This was no longer a seizure—it was a force of nature.
All around him, the battle swirled. Twice, Darius took wounds that would have broken a smaller man, but he raged forward with the desperation of a father protecting his son. Rosie, too, had been hit, but she had none of Darius’ raw bulk, and the glancing blow almost shattered her. She’d been knocked to the ground and responded with an avalanche of magic that bathed the nimh in a hurricane of golden light, but for all its power, the attack had almost no effect on the monster.
The golden light that surrounded Rosie faded to a dull sheen as her strength failed her. Still, she didn’t stop casting, and with every impact of her magic on the carapace of the nimh, there was a moment of wild resonance that beckoned to Mark.
During the nimh’s exchange with Rosie, it had been pushed back up the road, towards the wagon. Darius responded with a flurry of attacks meant to force the monster back up the road, away from the direction of Gavin’s escape, but it was no simple task, and before long, Darius was getting forced backwards toward the wagon as well.
It was all Mark could do to remain conscious. He kneeled in the rain, his grip on the staff the only thing keeping him upright, as he watched Darius and the nimh battle their way slowly towards him.
As Darius was forced back another step, he took a moment to glance at Mark. Despite the haze in Mark’s vision, he was able to make out the expression of utter disgust and fury that came over Darius’ face when he took in Mark’s pathetic form, and the man turned that anger into a powerful blow to one of the nimh’s legs. It was a solid blow, and the chitin bent under the weight of the impact, but the sudden pain caused the nimh to respond with a reflexive strike that was too fast for Darius to defend, catching the man hard on the chest and sending him tumbling through the rain until he finally stopped, lying bloody and motionless on the cobblestones.
“Da! No!”
Everyone’s eyes spun to the sound of the voice, the nimh included.
Mark looked up in shock. They had been operating under the belief that Gavin had fled down the road, but instead, the boy was still there, his head poking out of a gap in the canvas and staring in horror at the prone form of his father.
“Lad!” Darius shouted, somehow summoning the strength to raise his head in a lament over his failed duty to protect his child.
With an indiscriminate singularity of purpose, the nimh raced toward the wagon, bladed arms raised. Mark watched, frozen, only distantly aware of Rosie’s scream as she sent a ball of weak silver light at the creature. It was barely even a spell—little more than the final remains of a mother’s fading magic.
At that moment, Mark saw it all. All of the permutations of chance that lay before him, and he selected the one that produced the outcome he desired.
Luck -1
What the hells? No, I didn’t do that. That shouldn’t even be possible!
The storm inside Mark broke. Not as a biological imposition upon Mark’s unwilling body, but as an unfettered convulsion of raw energy; a transformation of the chaotic forces bound within his mind into a fundamental unit of creation.
Mark took that torrent of power and forced it out of himself, up into the staff. The whorling pattern exploded into a state of agitation so great that it was like looking into the eye of madness. Intense, multi-coloured light bathed the roadway, crackling through the lines in a shifting display that would have looked alien to anyone who hadn’t seen it before. But Mark had seen it before. Underground. Looming over him in the heart of the fog.
All of this happened so quickly that it was almost simultaneous with the casting of Rosie’s spell. The weak orb of silver magic flew across the battlefield and hit the nimh before it could get to the wagon, but broke apart predictably upon the creature’s inherent defences. Just as before, when Rosie’s spell was torn apart, it left behind a minute residue of raw magical energy that passed through, immediately beginning to dissipate now that there was no spell to hold it together. But this time, Mark wasn’t going to let that happen.
Reaching a hand out towards the nimh, Mark used it as a conduit to focus his mind on the resonance he felt within that tiny piece of magic, seizing it just as he’d seized the spectre in the fog. Then, with a flexing of one hand into a fist, he forced a connection between Rosie’s ball of fading magic and the raging power surging within him and his staff.
The world stopped moving.
Normally, the nimh’s magical defences were almost unparalleled. And while there was no way to say how well those natural defences might have weathered Mark’s attack had it been cast as a mere spell, the manner of Mark’s assault rendered the question irrelevant. By seizing on the broken remains of Rosie’s spell after they had passed through the nimh’s defences, Mark’s attack effectively bypassed those defences entirely, and to devastating consequences.
A torrent of energy flooded out of Mark as the world leapt back into action. Every twitch, every shake, every misfiring nerve evaporated as the roiling seizure of force escaped through that connection, pouring from his staff and body, through his now glowing, whorl encrusted fist and into that tiny mote of dissipating magic, causing it to explode into a surge of force so powerful that it was incomprehensible to Mark, and catastrophic to the nimh.
The nimh’s race towards the wagon halted as its limbs suddenly shook and spasmed, the actions of the muscles magnified to proportions far beyond the scope of a normal seizure. Its bladed arms lashed around wildly, slicing through its own body as they flailed, even cutting one of its legs so viciously that it severed the limb completely, sending red blood spurting across the white, furry carapace. Meanwhile, the remaining legs jerked so violently that the air soon filled with the sound of tearing ligaments and cracking cobblestones, the latter getting torn out of the road by clawed feet that happened to catch purchase in the course of the demon’s thrashing.
Eventually, the thrashing grew to such proportions that the nimh flopped over onto its side and began bashing its own body over and over again into the stones of the road. Finally, as the last of the energy flooded through Mark and into the flailing creature, it jerked into one final crescendo and—with a loud crack that reverberated through the forest—the demon’s carapace shattered and it went still.
Mark dropped his staff and fell to all fours, panting as he stared at the enormous, broken body lying in the middle of the road, ichor pouring out of the gaping hole in its shell.
You have slain a Level 23 Adult Deep Nimh.
Are you kidding me with this???
13,500 XP Earned
RENOWN LEVEL UP!
Level 7 Achieved
RENOWN LEVEL UP!
Level 8 Achieved
RENOWN LEVEL UP!
Level 9 Achieved
RENOWN LEVEL UP!
Level 10 Achieved
XP: 19,250
XP to next Renown: 3,050
“Wowee, Mr. Mark!” Gavin said from the wagon above him. “Could you teach me how to do that? I have almost the same Renown as you.”
Mark snatched the notification page out of the air that had just appeared. “Not anymore,” he said. He looked up to see a now-normal-looking Rosie staring at him in wide-eyed shock.
“What did you do?” she said, almost accusingly. She got up off the ground and walked over to the mangled carcass of the nimh, then looked at Mark again. “What did you DO?”
When it became clear that Mark had no answer for her, Rosie shook her head and turned her attentions to her husband, who was only now struggling to sit upright. She pulled a vial from a pouch in her skirt and raced over, uncorking the bottle as she went. She forced the draught past Darius’ lips, and the healing potion brought colour back to the man’s face, as well as an audible sigh of relief as the wounds from the battle closed and his bones reset.
“Aye, that was needed,” he said, patting Rosie’s hand in thanks before pushing himself up off the road. Once he was steady on his feet, he took a couple of steps over to Mark and looked him up
and down. Then he looked at the corpse of the nimh. Then back at Mark.
“Gods lad, I’d like to know the answer to Rosie’s question as well,” the blacksmith said in an exhausted tone. Then a piece of paper appeared in front of him. He took it in hand, and as he read, his eyes widened.
“A whole level of Renown! I didn’t think that would happen for at least another five years!” He spun to Rosie. “Do you have any idea what this means? There’s no way they can deny us the permits now!”
He looked at Mark with a grin, but it vanished and was replaced with shock. “Casúr’s forge! You gained four levels of Renown in a single battle?”
Mark smiled sheepishly and picked up his staff, ignoring the look on Rosie’s face when the now-sedate lines once again appeared on the wood. Using it to help himself to his feet, he walked over to the nimh and poked it.
“Uh, are these things common?” he said. God, please say no.
“Absolutely not,” Rosie said, much to Mark’s relief. “Go ten kilometres beneath the earth, and they’d still be rare. Someone brought this over from Daehon, and that is very bad news.” She looked at Darius. “I’m sorry, my love. I know you’ll want to start on the business as soon as we get to Palmyre, but I have to report this to the Queen.”
Darius sighed but nodded. “I understand. There is much to be done for the store before it can open anyway.” Then he turned his attention to Mark, hiking up his belt.
“Now… what in all the Planes was that? I’ve never heard of a spell that could kill a high-level nimh—a creature specifically created to have magical resistances—in a single cast. Not without it being highly regulated by the Mage’s College. And it certainly wouldn’t be castable by a singl’d.”
Mark scratched the nape of his neck and grimaced. “That’s not going to be easy to answer.”
“Good thing we have time then, isn’t it?” Rosie said. She looked at Gavin and snapped her fingers. “You! Get out here and start stripping that carcass. It’ll be good Skill training, considering how high-level it is.”
“Aw, but mum, I want to hear the story!”
Rosie strode around the back of the wagon and grabbed Gavin by the ear, dragging him out of the vehicle. “And I wanted you to run! Do you realize we risked our lives for you, and you would have thrown that all away? By the gods… if you weren’t born with such a ludicrously high Luck attribute, you would be dead right now!”
Gavin cowered before the diminutive woman. “Sorry, ma.”
“Sorry doesn’t work for me,” Rosie said. “Your punishment is that you don’t get to hear the story.”
“But—!”
“No buts! Maybe Mr. Sullivan will let you hear it some other time, but for now, you’re working on that corpse.”
Gavin burst into tears, but Rosie didn’t bend. She merely fished some tools out of the back of the wagon and handed them to the boy. He trudged off into the rain, throwing a pout over his shoulder as he left.
Mark walked under the covered awning with Darius right behind him. As soon as he got there, a wave of exhaustion and dizziness washed over him, enough that he had to grab onto the edge of the wagon to support himself. Darius noticed and lifted Mark onto the back of the wagon, sharing a knowing glance with his wife.
“You did only have 6 levels of Renown when we found you, didn’t you?” Rosie said.
Mark nodded, unable to muster any more of a response.
“Then the story will have to wait. You just lay down.” She accompanied the instruction with a firm hand on Mark’s chest to force him to comply.
He mumbled that he was okay, but she was having none of it.
“Listen, my boy. You just expended a massive amount of mana. And if I’m correct, you will be passing out right around… now.”
If she said anything after that, Mark was too far gone to hear it.
The turkey pecked away beneath the tree. It had been difficult finding food, but at long last, it appeared she’d found a source of nourishment.
Padding her way over to an acorn, the turkey scratched at it with her foot to get it loose from the dirt. She bent to pick up the nut, only to have it snatched away at the last second by a ground squirrel almost a third of her size, the thief chittering with laughter as it ran into its burrow.
The turkey watched in silence, then resumed her search for acorns. She managed to find another one, but again it was snatched from her grasp by a squirrel. The turkey jumped up and down, flapping her wings indignantly, but her display was met with yet another chorus of squirrel laughter.
The turkey’s head swivelled around. She was surrounded. The rodents were enjoying a game of “snatch the acorn,” and she was the butt of the joke.
Resigned to her fate, the turkey resumed looking for acorns. She scratched one from beneath the leaves and pulled it towards her, but the moment she saw a flash of gray to her right, she shifted her foot and stomped down on the head of the squirrel instead. Bringing the other foot across, the turkey wrapped the head of the squirrel in both of her feet and began pecking at it viciously, rolling around on the ground as the squirrel tried to get free of the turkey’s vicelike grip.
Over and over, the turkey plunged her beak at the squirrel’s head. None of the other squirrels made a move to stop the attack, their only reaction coming when there was a small cracking noise as the hard keratin of the turkey’s beak fractured the would-be thief’s skull, plunging its way into the squirrel’s brain and killing it instantly.
The turkey fluttered her feathers and righted herself, warbling righteously at the squirrel’s corpse. She took a step toward the abandoned acorn, then looked back at the dead ground squirrel. Then at the acorn. Then at the squirrel.
Hopping over to the corpse, the turkey grabbed the squirrel by the head and tossed her neck back, shaking and bobbing to get it oriented correctly. Once the squirrel’s body was positioned, she swallowed the large animal whole, jerking her head up and down to get it into her stomach before it choked her to death.
A piece of worn newsprint appeared, text rapidly squiggling into existence on its surface.
Animal growth process… not permitted. Edge-case scenario remains unresolved. Escalating to management.
Admin (Carl): No, no, no! I’m here! Don’t contact management! Blast it, how do I turn off this microphone?
Microphone = Off
Microphone = On
Admin (Carl): There we go. Quite the sticky button, I’d say.
Edge-case scenario unresolved. Contacting management in 10… 9…
Admin (Carl): Oh dear, this is not good. Damn, why couldn’t they have used a rune-based system instead of this confounded interface? “Every button is a complex magical ritual!” they said. Ugh…
Advancement qualification reached
Tome present
Enact tome progression…
…
…
Failed. Non-Sentient species.
Enact Animal growth progression…
…
…
Failed. Tome present.
Target is Legend. Advancement mandatory. Conflict must be resolved.
Contacting management in 8… 7…
Admin (Carl): How am I possibly supposed to fix that? Let’s see…
Species alteration failed: Base identity cannot be modified.
Target is Legend. Advancement mandatory.
Contacting management in 6… 5…
Admin (Carl): If I can’t change the species or the Tome, how in the blazes is this damn turkey supposed to advance? The only thing both animals and Legends can do is…
Oh dear. That’s probably not a good idea.
Contacting management in 4… 3…
Admin (Carl): I mean, maybe it would be okay…
Contacting management in 2… 1…
Admin (Carl): Aaaaah!
Operator input received.
Tome progression = Evolution progression
Animal gr
owth progression = Evolution progression
CAUTION: EVOLUTION PATH UNDEFINED. MAY PRODUCE UNUSUAL RESULTS
PROCEED? YES/NO
Tome: Evolution path permitted!
Animal: Evolution path permitted!
Conflict resolved.
Admin (Carl): There. What a headache. Blasted thing will most likely be dead in a couple of hours anyway.
The paper disappeared. An instant later, the turkey began jerking spasmodically, her feathers ruffling as she tried to get her body under control. It was no mean task, but when she did manage to calm herself, a rippling shimmer passed over her body, leaving behind a smoother, more compact appearance.
Cool and collected once more, the turkey surveyed the clearing and noted that the squirrel colony was now staring at her warily. She walked towards one, but it darted underground, the sight of her now triggering the animal’s predator reflex. The turkey nodded to herself. She’d have to come up with a strategy if she was going to catch more of these.
Arrival: Legends of Arenia Book 1 (A LitRPG Story) Page 22