Bizarrely, every trace of ambient noise had been sucked out of this room, and even though it was already night—one of Vencia’s countless moonless nights—everything was darker than it should be.
My vision dimmed, but it didn’t leave. My hearing was stymied, but I had other senses. My nose picked up typical smells…along with a kind of…metal ether?
In the same instant, my buffs went off. One Guard and one Meditate—okay, maybe two Meditates. If Meditate raised Wisdom and Wisdom literally made you smarter, more intuitive, that would help me keep up my cunning. Another Guard could come later, if needed.
HP 100% (598/598) SP 83% (474/570)
DEF 116 (+50%)
WIS 144 (+100%)
The pain of stacking buffs wasn’t as bad as it had been. Or was I just used to it? Or was I just feeling too determined to let that bog me down?
I pivoted, hiding behind the edge of the counter that split the kitchen and living room. Then I peeked at the front door, my mind all action:
The front door was open. The world outside was a shade darker too—this Spell or Skill had either surrounded our place or fully clouded my sight. And the intruder, luminous, was charging in.
Yeah, somehow I knew it would be her. Yet this all felt off. The Sapphire Queen…normally she was elegant and she got crunchy little insects to do her bidding. But tonight she—especially luminous in the eerie dark—was running for me like a linebacker.
She was holding something, but I didn’t have the luxury of time to gather what as she bashed a shoulder into the counter.
Plates and decorations fell to the floor, shattered. The utter lack of sound was the most jarring thing. I danced away from porcelain shards.
SPD 91
Well, then. And here I thought she might be more of a stealthy thief. I basically abandoned my cunning, saddled myself with another Guard, and set up a strategy.
The goal: get this Queen out of here before anything else, or anyone else, gets hurt.
And if things went so wrong that anyone had to die, let it be me. Please. Sierra didn’t hate me so much she’d leave me un-reincarnated, not yet.
I dashed out of the kitchen and sent her an Air Cutter with a whip of my whole body. This’d goad her as I made my way to the door.
Except, uh…
She was already standing in front of the door, and the Air Cutter had rocketed into the wall, ripping up logs.
Um, good thing that Cutter hadn’t knocked anything down.
The Queen was holding a silver blade low, apparently to block my path. She looked like a glowing hockey player with a glowing whitish stick.
Part of me got panicky. I needed to get outside, or else this place could get wrecked!
But further inside of me, I saw the situation clearly. That deep inside, time seemed to slow. The Sapphire Queen was advancing, drawing her sword back…and keeping her face on me. I couldn’t see her eyes through the glow—was beginning to wonder if she even still had those—but I imagined they’d be staring. And watering. Looking at me without a break.
Don’t worry about your friends…because she isn’t worried about them.
I darted past her sword strike, gunning for her leg. While I had a feeling this wouldn’t do much damage, I needed to see what her defensive baseline is, figure out how to conserve my SP when I—
What the?!
I swore I had gotten past her sword! Instead, my face was hit with a blinding mass of shimmers—wha, cubical shimmers?!—and a blade bit into my face, the gash almost reaching my eyes.
HP 69% (414/598) SP 78% (442/570)
I was knocked back. All the way back, into the wall with the Air Cutter wound, and sinking a little into the crevice.
My mind reeled. That blow hadn’t reduced my health too much. But that was because it had hardly even been a blow. The Queen had barely moved her wrists—again, like a hockey player. One who was merely blocking.
So consider what she could do at full power.
Or a fraction of her power, as long as her shimmers could keep me caught in the loop.
I fell back onto my feet, saw the Queen for a moment. I was reminded of how oddly inelegant she was tonight, and yet I didn’t get the sense that this was another person. All the same, it was odd to see her rising with a hunch, and letting the sword swing almost loose in her arms. She looked like a movie axe murderer—
She looked like she was using a Stat-changing blade.
That part almost made too much sense now. Lose so much INT and you lose a part of yourself.
Was that blade creating the shimmers too? I bet it was. Disarming her would probably be the key. Maybe it wouldn’t stop anything, but it’d certainly tank her Stats and make this a fair bit easier.
But I couldn’t just stand and think for much longer, the Queen was raring to go!
Wait…she was, uh, taking her sweet time over there?
This casualness had gone too far. She wasn’t, like, hunched over, but now she was swinging that blade a little too…jollily. And then, in a move so fast and brusque it should have been accompanied by a bonelike crack, she actually split the sword in two.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
It was intact, though. Kinda. It had changed into two knives.
Wh—
Why couldn’t mine do that?! (Wait…could it?)
She spun the knives in her hands like a showoff gunfighter before charging towards me.
Okay, now I couldn’t keep standing around thinking! I jumped as high and far ahead as I could without a Leap, and I was strong and springy enough that I certainly topped an ordinary cat. Latching onto her head from across the room would’ve been a no-go—latching on from three feet away, and from a standing position, was no problem.
Well…the one problem was the latching-on part. I could aim and fire, but she would intercept.
Which she did. One shimmer and I was hovering in a part of the air I absolutely hadn’t been a moment ago.
A knife was coming for me, slashing in an arc. I took another Guard, ate the blow, and latched on.
So I made it! Just not onto her face.
DEF 194 (+150%)
HP 46% (274/598) SP 72% (410/570)
Dang! Under 50 percent HP?! That dampened my spirits a little. I mean, so did the knife cutting through my side and, actually, still kinda lodged in it. But now that I was on her wrist (and her other wrist was coming for me, armed and dangerous), I could not waste the moment.
Hooking my claws between her fingers as best as I could, and forcing my side further into her knife (ow, ow), I then took a Leap, releasing her grip, sending me and the knife flying.
The idea of putting that thing in my Inventory made me feel ickier than it should have. It warped reality, sure, but why would that make my skin crawl this way? It must’ve been the other associations I had with the knife, the general aura of evil and wrong.
Nonetheless, I put it in.
Butterfly Knife
One half of the Bug Blade, a sword crafted by a smith from the Beyond and gifted to the Arkmagi themselves. When equipped, gives DEF, INT, and base SP a—
Error: Action banned by sysadmin.
SIERRA! I thought, frustration turning to utter outrage.
Her weapon flew out of thin air and skidded across the kitchen counter. I missed, bouncing off the counter’s edge…if you wanna call it a “bounce.” Landing on my feet made for the perfect shock absorber, but the extra damage I’d taken from shunting that blade away—a good 40 or so—stung with a radiating pain. Well, as long as I had no debuffs…
Wait, that wasn’t good news. None of this was good news! I mean, I couldn’t remember the whole item description, but I retained bits of it. I got “the Beyond,” for one thing, and that was never a good buzzword. And…and this weapon raised DEF and INT. It didn’t raise ATK.
Let that sink in: it was not raising the Queen’s Attack.
I looked up at the Queen.
Somehow, even though she had no mouth that I could see, she seemed delighted. Like, over the moon that I was messing with her. That movie-axe-murderer spirit was back in her, and I’d been a sucker for hoping it’d ever left.
My eyes focused on her free hand. It had no blood.
It shimmered and a knife appeared in it.
Shoot.
Well, what now? I thought.
Well, I myself responded, let’s just give her what she wants.
The moment I’d seen that item description, I figured I knew what she was after.
Her hesitation said the same.
She wanted a duel.
But if she wanted one on even footing, she wasn’t getting that, given her sky-high unadulterated ATK.
First off, I Morphed. Dusting myself off, smearing away some face-blood, and putting on my best pout, I pointed towards the door like she was a bad dog.
She studied me, not moving.
This was not good. I didn’t want her breaking up any furniture. But, uh…maybe this was a lost cause.
I’ve gotta be honest, I felt this thing was lost the moment I realized she wanted me to take out that golden blade.
But nonetheless, I settled into my coolest combat pose, gave my fingers a preparatory wiggle, hoped my human-form reflexes were up to snuff…and I went for it.
Here was my plan for the Debug Blade: equip, check stats, and if too many of them are too bad, unequip. Keep playing that lottery for the best ones. The flaws of the plan were the luck of the draw, but also the melty brainstate the sword put me in. Forget the pain—Meditate might even fortify me against that, at least until the five minutes ran out. What if it didn’t even occur to me to unequip?
Maybe melt-brain wouldn’t be so bad for the first few moments?
The moment I got the sword, I checked my Stats.
HP 39% (231/598) SP 72% (410/570) (x1)
ATK -336 (x-3)
INT 0 (x0)
DEF 194 (+150%)
WIS -288 (x-5 +100%)
SPD 91
My eyes bugged out.
Then my inner monologue turned to relentless screaming. UNEQUIP UNEQUIP UNEQUIP UNEQUIP UNEQUIP—
But even that train of thought was drowned out by the sheer pandemonium raging in my head once the Sapphire Queen was upon me.
By all appearances, she was no longer holding back. She had charged up to me in a flash and reared, Butterfly Knives out and ready for a cross-slash.
Shimmers exploded from the knife edges, harder to see in my wavering vision. My head began to pound, and I thought I’d cry, feeling utterly useless, at any moment. Part of me wanted to move, escape, and defend myself so bad, but my brain and body wouldn’t let me. In fact, my limbs felt more fragile than jelly.
I fell just before she struck.
I expected to feel daggers in my guts. Instead, as my back hit the floor, I heard a clash of metal on metal.
My mental disarray faded. My eyes opened again, and a gold blade, an almost-normal sword without a glow of aura or even a gleam, fell before me.
…While my huge Stat losses were gone, so were the Meditates I’d opened the battle with. I could not comprehend what’d happened for a long second. I just felt spent.
The Queen was standing over me, but between us was the golden blade. She was looking down at her knives.
Those weren’t glowing either.
Okay. So we both learned something tonight.
Then a System message careened into view. I wouldn’t have flinched harder if it’d been a falling guillotine.
Before I even read it, my inner voice thundered. I almost had her! I HAD HER, SIERRA! And you took that away! With your help, I learned that the swords counteract each other. Yeah, thanks, I would’ve found that out the moment I started practicing with them, SOMETHING I HAVE BEEN PLANNING AND WAS FULLY INTENDING TO DO. But you’re still acting like you’re gone, huh? You don’t have an excuse now, huh?
Wow. I can think really fast when I’m angry, huh.
Then I actually looked at the message.
Huh.
It wasn’t the same color as Sierra’s messages, for one. Hers were purple. The ones from the System were gray. This was, um…sapphire.
No one was waiting behind the message. The Queen herself was gone.
The message she left was worth a groan.
Hehe
You’re good