That was difficult, Eric thought. These dark elf mages have some powerful abilities, and some level of dimensional magic since they can negate my meteor strike.
[On the plus side, you are going to get a ton of Embers from this.]
That brought Eric a bit of satisfaction and he re-activated his Bristling Bastion which had been broken across most of his body. Taking in the surrounding space, he took particular note of the opaque, shimmering barrier that only occasionally caught his eyes, that extended across the street about a hundred feet ahead. Moving forward, he saw that the billowing smoke and ash cloud of his Skill seemed to bounce off of it.
Looking from side to side, he saw an open door with crushed glowstone laid down in the shape of an arrow, which guided him exactly where he needed to go. Entering the building, he willed his destructive shroud to destroy everything it touched, scouring the place clean of all of the furniture and decorations that could possibly hide something.
As he walked down the hallway, he thought, The Mage Quarter seems like it might be one of the most hazardous parts—
Naomi’s voice on the bracer interrupted his thoughts. “Checking in.”
Shannon’s response came back via a text on her bracer: [I’m busy sneaking into the bank.]
“I’m fighting mages,” Eric replied. “Check-ins every five?”
“Yes,” Naomi replied. “Peter is good—just moving some big shit out of the way.”
Eric deactivated the bracer and made sure to set it to voice-to-text, so that Naomi’s words wouldn’t break through in an inopportune moment. He continued his walk through the house, and spotted something glimmering on the ground. Freezing in place, he silently thanked past-him, because his Glimmertrap Eyedrops had just warned him about a magical trap. Without the Body Enhancement, there would have been no way to see…whatever it was.
Lowering himself to the floor, he closed his left eye and planted his right cheek to the wood. He could see tiny crystals scattered along the ground. Pulling himself up and backing away, he fired off Blackflame Evocation. The five spheres blipped out of existence, slammed into the ground…and did nothing.
Well, Eric thought, I can’t destroy the trap with a Rote. It’s either avoid, activate, or figure out where the arcane mark is that I can overload.
He couldn’t see anything of note aside from the empty hall and the trap, so he thought about the optimal solution. The best would be to just avoid the trap. Recalling back to what he had done previously in the first floor of the Twilight Depths, he jumped up, planted his arms and legs on both walls, and spider-climbed his way over the trap.
Then the walls moved. They pulled back, as if controlled by some hidden mechanism, and Eric fell down, face-first, onto the substance below.
Bang!
The crystals all detonated and Eric was sent slamming up to the ceiling, then landed back down on the floor once more. He groaned in pain and rolled over. Everything hurt, and he used Blacksteel Healing to mend himself. But, his armor had been nearly destroyed, and even his Cinderscale Shroud and the incorporated armored plates did nothing against this type of blunt damage from being ragdolled.
He barely pushed himself up on his arms when the walls opened, and more of the dark elves descended upon him in a swarm. Six of them, all wielding dual daggers, with blazing, purple auras that surrounded their bodies and kept Eric’s cinder cloud from affecting them. Eric willed his summoned weapons into existence to intercept the foes and buy him a moment to recover.
Getting up all the way, Eric could see his weapons were shattered, and the dark elf assassins closed in and began their assault with renewed vigor. They were not suffering from any Blackflame Blazes personally—the burns were upon their barriers—and thus Eric had no incoming healing or mana restoration. He had just learned a massive downside to his Trait: if the thing on fire had no health to siphon, he was fucked.
The dagger blows came raining in from all sides, and his natural reaction speed thanks to the Body Enhancements was enough to dodge a good portion of the blows, but other strikes stabbed into his scaled, armor-incorporating form. He could feel the impacts, and little cuts that then spiked with pain as the black ferrofluid cut through his skin, muscle, and deep into his body. Eric didn’t waste a single moment: he activated Blackflame Eruption, and placed the effect right under his feet.
Oily, almost black liquid pooled beneath him, then seared skyward: a fifty-foot-long, and five-foot-wide line of Blackflame that encompassed his whole body, burned more of the dark elves’ shields, and forced them back. Once more, Eric used Blacksteel Healing, but thanks to the amount of healing he had been forced to do from the damage of both the mines and the weird, metal-spike poison, he was fully drained. Tapping into his mana skin, he refilled to the brim.
The eruption faded, and Eric used the gap to activate another combo: Blackmana Shield for a Sigil—down to eighteen—and Mana Channel.
If I can generate more mana than the damage they are putting out and the shield is taking, then I can stay safe and rely on my Reservoir Savant’s passive AOE for excess mana to deal damage.
The idea didn’t work. Eric’s barrier was attacked with such ferocity, strength, and some level of shield-dampening or negation similar to his Final Reaping, that all of his secondary reservoir’s mana was drained—leaving him with just the fifty percent maximum capacity in his Leysteel covering on the grimoire.
Eric had no choice as the damage kept coming and he began to panic from the relentless assault—he’d have to burn a lot more Sigils. In rapid succession, he used three Cinderstorms.
Bang! Fzzt!
The sounds of three near-simultaneous explosions ricocheting off of the walls was almost deafening, but Eric was surrounded by three of the Blackflame rain after-effects of the fireball-esque explosions. That, combined with the initial damage from the blasts, finally broke through the attacker’s shields, allowing his Blackflame Blazes to stack upon living creatures, and transfer both health and mana.
Eric began firing off Blackflame Evocations, interweaving Blacksteel Healing: the spheres of the flaming fury slamming into his foes and igniting them.
Then, Eric heard movement from the doorway he had entered, and turning around, saw a huge, white-purple light coalescing. His body reactively used a Flashstep thanks to its [Flareburst] evolution—down to fourteen Sigils—and he was behind the caster. The beam of radiant, white light bored a hole through the hallway where Eric had been standing.
He brought the finger-claws of his right hand to a point and drove it into the back of the caster’s skull, impaling them, and then flexed his fingers out to get a bit of a grip, and rip them out of the way.
The rogues, still very much alive, came through the hall in a single file line.
Perfect.
Eric used a Blackmana Beam, pulling as much mana as he could into it. The beam elongated and widened, completely destroying the attackers and sending them to oblivion. Ashes congealed onto the ground, and Eric’s bracer vibrated as he stood there, catching his breath.
[Interesting. Ambush tactics. And, means to negate your healing. The mega dungeon is learning about your powers, and countering it, to throw appropriate challenges.]
“It…it learns?” Eric asked.
[Beyond the first five floors? Yes. I would expect more enemies with barriers to negate your healing.]
Eric stood still, using Mana Channel to refill his primary, secondary, and tertiary reservoirs. Once he was full up, he looked at his bracer.
[You have leveled up!]
[You have 6 level-ups to process.]
[Blackflame Arcanist 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230.]
[Level 225 in Blackflame Arcanist reached! Gain access to a new Skill. You may equip your new Skill on your Loadout by spending one hour doing low-impact activities.]
[Level 225 in Blackflame Arcanist reached! Gain access to a new Trait.]
-----
New Skill:
Ash Clone 1 - The user creates a clone of themselves, which cannot be harmed, and can travel anywhere within 50-feet of the user. Skills and Rotes that the user activates may be cast from the position of the clone. 1-minute duration.
-----
New Trait:
From the Ashes 1 - The user may destroy any Ashes of conquered foes to empower their next Skill or Rote by a % equal to the number of Ashes consumed plus 1.
-----
[Choose a Skill and Trait to increase. Then repeat this five times.]
Let’s go into Bristling Bastion for all six Skill Ranks. For the Traits, five into Kindling Efficiency, and the remaining one into From the Ashes.
[Confirmed.]
[[Armored] Bristling Bastion is at Rank Transcended 10. Maximum Rank achieved. Mythicizing and resetting.]
-----
Skills:
[Armored] Bristling Bastion M1 - Enemies in the cloud have a [20% miss chance] when using anything hostile to the user. The user and allies within the cloud of ash have the mana cost of Rotes reduced by [51%].
-----
Traits:
Kindling Efficiency 10 - Whenever the user (or a Blackflame empowered ally) applies a damage-over-time effect with a Skill or Rote, they recover mana equal to [10%] of the total damage that effect is expected to deal over its full duration. This mana recovery occurs over the DOT’s duration rather than instantly. If the target dies before the DOT ends, the remaining recovery is granted immediately. This Trait can only recover mana from each target once every 5 seconds.
From the Ashes 2 - The user may destroy any Ashes of conquered foes to empower their next Skill or Rote by a [% equal to the number of Ashes consumed + 2].
-----
Eric took in a deep, shuddering breath, and then closed his eyes to re-center himself.
Alright, he thought. I’m good. I’m alive. Rough fight, but I came out on top.
He had full health and mana, and was doing okay on Sigils with thirteen remaining. Still, the fact that in two fights he had burned through seven, plus the five from restoring a few with Mana Conversion, meant he had gone through a large portion of his resources. And, he was only in the second section of what he saw as his solo challenge in the dark elf city.
Taking in a deep breath, Eric moved through the now-destroyed hallway—grabbing Ashes to toss into the storage dimension as he went—and ascended the stairs at the far end. He kept a wary eye for any possible traps—magical or mundane—and spotted a few tripwires which he stepped over. Thankfully, he was well-enough versed in the mundane type of trap thanks to learning all about them in the Shimmersand Caravan in his prior timeline that he had no problems with navigating that hazard.
He emerged on the second story of the building, and exited out of a door that led away from the street he had initially arrived on. It put him onto a second ring of the city, and he saw the glowstone arrows pointing to his left, down the street. About fifty feet from him, standing with a shield in one hand and a stave in the other, was a dark elf with hair tied up in a high knot, whose dark purple eyes bored into Eric’s.
The figure spoke in a calm, collected voice as he said, “You are unwelcome here, mage.”
Eric walked to the center of the street and clutched his grimoire in his left hand. Activating Blackmana Shield, Eric prepared for the fight he knew was coming.
One enemy? This should be easy.
The figure’s stave shifted form into a large club, and their entire body was covered with dozens of barriers, shields, and other magical fortifications. In an instant, what was once an unarmored mage was now a hulking juggernaut of arcane defenses and might.
Eric didn’t waste a second. He instantly fired off a Blackmana Beam, just using the Sigil and not pumping extra mana into the Skill. The lance of energy short forth, pierced through the layered defenses, and bored into the mage-knight’s chest. The figure collapsed to one knee, and Eric felt his Blackflame Blaze take hold. He didn’t let his foe have a single second, as he fired off Blackflame Evocations into the mega-dungeon’s monster in elf form.
The figure staggered upright and unleashed a blast of their own that cascaded forward, slammed into Eric’s shield faster than he could react, and drained away a huge chunk of his mana: dropping his primary reservoir to practically nothing.
Oh, wait. It’s a mage.
Eric grinned as he used Mana Drain, which he could still use as he kept firing off Blackflame Evocations. The five spheres of crackling flame slammed into the shields and barriers of his foe, and at the same time, the stream of blue-purple draining his foe kept flowing into him.
Yet the mage-knight kept their assault up, firing off beams of cascading, gold energy that Eric tried to dodge but couldn’t, as they seemed to travel at the speed of light itself, and there was no way he could avoid.
Then, his reflexes told him to dive to his left, and he did so. A massive, phantasmal, summoned golden sword swung down at where he had been standing, and it carved a gouge into the ground which then hissed as stone melted into lava. The superheated magical blade would have done some significant damage to Eric’s mana shield if it had struck.
Another instinct told him to dodge once more, and he ran forward as a huge mace of the same, floating, golden power slammed into where he had been standing.
Annoying, Eric thought.
He had lost focus on his Mana Drain, and when he tried to re-activate it, the stream failed to connect to his foe. The Blackflame Blaze affecting his enemy was gone, as it had burned itself out on its timer, and the shields that were taking the new hits held firm. For some reason, his burns were not refreshing.
Then, it hit him. The shields weren’t from this opponent—otherwise his Trait that did harm his foe would keep refreshing. The shields were coming from somewhere else. Looking around, he spotted several balconies on either side of the street, and had a gut instinct that there were mages up there, protecting their ally on the ground.
Rushing to the left, he kept taking hits and felt his mana drain to his Mana Skin’s reservoir. But, he got below a balcony, and unleashed a Blackflame Breath, sending the fire into the stone up above. It was incinerated, and the dark elf hiding on the balcony fell down, coated in burning agony, and crunched into the ground in front of Eric. He swiftly dispatched them with a vicious foot stomp, and moved to the next balcony to repeat his feat.
Beams kept lancing into him, and his mana was drained away fully once more, leaving him vulnerable. His Flashstep auto-activated, and he fast-traveled up to one of the balconies, and was right behind one of the hostile mages fueling the shields on the mighty spell caster in the center of the boulevard. The dark elf mage-knight seemed to have lost track of Eric with the rapid movement, and Eric used that opening, aiming a Blackmana Beam right at his head.
Down to ten Sigils, Eric thought.
The beam lanced out and removed the mage-knight’s head, sending him falling to the ground, dead from the single shot. The dark elf who Eric had been standing behind wheeled around, and Eric just let his grimoire fall loose from his fingers, grabbed the figure’s throat, and snapped it with a swift motion while letting Blackflame pour from his palms.
Other mages on the other balconies began firing off spells at Eric, and he was easily able to dodge the shards of ice and balls of flame, returning in kind with Blackflame Evocations, igniting all of them. They were weak support casters, and they all went down within seconds of each other, refilling Eric’s health and mana.
His bracer did not vibrate, though, and so he knew there was more to come. Hopping over the balcony, he rolled upon landing and got to his feet, then went to collect all of the ashes. He used his Blackflame Breath to destroy the balconies, sending the ashes of the mages up on those levels tumbling down for him to collect.
“Halt!” a voice shouted from down the street.
Eric looked up and saw dozens of dark elves, mounted on massive spiders the size of carriages, holding blazing blades of gold and silver. He was running low on Sigils, and given that his foes could prevent some of his mana restoration, he was cautious about engaging in a fight if he didn’t have to. The mega-dungeon generated monsters seemed like they could be reasoned with, perhaps.
“I’m just looking to pass through,” Eric said. “If you fight me, you will die.”
“For Krokthreral!” one shouted and that began the charge. Twenty-eight dark elves, holding magical weapons, on spider mounts…but with no magical protection.
Eric just stood up straight, used Blackflame Breath, and walked forward. The torrential outpouring of his wrath ignited every one of the spiders and elves with his Blackflame Blaze, and that just let Eric keep his Rote going. Every few half-seconds, there was a little bang of Mana Burn empowering the flood of flames that scoured the city street. But within a few seconds from the start of the encounter, Eric’s bracer vibrated, and he let the flow cease, as nothing but Ashes covered the ground before him.
He set to collecting the Monster Parts turned to the congealed particles, and then glanced around looking for his next destination. Another set of glowstones pointed him to another building which, he presumed, would lead him up higher and to the next ring of the city. “How far off am I?” he asked.
[You should be getting fairly close. The city had twelve layers, but I believe that the section you are climbing has buildings—like this tower—which skip some layers.]
Eric nodded and glanced down at his bracer.
[You have leveled up!]
[You have 5 level-ups to process.]
[Blackflame Arcanist 231, 232, 233, 234, 235.]
[Choose a Skill and Trait to increase. Then repeat this four times.]
More into Bristling Bastion, more into From the Ashes.
[Confirmed.]
-----
Skills:
[Armored] Bristling Bastion M6 - The user and allies within the cloud of ash have the mana cost of Rotes reduced by [56%].
-----
Traits:
From the Ashes 7 - The user may destroy any Ashes of conquered foes to empower their next Skill or Rote by a [% equal to the number of Ashes consumed + 7].
-----
“All in all,” Eric muttered as he walked to the tower, “I’m doing decently. Lower on Sigils than I’d like.”
[It is good that we are revealing a weakness of your existing build. Knowing how your Traits interact with barriers and shields that are already in existence upon a creature, and how that is factored into renewing Blackflame Blaze upon foes, is valuable information we did not have before.]
“Not like it’ll matter on a battlefield,” Eric replied. “Formation-based defenses and shields are the standard: not an external support caster giving their support.”
[True.]
Eric stood stock-still on the first floor of the mage tower, and groaned. There was a shimmering, gold, sparkling barrier in front of the staircase, and a table with a board game set up. A phantasmal, glowing, sparkling-silver ghost sat opposite the entrance Eric came in. “I’m guessing I have to best you?”
The figure nodded and gestured once more.
Eric sat down and said, “Rulebook?”
The figure snapped its phantasmal fingers, and a pamphlet appeared in front of Eric. He grabbed it, ran his bracer over it, and then called Naomi. “Hey.”
“What is it?”
“Board game. Can you read the instructions and tell me how to kick this guy’s ass?”
“Give me a moment.” Eric sat there for a minute, waiting, and when Naomi replied, “Well, it’s like checkers, but you have three pieces that are a triangle of what can jump over the other. You can stack your pieces on top of one another for movement purposes, but you can only ‘jump’ the next in the triangle: sword over axe, axe over lance, lance over sword.”
Eric nodded and looked at the board. “Thanks, Naomi. If it’s just that, I think I can manage.”
[I can help.]
Naomi replied, “Good.”
“How are you and Peter doing?” Eric asked as he moved his first piece.
“We’re managing,” Peter said.
“Shannon?” Eric asked.
He glanced down as his bracer vibrated with a reply. [Assassinating some merchant lord. I’m good!]
Eric nodded confidently. “Excellent. Talk to you all later.” He focused his attention on the board game, and with Indedroma’s insight, was able to trounce the competition. The silver spectre bowed, and the golden barrier vanished. Eric stood, went upstairs, and let out a groan as another board was set up.
Seven floors of ascending-difficulty weird-checkers challenges later, and Eric was finally at the top of the tower. His bracer vibrated, and the open doorway behind his last opponent heralded his escape from the place. Glancing down, he frowned, as he had not received any level-up notification.
[Insufficient participation. No milestones given.]
“The fuck?” he muttered.
[Ah, perhaps because I gave so much advice and guidance?]
Probably, Eric thought back.
He exited the building and found to his satisfaction that he was one or two levels below the highest point of the city, where the dungeon core pedestal lay. This time, he turned right, and saw that the boulevard had been filled with defensive fortifications: palisades that were covered with glowing barriers, archers behind whose weapons blazed with azure and golden sparks, spider-riders behind them who were also on the buildings on either side of the street, and at the back, on a raised platform, robed dark elves with staves.
Well…shit.
Arrows were loosed, magical projectiles went flying, and Eric was right in the path of all of it. Eric elected to use Blackmana Tempest Minefield, dropping down to seven Sigils: and he spent all of his mana in his main reservoir, tapping into his secondary Mana Skin buffer of extra magical might.
The torrential tornado whipped to life, and its sheer destructive power obliterated the incoming attacks. He sent the blitzing whirl forward, and it carved a path through the street, devastating the front line and sending elf, barricade, and spider flying. The ones that were in the initial path were utterly consumed by the devastating power. The motes of manacules, rippling with Blackflame, were strewn about and detonated, sending waves of explosive force across the street: instantly killing some foes and blowing others aside. Buildings were shattered, melted, and blown to bits as the single, mighty Skill forced its way down the boulevard.
Eric saw several portals open up to try and redirect the tornado, but they were not big enough to take away the whole tornado—it was not like the meteor, which was a singular object: this was a force of nature imbued with the power of Eric’s primal force. He felt his stacks ramping more and more until he had capped out at his artificially imposed limit, and after ten seconds, the tornado vanished, leaving behind thousands of mines between Eric and the remaining enemies.
He was full up on mana, and overflowing with the magical power. Shooting off a Blackflame Evocation, he focused one orb apiece on each of the remaining magi at the back of the elf forces. The spheres that blipped into existence above each foe were massive, and when they slammed down into each, the hostiles were incinerated in an instant: the amplification of Mana Burn making the single Rote deal enough injury to destroy shields and magical barriers in the single strike.
The remaining elves rallied and charged…and exploded upon the manacule mines. Eric just stood there, firing his Rote at the ones in the back, while those on spiders and melee-oriented broke themselves upon the countless, sparkling explosives embedded in every surface.
The whole ordeal took twenty seconds, and Eric was left, standing alone, on a ruined city street, surrounded by Ashes. His bracer vibrated intensely, and he set to gathering up the Ashes. That whole process took him a good fifteen minutes, given that there were so many, and he shifted his level-up process to his vision to multi-task.
[You have leveled up!]
[You have 4 level-ups to process.]
[Blackflame Arcanist 236, 237, 238, 239.]
[Choose a Skill and Trait to increase. Then repeat this three times.]
The same two. Well, wait. From the Ashes only needs two to get up to max for Baseline. So put one into Reaper’s Flamesight.
[Confirmed.]
-----
Skills:
[Armored] Bristling Bastion M10 - The user and allies within the cloud of ash have the mana cost of Rotes reduced by [60%].
-----
Traits:
From the Ashes 10 - The user may destroy any Ashes of conquered foes to empower their next Skill or Rote by a [% equal to the number of Ashes consumed + 10].
Reaper’s Flamesight 2 - You have an intuitive understanding of where to strike to inflict the most harm to a person, mana beast, or monster. Your strikes that target a weak spot (vital location) deal [11%] additional damage. At will, you may shift your vision into 'Flamesight', which grants thermal vision, highlights vital parts of living creatures, and grants sight of any fire within ten miles of your location, which remains during the use of the Skill Through the Flames or any variant of it.
-----
Eric reached the end of the street and had collected all of the ashes by the time he finished. “Out of curiosity,” he thought as he kept one of the spheres of congealed ashes, “how does using From the Ashes work?”
[Just squeeze.]
Eric did so, and felt the Ashes compress in his palm until he could only feel a marble-sized bit of hardness. Then, nothing. “Okay, so that gives me—”
[Eleven percent increase on your next Skill or Rote’s outgoing damage.]
“But I have to spend a sphere of Ashes to use it.”
[Correct. And, you can’t activate the Trait again until after this application is expended.]
“Preventing me from stacking one sphere of ashes and the flat ten-percent addition from the Skill itself.” Eric sighed. “Got it.” He moved down the ruined street, following the crushed-glowstone arrows embedded in the ground, and made his way to the next means of egress upward and onward.
It wasn’t a building this time: it was a set of stairs that led up. Past the second-to-last layer of the city, and right up to the topmost level. But there was a person blocking his way. A tall, regal female dark elf. She was wearing silver and gold scale mail, and held a sword in either hand. She said no words, she made no movement, she just stood there as a silent statue and protector of the highest heights.
Eric fired off a Blackflame Evocation, and all five spheres instantly shot down—but fizzled out before reaching her as they encountered some invisible barrier. She blitzed forward faster than Eric could ever keep up with, or imagine keeping up with. Before he knew what had happened, his Flashstep had auto-activated, and moved him back down the damaged city street. He had just avoided a deathblow, and the woman turned to face him.
Oh, fuck that, Eric thought.
He activated Bristling Bastion, and was hesitant to use any more Sigils since he only had five remaining. The cloud of ashes and crackling wrath manifested around him, and he had all of the summoned weapons that manifested around him: ranseurs to catch the woman’s blades, and shortbows for the ranged, summoned weapons.
Eric saw her raise her blade, point the tip right at him, and she said, “Time passes all defenses.”
He blinked, and she was in front of him: the summoned weapons reacted at his speed of thought, intercepting both blades before shattering and vanishing. She unleashed a bevy of attacks. Her blades cut into his armor, and through, with enough speed that she was able to get the slice in before the retaliatory explosion went off—but even that seemed to not take effect, as the explosive retort fizzled the moment it reached the film surrounding her.
That’s when Eric saw the little bending and warping of space around her. She wasn’t controlling time, but rather space in some way, and it was condensed into a barrier around her. Perhaps she had compressed millions of miles into the inch between her and the space Eric existed in, and her blades were able to go through that intervening space, while all of his abilities could not. He had nothing with the range needed to impact her. Even his Mana Skin’s [Reactive] property wasn’t able to affect her.
He had to get inside her guard somehow, past the vast expanse compressed down to a little space, and he needed time to think. Activating Blackmana Shield—down to four Sigils—he used Mana Channel, and trusted in his mana regeneration to build up his shield and outpace her outgoing damage. It seemed to hold, and he had a moment to actually think about his problem instead of just reacting. He could observe her pattern of movement, see her spell in real-time, and try to game out how to play the encounter.
Her weapons seemed to bypass the barrier in its entirety, but the film let them return back to her. The idea was in place, and Eric needed to execute it. He let the Mana Channel fade while he was topped up, and intentionally left his side open to a sword strike—an opening right for his underarm, which could be an instantly-lethal, killing blow. Flashstep would save him if it were actually to strike, but he knew a skilled combatant would go for the kill.
She did so, and her reach overextended. Eric activated Flashstep and moved only a foot to the side and right next to her. But, he got his hand onto the sword, and felt the weird, squishy membrane of the space-warping barrier just hugging the surface of his hand. The woman withdrew the blade, and Eric clung tight, feeling his arm get through the space, while his face was smushed against the barrier. Still, his arm was in the shield, and he unleashed a Blackflame Evocation from the tips of his fingers. The five fires ignited on her flesh, and he immediately used a Combustion Trigger.
Bang!
Eric heard her scream as the entirety of his vision was filled with the flickering eruption. He pulled his hand back: or tried to, rather. Space seemed to warble, flicker, and then he went careening backward and crashed onto the ground, rolling over and over in a tumble. He slammed into a chunk of rubble from his earlier destruction of the street, and felt dizzy.
Sitting upright, he felt tired, and his right arm felt numb. Looking down, he saw his arm had been mangled, crushed, and looked horrific. Still, health was transferring from the swordswoman to him, and thanks to the face that Combustion Trigger applied ten Blackflame Blazes, he received ten instances of ten-percent of the woman’s health and mana. His arm fixed itself, snapping back into place as the tissue reconnected and everything went back to normal.
The woman had no means of healing or regeneration, and so ten stacks of the DOT was enough to suck away all of her health and mana, and her blades clattered to the ground as she let out a shriek and crumbled to ashes.
Eric just lay there for a moment as his bracer vibrated.