PoV: Snow Okiyama - Ion
Opal appears next to me, and a second later, Thatch comes down the ramp, covered in blood. I stare at him, but say nothing. Instead, I wait. I hold my breath for a second, then two…
And then, the first of them comes.
It’s the vanguard. A woman, clad in iron, her face bloodied, and flames licking at her skin and armor. She growls and snarls, charging into us like a raging bull. Which is, frankly, a terrible plan.
But it is effective. A half-dozen attacks crash into her armor and do just about nothing, which makes the blood Thatch made her shed all the more impressive. He’s panting and looks like shit, but she’s hurt, too.
So we set our plan in motion.
The first step is to get them all down here. That shouldn’t be too troublesome; I can already feel the others pressing in on the edge of my [Observation]. The spellblade, then the priest and soothsayer. But we need to buy time - which is where Amelie comes in. I give her a nod, and the girl returns it.
Her task is stalling. And we prepared sufficiently. Our puppeteer has covered the entrance after the ramp very thoroughly in a spiderweb. With simple twists of her hands, threads upon threads crash down on the vanguard. They sink into the joints of her armor, and the raging woman rips dozens apart with each motion.
But there’s always more. Amelie has been spinning this web of hers for nearly a month, and she is a spider, after all. Threads woven from mana, silk and bone all wrap around the vanguard. She struggles and tears at them, the iron of her armor writhing to shift into blades and spikes, and yet, her movements slow.
The threads dig into the wounds on her skin, worming inside of her, and the woman screams in pain. I watch and wait.
It takes three seconds for the spellblade to enter, and then one second for her to shred the web we so meticulously set up. Her sword flashes out a dozen times, coated in trails of light and shadow, and she swiftly frees her companion. “Get it together, Igrys!” the spellblade cries.
And then, her blade flickers and does something dangerous. I lean forward and watch as she cuts at the rage implanted in the vanguard by Thatch. There’s an aura to the motion, a pressure. Not from a skill, but from something deeper.
Instantly, the woman’s eyes clear up, and she grits her teeth. Igrys, the vanguard, shifts the metal coating her, and it flows away, thinning, becoming a new shield for her to wield.
For a moment, I wonder if she needs one to channel her skills. Then, I throw myself to the ground when it rapidly soars through us, slamming into the distant walls and embedding itself ten feet into the earth.
I feel as Norman works even harder to hide us, to buy us just a little more time. Then, from above, comes the soothsayer’s voice. “It’s a trap,” Orri says calmly. “Get out. We all die down there.”
And that makes me click my tongue. Igrys, the vanguard, instantly has her eyes widen. She turns for just a moment, but by then it’s too late.
Bile brings up the stone wall. I wanted Ezekiel down here, but this is fine. These two are more dangerous than the others. They’re variables. I don’t have their loadout archived. So I activate my trap.
[Job up! Imbuer 19 > 24]
[Level Up! 62 > 64]
[Inscription 18 > 21]
[Congratulations!]
[Advancement achievement completed! Your masterpiece is accepted. You may change your job upon achieving the level threshold.]
Mana pours into me as I advance, the tower finally taking notice of what I made. And it most certainly is an enchantment. Mana doesn’t just thrum around us, it roars.
It’s denser than anything I’ve felt outside of the tower itself. The mana is so dense I can feel it, tasting faintly like ash on my tongue. It distorts the world, moving it a shade towards greyscale with the density.
We’ve bought a dozen minor mana-cores and installed them into the array to act as batteries, in addition to the power the runes themselves hold, and it’s also connected to me. For the first time in a month, I drop my attunement loop, and instantly, I feel the pressure.
My vessel wants to crack and burst, but my new epitaph holds it in place. There is work for me to do, after all. And this grand array, a titanic room filled to the brim with power, exists for only one thing. One thing alone. It’ll be burnt out in five minutes, but for those five minutes, in this place, magic breaks.
[Suppression 24 > 25]
My skill breaks through the second threshold. The bottleneck snaps and shatters, and I cast it through the massive array. Because that’s the wonder of it.
[Selection 21 > 23]
It’s targeted. I designate the vanguard and the spellsword, and instantly, they crumple to the floor. It’s as if a titanic hammer fell on their heads. Mana that I should never have is at my fingertips. I burn through a torrent of the stuff to throw them to the ground, and yet, right next to me, Opal [Blinks]. They appear in front of the spellsword, and the woman grits her teeth.
Despite the massive amount of resistance, she moves. She fights. She even matches Opal blow for blow, her speed and power great enough to do so. But then, Richard bites her leg.
The little hiy’ht chews through her armor in a second, pulling her footing away, and Opal’s blade ruthlessly exploits the chance. I feel the vanguard try to move, to capitalize, but Amelie has one more surprise. An army of skeletons pours from alcoves, throwing themselves on the massive woman, slowing her down, and so do I.
Norman ensures we stay safe. Richard, Thatch and Opal take down the spellblade. Amelie and I hold down the vanguard.
Another, more personal cast of [Suppression] flows out of me and into the vanguard. She was drained by Sylves on the third floor, hurt by Flamando on the fourth, chased, punched, burnt, and led into a trap. I press down on her with a gigantic formation, my own unrestrained, vastly overlevelled mana, and a skeleton army.
And still she rises.
Somehow, she gets up from the floor. She reaches out, and her shield begins to hum, as if trying to return to her, and even as I try to shatter the spell, it holds. Oh, it chips, alright. It’s a thin, pathetic version of the spell. So, the shield hovers towards her slowly, instead of carving through my neck like a lightning bolt.
An aura spills from her, pressing against my suppression. It’s not made from mana, but it’s unmistakably full of power. Violent, steadfast power.
She rises, and I summon a sword made of solid mana. It brims in this place, drinking from the enchantments based on my skills. That’s what being an imbuer is all about - distilling my own abilities into runes. And then, the array reinforces my hastily imbued temporary construct, until it turns from a dagger into a longsword.
I swing it, just as the woman tries to bash my nose in with her shield.
Her power is hampered severely, thrice, four times over, and she still matches mine. I swing at her, and she parries me aside, a blast of force pushing my sword away, then moves to sweep out my legs, only for more skeletons to throw themselves at her. She crushes the puppets, and steps towards me again. I break a lance of metal that rises from her armor, forming mana needles to pierce into her joints.
She’s forced to break them, because the dispelling would have killed her. But as she moves her shield arm out, I refine my [Suppression]. I target only the weak points. I mimic Norman, making some of my mana needles sneakier.
My brain overloads again, pushed too far by myself, and a bit of blood trickles from my eyes, but a single needle hits. A sneaky, half-translucent blue-grey spear of mana sinking into the joint just behind her knee.
[Solidification 17 > 18]
The vanguard goes down. And then, there’s a gurgle next to me. A heartbeat passes. Then another. And then, Thatch bursts through the skeleton army, and slams a fist into the woman’s face that pulps it. As I watch her die, she just looks… surprised. As if it hadn’t been meant to go that way.
Thatch slams his fists into her a second time, then takes a deep breath. I see him get up, and then deactivate the enchantment.
The fight only lasted one minute. Not because of the enchantment, but because of me.
Keeping it up took its toll, and I taste iron and ash. But despite that, I laugh. In front of us, there are two corpses. And above, I can already hear the sound of fighting. And the familiar warmth of someone very dear to me.
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