Daniel called out his insights as fast as he could. Clipped battle speech didn’t help clarity much, though ‘we’re killing the impalers’ was more concise than the minutes of thought process he’d spent coming to that decision. It was another reminder that he wasn’t the best leader out of Wingcraft, but Moment of Clarity helped him fill in for the real one.
Though he moved at top speed, he was wary as he reached where the ground leveled in the center of the stadium. He’d fought one monster already that could manipulate barriers at whim, though the warden didn’t seem to have completely overpowered abilities like Casia had. There was also the benefit that he could see where its hands were pointing, as well as the purple shields themselves. Further, it appeared the barriers had to be flat, meaning the warden couldn’t lock someone down with a dome like the one around it. All things considered it wasn’t that strong an ability on its own for this level, since Willow could already deflect attacks while at a level disadvantage.
That didn’t change the infuriating sting of watching his next shot get completely blocked by a barrier that also caught Khiat’s arrows. With the impalers closer to the rift they were having a harder time firing on separate angles. He’d have to get around to the other side, and remember to keep track of his ammo. Five shots, yeah, two more before I have to switch.
“Daniel!” His head jerked at Willow’s shout, ready to respond to whatever trouble she was in, only to find she’d been deposited in a far corner away from trouble with the still surviving spark pterodactyl to act as a shield. If she was fine, then-
The Dodge Roll came too late as he felt something pierce his back. The ability still helped, increasing his body’s resistance to the damage as the armor around it was broken. It was still a blinding pain that could have incapacitated him if he hadn’t already gone through getting cut in half and slowly healing from the wound. One of the javelins had hit him from behind, and the point of the long weapon was now sticking out up and to the left of his navel.
He’d been careful to keep eyes on the impalers and none of them had been aiming for him. How had they hit him? Daniel gritted his teeth as he took hold of the spike and yanked it out. The blood loss wasn’t too bad, and his armor soon closed over the wound even if his skin would remain broken for a time. He was in no state to check his phone for active debuffs, but it didn’t feel like the glowing javelin had afflicted him with anything.
Another came for him, and once past the initial shock he figured out what was going on. “The impalers are pulling their weapons back towards them, watch out!” he shouted to warn the team, noticing as one of the monsters covertly made the motion they normally used to call a weapon from the rift. Instead of one appearing from the center, a half-buried javelin shot out from behind Daniel and into its hands.
Makes fighting in the center harder, but at least they don’t explode, Daniel thought optimistically, still aware the monsters would upgrade two more times before they would kill everything here.
The injury was slowing him down, and he was forced to fire a shot at about halfway across the side of the ‘court’ he was on or else waste too much time getting in position at the far end. Charging the center or one of the impalers had occurred to him, but he wanted to be careful about his angle of fire. With what he was reloading now, a messy close combat might see incidental fire becoming friendly.
The hope was to kill the back two impalers, and then collapse on the last one in the center before it could benefit from whatever grade 4 did. There was no way the warden could block circular fire from himself, Khiat, Khare, and Tlara’s shock runner.
Another Dodge Roll brought him closer, but the quick movement also made something in him shift as a modest amount of blood oozed from his back. He tried to pay it no mind, assured Regeneration would fix everything in the end. Instead of wondering just how screwed his digestive system currently was, Daniel brought his blast bow level with the impaler fighting around one of the back goalposts, side-stepped the javelin it had tried to backstab him with, and used Snap Shot.
Even if the aiming ability had difficulty with the way splitting ammunition fractured post-shot, it at the very least helped keep the barrel trained on his target. Daniel was prepared for a shield to come up and block the shot, but he was lucky this time. The warden’s two free hands were already dealing with other threats and were unable to rotate in time as his shot devastated the impaler. It had tried to dodge, but some of the split projectiles still caught it to terrible effect on its body.
It didn’t emit purple energy, however, and after a moment to reign himself in Daniel didn’t finish it.
“Keep this one alive for now!” Daniel called out, then set his sights on the other one in the backline. Shuni was shadow-dancing around it, trying to find an opening, but it seemed the impalers were wise to her tricks and able to keep her at bay while otherwise unmolested. From the entries of Sneak Attack and Khiat’s old Critical Strikes he knew enemy awareness played a role in some powers, and this was likely hampering the team’s Rogue.
“Think you can distract him for me?” Shuni asked, noticing his approach. “Having trouble beating their perception.”
“I could just kill it,” Daniel countered, not opposed to kill sharing in principle but also eager to finish off the things trying to pincushion him from two sides.
“Not until I give you the signal.”
“What?” Daniel was confused, until he noticed he’d stopped registering Shuni’s scent. The Rogue was still standing next to him, only she wasn’t. He realized instantly what she was doing and played along, resorting to Grow Feathers for short-range trading of blows while being mindful of incoming fire. At the least Sigron was holding down the maulers, and it seemed the remaining crawlers had gone to the edges of the stadium to try and stop Tlara from running circles around them.
He didn’t stop Khiat and Khare from going all out though. If they managed a kill and ruined Shuni’s plan, he’d try and target the warden itself. As far as it was concerned, Shuni was fighting with him, attempting to stab the impaler in time with his bursts of razor feathers. If you were looking for it, you could see how the Rogue’s illusion just missed attacks that had a fair chance of striking the monster, and she was very careful to avoid the times when the monster tried to strike out with a fist.
It was, of course, her shadow clone. Daniel didn’t know the actual power’s name but he was going to call it that until someone corrected him. He hadn’t known it could mimic fighting though, she’d only used it for a jumpscare back when it had been shown off. The arcadians had greater coordination and were perhaps sentient, though not likely sapient, and wouldn’t have missed the fact that it was a complete illusion if she’d tried to use it alone as a distraction. Instead, they were making it look like Daniel was, providing real projectiles for the impaler to dodge, while shadow clone Shuni kept trying and failing to go for a kill shot.
The deception ended when the real Shuni appeared across the court, one knife repeatedly stabbing a surprised impaler while the other was plunged into its head and dragged down across the back. Hearing what was more a bird call than a word from her, Daniel capitalized on the opportunity by Jumping straight at that last uninjured impaler, pressing the blast bow to its head, and firing.
It was a move only made possible by taking the warden off guard, as otherwise it could have thrown up a barrier to divert his flight. When Shuni had revealed herself it had adjusted the hand directed to Daniel’s impaler slightly, which itself had grown puzzled by the shadow clone’s disappearance.
Khare was not keen on disappointing either, reacting to the mark Daniel had flashed through their bond on the downed impaler. Using their twin bows, they finished the kill seconds before the next man’s pulse fired off.
25%, Daniel thought with wide eyes, a tremendous resurgence in his mana reserve flooding in as a heavier ephemeral oomph issued from the rift in the center. Unlike the last two times its brightness did not increase in intensity, but the areas of black mixed in diminished to make a purer purple. The arcadians, as expected, did go up one grade to 3.
“Everyone back off, clear the center!” Daniel shouted, Jumping to the nearest bleachers to follow his own order. “Let’s see what they can do now and- holy shit!”
The arcadian crawlers doubled in size, the one nearest him going from a ways away to within arms reach. They didn’t suffer for it, though, as something odd happened to the upward-rising joints of their legs. It seemed they now could walk on the ceiling with their inverted knees, which somehow enabled the lower limb to function as an independent spearing weapon while moving. As if that wasn’t enough, the ends of the barbs all across the body took on a purple sheen as they mimicked the mauler’s maces.
Why have that on their weapons if it doesn’t do anything? Daniel wondered, still confused. As for the maulers themselves, there was no obvious change. A grunt from Sigron told him it must have been a hidden attribute boost, as a blocked attack in the next moment almost threw the Knight off of his feet.
As for what grade 3 held in store for the warden? Third hand. If they’d killed the maulers before rushing the impalers, it would have been far more difficult to kill them. The warden could also now form a triangle of barriers if it so wished, fully protecting or trapping something if it focused on it.
“Sigron, can you hold off those maulers?” He asked from across the stadium, already charging a Power Shot. He got an unclear grunt in reply, but when the Knight didn’t clarify further or run away Daniel decided to leave it to him. “Get acid on the other crawler. Archers, wound the maulers if you can but try not to kill them. We, oh, no you don’t!”
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He was now closest to the opposite corner of where they’d come in, which was also where Willow was taking cover. The enlarged crawler practically filled all of the space between them, the underside of its central mass scraping against the higher rows of benches. Daniel had been ready to kite around its edges until he could get off an armor-breaking shot, but it appeared more interested in going after Willow after receiving its upgrade.
The speed of the monster showed little of its bulkiness, even now. From its aura Daniel knew Tlara currently possessed the shock runner, though all of her summoned monsters would take the damage for her sister. It was little comfort when the spark pterodactyl looked like it wouldn’t survive a blow either.
He ran up and grabbed onto one of the dangling spear legs as the crawler moved, trusting the rest of the team to manage themselves. Power Shot required he keep one hand on his weapon so he couldn’t put all his weight behind it, and what’s more he had to hold onto a barb rather than the leg itself due to the sheer size of the thing.
Despite straining himself, he couldn’t slow it. What’s worse, the seemingly smooth surface of the barb was sharp to touch, and the surface of his hand was shredded as he gripped it. Daniel was forced to pull away, noting with concern and confusion that a trace of purple had briefly been left behind in the wound before it faded. He didn’t feel any lingering effects beyond the pain, same as the stab wound, but something had been there.
He raised his weapon, ready to release about a 35% Power Shot, but Willow waved him off. She wasn’t cowering, but was instead preparing to strike out against the monster when it came for her. Vaporous mana gathered around her as she activated Spirit Strike, and the sight of the ability eased his concerns a bit. If that attack could somehow bypass armor, could she one shot crawlers with it? There was a lot they still had to figure out about her powers, as his Encyclopedia was fairly vague about them.
Daniel kept pace with the crawler, preparing a retaliatory shot at the closest leg joint to Willow in case her gambit failed. The spark pterodactyl was close enough that it would take the damage from the first hit, no matter how heavy.
Willow struck first, trailing white energy as she chopped toward the leg that was angling to stab her. The form was honestly bad, not that Daniel was an expert at hand to hand combat as he was, but neither could she miss her target. It was inevitable that she take some form of retaliatory damage based on how the crawler’s hide was covered in spikes, and he grimaced as he saw a small cut form on her hand while nothing appreciable was done to the crawler in exchange.
Daniel was now ready to release Power Shot, aiming at where the spear leg was now freely rotating off of the knee, but he was too slow. The tip of the leg shot forward as if pressurized, connected by a thick ligament he knew hadn’t been part of the crawler’s biology before reaching the grade.
Willow was stabbed through the heart, the Spirit Master barely retaining enough awareness to scramble off as her bond assisted in removing the stuck in weapon.
His shot punctured the joint in the next moment, and though the end of the legs seemed changed, the rest of the monster was still hollow. In fact, it seemed the improved version of the crawler had introduced weak points in exchange for the other upgrades. He wasn’t concerned with that at the moment, or the fact that he had just progressed the arcadians to grade 4.
“Willow, are you ok?”
She was holding her chest, armor reforming around where it had been hit. It seemed her body had been uninjured thanks to the bond, the wound either instantly healing or her body pushed around the leg until it had been removed. “I think so, but, Tlara’s monster. Something happened to it.”
He went over to the now dead spark pterodactyl, first seeing the hole in its chest approximately where Willow’s would have been. There was also the small cut that had been transferred over to the wing, and-
As he looked for it, a sudden change overcame the pterodactyl. Spreading first from the wing, and then the torso, the body rapidly crystallized into a similar substance as the rift javelins. Cracks then formed, and soon after it was a pile of broken shards. The next mana pulse came as he stared blankly at the remains, returning a third of his mana, more than he needed to get back to full.
He looked between what had been the spark pterodactyl and Willow and knew there was yet another way they were taking this encounter wrong. Every battle up until this point had trained Daniel to use mana conservatively. It’d trained all of them to do so, but the rift would give them more than their maximum amount on top of the passive regeneration over the course of the fight.
Too passive, too defensive. Daniel considered his thoughts on a possible dual-channeling technique and dropped the time-bending part. Reaching out a hand, anger welling in him for the fate Willow had just escaped, Daniel attempted to tear the arms off the warden with Telekinetic Reach, which now numbered six in total.
He grunted with effort as the magic worked, penetrating the barriers as if they weren’t there. The other three hands shot toward him, but he was still out of their reach, while the fourth one on the top was completely locked in his force grip.
Mana began draining from him rapidly, a percent a second at least, and increasing as the other hands latched on to fight the effect. Still, not enough.
Rorshawd had used this power to incapacitate the greatest technical fighter Daniel had ever known. It was his best way to convert raw mana into a way to overpower someone, with commensurate costs. So it was that he sacrificed a fifth of his mana for one of the warden’s arms, and by the looks of it, it couldn’t just reattach the torn off limb.
There was something visceral to the base pleasure he reaped as he latched onto one of the two arms planted on the ground, finding less resistance in breaking that one as the upper arms coming off the neck couldn’t effectively reach down there.
Standing in front of Willow, Daniel fought with the warden at a distance, his body mirroring what he was doing mentally. When the third arm went along with the majority of his mana, the purple barrier behind him and at every corner vanished, though the one around the warden remained.
Less effective than the blast bow against things like the crawlers, Daniel thought retrospectively. I couldn’t tear the whole thing in half even if I used all my mana. It’s inefficient, too expensive for things my level. Forget anything higher. But damn is it satisfying.
“Tlara, get Willow!” Daniel yelled over to the shock runner, who was trying to dodge the crawler. Grade 4 had upped its speed, and it seemed the monster was steadily evolving from a ponderously slow tank to a large, durable, yet agile hunter. Fortunately there was only one left, and he’d both partially crippled the warden and removed the barriers over the exit. Not that they were running. What happened to the spark pterodactyl did concern him, but he’d taken a hit and not had his hand or torso crystallize. Maybe it was some effect that triggered on death, making the body unrecoverable. It wouldn’t make sense for the monsters to have that, unless the rifts could be used to revive people as he’d always hoped. He consciously ignored the fact that he had lost Hunter’s body and pressed on.
There was one crawler, two maulers, and the warden remaining. He didn’t like the look of the crawler, and while there were a few noticeable rents in Sigron’s armor, the Knight didn’t appear in distress. He was also still holding them off of the two archers behind him, who were at the same time wounding the two maulers. It had been effective until grade 4, when the mace-wielding monsters had grown thicker armor and apparently healed or were passively healing some of the damage.
Daniel had little need to redirect the team, other than Tlara, who he was about to swap with. Jumping, he used his free hand and feet to deflect the leg that tried to pierce him on the approach. He did take the retaliatory damage as always, but at least his boots protected some of the damage.
Rather than charge another Power Shot, Daniel let loose with a quick barrage of Scatter Shot empowered blasts, emptying his entire load of ammunition into the nearest leg joint. It was honestly wasteful, he didn’t have too many of the splitting ammo magazines made, though he was about to get a lot more mana and had a nearly endless supply of wolf bones compared to the dwindling fur stash.
Despite the fact that his weapon was bolt action, he still managed the kill in less than ten seconds. Combining the action of loading another round with casting Scatter Shot effectively eliminated the cast time of the spell. Another stream of purple headed toward the center to pass by the now mostly impotent warden.
Now moving to join Sigron, he did wonder why the maulers hadn’t retreated to benefit from the warden’s shields, but he wasn’t going to overly question a bad decision on his enemy’s part. With everyone in the party having realized as well they could be freer with their mana, and having maintained a numbers advantage, their momentum in the fight was unstoppable.
Another Jump cleared most of the distance back to Sigron, though the height of the chamber did limit him somewhat. If anything, this fight had helped Daniel remember some of his lesser-used powers after ‘just fly around and shoot things’ became a suboptimal strategy.
“Focus your attacks on this one!” Daniel called out to Khiat and Khare, flashing his mark for emphasis for the gestalt. He had his last six rounds of splitting ammunition loaded, though at this point using solid slugs wouldn’t be that detrimental either.
I’m going to have to be careful with positions. Daniel looked around and realized he’d lost track of Shuni. Since there wasn’t a gray-feathered body lying around he took it as her activating some kind of super stealth skill and just shouted a warning for her not to get close to the maulers.
As the rest of the team began whittling down one mauler, he steadily blew off the arms of the other. It took two shots each and good timing to avoid friendly fire, but over the next two minutes one mauler was killed while the other was disarmed.
One last mana pulse got sent out, restoring an insane 50% of his mana while sending the remaining two monsters to grade 5. It wouldn’t help them. The last remaining mauler got a bit taller, and the wounds on its shoulders rapidly closed as it benefitted from a Regeneration-like effect faster than Daniel’s, which had still yet to completely fix his earlier stab wound. Familiar with the difficulties of regrowing limbs, he knew it would take too long for it to make more maces before they took it down.
On the warden’s side? He was worried as the center of all remaining palms glowed and began charging as if to release a laser, only for Shuni to appear inside the barrier, wrap around the back, and mercilessly rip open the torso while tearing at one of the neck-arms with a beak. He actually stopped what he was doing to watch the carnage, the mauler ineffectually thumping him in the back with its mass.
She’s fighting like Tak, just with knives instead of claws. Damn. The sound of wind shearing briefly snuck up behind him before the mailer collapsed, one of Khiat’s arrows having done enough to slay the last mauler. His fear of the last monster standing getting a final upgrade didn’t pan out, and Shuni had pretty much eviscerated the warden as it was. The barrier around it began to fade as a twelfth purple stream made a short journey to the rift, which decided to surprise the team with a pulse completely refilling their mana and then some. The overflow did give his seventh sense an odd tingling, but the excess mana he had was decaying and he could fire off abilities worst case to drain it.
“It was bad at times, but now that I’ve seen everything they have I would say they were about our level compared to monsters on the outside,” Daniel commented out loud, feeling the adrenaline rush out of him to be replaced by relief. “Thanks, Sigron,” he said in a lower tone meant only for the Knight. “You were fighting those guys for almost the entire time. I know you didn’t get any of the kills, but we wouldn’t have pulled it off without you.”
The half-choking noise the Knight made in reply made him turn rapidly, and upon closer inspection it became clear he couldn’t relax just yet. With no other enemies present, Sigron had dropped his guard and was clutching at some of the wounds the maces had struck past his armor. Through one of the holes, Daniel could see the Knight’s skin turning black and purple as it began to crystallize.
