World-Tree's End

by E A Hooper

  At the bottom, they found a hallway entirely coated in basteel. A multitude of massive gates, each made of several feet of basteel, had once protected that part of the building complex, but it appeared the angels had burned through them. Beyond the melted slabs of basteel, patches of ice covered the hall where a battle had taken place.

  Vincent couldn’t see the end of the hall because a massive wall of black ice blocked it off, and there were three angels floating before it. It looked like the angels had been drilling through the ice for some time. He could see lines in the ice where different layers overlapped, almost as if someone had cast a spell numerous times to seal off the hall.

  Vincent Scanned the ice and then True Scanned the three angels.

  Black Freeze (Mage Only) – Mana Usage: High+ | Quickly forms a wall of ice charged with negative energy, making it incredibly dense.

  Abraham the Cold Lance (Exotic Boss) – Death Triggers: Brain (if 50% damaged), Full Body Total (if 50% damaged), Lifeforce (if 100% lost). World Magic Field (Average Rating): 750 | Bone Rating: 800 Total (300 Material | 500 Density) | Magical Protection: 700 (all other body parts).

  Judah the Smiling Mask (Exotic Boss) – Death Triggers: Brain (if 50% damaged), Full Body Total (if 50% damaged), Lifeforce (if 100% lost). World Magic Field (Average Rating): 700 | Bone Rating: 750 Total (300 Material | 450 Density) | Magical Protection: 600 (all other body parts).

  Tabitha the Horned Dancer (Exotic Boss) – Death Triggers: Brain (if 50% damaged), Full Body Total (if 50% damaged), Lifeforce (if 100% lost). World Magic Field (Average Rating): 700 | Bone Rating: 800 Total (300 Material | 500 Density) | Magical Protection: 650 (all other body parts).

  As Vincent refilled his mana with potions, he looked over the three angels. Abraham, a Paladin in heavy mithril armor, appeared to be the strongest, even disregarding his magical defenses. He carried a shield in on hand and a lance in his other. While the other two angels waited, he pointed his lance at the layers of black ice and blasted it with a wave of world magic as large as the Vaporize spell. Vincent took the opportunity to Scan the attack.

  Greater Holy Smite – Mana Usage: Very High | The user channels a large amount of world magic through their body before releasing it out of their palm or weapon at a target. The average rating of the world magic is stronger at the blast’s center.

  Okay, so it’s basically Vaporize but with world magic. Still, a direct hit from that would probably kill me. I should finish him first. The other two don’t look as strong.

  He glanced over the other angels one more time. Judah leaned against the wall, twitching impatiently. He couldn’t seem to hold himself still for longer than a second, and his muscles and bones twisted underneath his skin with each movement. The smile lazily drawn onto his mask reminded Vincent of Rosaria’s, which gave him an uneasy feeling.

  Tabitha stood crouched on top of a slab of basteel. While Vincent had been watching them, she hadn’t moved the slightest muscle. Unlike the other angels, her mask continued over the top of her head before forming horns that curled through her messy white hair. In one hand she held a long mithril spear, but her other stayed outstretched on the basteel slab like she was ready to pounce.

  Vincent heard the scrambled voice of Jim trying to say something over team chat. Despite standing right beside each other, it didn’t go through clearly. However, Tabitha jerked her head in their direction as if she could hear the static in the air. The other two angels glanced at her as she stared down the hall.

  Vincent dared not move, even with his Ghost Cloak concealing him, and he held his breath. He couldn’t hear Jim’s breathing beside him, so he knew his friend had done the same.

  After several seconds, Tabitha turned her head back to the wall of black ice. Judah relaxed, and Abraham continued drilling a passage.

  It takes him twenty or thirty seconds to ready that attack, Vincent realized. I’ll jump him after he uses it again.

  Just as Abraham raised his lance to attack the ice once more, Tabitha slammed the butt of her spear into the basteel slab. The other two angels turned again, and Tabitha raised a hand. A shimmer ran through the air, and suddenly Vincent and Jim became visible.

  Abraham aimed his spear and cast Greater Holy Smite, but the two men leapt away from the epicenter of the blast. The attack incinerated Vincent’s clothes, including his Ghost Cloak, but he swapped to a new outfit while raising his hand to cast Greater Voidfire. He knew the angels might be fast enough to dodge that spell, but in such a small hallway the explosion would surely reach them no matter how far they ran.

  Abraham pushed past the other two angels, throwing himself into the attack. He unleashed a wave of world magic from his body, and for several seconds Vincent couldn’t see anything through the flashes of white and black fighting against one another. He felt waves of pressure from the blinding explosion, and when the spells vanished he saw the blast had eaten through the walls, floor, and ceiling.

  Although the blast had destroyed Abraham, his sacrifice had helped the other angels survive. They’d lost patches of skin and most of their armor, but that didn’t stop them from springing into action. Judah created ten doppelgangers from white light that charged at the two men, but Tabitha outpaced them as she rocketed across the hall.

  Vincent equipped Endless Edge in his right hand as Tabitha reached him, then knocked the tip of her spear aside before she could run it through his heart. He took Green Flash—the sword he’d gotten from Silpher—into his other hand and slashed across her body, releasing a wave of Ghostfire that ate through her flesh.

  Vincent could hear whizzing attacks nearby as Jim bombarded the other angel’s doppelgangers and gave his ally time to focus on Tabitha. The angel, not giving up despite looking skeletal by that point, jumped away, rebounded against the wall, and sprang toward him again. That time, she fired world magic ahead of herself, knocking Vincent against the wall. She thrust her spear toward his chest, but the man moved just enough that the blade pierced his lung and not his heart.

  Tabitha ran the spear through him, then grabbed his head and unleashed repeated blasts of world magic. The first attack tore off his face, and the next few turned his head to a pulp. As his mana was drained into Warro’s Necklace to keep him alive, Vincent crossed his blades and decapitated Tabitha.

  The angel’s head stared with shock as it rolled across the ground, but her body continued to strike him with magic blasts. The explosions weakened while her strength drained away, and when Vincent saw an opening, he sliced off both her hands.

  Tabitha growled, and her body retreated to her decapitated head. Her spine seemed to stretch out of her neck like a snake as it tried to reconnect with the skull.

  Vincent forced an ultra-ether down whatever remained of his mouth and throat, then tossed a Voidfire at the head before it could reattach itself. Tabitha snarled just before the black flames consumed her.

  After choking down more ultra-potions, both ethers and elixirs, Vincent turned to find Jim struggling to hold back Judah. With the other angels dead, that meant the remaining one could siphon world magic without competition. He produced doppelgangers at a faster rate, and some of them charged Jim, detonated, and knocked him back into the stairwell.

  Vincent fired a few Void Guns across the hall, trying to nail Judah in the head, but the angel narrowly sidestepped them with lazy movements. One shot took off his left ear, but he didn’t acknowledge it. Eight doppelgangers rushed Vincent at once, and he threw a Voidfire on the ground in front of himself, hoping the black flames would stop them. The first four Judahs hit the flames and exploded with white flashes that overwhelmed his Voidfire. The next four continued onward and detonated themselves before he could react.

  Vincent stood his ground as world magic bombarded his body and the surrounding hallway. Once the light faded, it surprised him to see the floor hadn’t collapsed. He raised his arms, trying to equip potions, only to find the explosions had left him mangled and fingerless. The ultra-elixirs he’d drank moments
ago began to regenerate his fingers. However, before he could heal enough to defend or attack, he saw Judah create two glowing blades.

  The last angel rocketed toward Vincent, and then Jim’s Deletion Cannon zipped past in the blink of an eye, taking off the top half of Judah’s body.

  Vincent glanced back at Jim, who flashed a thumbs-up as he drank potions. After taking several minutes to recover from his gruesome injuries, Vincent used his Builder’s Tome at the start of the hall to open a passageway that went around the black ice. It cost him a lot more points than he’d expected, but he soon realized the marstone walls had reinforced beams of basteel intertwined with them.

  Instead of ending his tunnel at the basteel doors at the end of the hall, Vincent cut straight through to the next chamber, where he discovered another wall of black ice. With his Builder’s Tome, he circled around until he finally found a way to the chamber. He stepped into a large laboratory full of equipment, and then his eyes fell on his fellow guildsmen.

  Zhang, River, and Athena all looked ready for a fight, but they breathed sighs of relief when they saw Vincent and Jim.

  “Gramps?” River said, still looking surprised.

  “Quick, close the passage behind you,” Zhang said, motioning at Vincent’s tunnel.

  Vincent used his tome to seal the tunnel, and then Zhang covered the wall with black ice.

  “Did the angels follow you?” the Ice Knight asked.

  “No, they’re busy with the moss-men,” Vincent said. “Those monsters escaped the other facilities. They’re trying to free their brethren.”

  Zhang glanced nervously at Jim. “I was worried that might be the case.”

  “Yeah. I warned you, didn’t I?” Jim said.

  “Indeed, you did,” Zhang replied, his eyes going back to Vincent. “I suppose I should’ve trusted Jim when he said you’d be back one day. If I had known for certain, I wouldn’t have taken our research to such extremes.”

  “Nah, I think it was still worth it,” River said. “One of our weapons is almost ready for mass production.”

  “We don’t need it,” Jim said. “Vincent is working on a spell that will crash the game. I’ve already explained this to Fynn, but these experiments are over, got it?”

  River let out an annoyed groan. “Gramps, just hear me out.”

  “River, it’s finished,” Jim said, sternly. “I told you guys to stop these experiments years ago. You should’ve listened to me then.”

  “It’s been forever since I’ve seen your granddad so serious,” Athena whispered to River. “Maybe we should call it quits?”

  “But we’re so close,” River said. “This was decades of hard work that’ll go to waste. Zhang, can you say something? My granddad won’t listen to me.”

  Zhang looked to Jim and Vincent and then hung his head low. “No, no, your grandfather is right. I only continued this research because I feared Vincent wouldn’t return. If he has a spell that can break the skybox and crash the game, this research isn’t necessary.”

  “Are you kidding me?” River said. “You’re giving up so easily?”

  “I’ve had doubts about what we were doing for a long time,” Zhang admitted.

  “Yeah, I won’t lie, I’ve been questioning myself too,” Athena told River. “You can’t tell me you didn’t either.”

  “I mean, yeah, I had a few doubts,” River replied, “but we’ve never given up on anything before. Not in the fight against Lucas. Not against Isaac. And not the angels keeping us from Edgelight.”

  “River, no one is giving up on crashing the game,” Jim said. “I’m only asking you to trust Vince to handle it.”

  “To be fair, Vince has never let us down in the past,” Athena noted, taking River’s hand.

  River slumped her shoulders and looked at Athena. “I just wanted us to do this on our own. It always feels like we’re counting on Vince or your sister Xan to save everyone. If they can’t do it, then we need another way.”

  Zhang stared at a control console, where several runes started glowing red. “It looks like we have little choice but to trust in Vincent. All the moss-men chambers are being cracked open one by one. They’ll try to work their way to us, and we have no way to save our equipment in time.”

  One rune turned green, and Zhang faced the door at the end of the chamber. “Something opened the auxiliary hatch!” the Ice Knight said, running toward it.

  Vincent followed, watching as Zhang opened the basteel door. In the next room, a hatch opened, and Fynn climbed from the tunnel. Before Zhang could say anything to him, the Wolf Lord ran to the end of the hall. He opened another basteel door, then closed it behind him. When Zhang reached the door, he found it locked, so he pressed a button on the rune panel beside it.

  “What are you doing?” Zhang questioned.

  “They’ve already talked you into abandoning the project, haven’t they?” Fynn’s voice asked over the communicator.

  “It’s not like we have a choice,” the Ice Knight replied. “The moss-men are on their way. We don’t have time to relocate our equipment, even with the auxiliary tunnel.”

  “We don’t need to relocate it,” Fynn replied. “We just need to ensure they can’t reach it. You and Vince could cave the whole place in, right? The experiment chamber is surrounding by a hundred feet of marstone reinforced with basteel. If you seal this side in black ice, then Vincent uses his tome to bury the lower chambers, the moss-men won’t be able to reach me in here. I have everything I need to fine-tune the weapon until it’s ready. Then the guild can break me out in a few years once I’m done.”

  “If we leave you here, the moss-men will never stop trying to reach you,” Zhang said. “You know they’ll do anything to get her back.”

  “Her?” Jim asked.

  “Uh oh,” Athena said, looking at River. “Your gramps never saw the World Boss here, did he?”

  “You have a World Boss in there?” Vincent asked.

  Zhang sighed, his hand hovering over one of the buttons.

  “Zhang, don’t!” River said worriedly. “They don’t need to know. It’ll only make things worse.”

  The Ice Knight pressed the button, and an image of the experiment chamber appeared on the screen. In it, Fynn stood near a rune cannon that appeared like it had been modified a hundred times over with various markings. Several similar cannons sat nearby on the floor, although most looked like they’d broken under the stress of many tests. The cannon by Fynn, however, pointed through a gap and into a room with glass walls that had runes drawn onto the sides. Behind the glass, a young woman with green skin sat on the floor, crying.

  “Who the hell is she?” Jim asked, growing angrier.

  “That’s the World Boss,” Zhang said, sorrowfully. “She’s the queen of the moss-men. She also possesses the strongest regenerate abilities of any monster I’ve seen, making her the ideal candidate to test our weapon.”

  Jim pounded his fist on the basteel door. “Let us in, Fynn! You can’t keep doing this!”

  “She’s just another monster,” Fynn replied through the communicator. “Once you look past the crocodile tears, she’s as vicious as any other. Just watch.”

  Fynn approached the glass, and the green-skinned woman leapt from her curled position. She snarled and slashed at the glass, but she didn’t seem to have any power behind her strikes.

  Fynn stepped away and activated the weapon. Negative energy surged across the cannon, and then black waves rippled from it toward the glass chamber. The woman screamed, fell to the ground, and convulsed as the world magic in her body tried to push back the waves. After a few seconds, the machine gave out.

  “See, we’re so close,” Fynn said. “I’ve been fine-tuning these weapons for years to cancel out the frequencies and make waves of negative energy. Once it’s perfect, it should kill her in an instant. Then we can start mass producing them—or better yet, make a large-scale one to use against the skybox.”

  Jim turned away from the screen and glared
at Zhang, Athena, and his granddaughter. “You three tortured that woman for years?”

  “She’s a monster,” River said coldly. “It’s no different from killing hell ants over and over again, right? You’re the one that taught me I should do anything to win.”

  “I didn’t mean that literally,” Jim said. “It was always metaphorical stuff about pushing past your limits—Jesus Christ, you’re as stubborn as your mom was at that age. Even centuries in this game haven’t changed that.”

  “Everyone, please calm down,” Vincent said. “There’s a really simple solution here.” He held out his hand to Zhang, Athena, and River to add them to his friend list.

  “And what’s that?” Athena asked, appearing genuinely curious. “Cause, knowing River and her granddad, they’re going to keep arguing about this until the moss-men find us.”

  “I’ll demonstrate how I plan to break the skybox,” Vincent said, holding out his hands. Since he didn’t have Silpher’s Coat to store extra mana, he knew it’d take a few potions to pull off his experimental attack, even with Heliostorm. He equipped the hammer and began to gather the mana for Greater Mana Bomb. Once he held that spell on the hammer’s head, he started drinking potions.

  Fynn must’ve been able to hear them, because the basteel door flew open. “Wait! Just give me time. I know I can get this weapon to work.”

  “It won’t be necessary,” Vincent said calmly. “What I’m about to show you will prove your experiment is a waste.”

  He tried to focus on Greater Mana Bomb to infuse it with Greater Voidfire. Just as his mana was about to run dry, darkness swallowed him and everyone underground.

  You’ve died. Respawning at your Checkpoint Crystal…

  Vincent and Jim reappeared next to the Jump Gate in Edgelight. Just like the previous time, he checked his spell development to see it was still only one percent.

  >Devon: Holy crap. I almost reached the facility before it exploded. Give a guy a little warning next time, Vince.