“He’s a much better swordsman than I am,” I muttered, understanding that from just that one exchange. Even though I was strong, I didn’t have any formal swordsmanship training, and though most of the time, this didn’t pose any problems, it was most certainly an issue when I was going up against someone who was as strong as I was and had had proper training in the arts of the sword.
“I had hoped I wouldn’t have to use this,” the man said, a sigh in his voice. He was still treating me lightly, and that bothered me a lot. Why was he so strong?
My eyes widened. Another Eternal? I blinked.
“They’re not supposed to be up and about,” Nyx said. “We know this.”
“Yeah, but how else can we explain his strength?” I said as I looked at the man. He was looking right at me, as though anticipating my next move.
“This is intriguing,” Nyx said.
“I cannot ask multiple times, Eternal,” the man sighed. “I do not wish to fight with you over the Kobold. Give him to me and we can avoid all this.”
“Why do you want him so badly?” I asked. “Why are you so afraid to tell me?”
He sighed once again. “You just don’t listen, do you?” He disappeared in a flash, and before I knew it, his blade was inches from my face, swinging straight into it. I threw my sword up fast, and the metal clashed. I slid back a few feet just from the force of the blow, but I kept my sword up high, right above my face.
I’d merely glanced ahead when I realized the man had already shot to me. His fist smacked into my face and I went flying back. He didn’t stop, surging forward to where I was going to fall before I did, and landing a stronger punch against my back before I could even hit the ground.
In the next few seconds, all I saw was flying skies and racing fists. The man kept me in the air constantly with just his flurry of uppercuts. My health dropped fast, heading to below half in just a few seconds. This man was toying with me. His strength was formidable.
“Diablo, you need to use your special skills,” Nyx said. “Now.”
I hesitated but gave in, making my own compromises. “Ceebros!” I yelled. The world around me stopped for a second, and the images washed away, replaced by nothing but darkness. I saw black for as far as I could see, and in an odd way, the sight left me with a calming peace.
“Frozen Night,” Nyx said. “Didn’t think you’d use that move of all things when I said you needed to use your special skills more.”
“I need breathing space,” I said.
Frozen Night was a spell from the Dark Arts that allowed me to put myself in a detached space, away from reality. If I left this space, I’d reenter the very moment I’d left, so from my point of view, time in the actual world just stopped while I was here. It was quite convenient, although this was the first time I’d used the move since I’d come back to this world.
“You could have used an offensive spell,” Nyx said.
“Did you see what the guy was doing to me? I was getting battered.”
“That’s true. You were. He’s way too strong for you to take on by yourself.”
“And if we don’t stop him, he’s going to go after Freya and Nazu. And you know what might happen to Freya if she goes up against him. Even in her full form, she can’t take him out on her own, but she won’t back down either.”
“Maybe together you could—”
“She needs to be safe. I can deal with this guy myself.”
“Wait. Are you planning on using—”
“No, I am not,” I said. “It’s not the time or the place for Blood Drive. I’d rather do things myself than use that.”
“Fine,” he said. “That isn’t even your strongest attack, though. Just saying. There are a lot more you could use.”
“And all of that is going to lead me down the path the former me walked.”
Nyx stayed silent, and that was expected. There was no proper response to “I might become a mass murderer if I use those skills.”
You already are, I thought, but I ignored myself and focused instead on the situation at hand. It was going to be hard to defend against this man without a proper plan in mind. I looked at my health bar and saw that I’d recovered nearly to full health, courtesy of my health regeneration. Still, it was concerning that I’d lost so much of my health in the first place, and at such a rapid pace at that.
The worst part? It felt like all this had happened even though the man had held back his true strength.
My eyes widened. “He’s not trying to kill me,” I realized.
“What? He tried to punch your lights out,” Nyx said.
“But he held back. He knows I’m an Eternal. He knows if I die, I’m just going to be resurrected somewhere else—somewhere he can’t find me.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“He’s not just searching for the Kobold. He was looking for me as well.”
“And why would he be looking for you?”
“I can’t answer all those questions, okay?” I pouted.
“By the way, your mana has gone down by 20% already. It’s probably time you got out of this space.”
“Oh.” I blinked. “Yeah, it probably is.”
Frozen Night ate up my mana for every moment that I was in here. It wasn’t a small amount, by any means, and it added up to be pretty large even if I stayed only a few minutes. That, added to my Berserker armor’s mana usage, meant my mana was going down pretty fast right now.
“What’s the battle plan?” I asked, willing to spend a few extra minutes before I left this space.
“You tell me,” Nyx said. “You said that man wasn’t out to kill you. I don’t know how that influences your take on how to defeat him, but I’d assume it would have some impact.”
“I’ll figure something out,” I mumbled.
“So we have no battle plan?”
“Sounds like it.” I put my hand into the air. “Ceebros break!” I yelled. The darkness around me shattered almost immediately, and I found myself halfway in the air, the man right behind me, ready to punch.
Not this time, I thought and twisted, throwing my fist around and making contact with his. The blows sounded a loud boom once more, sending a pressure wave out of the impact point. We both pushed back, sliding across the snow before coming to a stop.
“Hmm?” The man looked at me. “Something is…different.”
I shot at him, sword in hand. He stood there immobile as I swung, and in a flash he raised his blade up, fending off my strikes. About ten seconds and fifty strikes later, I stuck my sword into the ground and used it as a pivot, swirling around and kicking him right in the head. My kick landed clean, and he flew through the air, smacking into a rock formation a few yards away and crunching it down to rubble.
That seemed to have worked, I thought.
“Ugh, that was unexpected.” The man stood up, brushing the rubble off his armor. “You seem less restricted now. Interesting.”
I looked at him, ignoring his words and trying to read his body language instead. However, I could tell absolutely nothing. He was extremely calm, and quite confident as well. There was no advantage to be exploited here.
He shot at me and struck hard with his sword. The blade slammed into my armor faster than I had expected, but I was quick enough to shift my body weight, pushing forward hard enough to prevent myself from being thrown by the blow. I immediately swung my sword from the side, the blade smacking right into his helmet. He, however, stood there still, unfazed by the attack. He pulled back his blade and slashed at me once again, this time even harder than before. I went flying, hitting a block of rock and smashing through it.
He pushed after me, grabbing me by the shoulder and smacking his fist right into my abdomen. I gasped, watching as my health quickly dropped to a little more than half from just the last flurry of attacks.
“I won’t give you many chances, Eternal,” he said, sitting atop my chest and pinning me to the ground. “Give me the Kobold.”
He stayed silent. A moment later, he swung down with his fist, landing it straight in my face. Pain surged through my muscles as multiple blows landed across my cheeks, turning them first sore, then bloody. My health went down quick, sinking to the dangerous red in seconds.
I guess I’ll just have to resurrect, I thought as my body began to turn numb.
“Zoran! Switch!” a voice yelled.
A massive sword came out of nowhere and smacked straight into the man, throwing him hard to the side. He crunched through multiple layers of rock before coming to rest in a pile of rubble.
I looked in front of me, my gaze weak, and saw blazing red eyes looking at me. An elf with red hair and white skin knelt over my body, strands the shade of fire falling onto my face.
“Freya,” I said, my voice hoarse. “You unlocked your seal.”
“I heard the commotion,” she said, touching my face. “I couldn’t leave you by yourself.”
“Nazu…”
“In a cave far down,” she said. “He’s inside a shield I set up with my full strength. I doubt anyone can break it easily, if they find him in the first place.”
“Can you keep that man at bay?” I asked.
She nodded. “How long?”
“Thirty seconds.”
She smiled. “You got it.”
“Thirty seconds?” Nyx asked. “Are you finally going to use one of those moves?”
“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” I asked.
Nyx stayed silent. I closed my eyes and sat down, crossing my legs. I heard sword fighting in front of me, the sound of metal against metal. I heard the man speak to me, but his words I could not make out, my concentration too focused to let me listen. I trusted Freya to keep him away to me, and so I turned to my own task.
A chant began in my mind, words that were unfamiliar to me, and yet I somehow knew them. I focused on the energy within me, channeling it to my chest. I felt power surge through my veins, flowing in and out of my heart with every pulse of blood and air that coursed through me. Thirty seconds later, the words stopped.
“Freya, move!” I opened my eyes and pointed my hand straight up at the sky. “Injela Reikian!” I yelled.
The elf shot out of the way, and just in time at that. The sky darkened in a flash, and all of a sudden, a massive blast of dark energy shot down, striking the man where he stood. Rock and snow crunched under the force of the attack, and Freya and I backed away to safer ground, afraid we’d get caught in the plethora of fissures that ensued. A good part of the mountainside broke away, collapsing and trembling fiercely.
Nyx said. “I can’t believe you actually used that move.”
“It’s still a nerfed version,” I said. “I’m not confident enough to use the whole thing. I’m not strong enough either.”
“Still,” the spirit said. “Darkness Divine is not an attack to mess around with.”
Laughter echoed from within the chamber as dark energy sank into the ground and the attack cut off, its power depleted. The man stood in the center, now crouching on one knee, with about a third of his health still remaining.
He chuckled as he stood. “Impressive, Diablo,” he said. “You are more of a threat than I had expected. Looks like I’ll have to take it up a notch as well.”
He put his hand up into the air. “Rosou Liara!” he cried out, and before I could even flinch, it happened.
A massive bolt of lightning crashed down into me, striking me where I stood. Pain and thunder exploded into my head, forcefully pushing themselves through my body. I collapsed to the ground almost instantly, my limbs turning numb. Beeps resonated in my mind for a few seconds. And then everything went black.
I died.
***
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Darkness surrounded me, trapping me in a silence that I hadn’t wished upon myself. My muscles ached, and they held stiff as I tried to move, making me feel as though I was stuck in half-broken ice.
“Nyx, what’s going on here?” I asked. I was met with silence.
Everything around me was still, as though the darkness was stuck in time.
Did I accidentally summon Frozen Night again? I wondered. That wasn’t supposed to be possible, though. The recharge time for that spell was immense. Using it so frequently was impossible.
A voice laughed through the darkness, its tone deep and rustic. “It is nice to see you again…Diablo,” it said, speaking my name with a certain toxicity.
“Who are you?” I asked, turning around, searching for the source of the sound.
“Amusing,” he chuckled. “Do you not remember the voice of your greatest enemy?”
“Okay, you’re going to have to be more specific here,” I said, smiling a bit at my own lack of seriousness.
“Don’t belittle me, Eternal,” he boomed, the force of his voice sending vibrations along my skin. “It would serve you well to remember the Lord of the element you are in.”
“The element I am—” I froze. “Azmuth,” I said.
“Do not call me that!” he yelled, his voice even more forceful than before.
Azmuth Razugan, I realized. The Dark Lord.
Questions peppered my mind immediately. Where was he? What was he doing here? Did he have a reason to come and talk to me like this? Where had he been all this time? I hadn’t heard a single person mention anything about him since I’d first seen him three months ago, and having him show up now, out of the blue, was not on my list of improbable things that might totally happen to me.
“You seem perplexed,” he chuckled.
“What do you want from me?” I asked. “Where even are we?”
“I want nothing from you, Eternal,” he said. “You will do what I want either way.”
“What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“It is the way of the Phantom Lord,” he chuckled. “Misfortune seems to be your thing.”
“Shut up,” I muttered. “What do you have to do with what your Alliance is doing right now?”
“What have they been up to?” he asked. “I hope they found a better way to summon me to the world again. They didn’t do a very good job of it the last time.”
“Why are you acting innocent?” I asked. “Are you telling me what they’re doing now has nothing to do with you? Are you saying the Alliance you founded is putting you aside and focusing on something else?”
He chuckled. “You yourself felt the Void Blade sink into my chest, Diablo,” he said. “Are you so afraid of a dead man?”
“Yes, especially if he’s speaking to me without any form.”
“That is because I no longer have a form,” he said, amused. “Though it hurts my ego to admit it, the last time we clashed, your powers were strong enough to completely wreck my physical self. All I have now is…this. A consciousness that simply connects to this world.”
So he’s just a spirit now, I thought, feeling very relieved that I didn’t have to worry about him attacking me for the time being.
“So you can speak to the people of this world,” I said. “And yet you say you have no clue what the Dark Alliance has been up to.”
“I do not concern myself with what my Alliance does, Zoran,” he said, and then his voice turned serious. “They will raise me from this darkness someday, and when they do, I will come after you. I will not forget my revenge, Diablo. It would serve you well to run away while you still have the chance. You and those you love will not cherish your lives for long.”
“You came all this way just to threaten me?”
“Threaten? No, not at all,” he said. “This is more of a warning.”
“Got to say, I’m quite confused about why you’re even talking to me in the first place.”
“What can I say?” he chuckled. “It is nice to speak to old ‘friends’ once in a while. However, my time is up now, I must take my leave of you. Goodbye, Diablo.”
“Wait, I—”
My eyes shot open, and sensation immediately returned to my body. Darkness left my sight and I slowly began to see things again—the image of the night sky, the black sprinkled with the jewel-like lights of the stars. A gentle wind blew past my face, and I felt the damp soil under my skin, my fingers digging into it unknowingly. I slowly sat up, rubbing my eyes as I looked into the darkness before me.
What was that? I asked myself.
“You’re awake,” Nyx chuckled. “Finally.”
“Good morning,” I said. “What happened?”
“Well…” he said.
DING!
You have Resurrected. As a penalty, you have lost Warrior’s Restoration Potion (x50). You have lost Mage’s Restoration Potion (x34). You have lost 1,200,000 Sol. You have lost 4,000,000 XP.
Normally I’d have been extremely mad at that, but I knew those penalties weren’t really much of a handicap. For example, the XP drop didn’t even decrease my level progress by 10%. The Sol drop took away less than 1% of all the money I had on hand. And I had numerous potions left over.
Honestly, it was almost as though the penalties for resurrection had…softened.
“Yeah, so you kinda died, do you remember?” Nyx asked.
“Oh,” I mumbled, looking at my hand, feeling the pain still linger from that man’s lightning. “Yeah. I remember. Who was that guy?” I asked, recalling the man in the white armor.
“No idea,” he said. “Alliance of Light?”
“White and gold does seem like a cliché they’d use, but I don’t know. That man felt very different. It was odd.”
“I feel what you mean,” he said. “It still bothers me that he was that strong.”
“Freya and Nazu.” My eyes widened. “Do you know if anything happened to them?” I asked, my tone panicky.
“Calm down,” Nyx said immediately. “We don’t know what happened after you died, and we have no way of knowing either. You need to keep calm about this and not worry too much.”
The Eternal: A Boxed Set (World of Ga'em Book 6) Page 39