Battle mage, kensai, spellstriker, I mentally recited as I read the names of three classes, perfectly recalling each of their descriptions after having read them over so many times the previous day. But as I hedged over which of them to pick, knowing full well the weight of the decision I was able to make, I suddenly found that my decision was an easy one to make. Selecting my choice with a surge of confidence, I allowed myself a few seconds to soak in the moment before confirming my choice, once again seeing a wave of text flash across my vision.
You have chosen the Spellstriker class as your Advanced Class!
You have learned the ability: [Magical Strike]!
You have gained Mastery over Fire and learned [Fire Strike]!
You have gained Mastery over Frost and learned [Frost Strike]!
You have gained Mastery over Thunder and learned [Thunder Strike]!
And there we have it. I’m a spellstriker now, I thought as I felt my body subtly change in response to the plethora of attribute boosts that accompanied the choice, my muscles hardening, my joints becoming more flexible, and my mind expanding. The barrage of sensations reminded me of one last thing that I had to do before my leveling was complete, causing me to assign the attribute points that I had gained, deciding to put all ten into Agility. With that done, I gave my character sheet one last look, marveling at my new stats.
Lyrian Rastler – Level 30 Spellstriker
Statistics:
HP: 1981/1981
Stamina: 1636/1636
Mana: 2214/2214
Experience to next level: 0/141,200
Attributes:
Strength: 109 (184)
Agility: 119 (220)
Constitution: 95 (96)
Intelligence: 134 (156)
Willpower: 49
Satisfied with what I saw, I dismissed the last of the text and notifications hovering in my vision, finally having finished my ascent to level thirty and looking to see if I had the time to teach Amaranth the new spells that he was able to now learn. Unfortunately, however, the timing worked against us with our short sprint through the town, and I saw that we were rapidly arriving at our destination—a destination that was in the process of being hotly contested with several flares of bright magic flashing out above the buildings ahead of us, signaling the battle that raged ahead.
Approaching the battle from its rear, it only took a handful of seconds more before we closed on it, the street that we were rushing along slowly bending to reveal Aldford’s town square. Having been partially razed since the last time I’d seen it, the entire square was filled with adventurers fighting against a wall of orcs pushing from its west entrance. Gaping at sight, I could see that the defenders were being steadily pushed backward, a stream of them rushing from their respawn point in front of the town hall the instant they reappeared to rejoin the battle.
Shit! We’ve been pushed back this far already? I thought, my earlier elation at leveling fading away in light of what I saw. This is bad. Really bad.
Fortunately, as we all arrived at the large square at a run, we didn’t need to wait long before someone spotted us with several heads turning the instant we appeared, one of them, in particular, shouting out towards me.
“Lyrian!” Constantine exclaimed, the rogue jogging from the front of the town hall towards us, having very clearly just respawned. As he did, his eyes grew wide the second that he spotted Hido and the Dread Crew behind me, followed by his mouth opening in shock. “I-Is that all who I think it is?”
“They definitely are!” I called back to the half-elf as we closed, wincing as I saw that he bore a large stain of corruption across his face and neck. “They’ve all surrendered to us and are willing to help us fight the orcs.”
“That much we saw,” Constantine replied with a shake of his head as he glanced over the Dread Crew behind me, all of whom looked onwards a bit nervously, especially given where we were. “We all got an update that they had surrendered, but we didn’t know exactly what had—hold on, is that Carver? What the hell happened to him?”
“Amaranth and I did,” I answered, turning so that I could see a pair of particularly strong looking adventurers in the process of dragging the aforementioned man to the front. “We need a place to stash him where he won’t be able to escape—preferably with Dyre, if possible.”
“He’s here, defending the town hall,” the rogue said, waving a hand in direction of the building. “I just saw him a second ago when I respawned.”
“Perfect,” I said, giving him and Hido beside me a nod, the latter having remained silent while Constantine and I had traded notes. “Then let’s get him turned over and see if we can’t find a way to help. What’s our plan here anyway? Where are Freya and the others?”
“Somewhere in that mess,” Constantine replied as we all started to move towards the town hall, the man waving a hand at the edge of the fighting that was barely being contained from entering the square. “As for a plan, it’s basically ‘hold on for dear life until the mages finish whatever it is that they’re doing’.”
“And what is it that they are doing?” I asked, having hoped for something a little bit more detailed.
“I wish I could say, Lyr, but I didn’t quite understand when they explained it,” he said somewhat apologetically. “Something about using a mana surge to attack the orcs with. But I don’t know exactly what that means.”
“I do,” I said, paling as I recalled the conversation that I’d had with Halcyon and Donovan several days earlier. “But that’ll only work if the orcs are close to the tree.”
“That’s what they said, yeah,” Constantine agreed, once again vaguely gesturing towards the chaos. “Which as you can see, isn’t exactly a problem at all. Anyway, once they do that, the plan was to push the orcs backward as far as possible—hopefully, all the way out of the town. Mithaniel, Janus, and Riggs are grabbing as many of their people as they can to attack the orcs from the flanks. That is if they haven’t hit them already.”
“Okay, what about Zhul and the siegebreaker?” I asked as I absorbed the plan, which while desperate seemed to already be far enough in motion to have a chance at succeeding. “Where are they and the other heralds?”
“As far as we know? Regrouping around their big monster,” Constantine answered with an uncertain expression. “I didn’t see any of it. But apparently, Janus, Riggs, and a few others were able to keep Zhul busy enough that Hal and the other casters were able to light up the big monster and cripple it before it punched any more holes in the wall. Last we saw, Zhul and his minions were trying to heal it, or so we assume at least.”
“Which explains why it hasn’t overrun the town just yet,” I said, feeling a little relieved that the massive abomination hadn’t been able to run rampant through Aldford while we shored up our defenses.
But that was all that we had time for Constantine to update us on as we finally reached the town hall, easily finding Dyre who was standing near its entrance protectively with his sword drawn. Unceremoniously dropping Carver at his feet as we arrived, we quickly explained the situation to him regarding the Dread Crew’s defection and willingness to aid us in our defense, to which the justicar simply nodded as if he already knew. His only words in response were a stern reminder to Hido and the other Dread Crew about the consequences of breaking their oath of surrender to us, which judging by the way their faces paled as they read something that flashed in their vision was serious indeed. Despite that, however, he soothed their concerns with the assurance that if any of them died in our defense that their souls would resurrect here and not back within the orc’s clutches.
With that last detour finished, there was nothing else for us to do but rush to join the battle in progress, Constantine, Amaranth, and myself leading the Dread Crew into the fight. Sprinting across the square, there was little thought involved in where we charged the orcs’ line, the three of us simply rushing straight into the nearest line of flagging defenders, our arrival immediately reversing their stead
y retreat. Instead, they found themselves struggling to keep up with us as we cut deep into the orc advance, going as far as to even trample over their front ranks and throwing them into complete disarray.
Slashing, stabbing, and throwing magic as I pressed forward, I didn’t hesitate to make the most of my newfound abilities, alternating between burning, freezing, and shocking the orcs that had the misfortune of finding themselves in my way. Flashing before me as disconnected scenes of combat, I caught sight of one instance of me slashing a flame-coated Savagery across an orc’s shoulder and chest, the wound that the blade left behind with its passage instantly cauterizing itself with blistering heat. In another, I delivered a punishing strike with my fist across a corrupted guardian’s skull, causing it to crack and rime over with a layer of ice, slowing its movements just enough so that a crackling Savagery, arcing with electricity, could plunge into its chest. It wasn’t until I heard Constantine shouting practically in my ear and grabbing my arm to stop me from charging another group of orcs that I was pulled out of my battle frenzy.
“Lyr, wait!” I heard him exclaim as he bodily pulled me backward with enough strength to cause me to stumble, the urgency in his voice causing my head to snap towards him in confusion. “The mages are—”
The man never had a chance to finish his words as the world suddenly turned a bright white, followed immediately behind by a loud thundering blast and a shockwave washing over us less than a second later. Staggering backward from both the impact and the brutal assault on my senses, I barely managed to stay on my feet, thanks largely in part to Constantine’s grip on me. Mercifully, however, as quickly as the magic had appeared, it vanished, having burnt itself out in a single burst of power, leaving me blinking away bright afterimages in my eyes.
Recovering in short order, I moved to charge back into the fray, both not wanting to lose the momentum that I had and not knowing what sort of effect the blast might have had on the orcs. But as I turned my attention back towards where I last recalled seeing them, I found myself staring at an empty swath of burnt-out ground that stretched out several dozen feet, devoid of anything, be it either orcs or the buildings that had once stood there.
“Whoa,” I whispered faintly once I recovered enough to process what I was seeing. “So…that’s what a mana surge looks like.”
“Y-yeah, so it does,” Constantine said in an equally shaky voice, the magical detonation having rendered the entire town square, which until a moment earlier had been filled with the cacophony of battle, eerily silent.
At least until Freya’s voice shattered it.
“Okay, now here’s the chance we’ve been waiting for!” the woman shouted from somewhere on my left, her commanding tone slicing through the shock of the destruction that had been unleashed. “Let’s throw these damn orcs out of our town! Everyone with me! Don’t stop until we reach the walls!”
Rallying instantly at the sound of her words, a cry of voices rose up from among the defenders around us before they all rushed to surge forward, Constantine, Amaranth, Hido, and I all being swept up in the excitement. Charging through the burnt-out length of still-steaming earth, it didn’t take long for us to build up speed, so much so that when a fresh wave of orc invaders finally appeared, they only had a handful of seconds to gape at us before they found themselves overrun. Pushing through them as we used our momentum to our advantage, we managed to fight our way forward until the breach in the palisade started to come into view, the orc ranks finally growing thick enough to force us to slow.
But not stop.
“We have them on their heels!” I shouted to those with me as I lunged into the mass of orcs ahead, fighting with each and every ounce of strength and skill that I could muster as I cut through them. “Keep hitting them as hard as you can! We’re almost there!”
Driving forward on my heels, I didn’t need to say anything else as the Dread Crew following me did exactly that, the bandit adventurers attacking with a before unseen frenzy as they carved into their former allies. The result had the orcs faltering their assault, never even having the chance to form a solid line of battle before they found themselves shoved backward, something that only made their defense more perilous when the casters finally started to catch up to us. Lobbing their spells high over our heads, they began to rain a steady stream of destruction on the tightly-packed orc horde, heedless of the collateral damage that it caused on the town around us. A few of the more magically inclined orcs among the tribes we were fighting attempted to respond to the bombardment with their own, but they found their efforts too weak to make a difference and were quickly overwhelmed in turn.
Over the next few minutes, this allowed us to steadily grind our way even closer to the breach, eventually pushing far enough that I was able to catch sight of the siegebreaker on the other side of it. Appearing badly scarred and burned, the massive creature looked notably the worse for wear since the last time that I’d seen it—likely a result of the damage that Halcyon and others had inflicted upon it in order to cripple it. But as I stared at the half-prone abomination, I saw that it was slowly beginning to stir, with several distant figures leaping off it.
“Heads up! The siegebreaker looks like it’s coming back to life!” I called out the second I saw it start to move, finding myself just behind the front line with an opportunity to call out a warning towards where I knew the mages were.
“We see it too, Lyr!” Caius’s voice called back with barely a second’s delay, a few scattered casts of magic already rising from around where I sensed him. “We’ll do our best to hit it again! But we’re going to have to split our efforts between it and the—ah, shit! Everyone, look out!”
Whirling at the warlock’s warning, I twisted back to look ahead of me just in time to spot several black orbs of magic lancing through the air from the direction of the siegebreaker, their path taking them deep into our ranks. Of them all, one, in particular, seemed to be directed practically on top of us, arriving faster than we could move to escape through the press of bodies around us, leaving us with only a split-second to brace ourselves. A heartbeat later, a wave of corruption was washing over us, causing a chorus of retching cries to shout out all around me.
“Ugh,” I grunted with a wince as the orb detonated itself above me, causing a surge of nausea and pain to shoot through my body. But where I was able to withstand its effects and the substantial dose of corruption that it afflicted me, I immediately saw that Constantine wasn’t so lucky, the rogue dropping to the ground like a stone.
“Shit, Constantine!” I exclaimed as Amaranth and I bent down after the man, seeing him lying completely lifelessly on the ground. Reaching out to shake him, I found myself flinching the second I touched his shoulder, finding his body suddenly freezing cold, nearly to the point of pain. It was only when I fully rolled him onto his back that I realized what had happened, his completely black eyes staring blankly upwards as the corruption across his face twisted and roiled as if it were some sort of living inkblot.
He’s fully corrupted, I realized, my heart fluttering at both the revelation and what it meant for the others around me. There had been easily a dozen of the corrupted orbs that had been thrown into our ranks, which if their potency was anything like the one that had hit me and Constantine meant that there would be several that shared a similar fate as him. It was at that point that the thought sparked another fear, and I glanced up towards Amaranth, seeing that the cat now had more dark lines of corruption throughout his fur than he did of its natural azure color. But before I could say anything to him about it, or do anything to help Constantine, a ripple in the line directly ahead followed by a loud panicked shout stole my attention, forcing me to rise to my feet.
“Heads up! Heralds incoming!” an adventurer’s voice cried out ahead of me as several bodies stepped backward in response to a large dark shape abruptly arriving before them.
In an instant, it cut down a pair of the defenders before me, sending them both falling to the ground, clutch
ing at wicked claw marks across their faces. Reacting as fast as I could to their arrival, I didn’t hesitate in leaping back into the line of battle before the shadow-covered orc could press its advantage, shouting at one of the nearby adventurers to drag Constantine and the others to safety as I did so. Crossing the distance between us in the blink of an eye, I met the herald with a powerful, lightning-coated sweep of Savagery directly across its chest, the shocking blow causing it to rock backward on its heels. Stunned from the attack, it had no answer for the barrage of slashes that I rained down upon it, using that opportunity to go as far as to reach out and grab hold of its wrist with my free hand, seizing it in a powerful grip.
Staggering from my brutal assault, it took nearly a three count before the herald recovered enough to realize that not only was it under attack but that I was actively draining mana from it every second that I held onto it. Flinching away from me, the orc tried to break my grip, only to find themselves yanked off balance as I refused to let go. Blocking and trapping its other arm with Savagery as I drew it towards me, I then twisted its arm with enough force that I felt it crack, causing it to go limp in my grasp. But even despite that, I still held on, continuing to drain the creature until I saw the corrupted shadows armoring it begin to thin and fade, picking that moment to slash my sword across its throat. Falling away from me with a wet gurgle, it was only then that I finally let go of the herald, pressing forward to attack another that was forcing its way through the orc ranks.
Charging it with the same speed and ruthlessness that I had with its companion, it wasn’t long after we clashed before the second herald joined its partner on the ground, bleeding out from a fatal stab wound in its chest. After my battle with Carver, I’d learned that the best way in dealing with them was to rely heavily on my mana draining while supplementing it with as many magical attacks as I could bring to bear. Their resistance to physical attacks was simply too high to make attacking them worthwhile—at least, not beyond overpowering or pinning them in place with sheer strength, which Amaranth was more than happy to help me with, his timely bites and claw swipes keeping the heralds off balance.
Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4) Page 95