out a city, at the minimum. It is only kinda being used against us; the remaining power will destroy… I don’t even know how much. The entire mountain range?”
“The spell hasn’t been cast yet.” Something about Andre had changed. He dropped to the side, sliding off of Arthur, and let his bare feet slam onto the ground. Mana whipped around him, and in an instant, a dust devil had formed around him. The particle-filled whirlwind exploded outward, making the surviving chimeras stumble. The ground between the team and the boss of the Scar shifted. Without a better way to understand it, Luke only saw that a direct road had been suddenly built into the pass. Their speed increased, and chimeras that had been waiting - partially buried in the ground - were trapped in the hardened stone.
“Did I just witness a Druid reaching the Third Circle? He bound himself to the earth itself! Ha! Yes!” Zed’s voice was filled with awe, and the others could practically hear the sound of his thoughts: coins falling and clinking into a large sack. “We can do this! Go team! I believe in us! Andre, the path is great and all, but make the earth stab them or something!”
Taylor ignored them all, her focus on the rapidly approaching Boss. “We’ve got at least a few minutes before it gets that spell to tier nine! We can do it! Kill him!”
The ground shattered as Andre created a jumping-off platform for Luke. The Murderhobo in question didn't bother to ask. “Bum Rush!”
He crossed the remaining distance in a flash, the entirety of his remaining mana redirected to his right hand. The weakness of Mages was their need to cast uninterrupted. It was a well-known weakness, which made the next moment all the more confusing for Luke.
The hooded figure didn't move… didn’t move… yet was gone in the next moment, just as Luke’s fist *whiffed* through the spot where it had been standing.
“An illusion?” Zed screamed the question at Luke. “Were we hallucinating?”
“Pff. I wish.”
No one heard Luke’s words, since Taylor had directed a warning at them. “He’s over there!”
Luke sprinted at the huge magical circle that hung in the air in front of the boss monster. He could barely make out the hooded figure, but could clearly see that strange mystical markings crawled along the outer edge of the magical circles. A little over one-third of the final circle had been completed, making it easy to see exactly how much time remained as more and more was filled in. Something screamed a warning to him just before he dived into the circles, and his eyes took in the free-floating physical components within their boundaries.
Though he wasn’t concerned that the mana itself could hurt him, thanks to the pure mana-ignoring effect of ‘I have Concerns’, there was something about this structured power that told him that touching it was death. The circles and boss blinked, and Luke’s eyes focused on Taylor, who had just tried to jump into the rings. “Taylor, that’s death!”
“I’ll discharge my entire mana pool into that to interrupt it if I need to!” Taylor replied, sprinting at the new location of the Boss.
“Will a huge influx of mana destroy it?” Luke’s question caught her off guard, but she knew what he was getting at.
“Do not put pure mana into that!” She ordered firmly. “It’s a draining spell right now, and the only reason it isn’t ready to cast is that there isn’t enough ambient mana to fuel it. It is pulling in everything from miles around. Structured mana introduced to the system would rewrite a section enough to make the spell self-destruct!”
“Are you sure?” Andre had caught up, and Zed held onto Arthur as he lumbered at the Boss and missed a swipe.
“No, but it would make something other than the intended effect happen!” Taylor’s exasperation was shining through her normally cold demeanor. “It should just explode.”
“But we are right next to it!” Zed snarled at her, his face flushed with fury. “Just because you are so willing to die for the Hollow Kingdom doesn’t mean we are! Stop trying to kill us!”
“But that’s the only-” Taylor was cut off as Zed hopped off of Arthur and stalked close enough that their noses almost touched.
“Celestials above and Abyss below, if you finish that statement, I am going to blow up harder than that spell would!” Zed’s teeth were clenched so hard, he would likely need healing. “If the only way forward is to die for somet
hing, find another way! If it is impossible, make it happen!”
A grating laugh caused them all to freeze. They turned as one to face the new location of the boss monster. “I do love watching lower life forms quibble.”
The circle was approaching the halfway complete point, but this was the first sign of true intelligence any chimera had displayed. It knew their language? Zed was the first to react, unsurprising since it had suddenly turned into a verbal battle. “I’m just going to go over to your home plane and wait this out. Unless you plan to send… whatever that is into your own house? To be fair, I wouldn’t blame you. If everyone around me was as ugly as the rest of your people, I might be tempted to chuck a few killing spells at them, too.”
“Insulting our appearance? It’s just so… cute.” The Mage’s face was clearly visible, though painted by the shifting red and gold colors of the spell circle it was building. “Tell you what. You go through that portal; I’ll keep you as a pet until I get bored of you. You get to live at least a little longer!”
“Why are you attacking us?” Taylor demanded from the man. “What do you even get out of this? You come from a mana-dense world, we can’t be worth almost any Potentia for you! If you are trying to become a Paragon, this place will do nothing for you!”
“Why, I’m here for resources, of course!” The boss flickered and appeared in a new spot as a dozen vines whipped through the space where he had just stood. “Tut, tut, that won’t do. As I was saying, there is so much here! And on such a backward world that is barely protected! Almost no beings, hardly any understanding of magic, and so many food sources!”