I breathe.
There’s a fire in front of us. I lit it by freeform-casting a crappy version of Jess’ spell. It took me a ton of mana, and it’s a pale imitation, but that’s okay. It still works. There’s a few roots and leaves, as well as chunks of more plantmatter floating in a water-filled pot. Richard stirs it, occasionally adding pinches of salt from that treasure baggie of hers.
[Level Up! 48 > 49]
We fought. There weren’t a lot of enemies, but we did fight them, and we won. There were a few levels, spread across the group. And now, we also have a reason to level.
In front of me hovers the guild menu. It has a single, simple line.
[Petition by Jess Chavez: “Regroup on the fourth floor?” Y/N]
Looking at my level, I nod. Yes. The fourth floor. That makes more sense than trying to find anyone in the green labyrinth.
[Vote confirmed. Yes (7) / No (0). Pending Votes: 4]
Richard hands me a bowl of soup. “Eat,” she says, gently. And she’s right. I need it.
After a few days of marching, I can feel the way my injured legs still baulk at the task. They’re heavy and tired and hurt, but that’s okay. I funnel healing into them whenever I have it available, and bit by bit, the scar tissue is breaking apart, replaced by healthy muscle and flexible skin.
It takes time, though. And calories. I’ve been eating more, since the forest has enough for all of us, though for each kill we also scatter some biomatter on the ground, to rot and compost and feed the forest itself. Most of the time, nothing happens, but sometimes, the Earthmother gives a tiny note of appreciation. Not true gratitude, more a mutual understanding that that is how things should be. Take what you need, leave the rest for scavagers.
There’s a bizarre and primal fairness to it. One that I’m not entirely comfortable with, but I can at least deal with it for the time being. “Thank you,” I tell Richard, taking the food and eating it. Despite everything, this tastes okay. Decent, even. I close my eyes, and let the moment pass, feeling the trickle of mana returning to my vessel.
As soon as it’s back to halfway full, I start practicing again. Breaking and building spellforms I expect to see, building on my library of skills and how to deal with them by asking the others to use theirs on me.
I watch as Norman’s aura spreads around. As Opal Meditates over their sword. As Richard gently snaps as the embers of the fire, and as Amelie sends out yet more puppets.
Out of all of us, she is the most able to deal with this. Her ability has more range than any of ours, and its even able to function autonomously, to some degree. She just sits there, sometimes moving her fingers, and near-invisible strings move through the air. Then, she’ll look through her notifications, and smile.
There’s something sinister about that, knowing that she’s most likely killing things. Or, maybe, just chasing off? For supremacy levels, it likely doesn’t matter that much. She really does work just like a necromancer.
I finish my soup, and then make sure that Amelie has eaten hers, before Richard devours the fire and what’s left of the food. As dust turns to darkness, Bile digs us yet another hole, and we spend the night deep underground, in a chamber with just a little more air than we need. Of course, I’ve also asked Bile to demonstrate his skills for me and added them to my mental library.
Stoneshaping is cool, and I wanna learn it. There’s nothing quite like a good trap. The thought reminds me of Bay, and the fact that my headphones are already almost out again. It’s only been a few days, but frankly, it’s a miracle my phone has lasted that long before needing a recharge, even though I’m using it just as a glorified usb player.
When we meet up on the fourth floor, I need to either learn how to charge them myself, or make sure Bay remains within magic distance at all times. A small sigh leaves my lips. I’ll miss the music when it’s gone, but I’ll miss the quiet more than that. At least I’ll still have [Suppression]. Or maybe one of these days I could just rupture my eardrums, and regrow them when I wanna hear again?
Smiling faintly, I shake my head. What silly thoughts. Reminding myself of the bloody murderand mystery diving I really wanted to do, I close my eyes, and drift off to sleep.
- - -
You’d think waking up buried alive would be easier the second time around. But I really can’t say that it is.
There’s an instinctive need to try and breathe as tons of earth come crashing down on my chest. I gasp for air, but all that finds my lungs is dirt, dirt, and more dirt. It’s heavy. So much heavier than I usually ever realize. From sleeping peacefully one moment, I go to getting crushed the very next.
A moment passes. My heart beats in my chest, straining against the oppressive weight to expand and contract while my lungs refuse to. It pumps once, twice, three times. Then, the earth around me turns liquid, and I bob to the surface a moment later.
The world’s all wrong. The canopy up above, which should have eclipsed the eyes, is gone. Instead, there’s a deep darkness in the sky, and a thousand eyeballs stare down at me. Their invasive voyeurism pierces through my bones, staring at me, eating at me. As if I’m some sort of toy for them to play with, to laugh at, to scorn whenever they please.
It disgusts me. But it’s not the only thing wrong with the world. There’s a purple haze in the air, drifting and sliding across the floor almost like a liquid. When I gasp for air, it fills my lungs with the smell of ozone and lavender. It tasted like rain and a thunderstorm, it tastes like broken promises.
And then, there is a hitch. A moment of quiet. My [Intuition] screams, alarm bells ringing out with burning fury in my head. I throw myself to the ground, and instantly deploy a brutal suppression field around me. It’s as dense and efficient as I can make it, weaving myself in layer after layer of protective weakening magic.
A bolt of lightning slams into me. It draws figures across my skin, through my flesh, sending me spasming and gasping on the ground. The flash of light is so bright it hurts my eyes, and I feel like a fish out of water. The pain whispers of how it smashed through my protections, how it seared me despite everything I put in, and I feel the ache.
Despite that, I focus.
Letting the pain run its course, letting it be part of me, I still fight. The vestiges of arcing electricity in my body lash me with pain, and so, I reach for them. I break them apart, into tiny motes of mana, fuelling my vessel, and regenerating some of my flesh with my healing spell.
Tiny pieces of an ability gather inside my head. [Memorize] records every bit of intel I can gain on the pattern of the attack, and next time, I’ll defend better. I blink the white, blinding pain from my eyes, when there’s another roll of thunder.
It slams into me like a shockwave, the noise making me ears ring. I look over to see Bile behind a broken wall of earth, thrown back by the remaining force. Opal appears somewhere in the distance, wielding their sword. It glows with magic, with the memory of bloodshed, I think, but they don’t see the enemy.
Where is it? What is it?
I focus. Even as a lightning bold arcs across a dozen of Amelie’s puppets, searing their strings to ash, even as I pick pieces off of the remaining energy. I lean into [Observation]. My mana spreads out of me, the attunement loop dropping away and revealing the anger of it all.
My mana’s untamed rage appears, all of a sudden. The very idea of being suppressed, of being caged and stored seems inadequate. It’s alive, it wants to be used, it wants to influence the world. It wants to pour out of me - and I don’t deny it. Instead, I channel and direct it.
There’s a sort of ambient pressure in it all, a faint tingle in the air as more of my mana suffuses it, but it all flows into [Observation], powering that field of knowledge. I reach out with tendrils of ethereal power, grasping, feeling the forest. Another bolt of lightning arcs through the field, and I can almost barely glimpse where it came from.
[Selection] latches onto the scattering remnants of the ability. There’s a tiny, flimsy thread of connection that I follow along, trailing it with my field of [Observation]. It reshapes from a spherical bubble to a single, long tendril, lancing along the connection, seeking, twisting.
Blood pours from my nose. My mana, wild and free, streams forward, further and further, straining my ability to control it. It’s so far out, I can barely feel it anymore, and yet, it still provides feedback to me. I push, and push harder, sending it crawling, inching just a little further, a little closer to the source of the lightning.
And then, I touch something.
[Observation 9 > 10]
My eyes bleed, too, but I point. “That way! About three hundred steps!” I yell, and a moment later, Opal and Norman vanish. Amelie nods gravely, and I see her army of plantlife puppets rise up and stalk forward. She, for her own part, is weaving her strings between the trees, as if creating cocoon-like shields.
And me? I run off, too, Bile by my side, grasping, pulling at that distant presence. Beckoning it to tell me more about it, what it is, what it wants. And then, in one shiver of environmental mana, there is a twist in the tower, and it tells me.
[Congratulations!]
The menu declares it like it’s an accomplishment.
[You have discovered a Boss. The Earthmother approves your battle. She watches.]
And then, I’m close enough for [Observation] to tell me what I’m looking at. It’s a tiger. A large, truck-sized tiger, with skin made of bark, and a crown of blackened vine wreathing around her forehead. Her eyes blaze in azure hues, electricity arcing from them, and she regards us like ants.
The good news? This means we’re probably far enough from the bright priest.
The bad news? Norman laying on the ground, twitching and smoking.
I grit my teeth. Then, my mana lashes out again, not as a tendril or an eye or a gentle touch, but as a weapon. It turns into a cleaver meant to hack apart bones and slams into the tiger’s leg. Bark breaks, for but a moment, and the boss roars. The world fades into the background. There’s nothing left to do but fight.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter