After getting shot, I’m not feeling up to playing around.
I charge.
The zombie leaps back, more nimble than a corpse has any right to be, and fires another arrow. This one has a faint red glow around it, some Skill activating.
When he looses the arrow, it flies lightning fast through the air, all but a blur to my sight, before slamming through my shin and burying itself in the stone behind me.
I ignore it and the small twinge of pain, taking another step—and instantly begin falling forward as it feels like my leg was just torn out from under me. I land on my hands and knee and look back to see what exactly tripped me up.
What I find is the arrow, glowing a bright red with whatever magics the Ranger used. There’s a line of red mana between it and the same leg I’d just been shot in, connecting me to where it’s pinned in the ground.
I scowl at the thing.
It’s a tether, or a crippling Skill of some kind.
“Gods dammit,” I groan.
I’d heard of abilities like that before, but being on the receiving end is bullshit.
Thankfully, I’m not alone. A good thing, too, because the thing had already readied another shot for me. Instead, it abandons its attack in favor of dodging the large spear of ice aimed at its chest.
It’s a near thing, but it does manage to avoid it.
Then it seems to think better of fighting us, turning to run further down the seemingly endless halls—only to find a spiderweb of ice expanding to seal the passage.
By then, I’m already back to my feet, and after a quick peek at Bella to see she’s got things under control, I decide that now is as good a time as any to test my newest Strength milestone. With it, I should be able to physically interact with magic to some degree.
I reach back and grasp the thin red tether of mana connecting me to the arrow. It instantly numbs my hand where I’m touching it, but doesn’t hurt. It just feels… wrong.
Still, I push through the strange feeling and pull.
It resists, but only barely. The magic frays like rope around my hand before snapping outright, dissolving into motes of ambient mana, the numbness vanishing with it.
It wasn’t exactly easy, but…
…Okay, I won’t lie to myself. That was stupidly easy.
But it also bought the archer precious time, even with Bella constantly harassing him.
I make a mental note to experiment more with this ability in order to find my current limits with it.
Then I turn and face our foe, who still seems to be on the back foot, putting everything into avoiding Bella’s constant onslaught of ice. Looking around, I find the ice that covered its path of retreat is spreading, creeping along the ground towards the things position, and I jump into action.
Can’t have her taking all the experience now, can I?
I’m not exactly sure how experience is divvied up, but everyone knows participation matters.
And I haven’t even hit the thing yet.
Grinning, I charge the zombie once more, this time more cautious of its attacks. I activate Scarlet Barrier, feeding it as much health and mana as it can take. Familiar near-transparent crystals of blood appear around me, swirling in unseen currents of wind and tearing at the space around me.
With that, the whole “getting shot” thing shouldn’t be a problem.
In seconds, I’m before the creature and spinning into a powerful kick with the same leg it shot, determined to send a message.
It ducks—then leans back to avoid a spike of ice that shoots out of the ground between us as it threatens to use the creatures own dodge to impale itself on the spike chin first.
It falls back, into a layer of frost that spread across the ground.
In an instant, the frost creeps around its armor, seeming to almost weld the creature to the floor.
I’m on it without hesitation, fists falling one after the other, each backed with Arcane Strike and Bloodmist Fist, cracking bone and the stone behind it alike.
Moments later, the things skull is little more than dust and debris, and I pulse a little extra mana into Ashari’s Grace to clean my hands of…
Y’know what? I don’t even want to think about it.
Bella whistles behind me. “You know, I never got to see you fight in the arena yesterday. You don’t use weapons at all?”
Turning to face her, I grin. “Nah. Fists and kicks, that’s my way.”
I pause for a moment.
“And claws. And fangs.”
“May as well throw in your tail, at that rate,” she chuckles.
I give her an affronted look before wrapping my tail around myself and hugging it protectively.
“I would never!”
She seems taken aback by my vehemence, until she catches the smirk I’ve been failing to hide, despite my efforts.
“Yes, yes, heavens forbid we besmirch your perfect fur,” she says gamely.
“Exactly! Perfect! You have no idea how much effort it takes to maintain this fluffiness. This smooth silky texture. This—”
“Okay, okay!” she laughs. “Come on then, are you going to keep straddling that thing, or are we going to find our other party members?”
“Oh, right,” I say, quickly moving to get my feet back under me.
I pause again, looking down to see if the zombie holds any loot worth gathering…
And find the creature, alongside its armor and weapon, are rapidly degrading.
What was once a ancient-looking but otherwise perfectly functional bow is now little more than scraps of rotting wood. The leather of its armor all but falls apart like old parchment, the clothes beneath turning to dust.
And its body, once a mass of stinky, rotting flesh, is rapidly becoming an ancient, brittle skeleton as the flesh dissolves into nothing.
“Oh, come on!” I whine, my ears already drooping with disappointment.
Bella giggles.
When I round on her with a scowl, I catch her giving me a strange look.
“You’re adorable, you know that?” she says.
Heat rushes to my cheeks, but I clamp down on the sudden rush of emotions without too much trouble. Instead, I decide to go on the offensive.
I still owe her one for that little flirt she pulled when we split up during our enrollment process.
Play.
“And you’re staring,” I quip.
The faintest tinge of pink blooms across her cheeks as she quickly looks away.
“…I am not,” she says.
“You were,” I say, giving her my best shit-eating grin.
She spares me a glance, chewing on one lip. “I was… assessing your combat performance. Because it’s my first time seeing you fight, as I said.”
“Sure, sure. Gotta make sure your knight in shining armor is up to your standards... right?” I ask, tail swishing languidly behind me.
She stiffens, wide scarlet eyes staring at me, stunned.
Success!
I fold my arms and nod solemnly. “Good. I’m glad we’ve established that.”
Bella blinks. “Established… what?”
“That I’m adorable,” I say. “You said it yourself. I’m going to need that in writing, by the way.”
“…what?”
“A formal declaration,” I continue, utterly serious. “Signed. Witnessed. Possibly notarized.”
For a second she just stares at me.
“Maybe in triplicate.”
Then she laughs, bright and helpless and far too pretty, and has to look away again.
“You’re so… ridiculous.”
“I’m so glad you noticed!” I say brightly, then shift back to deadpan and pull out a small notebook from my storage. “Oh, I’ll need that in writing too, by the way.”
She lets out a tiny, undignified snort as she tries to hold back another laugh.
She clamps both hands over her mouth in horror.
I lose it.
***
It takes a minute or two to get back under control, and even then I only manage it so quickly due to the very real worry over our still missing teammates.
“So… got any ideas on how to find them?” I ask.
She’s still a little flushed from the mix of mirth and embarrassment, but she’s valiantly regaining her mask of composure. She taps her chin thoughtfully for a moment.
“We could… well, I could leave ice markers? I can have them point the direction we’re heading, and they’ll take hours to melt.”
“Ooh, that’s brilliant. I know most everything is cleared that way,” I say, pointing the way I came from.
It isn’t blocked off by her ice, but neither have any zombies come wandering through that section of the passage.
“I didn’t clear the side passages though, just kind of…” I make a vague shoving motion.
She nods once. “So they could be back the way you came. Even more reason to make the ice markers, then. Could I…” she trails off, hesitant.
I quirk a brow at her, and she looks away, cheeks flushed.
“Could I get some more mana?” she asks so quiet I almost don’t hear her.
Recalling the memory of her draining me overnight, I can’t help but feel a bit warm as well. I quickly shove the feeling aside though.
That’s it, I seriously owe the Headmistress one. Without the medicine…
I shove the thought away.
“Sure!” I say, trying to sound nonchalant. “How much more would you like?”
She analyzes my face for a moment, checking to see if I’m teasing her in any way. Eventually, she seems satisfied with what she sees and starts nodding.
“I used almost sixty-thousand just clearing this hall before you arrived, so… can you triple how much you’re sending?”
Currently, I’m sending her about 1.5% of my current mana regen. With my current mana restriction, that’s not so bad, but sending nearly 5% would… sting. With how most of my abilities work, my regen is what really matters—not so much my mana pool itself.
“How much mana can you hold?” I ask instead.
Something slams into the ice barrier, and she waves a lazy hand at it, reinforcing it without thought. More slams can be heard as the zombies on the other side no doubt begin to pile up, but the sound dulls more and more as the barrier gets thicker.
Gods… that is so cool. Can I do that with blood?
I make a mental note to check that sometime.
She peers into the middle distance as she checks her Status.
“I was averaging just over one-hundred thousand, then my drain would increase.”
“Huh? Increase?”
She sighs. “One of the lovely perks of my Race. Our bodies can hold seemingly limitless quantities of mana, but never for long. It’s like… well, this is going to be a terrible analogy, but bear with me.”
I nod, and she continues.
“Imagine everyone’s mana capacity as sealed chamber slowly filling with water,” she says. “Most people have a regulator—something to stop more water from flowing in. Once the chamber is full, it stops. That’s their capacity.”
She taps her chest lightly.
“Now imagine my chamber isn’t completely sealed, and that I don’t have a regulator at all. I can keep adding more and more water, but the more I add, the more pressure there is on the already leaky chamber. Eventually it leaks faster than I can refill it.”
She shrugs. “Tier determines how big the chamber is to start with.”
She pauses for a moment, taking a deep breath.
“Hypothetically, if you fed me enough mana, I could run at double or even triple capacity. But you’d have to send truly absurd quantities of mana, and…”
She blushes furiously for a moment. “Well, I wouldn’t be very effective in that scenario.”
“Huh,” I say simply.
“Yeah… quite frustrating, if I’m being honest. My mana typically drains to near empty over the course of a day or two, so I have to constantly absorb more.”
I wince. “Gods, that must be expensive.”
She chuckles, eyes wandering around the place and settling on a section of the wall just below the ceiling. With a wave of her hand, she conjures a fragment of ice in the shape of an arrow and slams it into the wall at an angle, making it so that it points towards the ice barrier.
“I’m sure it may seem that way, but for my family it’s not much. And it never needs to be large quantities of mana. My father is actually a Fighter, so he can get by every day with just a small fragment,” she says, then pauses. “I can too, of course, but I’m a Mage. I need a little more than that.”
Unfortunately, how her mana works kind of erases the alternatives I had in mind over burning my regen. I figured throwing lump sums of mana her way would work, but if she loses it faster when she has too much, then… it’d be pointless.
I sigh. “Yeah, alright. I can send more your way, but if there’s an emergency then I may have to reduce how much I’m sending you. Is that alright?”
She nods, a hint of a smile quirking her lips. “That’s perfectly reasonab—ah!”
A startled sound escapes her, entirely thanks to me pushing the mana I’m sending her up to 4.5%. Her legs buckle beneath her, and I find myself staring for half a second too long.
Then immediately feel ashamed for it and look away.
She breathes heavily behind me for several seconds before seeming to settle down, and when I hear her standing back up, I turn back to face her.
Her scarlet gaze pierces into me like daggers.
I scratch behind an ear sheepishly, eyes wandering over to the barrier.
“So… ready to go?” I ask, doing my best to let her scowl wash over me.
It takes a few seconds, but eventually she lets out a huff laced with disapproval and waves a hand toward the barrier. It dissolves into wisps of magic.
One the other side is a small horde of regular zombies, but I can see a few unique ones scattered within the crowd as well.
Undead FighterLevel 79
Undead RangerLevel 77
Undead FighterLevel 81
Undead MageLevel 74
I didn’t level up from the small army of zombies I’d plowed through to get here, or the Ranger.
Gods, Cari really wasn’t joking about how much harder it is to level after Tier One.
But this… this oughta do it.
******
Authors Note:
Sorry for the later than usual post this evening <3 Had a very, very busy day today. Adulting sucks :(
Also, I'm thinking of having her gain a level from the jaunt to Bella, but not too sure where to place it. Should I, or should I have it be after this next fight as they go to find Seraphine and Nyx?
If I do it after, I think I'll have it be two or three levels total, mostly coming from the Classed zombo's.