Spell Quest Unlocked: Telekinetic Enhanced Strike

To unlock Telekinetic Enhanced Strike, you must:

1. Enhance a melee strike with Heavy Telekinesis and use it for 100 killing blows against enemies of a higher level than yourself.

Progress: 0/100

Xavier grinned.

A spontaneous Spell Quest, triggered solely by his actions during a fight… he tried to recall if that had happened before, going through all the different spells he possessed.

There had been Spell Quests to upgrade spells, or Spell Quests after he uncovered one of his cores. There had definitely been spontaneous Skill Quests, but that was different.

Interesting. I wonder what other Spell Quests I might be able to trigger in the future…

The requirements for the Spell Quest seemed incredibly easy, given how powerful he imagined the spell itself being. Right now, he was cobbling together the technique. But if he had an actual spell for it… he could only imagine how much more effective it might become.

I wonder if my Strength attribute will contribute to its power or not.

He stood there for a moment, contemplating his fortune. He looked up at the sky and closed his eyes.

The System had sent him here. At first, he’d been outraged. Now… he felt a little guilty that he was enjoying himself so much. He cared about the other members of his party. He wanted to help them on their journeys. But there was a certain freedom in only fending for himself, in being able to take his time.

Xavier opened his eyes and wondered what the System might be thinking—if the System even had thoughts in a sense that Xavier would be able to understand. Was this what it had wanted for him? To experiment with his abilities? The System was what had given him the Spell Quest… he wondered if it had done it consciously.

Xavier shrugged off those questions. Having the answers to them wouldn’t help him, and he knew what his next move was.

Hunt. Kill. Fulfill the Spell Quest. Push his level up.

He’d gained another 1,650 E Grade Mastery Points from that fight—the exact number he’d gotten from the first wolven pack. He wondered how it was that the wolven packs could have beasts in them with levels that were identical to the last, but he didn’t wonder about that long. It seemed normal enough, given that’s what it would be like in any video game he’d played.

This isn’t a video game, but it sure feels like one sometimes.

Xavier left the clearing and pushed forward through the forest, seeing what else he could encounter in this place. Part of him wanted to face more of the same—he was getting a sense for how those enemies fought, after all.

If I encounter another enemy too quickly, I won’t be able to use Time Alteration on it.

It was a risk, not having the spell at his disposal, but it would take a lot longer for him to complete the Spell Quest if he forced himself to wait thirty minutes between each and every encounter.

It also made him wonder… why hadn’t Time Alteration been one of the spells that had levelled up during those fights? It didn’t really make sense to him. Time Alteration was still only a Rank 1 spell. He wanted to push the spell further. Gain more ranks. Reduce its cooldown. Make it reach farther… but he wasn’t really sure how to manage that.

Xavier paused midstride and tilted his head to the side. Often, he would receive a Spell Quest for a new spell, giving him the choice of two or more different paths for a spell, and how to move it forward to the next rank.

Time Alteration didn’t have anything like that, yet it wasn’t ranking up like his other spells. And his other spells were ranking up fast—he’d gained even more ranks from the fight he’d just had.

So why wasn’t this one moving?

Xavier opened up his mini-map and looked over in the direction of Hunter’s Home, wondering if there was someone there he could talk to about all this. He knew he was still very much an amateur when it came to his knowledge about advancement. Mostly because he’d managed to skip ahead on so many different occasions, moving past the fundamentals that a “normal” Denizen of the Greater Universe would have to learn.

It wasn’t something he was mad at himself about, because it had gotten him this far. But it definitely left gaps in his knowledge—gaps that might very well be the key to making him stronger in ways he hadn’t even considered, because he didn’t know about them.

He might also be able to learn about a better place to farm beasts. If there were lower-level beasts, or at least weaker beasts, out there that he could be taking on to make this Spell Quest go faster…

Then I wouldn’t really be challenging myself all that much, would I?

Xavier shook the thought of facing weaker beasts from his head and decided to head back to Hunter’s Home. He hoped Gimble, the dwarf that he’d met there, would still be around.

Despite how powerful he’d become, and how many life and death situations he’d been through, Xavier still wasn’t all that good at approaching total strangers and striking up conversations with them, especially if there was something he wanted from the interaction.

I found it easier to lead Collinsville than I did to just talk to people in it…

On his way back to Hunter’s Home, he encountered another beast. A Whiptailed Boar attacked him. He heard it barrelling through the trees long before it reached him, and he prepared himself for the fight.

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With his new technique at the ready, he hoped the fight would be significantly easier than the first.

Xavier was aware that his Spell Quest required him to get specifically killing blows against the enemies he faced for it to count, but he also wanted to practice the technique in general.

He decided to do his best to keep this a melee fight only. Perhaps he was being a little too overconfident, but Xavier figured he’d earned a little overconfidence considering all he’d achieved.

He got slapped by the beast’s massive, barbed tail halfway through the fight and broke part of his back when he crashed into a large boulder, cracking the thing in two with how hard he was slammed into it.

Maybe I haven’t earned that overconfidence…

Your health is at 40%.

Xavier’s eyes widened at that. One hit had taken out 60 percent of his entire health, and here he was, playing with the damned beast? Trying to restrict his attacks?

He changed his tact. Sticking to his first idea of how the fight would go was a recipe for getting dead.

His heart raced as the beast barrelled toward him. He leapt straight upward. He’d gotten in four Heavy Telekinetic reinforced strikes since the start of the fight. The beast was definitely injured, but he wouldn’t call it close to death.

From the air, Xavier hit it with a barrage of spells. Spirit Break. Soul Shatter. And a Heavy Telekinesis that barely pushed it down. He would have cast Core Burn on the damned thing, but he already knew that spell was ineffective against these beasts—at least at the level of power he could currently bring to bear with them.

His soul puppets were distracting it, but their usefulness was proving minimal as more and more of them became injured.

This Whiptailed Boar is stronger than the last.

The hundredth floor was quickly proving that the last thing he wanted to do was get cocky. He may have felt as though he’d annihilated that wolven pack, but it didn’t mean he was safe here.

His health shot up slower than he would like. He had a massive amount of Toughness—at least for his level and grade—but that also translated into having a lot of health that needed regenerating.

While he was in the air, it only ticked up to about 55 percent, which meant he was still in the one more hit means death category.

Not a place he liked to be.

As he fell back down, he held the Midnight Scythe with his left hand and summoned a Greater Health potion into his right and ripped off the cork with his teeth. Xavier hadn’t used many health potions as of late—he really hadn’t needed to—and when he consumed this one, he was frustrated to find that it only regenerated 5 percent of his health.

He didn’t have enough time to consume another one on his descent.

He gripped his Midnight Scythe with both hands and angled himself toward attacking the boar head-on.

If he’d judged this right, both him and the beast were in the same category.

One more strike and he would deliver its death.

The Whiptailed Boar’s tail became invisible again. When this had happened the first time during this fight, Xavier had misjudged where the tail would be. He’d thought it would come straight at him. Instead, it had come where the boar assumed he would dodge.

Crafty bastard of a thing.

This time. Xavier was sure to rely on his senses instead of his assumptions. Being in midair, it was difficult for him to dodge an attack—he couldn’t manoeuvre all that effectively when there was nothing that he could push himself against.

But he could make things push him—something he’d already proven when he’d made half of that tree that had snapped in his last fight with one of these boars launch him forward.

Xavier listened to the sound of the tail whipping through the air, then he used his Heavy Telekinesis spell on his Midnight Scythe—not as a part of a strike, but to shift him away. He gripped it tightly and was pulled forward.

The tail whizzed passed him. He felt the air billow his robes. The wind from the attack was so strong it actually moved him.

Unfortunately, though the cooldown on Heavy Telekinesis was incredibly short, it wasn’t short enough that he could perform the attack instantly once more.

Xavier landed on the ground in a roll. Farscope let him see the hoof come down at him, and he zipped out of the way.

Evasion has reached Rank 54!

He hadn’t been getting enough ranks in Evasion lately. Something told him a skill like that, if he was going to be fighting like this, would come in handy.

His health ticked up to over 60 percent. As long as the last attack the Whiptailed Board had delivered against him was indeed its strongest, then Xavier should be out of immediate danger.

He kicked off a tree, flipping his momentum back the other way, then sprinted along the ground. As much as he liked the ability to leap incredibly high, as it created a good amount of distance between him and his enemy, allowing him to cast spells, he thought it would be a good idea to keep on the ground right now—it was much easier for him to dodge an enemy’s attacks if he did.

A thought occurred to him as he was running. If he gained the Telekinetic Enhanced Strike spell, then he would be able to use Heavy Telekinesis to help move himself around and not have to worry about it interfering with the cooldown for his attack.

That would open up several opportunities for him that he had never even considered.

I really need this. I really need to be challenged.

He dodged another whip from the beast’s tail—the invisible attack spell must have been on cooldown, as this attack was clearly visible. The boar was shuffling backward. It had a frantic look about it.

It’s trying to get away from me. It knows it can’t take another hit.

That’s when the tusks on either side of its face began to glow in a way he hadn’t seen before. Blood red. Clearly a spell.

A beam of light shot forward. Xavier dodged to the right, and the beam cut through the ground where he’d just been. He saw it with Farscope. The damage it managed to do was tremendous.

With Farscope, he was able to see one hundred metres around him, yet he couldn’t see how deep that beam had cut into the ground.

And the beam didn’t stop. The beast moved its head, and the beam followed.

It was like he was being attacked by Cyclops from X-Men.

Xavier pushed his speed to its limit trying to dodge the beam.

Evasion has reached Rank 55!

Evasion has reached Rank 56!

Xavier shouted a battle cry as he got close enough. The bloody boar was three-storeys tall—he didn’t want to risk leaping in the air and losing his ability to dodge.

So he aimed his strike at one of the boar’s legs, cutting straight through it.

He’d been wrong—the strike wasn’t enough to kill it. But it was damned close.

Xavier dived and rolled out of the way as a hoof almost came down on him.

Evasion has reached Rank 57!

With each rank he gained in evasion, he could actively feel himself getting better at dodging.

Xavier made it back to his feet and came back in for the final strike.

He risked a leap. Used Heavy Telekinesis to reinforce his attack. And cut straight across the boar’s belly from underneath.

The beast was opened up, and unspeakable things fell from the wound causing a smell so bad he wished he didn’t have a sense of smell at all.

But a kill notification came, and he gained his first killing blow for his Telekinetic Enhanced Strike spell quest.

The boar slumped down and fell with a loud thud that could no doubt be heard for miles around the forest.

Xavier, breathing hard, stuck the butt of his Midnight Scythe into the ground and leant heavily on it.

Another fight survived on the hundredth floor.

And another lesson learned—no matter how overpowered he thought he was, no matter if he’d defeated beasts like this before, he had to stop getting ahead of himself.

He had to stop letting himself get overconfident.

If he didn’t pull back just a little, he would never make it off this floor alive.