Tailyn got to the main hall and stopped. Judging by his map, the halls ahead of him were smaller, and he couldn’t match the Absorber’s speed. Ignoring passageways, traps, and everything else, the latter just trudged right through the labyrinth, forging his own path. The dragon flew around the hall to drop stones for Tailyn’s teleportation before alighting on the boy’s neck and turning into a delightful if useless decoration. There was no point in the boy risking his companion with just two lives left. Running was pointless—Mark would have caught him in a corridor sooner rather than later. And so, it was time to turn and fight.
Fang activated; Tailyn froze in preparation for battle. Still, even with all his attention fixed on Derwin as the latter approach, he did have time to notice a strange empty space right below the hall he was in. There were no passageways leading to it, almost as if the cave had appeared on its own, so there shouldn’t have been anything strange about it. But there was. Right at the edge of his scanning range, Tailyn saw another empty space. The last time he’d been there, Raptor hadn’t had the radius to see it, and it was much larger than both the cave below Tailyn and the hall he was in right then.
The opposite wall exploded in a shower of rock, riveting the boy’s attention on his main target. Slowly and confidently, Mark Derwin flew into the space, though he stopped when he saw Fang. Chills ran down the Absorber’s spine. He knew better than anyone else in the local and all other universes what that particular weapon was capable of.
“Shall we talk?” the ancient asked.
“You should have thought about that earlier,” Tailyn replied before using his teleport. One of the stones he’d set out was right next to Mark, and that was the one the boy picked. Fang flashed. The battled between Tailyn Vlashich, twelve-year-old alchemist, and Mark Derwin, 3,156-year-old Absorber, had begun.
Chapter 13
MARK WASN’T EVEN SURE how he was able to dodge Fang. Perhaps, it was reflexes honed over millennia spent fighting. Maybe, Tailyn had missed the mark. Of course, it was also possible that the creator hadn’t been in any hurry to see one of its children lost even if Mark wasn’t among its favorites. Whatever the case may have been, what happened happened. Fang slipped by microns from Mark’s body, cutting through Vargot like it was paper. The suit’s active protection system kicked in, and nothing living was left within three meters—the wave of electricity was so strong it turned even the stone into black dust.
But it didn’t work.
Tailyn realized he’d missed and began whirling around to try another swing with his dagger, and that was when the floor underneath him disappeared. But even as he began to fall, he kept his head about him, glancing over at one of his stones and disappearing only to reappear at the other end of the hall. And he was just in time. Mark’s Valkyrie cut loose a bolt right at the spot where his body had been. Realizing with surprise that Tailyn had survived the deadly attack, the Absorber tried again. But his nimble opponent was showing him that the black slime’s demise hadn’t been an accident. Mark’s perception fought to come up with a hint at how Tailyn was jumping around the whole hall, only it couldn’t. And that meant the boy could do something he shouldn’t have been able to do, making it a bad idea to kill him, at least, right then. Over his three thousand years, Mark Derwin had learned that living a long and healthy life meant understanding the oddities in that life. There would always be time to take the boy out later once he’d figured out what was going on.
“I’d still like to talk!” Mark made one more attempt to reason with the boy, though Tailyn didn’t reply. The bolt he cut loose glanced harmlessly off the Absorber’s armor—Fang was going to be his only shot. Noticing that Mark’s hand was turning toward him, Tailyn activated his ability and once more disappeared before the freezing charge could hit his body. The shot had been aimed at his legs. Frowning, Mark realized he’d missed again even with his sky-high shooting numbers, and that was when the boy appeared to his right and counterattacked with the last thing Mark was expecting. A thick layer of ice formed around him. His movements restricted, fear gripped him for just a split-second, unpleasant memories of the time he’d spent imprisoned by the mages coming to mind. But a quick twitch was enough to shatter the ice. Even a meter of it wasn’t enough to hold the high-level player.
Tailyn hadn’t been looking to lock Mark down. The attack had been designed to distract the Absorber for just a moment, and the chunks of ice hadn’t hit the ground before another teleportation stone went flying forward. As the hole was filling up, and before the Absorber could completely free himself, Tailyn used his leap ability yet again.
The boy knew he had to take his shot the moment he appeared next to Mark, and that’s what he would have done if the ice that had piled into the hole hadn’t been so wobbly. No sooner had Tailyn’s weight hit it, than the blue sheet he’d appeared on dropped out from under him. He toppled right down after it. Fang flashed, only the blade whipped by even farther from Mark—a few centimeters away. A turn of his head and a quick focus on the next rock later, and Tailyn easily dodged the stream of liquid nitrogen that came back at him.
Mark spat a curse. Hunting a grasshopper leaping to and fro wasn’t something he’d planned on, and he began relying on his perception read-outs to fire off shots with Valkyrie where it predicted the boy would appear. But that was to no avail. The bolts went right through the walls where they hit, only finding their target was a much more challenging ordeal. As soon as the boy appeared, he teleported again, almost as if he could sense the danger. That went on for another minute until Mark finally realized Tailyn was jumping to the same spots rather than to random points around the area. After spending a few points confirming his guess, he coldly aimed Valkyrie at Tailyn before turning it toward where he estimated the boy was going to head. The named crossbow received a mental command. One more armor-piercing bolt took flight, its target the nimble boy.
Meanwhile, Tailyn was having a difficult time maintaining his calm, some small part of his consciousness fully aware that he was going to lose if he gave in to his emotions. But it wasn’t fear or despair trying to take over; it was happiness. Exultation. A sensation of greatness engulfed him, threatening to overpower all his other senses. The fearsome Absorber, the one Valrus was so afraid of, had been rendered powerless by a child’s intrigue. Not even the mountains of mana restoration potions he was burning through could do anything to bring objectivity to his perception of the situation. Looking to feel strong, he did just that.
But a still, small voice within the boy did keep its head about it, reminding him that he was going to run out of resources sooner or later. Yes, he had access to his virtual workshop, meaning he could make as many elixirs as he needed, but that was only until he ran out of money. And that was going to happen, at which point he was going to have to decide what to do next. More importantly, however, that part of Tailyn told him something had changed in Mark’s behavior. The latter was starting to turn his head in the direction Tailyn was jumping before he ever jumped. With the shots landing closer and closer, the danger level was rising—the previous three bolts had very nearly hit him. The next time he got ready to jump, Tailyn had already activated his portal when his glance fell on Mark. A chill ran down his spine. His opponent’s weapon had already turned, and it was aiming at the spot where Tailyn was set to appear.
And it was too late to cancel the jump.
The space around the boy blurred for a moment as he headed toward his new location. Still not completely conscious, he knew he wasn’t going to have time to duck away. The bolt from Valkyrie was going to hit him, earning Mark the second damage block. But the boy so desperately wanted to keep that from happening that he began to act without even realizing it. He began before ever jumping, in fact.
The sharp bolt flashed through the air and slammed into the wall in an explosion of sparks. Mark frowned. While he’d been expecting the piece of metal to pass through Tailyn on its way to the wall, the unthinkable had occurred: it had deflected off to the sid
e as if deterred by an energy shield, though that was impossible. There were no diverters capable of standing up to his Valkyrie in that part of the universe. And that went double for the dying planet he’d found himself on. One more mental command, one more shot at his suddenly static target, and sparks flew behind Tailyn yet again. The boy had managed to deflect a deadly piece of concentrated nanoparticles as though it were a pesky fly. What was going on?
Tailyn wasn’t privy to the thoughts flying around his assailant’s head. He was too busy forcing himself to stand tall and face down the second shot, preparing himself for the worst as he did. However, his ability worked exactly as he’d intended. Mark missed again. And that wasn’t a surprise—hitting Tailyn would have meant aiming to the side.
Invisible winds had begun blowing in front of the boy.
Joy had kicked fear off its throne, taking full control of Tailyn’s consciousness. Instead of panic, a peace had settled over him that let his brain kick into a higher gear. Canceling the teleport wasn’t an option. That was a fact. Canceling the Absorber’s shot wasn’t an option. That, too, was a fact. Avoiding the hit... Was that a fact? No, that was an assumption. Tailyn knew all too well how Valkyrie worked, and he could only presume nothing changed too much even at much higher levels. Instead of appearing at their target, the shots had to cover the distance between the crossbow and the target in order to hit the latter. Mark wasn’t going to miss. Tailyn had already confirmed that his enemy was an excellent shot. Throwing up an obstacle wasn’t an option, either, since there wasn’t anything in the world that would have stopped that kind of force. All that left was getting out of the line of fire... In his current condition, Tailyn knew he wasn’t capable of an athletic feat like that, so he put aside the idea of dodging. But what if he didn’t have to dodge? Could he change the shot’s trajectory?
It took that train of thought a hundredth of a second to rush through Tailyn’s head. As soon as his body finished appearing, he got to work.
Air Wall. Description: Forms an air flow in front of the mage with a width and height of 1.21 meters. Air speed: 1210 meters per second. 13 mana required to activate. Maintenance: 0 mana per second. Only 1 wall can be built. Recharge time: 60 minutes.
The dust and rock in front of Tailyn were swept away in a moment. Unsure of where the wind was coming from, all he could say was that it appeared half a meter to his right and disappeared half a meter to his left without leaving the faintest trace. But that wasn’t important. The key was that the wall of air did exactly what it was supposed to do, nudging the Absorber’s bolt just slightly to the side. And that was enough for Tailyn to survive. For the second shot, the boy was reduced to observer status, watching as the bolt was swept half a meter to the side. The best part was that his opponent couldn’t see which way the wind was blowing, even for Tailyn the only clue being a red line his perception outlined on the ground to keep him in place.
Mark stopped shooting a minute later. By that time, he’d even thrown something explosive at Tailyn, only the wind had hurled it at the wall so hard it had cut right through. The detonation had occurred on the other side without damaging Tailyn or his shield.
It was becoming a point of principle for Mark to kill Tailyn. At least, for him to do the fatal blow that would be blocked by the game and send him off to the other continent, though the System would have figured something else out if it had known that Mark was thoroughly acquainted with the portal system. But that was for another time. Somehow, Tailyn had managed to distort the space in front of him, and every shot Mark fired was going wide. The same went for his grenades. Obviously, they had been modified—the creator forbade the use of modern technology in backwards worlds, though they were still good enough to take out an ordinary kid.
A little while later, Mark’s perception was finally able to sketch out the area dislodging his shots. A small, invisible wall was bending their trajectory, keeping them from hitting Tailyn no matter where Mark aimed. A quick calculation later, the soulless bit of functionality announced that the only way to get to the boy was to go around the obstacle. But that was exactly what Mark was looking to avoid. Fang was still strapped to Tailyn’s arm, and he was presumably as capable of teleporting as ever. What Mark had realized was that the boy couldn’t get to him while he was still in the center of the three-meter crater, something about it keeping him from teleporting there the way he did everywhere else. Ideally, he would have blown the kid up with something, only he didn’t have anything like that with him. The creator had blocked his arsenal as soon as he’d requested access to the planet. That had even included Mark’s named items, without which he wasn’t even sure how to survive in the game any longer—Zelda, a camouflaging cloak; Shulma, an expansion generator; and Fartira, a device that hid his character information.
Not far from Derwin, a flask full of a dark liquid shattered to release a black parasite. Absorber was meeting Absorber. The only problem was that the artificial creation could only batter harmlessly at its older brother’s armor, fighting to get through until the active protection system kicked in to brush it aside. A charge of electricity turned the bottle-born Absorber into black dust. And that was the last straw for Mark Derwin. In all the civilized worlds, using forbidden substances was met with a complete reset, and that meant the creator wasn’t going to keep the Absorber, his personal living weapon, from bringing justice.
His body filled with power. Ulbaron, his suit of armor that had been turned into the obsolete Vargot on that planet, still did its job, injecting stimulants into him. His consciousness expanded. Going beyond just analyzing the situation, he was suddenly able to predict what was going to happen next, and though he knew he was going to pay later with excruciating pain, that was all he could think of to do in that particular moment. He had to finish off the nimble kid.
Tailyn was caught off-guard. Just as he’d been thinking about heading over to his opponent, the latter suddenly disappeared, only to reappear right next to Tailyn at superhuman speed. Mark didn’t just get around the wind; he went all the way around Tailyn to make sure he didn’t touch the unfamiliar phenomenon. A blow of his fist landed so hard the boy lost his concentration, and the air wall vanished. Sent flying, he slammed into the opposite wall, bounced off it, and tumbled across the ground, triggering a few traps as he did. Something clicked, smoked up, and crumbled away without hitting the body that had flown by overhead. When Tailyn got to the three-meter hole Mark had made, he tumbled, completely disoriented. Vargot took care of the blows, blocking the impacts, which meant the boy didn’t take any damage, though the psychological hit had landed square on the nose. His calm was wiped away. Apathy set in, keeping his brain from accurately perceiving information, though nobody was about to give him the time he needed to recover. A moment later, Mark was next to him, prepared at any second to dodge away from Fang. The battering continued. But the head of Mean Truk was giving no thought to attacking—all he wanted to do was head back to Valia, even as resurrected noa if that was what it took.
Mark was moving with precision. One leg pinned the boy’s left arm to the stone, keeping Fang isolated. Meanwhile, Valkyrie turned into a long spike capable of piercing right through his target, though that was when he suddenly realized Tailyn had stopped fighting back. His arm was already in motion, but he was able to move it slightly to the side at the last moment, burying it almost up to the elbow in the stone. Only his ability to fly kept his balance. Still, he was suddenly defenseless—Fang was free. But Tailyn didn’t seize the opportunity, having reconciled himself to his fate. Finally. Mark could have his talk and learn what he needed to learn, though he decided to teach the kid a lesson first. It was time to take out the anger that had been building up. After the spike disappeared, it was replaced by a man’s hefty fist, and Mark began raining blows down despite the boy’s young age. Vargot was going to handle the impact, meaning Tailyn wasn’t going to take any damage, though the battering itself was going to take a toll. Mark was going to feel better, too.
But that was when something happened that neither Mark nor Tailyn could have foreseen. Even the creator, had it been there, would have shaken its head in confusion. One more strike later, the stone gave way, and Tailyn toppled head-first into a small cave. It was the same one that had somehow appeared inside the mountain. Mark grabbed the boy before he could disappear, slipping down below with him as he still held Fang tightly. But that was when the pair both realized they were not where their Raptors had said they were. Instead, they were in a small, well-lit hole that was actually part of a larger space. The smooth stone wall on one side held no interest for them, though the thick fabric canvas on the other wall certainly did. That was where the rich blue light was coming from. Still, Mark was more intrigued by the fact that Raptor was showing nothing on the other side of the fabric but a thick layer of stone that went all the way to the lab.
Tartila Mine (The Alchemist Book #5): LitRPG Series Page 18