Novels2Search
Crew Battle
Chapter 25 - Formidable

Chapter 25 - Formidable

Beyond the timber wall was a barren wasteland. Wherever they were did not have wind, as the landscape would not be as perfect as it was if wind were allowed to enact its erosion upon the exposed dirt. This was the first time in weeks Luke had come out this far, usually kept in the woods by whatever fraxion he fought, either by them being aggressive and powerful enough to warrant him to kill them or being willing to die to make sure he doesn't extend the fight or close enough to dying from some natural cause that they only gave him a few hours of exploration time.

He was running low on rest potions at this point, only having half of one left. That was still long enough to last days at the rate they needed to be consumed, but he needed to find ingredients for it quickly. It needed a soft, external layer of a living organism; any substance with a crystalline structure; and a hydrocarbon. Skin could, in a pinch, work as the first of the ingredients, and he had an endless supply of that on himself; though, sadly, the woods contained no fruits, which would work significantly better. For the second ingredient, he could conjure glass to work as the second best material after quartz.

The problem arose with the third. He was unable to conjure any oils, plastics, or plants he knew to have any hydrocarbons in them. Maybe something he could conjure would work, but he didn't know that it could. He no longer had the internet at his fingertips to look up if something he knew how to conjure would work as a substitute for Walmart bags.

With the most free time in a long while, Luke set out into the wasteland to try to find any source of oil underground. He wasn't sure if this entire planet - judging by the curve of the horizon, it was a planet - was artificial or what, since there was never any natural winds here and the sun never moved from its place in the sky. If it was entirely artificial, he would never find what he was looking for, the biological material needed for oils having never been buried long enough ago to create the oils he needed. If it wasn't artificial, he wasn't sure why the oddities of this world existed beyond blaming the gods.

Every few hundred feet, he would make a large cone of the ground in front of him invisible, letting light down into the ground to attempt to find his target. He walked for what felt like a whole day and definitely long enough to need another sip of rest potion, the longest he'd been in the arena without returning to the neutral position. Every step left prints in the dirt, making him easy to follow if the fraxion just thought to examine the edge of the arena's ground.

He'd never made it very far from the wooded part of the arena before, so he was unsure if the whole world reset or just the area around the wooded section. The few footprints he'd made the other few times he'd been out here had disappeared, but he'd never gotten far enough that the starting arena had fallen over the horizon like today. A few times, he stopped to cook a bit of his leg meat, since food was still an issue, and not one the woods could fix, but that did not significantly slow his march, at least not compared to if his fraxion opponent had reset his position.

On his second day, he found water. Tasting it, it was salty, so he would still need to use a bit of magic to conjure fresh water for himself. With the length of this break, any issues that could have arisen from his consistent usage of magic were reset to zero, over a day being more than long enough for his magic capacity to fully return to him. Wondering if it would be more magic efficient to boil the salt out of the water or conjure fresh water directly, he followed the shore. He felt like being near the water would lower his chances of finding oil, but he wanted the break from the monotony of his last few weeks of existence, however mundane and small.

While he was cooking his second meal of the day on his third day of his hunt for oil, Luke was teleported back to the neutral position, the fraxion he'd avoided dying in some way he would never know.

The hunger slowed his reaction time enough to get fully wrapped in metal wires, small barbs piercing his clothes and skin. They began to unwrap themselves from him, tearing the barbs through his clothes and skin, as he reacted, freezing them in place with telekinesis before snapping them and flying into the forest. As he flew, he left a trail of blood, which he worked to patch up.

The fraxion didn't like that its initial trap didn't work and gave chase, trying to slam Luke down into the ground with a telekinetic force higher than Luke had experienced from any fraxion so far, causing him to almost crash into the ground before he corrected himself.

Now knowing his opponent was an actual fighter, Luke turned and went to end the fight quickly so he could run away from an easier to escape fraxion. He conjured acid directly on top of his opponent's face while conjuring a metal spike from below them, but this fraxion had been paying attention to Luke's fights, on the occasion he actually fought.

The acid simply slid off a transparent shield over the fraxion's human-like had and torso while the spike glanced harmlessly off of an armor plating as it side stepped the attack from below. In retaliation, it conjured a fireball directly next to Luke's chest and immediately detonated it, ignoring the inefficiency of long-range casting and going straight for damage, knowing this human would not fall under efficient casting. It figured that it would die to the next human, if it managed to get past Luke, but it would be worth it to get this menace out of his brethren's way.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Luke put up a shield around himself, blocking the explosion and fire, and flew off to the side to regain vision of his opponent. He was not prepared to see the fraxion holding a hand out toward the ball of fire and rapidly decaying. As soon as the fraxion made eye contact, it aimed its hand at Luke and let whatever magic it was gathering go, sending out a hypersonic metal spike the size of Luke's upper body, instantly conjured faster than Luke could react.

The tip of the attack pierced straight through Luke's shield like it wasn't even there before turning the vast majority of his torso to a red mist. The attack was slightly off center and low, leaving his head, left upper arm, and a small bit of his chest in tact. The fraxion who did this to him was looking in similarly bad shape, its body almost fully decayed. Both arms, most of its human torso, and almost all of its horse body black and decayed. It would die to someone with even light magical capabilities, but Luke had his own problem to fix.

He flew off into the woods, using his own blood mist as cover, while he began restoring his body. The pain of having the majority of his body cut off or pasted made even keeping himself afloat hard, let along healing himself. He'd never quite reached the point of fully ignoring pain as Laura had, but since he was still alive, he was sure he could get his body back. He'd already restored every individual part that was now missing once before, just never all at once.

Rapidly, his upper torso and arms were fixed, but as he began work on his lungs, he heard the bushes nearby quake as a massive fraxion began to chase after the blood trail Luke hadn't even thought to attempt to hide.

Fighting, even if his opponent was mostly decayed from magic overdraw, in his current state would be an issue, so he spent a portion of his effort on evading any line of sight with the opposing fraxion, slowing down his restoration. He only had a few seconds at this point before he would begin to take on permanent brain damage from lack of oxygen to the brain, so he spent more effort getting his heart and lungs back than he could afford, if he wanted to fully escape his pursuer.

The fraxion caught sight of Luke, revealing that it had maybe two more attacks in it before dying from magic overdraw, and sent a telekinetic punch straight into Luke's exposed wound, right into his half-formed lungs.

Luke gave up on keeping himself afloat, falling into the underbrush below, and focused purely on restoring the most vital of his organs, allowing him to only need to deal with blood loss by the time the bush caught fire, forcing him to fly out of it and put out what little remained of his clothes as his opponent died of magic overdraw.

Luke, the torso, arrived in the neutral position against a fresh fraxion. He no longer had any supplies from his backpack, as it and everything inside had been blown away from the impact. He flew away before the conjured ice could trap him, working on regaining his lower body now that he had working lungs and a working heart. He could easily replenish his blood supply, so he had no need to worry about actually bleeding out from his exposed innards, just to replace it all.

The fraxion wouldn't let such an injured foe go easily, so it created a hemisphere of ice on the opposite side of Luke from itself. Enough that Luke would need to either crash his way through with an attack or shield or turn and fight.

He chose to create a conical shield in front of himself and crash through, which ended up being a mistake as the ice was too thick. He'd managed to cleave straight through a block of metal in the past, but now he was trying to save magic for healing himself. He wasn't sure how close he was to reaching his magic capacity, but healing himself was the largest expenditure of magic out of any of his spells, barring making massive versions of said spells like the fraxion had done to get him into this state.

So, with his lower speed of flight and weaker shield than when he'd pierced through the metal cube, the thick ice wall prevented Luke from simply punching a hole through it.

The fraxion was immediately upon him before he could escape the divot he'd created for himself, sending a telekinetically-enhanced punch into Luke's chest. By this point, he had down to his hips restored and began working on his legs. To defend himself, he created a spherical shield around him. To attack back, he used a spell to heat up the air surrounding his shield, protecting him from both the punch that threatened to undo the work on his lungs and heat that vaporized the nearby ice.

A waterfall formed out of the ice, a section of which turned to steam as the heat around Luke's shield was enough to instantly boil it, causing the fraxion to back up and put a shield of its own between the heat and itself, escaping with only mild burns to its human-like torso and arms. The brunt of the heat had been blocked by its armor plates, but heat could still seep into the gaps needed for mobility.

Luke emerged from his cocoon with a fully healed body, legs being significantly simpler to heal than the complex bundle of vital organs in the torso, and invisible. The steam blocked the fraxion's view of Luke already, so leaving while invisible was significantly easier than it normally would have been.

The fraxions had some way to detect invisible entities, but it required an active use of magic, which his opponent didn't know to use at the time.

He sneakily flew behind the threat as it watched the steam cloud for his escape and crushed its head between two metal cubes. He dropped the invisibility, knowing it's usually useless, as he faced a new fraxion, now missing all his supplies. As he easily escaped this new fraxion, he thought about his new predicament.

He would need to fashion new clothes, somehow, and either rapidly find a way to make a rest potion with a conjured rest cauldron or figure out a way to sleep while actively being hunted.