Felix watched the clock and stopped meditating a minute before the round started. While waiting for the last minute, Felix looked over at the snake's corpse. He focused on it for a few seconds causing something to glow around it's mutilated head. He went over to inspect it but unfortunately, it was broken. He found little shards of glass or crystal all over the place but they stopped glowing when he focused on them making him think it was valuable, when it was whole.
Damn, do I really need to try and preserve my enemies now? That's so lame.
Felix bent over to pick up another shard when a root shot through the ground, spraying up wet mud and wrapping itself around Felix's ankle. He looked up and saw the ground tearing itself up to reveal roots spreading out from around the creepy and twisted tree in the center of the clearing.
[E - Rare] Agzara the Vile Cypress (Lvl 90)
A fucking tree. How am I supposed to kill that thing. How is it even… not alive… but like… moving?
Ideally I would love a chainsaw spell or something, but I don't think I'll be able to create something like that for quite a while. That would require a lot of complex shapes plus movement spells. Making something like that on the spot and making sure the whole thing doesn't fall apart or break, I don't see how that could even be possible. It would take forever just to create the spell form, and the shape is probably done manually. Maybe spells like that just don't exist?
Lighting it on fire is probably impossible since it's still alive and full of water, I would need an absurd amount of fire. Hopefully it has health, cause if it doesn't, I'm pretty sure I would have to cut it all the way down then dig up all it's roots.
Felix dodged and blocked roots from every direction. Unfortunately his arm wraps were mostly useless as the roots almost exclusively tried to grapple with his limbs. Felix cast quick, detached, mana shields to block the roots he couldn't dodge as he made his way towards the tree. As he did so, the roots grew thicker and denser but were less mobile.
Halfway there, the roots folder over themselves, completely ripping themselves out of the ground so that the thin and nimble ends could continue to harass Felix.
I really need to find a way to make blades, I wish I could cut these stupid roots.
Felix tried to cut some of them off with Mana Bolts but only managed to land glancing blows as they twisted over each-other to try and capture their prey. As Felix drew closer to the tree, the roots closed in, shrinking the space around him until eventually he had to cast Flame Throwers to create an opening and back off.
I don't really have the mana to just push through and incinerate the roots. I have no blade spells to cut the roots, which would be much more efficient. I could try and freeze them, but that doesn't sound very effective or efficient. I'm not even sure if an exploding Firebolt/Firebomb would do much, it doesn't pack a ton of force and these things are pretty tough. Ugh, I could back off and try to make a spell I guess, kind of boring though, guess it's a good opportunity though.
Felix blocked and dodged his way to the outside of the clearing where the intensity of the root's attacks waned as they grew thinner and weaker. Just outside the clearing, past the tree line, the roots couldn't even reach Felix. He was completely safe.
Felix started to experiment with spells, launching them at Agzara. Unfortunately, nothing he fired had landed on the tree itself as roots shot up from the ground and wove themselves into a dense wall to block every spell leaving nary a scratch on them. He tried many variations of fire, cold, wind, sound, force and mana spells but their effects ranged from nothing whatsoever to maybe the tree took some damage.
Eventually Felix had run out of spells to try and didn't want to waste too much mana so he decided to try and create a new spell. First he tried to make a saw of some sort, he created a disc of mana and manually shaped the outside to have sharp teeth. Then he drew out a spell to spin it quickly as it launched. It managed to do some damage, but it got stuck in the roots without cutting all the way through, was unstable in flight and cost way too much mana.
Felix iterated on the saw spell for a while but didn't manage to create something he was satisfied with so he decided to scrap it and try something else.
I know I said I would need an absurd amount of fire and that I didn't have enough mana, but I don't really see any other choice at this point. I've got to at least make this as efficient as possible. If this is going to work at all, I need the fire to be really hot, and I'm going to need a lot of it.
Felix sat down in a meditative pose and drew out a Pocket Star spell form in his Mind Palace with some modifications. First, he greatly expanded the channeling components of the spell to allow it to handle a lot of mana. Second, he changed the ratio of force pulling inwards and spinning to fire to be about 3:2 instead of 1:2. Casting the spell took a lot more mana to get going than before, almost 75% of his pool then he started to pull on the ambient mana as much as possible to fuel the Pocket Star directly. He kept it as far away from himself as he could, even though his cloak was keeping him cool.
He kept the star spinning and manually pulled mana into it, using the vortex imagery he wouldn't use on his own pool. He grew the star manually as his mana pool regenerated passively. The extra force he was applying ensured that the star stayed a similar size and simply grew hotter and denser to a point. Once Felix's mana had fully regenerated, he stood up and held the star in front of him. It was almost too bright to look at, so he moved it off to the side.
I don't want to just throw this thing at it, as cool as that would be, that would be too inefficient and Agzara might deflect it. I wonder if the tree is possessed by a soul or it grew it's own by leveling? Anyways, ideally I use this as a source and launch super hot Fire Bolts from it. The real question, is how do I go about that? Time to potentially kill myself…
First, Felix tried to simply shove some of the fire out of it with force, unfortunately that didn't seem like it would work. He didn't use enough force to destabilize it, but he could tell that's what would happen if he used any more. The next thing he tried was much more successful. Instead of fighting the spell, he tried to pull a thread of the fire from the star as it spun, like a ball of yarn. Since the fire was entirely fueled by mana, he could still feel it and somewhat influence it. He simple diverted a small thread into a Fire Bolt off to the side and then launched the Fire Bolt.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
His first attempt exploded before he tuned the amount of force required to keep the Fire Bolt together in flight. Eventually, after he expended half of his massive mana pool, Felix managed to create superheated Fire Bolt's fueled from the Pocket Star spell he sustained off to the side.
He launched one of them towards the tree and once again, the roots wove together to defend Agzara, except this time, it incinerated a hole right through them. They continued to weave together a defense, creating almost 4 walls of roots before the Fire Bolt burnt out.
Holy shit. That was way better than I was expecting. This might be the best combat spell I have come up with myself. Why would I ever use Fire Bolt from now on? Other than the fact that this costs a metric fuck ton of mana. I think I'll dub these, Star Fueled Fire Bolts. I don't think they are quite Star Bolts as I hope one day I will be able to create and launch Pocket Stars by themselves, but they are more than Fire Bolts. Also, I'm not sure if they are quite Fire Balls yet. I always imagined those being more explosive. Plasma Bolt? These aren't plasma though, are they?
Felix continued to launch Star Fueled Fire Bolts at the tree, incinerating the roots that came to it's defense piece by piece. Unfortunately there were roots everywhere under the tree. No matter how many Felix burned through, more dug themselves up to replace the ones that were lost. At a certain point Felix had gotten a little too overzealous and pulled too much from the star, luckily he immediately felt it destabilizing and managed to hold it together. This necessitated him taking a break to grow and stabilize the star though.
Luckily, Felix didn't see any of the damaged roots regenerate themselves while he was preoccupied. He also spent some time regenerating his own mana pool as he was running low from the Star Fueled Fire Bolts and keeping the Pocket Star Fueled. While most of the mana came from him sucking in the ambient mana, he was also supplementing it with his own mana as it required an astronomical amount to sustain.
Felix continued his assault on Agzara's defenses, a little more carefully this time. It took him almost an hour to get through all of the roots until it couldn't mount much of a defense anymore. He also started to slowly move inwards, using the Pocket Star to swallow some of the roots that tried to attack him as he moved. They simply acted as fuel, slightly lessening the amount of mana required to sustain them.
Felix got much closer to the tree than he had last time, standing just a dozen or so meters away. It turned out, Agzara also had other defenses it could mount against enemies this close to it, it swung it's branches down at Felix, similar to the roots. The branches were much slower, but swung with a lot more power than the roots. Felix was worried they might tear through his star, especially when some of them were equally as thick, so he didn't try to swallow them. Luckily, he dodged them fairly easily because they were quite slow. Also, when he got within just a few meters of the tree, the branches became much less troublesome as they couldn't quite bend themselves far enough to attack him directly.
I almost feel bad for it, but at the same time, I kind of want to see what happens.
Felix slowly brought his Pocket Star around until it was front of him then cast an unchanneled Mana Shield between him and it to protect himself from any debris. Finally, he slowly pushed the star into the trunk of the tree.
At first, the Pocket Star simply incinerated a hole through the tree and Felix was disappointed. Once it was almost entirely inside the tree however, it suddenly caught something and exploded outwards in flame, engulfing the entire thing. It all caught fire, creating an awful black acrid smoke along with steam to roll out from the tree as it burned down. Felix ran away from it while his shield blocked the burning splinters and charcoal that occasionally got launched from the pyre. The rest of the tree collapsed to the ground, the branches falling and the leaves vanishing in the heat.
I guess I won't be harvesting much from that corpse. Ah well, I guess the ring will be much more useful for the World Bosses.
Ding You have slain [E - Rare] Agzara the Vile Cypress (Lvl 90)
Ding You have gained 4 levels in [E - Common] Caster
Combat Dungeon A
You have chosen to claim rewards, you will not be able to continue further rounds.
You have successfully completed 3 rounds of +10 - +15 difficulty.
Congratulations.
Combat Dungeon A
Calculating Rewards
Bonuses:
Difficulty
Time
Solo
Reward Tier: Highest
Combat Dungeon A
Rewards
[E - Epic] Wand of Lightning Bolts
[E - Special] Rod of Escape
[E - Special] Mind, Body, Mana
10,000,000 Tutorial Credits
That is a lot of credits, and yet half of the amount needed for a fort upgrade. Though I don't think those are supposed to be funded by a singular entity.
Felix looted the credits then looked towards the first actual item on the table. It was a leather bound book with what looked like the Vitruvian man on the cover, except the figure was only the shape of a human and was a part of a simple spell diagram around it. Inside the body lay multiple geometric drawing, like a runic medical diagram.
[E - Special] Mind, Body, Mana
A book containing the life's work of one Ahedorya. She spent her entire life researching mana and it's interactions within the bodies of living creatures.
Huh, cool. I'd been hoping for more info on mana, I'll take it.
The next item on the table was a simple wooden rod. Felix might have considered it a stick, were it not perfectly cylindrical. It was about the length of a ruler and completely plain, with no distinguishing features.
[E - Special] Rod of Escape
Break the rod to launch yourself in the direction you are facing at extreme speed with a safe landing. This item may only be used once.
Another one of those: I'm glad I have it, but I hope I never have to use it.
Felix stowed the rod in his inventory and looked towards something he was rather excited about. The next item was another wooden stick, however this one, was blackened like it had been charred. It was much more natural looking, being slightly, curved and shrinking towards the point, rather than perfectly uniform in shape like the Rod of Escape. Wrapped around one end of it was a simple brown leather strip forming a handle, a stark contrast to the pure black of the rest of the wand. Overall it was just over a foot long, longer than a typical ruler but not quite unwieldy.
[E - Epic] Wand of Lightning Bolts
[Wand][Weapon]
A wand crafted from the remains of a great tree that was struck down by lightning. The wand now only casts a single spell, a remnant of it's creation.
Channel mana into the wand to cast the Lightning Bolt spell.
That's rather simple, can't complain though. I guess some might see it as a downside that it can't be used to cast normal spells, but I wouldn't ever use it for that anyways. I just want to learn the spell inside of it. Although who knows, maybe you can use it for normal spells too.
Combat Dungeon A
All Rewards Collected
Would you like to leave this room?
Warning: You may only remain in this room for a maximum of 15 minutes.
Yes.
No.
Yes.
Felix held his breath and a second later was submerged in the sea. He swam to the surface, which was just a few meters above him and then towards the shore of the sandy area, as far as he could from the swamp. . . . . .