Light, strange and ebbing, the color of green only found in the dampest parts of a swamp, beckoned me from up ahead. The light, as it turned out, came from a crystal in the center of an island in the mud. Unlike the sandbars, this island was made of hard stone, the lapping of the burbling mud marking the history of a tide on the rock.
I creep from my perch over the expanse of sucking mud, walking slowly to avoid both slipping or making noise. The monsters down below are attracted to noise, that much we figured out pretty quickly, but the shifting groans of the trees I walk on aren’t enough to bring the fish flying up at me. I find a wedge, a meeting of two roots that meet and intertwined, to sit and stare at the island for a moment.
The island of stone is not more than ten feet across, slate gray, and unnaturally smooth on its surface. The treasure chest that I have come to expect from these spaces in the mud-forest is absent. Instead, a crystal mass, almost three feet tall and jagged in its hexagonal features, grows up out of the stone. A well of sunlight pours down from overhead, the rays almost absorbed into the surface of the crystal, fluoresced out as a green light that beats like a heart in its rhythm.
Before I do anything else, I use my eye to tell me a bit more about the obviously magical object.
Bane Crystal(Very Rare):
A crystal grown from a Fragment of Malice. This particular Bane Crystal has absorbed the toxicity of its environment and developed an affix for magic of an acidic variety. Bane Crystals are often corrosive to their natural environments, changing naturally flowing mana into the type for which they have an affinity.
My eyes widen when I read the description. This might be the first thing that I have ever seen that directly mentions magical affix and affinities. I gesture with my finger, bringing up another window.
Emperor Conflux: Emperor's Prerogative(Rank 1):
A true emperor is unbound by the limitations of the world, and as such, the emperor is not bound by any mana affix affinities, capable of pursuing any magical paths they might choose. Provides a small boost to the understanding and attunement of different mana affixes.
Ever since receiving the ability a few months ago, I have had no idea how to use it. Considering that it is the ability of my Conflux, which has always seemed like a significant failing on my part. When I asked Halford about it, he told me not to worry about mana affixes as they didn’t come up often in the first rank. Arabella had said something similar when I brought it up to her. Trusting these two, I focused entirely on improving my dragonfire, a pretty good decision it would seem, but now an opportunity sat in front of me.
The glowing of the crystal almost calls out to me, asking me to jump down onto the stone island and snatch it up. That is exactly what I would do, if it weren’t for the four awfully suspicious tendrils sticking up out of the mud on the opposite side of the island from me.
Tendrils the same color as the mud itself rise up out of the mud, at least twenty feet long, and spread out toward the trees around, wrapping tightly around the roots and pulled taut. Even someone with as little experience fighting monster as myself can spot an ambush this obvious. The tendrils all collect to a single spot before disappearing beneath the surface of the mud, no doubt where the monster waiting to ambush anyone on the island is.
I call dragonfire to my palm, basking in the orange blaze that I conjure. I wait a few seconds, expecting whatever hiding monster is down there to react to my magic, but the tendrils remain still, sticking up out of the slowly shifting mud. I try to identify the monster with my eye, but apparently just seeing the tendrils isn’t enough to give me a description.
I give the monster a few more seconds to defend itself against my inevitable attack, over channeling my ability as much as it will go; at my significantly heightened mana pool, I can pour a hundred mana into a single Dragonfire Bolt. Yet, it continues not to react.
“Your funeral,” I say, shrugging. I stand on the platform of roots, taking aim. My bolt of dragonfire explodes down onto the mud where the monster lurks, tunneling a few inches into the mud before exploding in an orange conflagration. The mud blackens, catching fire, and I shield my eyes from the intense light of the fireball, a nearly fatal mistake.
As my fire splashes down into the mud, the tension is drained out of the tendrils holding onto the trees around the clearing. A shape, shadowed against the color of my exploding fireball, comes hurtling toward me, rocketed forward by the almost elastic properties of the tendrils. In the second that the shape is in flight, I conjure another Dragonfire Bolt and hurl it at the fast-moving monster. My orange fire collides with the creature mid-air, fire spreading over its slick form, before slicking away, leaving the monster unharmed.
Venomous Mud Catfish(Level 53)
I have just enough time to register what my eye tells me about the monster before it collides face first with the magical breastplate I am wearing. An explosion of force knocks the air from my lungs, compressing the metal of my armor onto my chest before my feet leave the ground. A crack rings through my head as I collide into the trunk of the tree I am standing on, my back splintering the bark and my head whipping back hard enough to knock my vision out of me.
Blind, I fall sideways, barely aware of the world as I begin to plummet toward the mud below me. I flail, knives appearing in my hands from my inventory, stabbing wildly as I try to find purchase on the tree. The knife in my left-hand bites home, the blade easily sinking all the way to the hilt in the trunk of the tree. In the next second, my legs buckle out from under me, and I dangle by the weapon I have stabbed into the tree for a good few seconds before the world slowly starts to come back to me.
I stare down at the mud beneath me, my orange hair falling over my face, rivulets of blood making the hair clump together and stick to my face. Beneath me, in the mud, several of the mud piranha poke their head out, gnashing their teeth as they wait for me to fall in.
The terror of those gnashing teeth forces me to suck down a breath. I push my unwilling body into panic, throwing all the strength I can manage into my legs, and pulling myself away from the edge. I stumble backwards onto the root and pull the knife out of the tree, finding the strange rainbow reflection of the magical knife in my left hand something to ground me in the moment.
I spin toward the monster, almost stumbling as my feet don’t want to cooperate with what my brain tells them to do, Healing Points 113/340. I feel blood trickling down my back from the cut across the back of my scalp. Though I can see again, all the colors of the world are washed out, and it is difficult to focus. I shake my head, but that only makes things worse.
On the branch in front of me, a huge fish flops toward the edge of the roots. The fish, a catfish apparently, is as big as my torso and fully the same color as the red mud below. Its gulping mouth spasms as it tries to breath the air. From its mouth, four whiskers, what I thought of as tendrils earlier, extend dozens of feet, flailing the same way that it does as it tries to put itself back into the mud.
The hatred that I feel toward the monster comes fast, and I welcome it. I try to step forward toward the monster but find that my foot doesn’t move how I want it to. I fall to my knee, seeing one of the monster’s whiskers whip over my head. The whisker wraps around the trunk of the tree we are both on. Like a perverse spring, the whisker drags the monster away, letting go of the trunk as soon as the catfish is airborne, and allowing it to plop into the mud below.
I know that I had said that I would run from a fight that I didn’t think I could win, but in the moment, I don’t think that there is any way a catfish monster could make me run away. Bark comes off in my hand as I push myself back to standing. I whip my head around, trying to find any whisper of the monster, but only end up making the pounding headache that is coming over me worse. This position is untenable.
Slowly, expecting that some monster fish will come sailing up out of the mud at me at any moment, I stumble my way toward the edge of the root. I am unsure of the jump even before I make it. My feet touch down on the smooth stone of the stone island, but my balance is still wrecked. I fall sideways onto the stone, rolling just in case the monster was waiting for that opportunity to strike me.
Sitting up, I find the mud-forest around me as quiet as it was before. Even the mud piranha that I know must be waiting beneath the surface of the mud do not come flying out to take a bite of me. I strain, pushing my eyes and ears for all they are worth, trying to catch sight of the creature before it attacks me again.
My eyes come up with nothing, but I do catch the sound of a snapping tree branch from my right. I move before I look, rolling away from where I currently sit, throwing fire in the direction of the sound. Half a second later, the body of the catfish sails through the spot where I just was, my fire splashing uselessly over it once again. It plops into the mud on the other side of the island, hardly a splash coming from its dive.
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My brain comes to the conclusion that my eyes have already come to understand. For whatever reason, this monster is completely immune to my fire.
“Silk on my dick,” I swear under my breath. I can’t help but smile a bit at the absurdity of the words, I will have to thank Jor’Mari whenever I see him next for introducing me to my new favorite swear. I stand, finding it a bit easier than earlier. I press my hand against the back of my head. It comes away slick with my own blood, but I don’t think the wound is still bleeding, Healing Points 125/340. Thank you Recovery Threshold.
With the monster immune to my fire, there goes the sole strategy that I have been relying on until now. The pulsing mana from the crystal that shares the island with me is distracting, the world gradually growing more green the closer I move to it, and move towards it I do. I put the crystal at my back, guaranteeing that there is at least one direction the monster cannot attack me from. Close to the crystal, the light from the sun overhead has practically vanished, draping the world in the green of the crystal and the orange of my own dragonfire that continues to smolder on top of the floating pieces of hard mud it makes.
Scanning the mud-forest around me for any sign of the monster, I reach back and touch the Bane Crystal, regretting it immediately when a spark of foreign magic lashes out and strikes my finger. I pull my hand away. The meat of my index finger sizzles as if it were burned, the edges of the wound a necrotic black.
“Can’t use that,” I tell myself.
I hear a snapping sound to my left and duck. A second snapping sound comes from my right a second later. I spin, horrified to see the catfish monster sailing through the air at me from my right, its mouth open, twin fangs barred at me. The bizarreness of seeing a fish with fangs escapes me for the moment. The monster is aimed directly at where it knew I would duck toward.
I reach forward, my inventory window popping into my view in the fraction of a second I have before the fanged monster can barrel into me. A shield, the heaviest one that I am still holding onto, appears in my hand, but I don’t have time to brace myself. The fangs of the fish punch straight through the steel shield, one of them stabbing down into my arm, before the mass of the monster collides with the shield and knocks me away.
The catfish sails up into the air, taking the shield along with it, before striking a root with a heavy thunk, slapping into the mud far less gracefully than it had before. The cut on my arm is shallow, a puncture hole near my elbow that begins to seep blood. Fear comes over me, replacing the anger I had felt earlier. This monster was called venomous!
A message window appears in my vision before I can really start to panic
Afflicted with Venomous Catfish Toxin
Venomous Catfish Toxin has been resisted! (Recovery Specialist Threshold)
“Lucky.” I stand, ignoring the injury, and looking toward where the catfish disappeared into the mud once more. This monster isn’t stupid, it adapted to how I moved and made a distraction to try and catch me off guard. We both seem to be bad matchups for each other.
I spot one of its whiskers snaking up from the mud toward a tree trunk, attempting to wrap around it. I call on my dragonfire, launching a bolt at the mud where the catfish should be. The unempowered dragonfire splashes over the mud but doesn’t penetrate, spreading out along the surface instead.
The whisker snakes back into the mud faster than I expect, and I see the telltale ripple through the mud of the monster swimming away. I throw more dragonfire at it as I track its swimming. The monster circles the stone island and I continue throwing dragonfire at it. As it moves through the mud, I track it with my dragonfire until I am just about out of mana.
I realize that I haven’t really been breathing as I pour all of my mana into my fire. When my mana is just about exhausted, I fall to a knee, sucking down air as fast as it will come. The world around me is on fire, the orange light drowning out the green glow of the Bane Crystal, and the heat rising in the air.
Listening, I try to find any sign of the catfish that I have lost track of. I hear nothing out in the world, nothing to tell me about the monster that is no doubt stalking me at this very moment. The catfish doesn’t care about the fire that surrounds the stone island, but I wonder if it can see me through the flickering flames. If not, I might be able to catch it off guard.
I summon chests around me, filled with meat from all the previous monsters that my team has killed today to weigh them down. I form a barricade out of the chests, focusing as much as I can on my hearing.
There is the sound of the trees cracking just ahead of me. I look that way, but don’t turn my head. A second later another crack echoes from my left, and then I see it. Rocks fall out of the sky, popping off of the branches of trees all around the stone island, creating a cascade of sound. I can’t tell where the monster will come from.
Instinct screams at me to move, and I spin to the left, finding the monster only a foot away from me as I turn. I am still ducked behind an iron chest, it is impossible for the monster to bite me at the angle it comes from, but it doesn’t even try to. One of its whiskers shoots toward me as it hurtles through the air over my head. As close as it is, even with all the points that I have poured into my speed, it is impossible for me to avoid it.
The catfish’s whisker wraps around my left arm, tight and unyielding. The bulk of the monster flying over my head rips me out of my crouch, smashing my ribs into an iron chest beside me, toppling the chest and spilling its contents as I am dragged off my feet toward the still-burning mud. If it can get me into the mud, I have no chance of defending against it and the hundreds of mud piranha beneath the surface.
I can almost feel the monster’s smugness at managing to outwit me, which makes my own satisfaction all the sweeter.
The body of the catfish passes into the orange fire, completely unharmed by the licking flames, but comes to a dead stop against the hard, baked surface of the mud. For a dozen feet at least, around the island, my fire continues to smolder and cook the mud I have thrown it onto. The monster skips off the mud, and I throw all my weight against the whisker still wrapped around my arm. I haul on the whisker like the happiest fisherman in the world, stopping the monster from making it all the way through the flames to disappear into the mud once again.
It stops bouncing forward, my death grip on the whisker it gave me holding it taut like a fishing line. “You didn’t think you could just get away did you!” I yell to the shadowed shape somewhere in the shifting orange flames.
I feel the panic race up through the whisker I hold onto, the tension around my arm going slack, but I refuse to let it go. This monster is no doubt stronger than me, but even a whole lot of strength won’t do much for a fish out of water. Heaving as hard as I can, I drag the fish monster out of the flames, up onto the stone island, where it flops and lashes out in all directions with its whiskers.
The magical dagger falls into my hand again, and I smile down at the monster. All four of its whiskers fire out at me as I lunge toward it, tightening around my body and arms, pulling it toward me even as I step forward to stab it.
Twin fangs race up at me, the binding of the monster’s whiskers around my body bringing it close enough to bite. Without a second though, I jam my free hand down the monster’s throat to the elbow, trapping its jaw open with only the barest cutting from its fangs along my arm.
“You aren’t the first catfish I’ve caught,” I tell the monster as I sink the magical knife into its eye.
The monster thrashes as I continue to stab away at it, but I won’t let it go anywhere. After only a few more stabs with my dagger, I can see the snaking of poisonous magic through its body with my Dragon’s Eye. The whiskers around my body slacken before it is dead, before I stop stabbing it.
I don’t stop until Galea appears in my vision, holding a sign in her claws, a look of pride on the spirit’s face that I have never seen there before.
You have defeated Venomous Mud Catfish(Level 53)
THRESHOLD FOR SOUL REINFORCEMENT REACHED!
The monster disintegrates off of my arm, still stabbed down its throat, disappearing into pink vapor that evaporates directly into my inventory. I let out a long breath, sinking to my knees on the hard stone, and giving myself a moment to breathe and recenter myself.
“You did it Mistress Charlene!” Galea cheers at me, clapping her claws together. “You killed a rank two monster all on your own!”
“I did…didn’t I,” I say through shallow breaths. “That’s a first.” I look down at the dagger in my hand, covered in the crimson of the monster’s blood. In the light from the fire all around me, it still gives off its iridescent sheen.
“Did you get anything valuable from the disenchantment?” Galea asks.
“I’ll check that later,” I tell her. I huff as I push myself to stand, turning back toward the Bane Crystal in the middle of the island.
In the second of its hurting my hand, I felt something deep in my soul whisper to me. It was my Conflux, I’m sure of it, though I have never heard of anyone speaking with their Essentia before. They are inanimate as far as I know. Still, there was a feeling.
I walk toward the crystal, drawing off my refilling mana reserves to conjure dragonfire into my hand. Instinct, no doubt granted to me by my Conflux, tells me what to do. Gently, I bring my flaming hand down onto the Bane Crystal. At first, nothing happens–no burning, no lashing out by the crystal. Then, like the spread of a wildfire, green light starts to tinge the edges of the orange fire in my hand. The green eats into the orange until all of the orange has seeped away.
I pull my hand away, finding the green fire still flickering on the tips of my fingers. The green is more beautiful than I had realized before, a perfect viridian that catches and traps the light.
Magic Essentia: Dragonfire Bolt(Rank 1):
Fire a bolt of dragonfire at a target, dealing fire damage and potentially setting it aflame. Dragonfire is a native ability of all dragons, and its aspects take on the properties of the user’s native mana affixes.
I can’t help myself but laugh as I see the new window appear in my vision. On a whim, I call dragonfire into my other hand. As I desire it, the normal orange dragonfire with the fire affix begins to pool in my palm. In less than a second, I am holding orange fire in my left hand and green fire in my right. I check my vital energies.
“My mana will be refilled in about ten minutes,” I tell Galea. She nods back to me. “We still have some time until sunset.”