Luke shoved Xera through a serpent naga’s chest. The creature’s lack of legs enabled it to struggle up the muddy hills effectively. A fact that worked against it this day.
The mass of enemies below began to wisen up, only approaching in pairs or more, although that further slowed them down. Unable to form groups larger than three without pausing their movement, Luke soon began to face waves of two or three monsters simultaneously.
To say the least, he was becoming an expert at cleaving, fast. The Reaver opted for more injuries if it increased the speed of slaying the aggressive creatures. He’d have to run for the hills if he backed down now.
Feeling like it was not the right move to do so, Luke held on, ignoring the ragged breaths and stacking cuts his body sustained. The most significant exhaustion indicator was a war troll managed a slash to his chest. His eyes could catch the trajectory, but his body failed to listen.
Luke swiftly dispatched the axe-wielding troll with Xera, leaving an icy blade line through its neck. He’d like to observe the situation more in the other sections of the hill. He knew the ice wouldn’t last forever. A constant stream of monsters made that wish impossible to fulfill.
Instead, he relied on Sooty, asking her through Reaver’s Link to keep an eye out for him and send a notice when the ice he created earlier no longer made the relevant section impassible. Or, if anything hostile, managed to scale the muddy hills in some other area.
Sooty let him know it would be a piece of cake. With that worry out of his mind, Luke made the most of the advantage he’d temporarily claimed. Calculating his cooldowns, Luke struggled to dodge an unaccounted-for surge of various elemental bolts coming his way.
Searching for the reason, it became clear the mages began to adjust to the bird of terror, an improvised name for Sooty, and grouped up. While this didn’t completely prevent his companion from taking them out, it did slow her down.
The caster monsters even paired with this hidden zone’s extremely few healers, with the healers sustaining most mages. Besides those Sooty managed to burst down, their death rate slowed to a fraction of where it was mere seconds before.
Putting his most effective ranged attack to good use, Luke shifted Xera to his left hand, returning to a one-handed style. He rolled in a curved manner, stopping just behind the legs of what appeared to be a cyclops with chitinous skin but half the size. In one smooth motion, he ripped Whispering Edge out of the ground with his right hand.
Using both swords, he slashed at the chitin Cyclops’ back knees. The still giant creature began to fall back, threatening to crush Luke with its weight. Not looking to die by monster flesh, Luke sprung forward, forcing his way past the falling body.
The creature’s weight staggered the other two eldrich monsters that came up with it. Ignoring the opportunity to land a critical blow on the three creatures nearby, Luke materialized Essence Lance, switching Xera to a wand first beforehand.
Not quite enough time passed for the internal cooldown of ruinous echo to reset. The aim was to wipe the healers, which gave Sooty a hard time. Instead, the long-term outlook of the fight would benefit more if he killed the back line support the monsters had stitched together.
Plus, he really started to hate those mages. Fireballs hurt.
Winding up, he guided the lance just above his arm, with Xera helping to control the rapidly rotating projectile.
“I can’t wait to see this. Frost explosions are becoming a favorite of mine, fast!” Xera said.
As his arm reared back, he twisted forward, his left foot smacking down on the solid dirt beneath him. A small puff of soil spread into the air just below his knees. With the wand version of Xera pointed in the proper direction, Essence Lance shot off.
Luke quickly felt a wave of satisfaction as he watched the frost mobile bomb explode in front of the healer-type monsters that prevented Sooty from killing her targets. Most died on impact, and the remaining few alive were frozen, nearly immobile. Plenty of nearby mages took irreparable damage.
Subconsciously, Luke sent out a heads-up about his move to Sooty. The corvid pounced on the healers before the frost mist began to subside.
While the Reaver would choose to help his crow as always, it did come at a cost. One of the eldrich horrors snaked out a tentacle and stabbed it through his stomach. The constant stat growth had toughened up his body, but the pierce still entered about halfway in before stopping.
Slicing off the tentacle with Whispering Edge, he performed a rushed incision onto himself, getting the rest of the disgusting limb out of him. The frost essence he had left rushed to freeze over the wound. The lack of control over essence came back to bite him. That lack of skill left Luke unable to flow any frost essence into Xera or Whispering Edge.
A few more probing tentacles rushed at him, no longer focusing on another group; Luke easily dodged about and closed in. Whispering Edge carved the horror into several pieces. Xera’s internal three-second cooldown between forms subsided, and Luke changed her back to a sword.
The extra blade fended off the other horror, aiming for his life. Crossing the blades, he executed one creature before raining the dual blows down on the other. The impostor Cyclops attempted to grab at Luke’s legs several times. The man had grown too nimble for such rough attempts to work on him.
When he didn’t split his focus, at least. You live and learn.
Whispering Edge smashed down on the horror’s head, then became stuck on the internal guts. Unperturbed, Luke thrust Xera in at the stuck point. The two blades slid down, rending life from the monster.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Casually dodging two grasping arms, both blades mutilated the cyclops’s eye. They found the tiny brain hiding behind, and the creature stopped moving. With no time to compose himself, two other beasts came up the muddy hills, thrilled in their victory over nature.
Stepping onto the freshly created cyclops corpse, the cyclical crusade continued. The piles grew, and Luke lost himself in a trance. A notice from Sooty woke him, and only then did he notice the ragged breathing and pounding headache.
“Get to some cover, lad. It’s best you get most of the beasties off your back. Their ‘alliance’ is paper-thin, use that.” Wayfinder said.
“Use your head so you don’t become dead!” Xera said.
They were going to be surrounded soon. Not bothering to stay as a stopgap to a tide of monsters, Luke changed gears. This much fighting was exhausting. It was time to figure something else out.
With Sooty flying above the rest of the monsters, she could guide him optimally in his view. Luke kept running up the mountain, trying to lose any monsters coming at him in the thin forest he was in. As he got closer to the peak, there was less cover.
Spotting a roughly hewn hole in the side of the mountain, Luke took cover within. The hole was hidden well and hollow like a cavern’s beginning. If a man crouched down, you wouldn’t see him there. Sooty observed with her aerial clarity and began to harass monsters whenever they went near. The blood piles Luke created through killing masses of creatures covered his scent well.
Turns out, as soon as you stop making yourself a target and find a decent place to hide, it’s not all that difficult to disappear. With no delectable human to target, the monsters soon turned on themselves, any alliance or order between them imploding from within.
Sooty hid in the trees, then melded to the wood. The assistance of shadow essence ensured she was barely perceivable. The sounds of infighting rose around Luke, and he kept his breathing as quiet as he could manage.
Guttural growls and pained cries suppressed the sound of the wind. The wound Luke managed to freeze over thawed slowly at his command. The ice shrank as fast as his regeneration would heal.
Xera learned from her last mistake and stayed silent. Wayfinder followed suit, and for an extended time, Luke’s music was the clang of metal and rending of flesh. The explosions from magic spells were common. A smell of burning entered into Luke’s nose.
He felt cold, with the black mountain stone and dirt enclosing his body. Sooty, with her connection to him, became Luke’s eyes. The monsters had forgotten all about him by now and entered into a free-for-all brawl.
A red line volunteered itself to the front of Luke’s vision.
[00:59:59]
Time is running out.
Luke felt little at the notice. He’d already been under immense pressure. This was like adding a trickle to a waterfall. Instead, he continued to bide his time, and the sounds around him grew faint rapidly.
Less than five minutes later, Sooty got bored of her spot. Instead, the bird flapped over to him, unnoticed with the cover of night and her technique of becoming nigh invisible. Sooty came over, untethered to the tension, and pecked him on the forehead several times.
Xera let out a snicker.
“Not that many left now?”
Sooty responded with a rattle.
Luke used his two arms and extricated his body from the cramped hiding spot. “Alright then, let’s teach the remaining few manners, shall we?”
Sooty walked on the ground. She kept pace with Luke as he crept closer to the center of the remaining harsh sounds. Luke observed for a moment. All that was left was a mishmash of roughly twenty monsters, half-complete bodies littered the side of the black mountain.
Several valiant battles were fought, each vying to be the king of this hill. Unfortunately, Luke desired to put an end to their endeavors anticlimactically. He cast Essence Fissure in a display of growing mastery. All but one ended up in the abilities clutches.
As he threw Essence Lance toward his fissure, Sooty sped off to finish the straggler that Luke didn’t manage to include in the rain party he vied to create. As for what he meant by rain party, well, it was better to show rather than tell, wasn’t it?
Essence Lance touched the fissure, and the ability spread, fragmenting across the entirety of its range. The separated skill became drop-like, and the pressure of Essence Fissure did the rest. Hundreds of drops smashed at hyper-accelerated speeds into the monsters below.
By the time the drops were spent and Essence Fissure had done its work, the monsters could only twitch or stop moving altogether. As he stayed in place, Luke inspected each one. Mere moments later, the few that survived bled to death.
“Quite the gruesome rain you created, lad,” Wayfinder said.
“Effective, though,” Luke said.
“If by ‘effective’ you mean downright amazing! That was neat. Why didn’t the other Reavers ever do that?” Xera asked.
“Assuming they had the same abilities as me, they just didn’t live long enough to find out it was possible. Or weren't curious enough to try.”
Sooty had finished her target and landed onto the hilt of Whispering Edge, which Luke had long made sheathed.
“You sure you want to perch there? It’s going to be uncomfortable to walk.” Luke asked her.
Caw!
“Suit yourself.”
The quest hadn’t been completed despite the dead silence around the group. The monsters were all dead. Looking up to the peak, Luke found his answer: a crystal floated there, this one a pale red.
As he walked up to the peak, he kept straining his senses. Luke thought he missed a monster or some other piece of information. Nothing came about, and he touched the crystal at the mountaintop.
The crystal melted at his touch, splitting into two parts—one fusing with Sooty, the other him.
[Quest Complete]
Reward: Companion gains three skill points. You have looted Shadowmeld Spaulders.
That was all. Luke still hadn’t left the zone. He got an unimpeded view of the entire mirror realm using the current vantage point. To the edges of the zone, to the upper right side of him, was a ruin. With no other ideas, Luke made his way to the out-of-place section.
The descent was fast. No monsters were in Luke’s way; gravity worked with him this time. At the muddy hill area, Luke didn’t bother with keeping clean. He slid down, only focused on saving precious minutes now.
Momentum took him to the foot of the ruin. The black stone spires and blue pulsing runes were visible now. Carved into each spire was a faceless human, and what looked like to Luke was the Spectral Lord. The withering of time had done its job. Most details were lost, and Luke could only deduce some of them.
The Spectral Lord had his hand forward, and a portal formed beside him. Ethereal heads looked out, and the faceless human stood on the opposing side. There were runes carved beneath. Luke wished he had a translation skill in this teleport to another-world funny business. Wasn’t that supposed to come with the package?
He guessed not for a runic language, or maybe the Interface missed an update way back when. Behind this particular spire was another black mirror. Similar to the first, he couldn’t see what was within. The irregularity in his heartbeat pushed him to step in without thought.
A darkness swept over his vision, and half a moment later, he was back in the primary mirror hall, just in front of the black mirror there.
“We’re back, huh? Let’s clear those minotaurs. Do you think they’ll drop steak? I’m hungry.” Luke asked allowed, addressed to no member of the party in particular.
“Doubt you’ll have the time to go grillin’ lad. Come on then, a final tussle and those stone doors fit for giants should open.” Wayfinder said.
“Fair enough, sating any desires can wait until we’ve faced the Spectral Lord.”