Short summary of the last chapter:
Spoiler :
Voice hid for a while, while creating an underground home of sorts. After a while he noticed a light mana signature that was periodically killing the others. He decided to go check out who was helping him, and it turned out to be EDI.
Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate!
Note from the Author. Sorry about the long delay. I have been swamped with projects lately. I have been trying to get chapters out, but I either have a test, or project, or both every week. I only got this out since I just finished my test.
Forty people all came at us with their large flying monsters. EDI smiled a wicked smile as she turned to me.
“So Voice, want to see a cool trick I picked up?”
I cocked my head to the side. “Sure.”
She nodded her head. A thin string appeared between her two Sai, connecting them at the hilt. She threw one of them. The instant it left her hand it disappeared. One of the players cried out as he fell to the ground, a vampiric Sai protruding from his left eye.
With a flourish of movements EDI quickly dealt with five more people before they got close enough to attack us. Every time she threw her Sai, another person would die. She always went for the eyes too. Scary.
She seemed to perk up seeing my face. I was very impressed with her to say the least. “I got a unique class after using the skill scroll! It lets me slow time down a bit while targeting!”
I focused on her to see what the class was.
Stats WindowNameEDIClassDread AssassinLevel 204Health: 5000Mana: 300Stamina: 2500Current Title: Dark SaiHealth Regen: 100/sMana Regen: 5/sStamina Regen: 25/sStrengthxAgilityxWisdom50Intelligence30Endurance250DexterityxLuckxVitality250Indistinct63Unused Stat Points0Fame-120
Even though my stat inspection could only see stats that were up to three times higher, since I could see the stamina and stamina regen, I automatically got the vitality and endurance. Her stats were waaaay higher than mine.
“Dread Assassin huh? Nice class.”
She didn’t even seem surprised that I could tell what her class was. She just nodded.
I got ready for the battle that was about to happen.
“EDI I am going to need you to stall them for just a few minutes. After that I’ll have a surprise to show you.” I gave her a mysterious smile.
I’m going to be honest here. I missed working with her. She always managed to make things easier on me. She always seemed to know what to do.
She gave me a resolute nod. Even for her it was going to be difficult to hold off 34 people by herself.
My mana had regenerated by a large degree by this point. I still needed more though. I sat down to meditate. All of my fairies but Eli and Kretchof were tasked to defend me. Since I was going to show myself to her anyway, I decided to have Kretchof raise the bodies of the players near us.
He didn’t show himself just yet though. He merely used his mana from inside of me. The thirty odd people were already throwing attacks at us by the time Kretchof summoned the first undead minion. The attacks were all arrows and thrown weapons at this point.
SparrowHawk took care of this part for me. SparrowHawk maintained a large sphere of wind around my body, throwing the attacks off of their target.
Continued to down the people, one at a time. After only another few seconds the group was down to 29 people. The group of 29 were upon us.
EDI was the closest, and so suffered the first attacks. She seemed to flow around them. Each attack seemed as if the attacked had planned to miss her. The increasing anger on the faces of those she blocked was the only thing that convinced me otherwise.
The way she guided the attacks could only be described as beautiful. Her eyes never left her opponents. Soon she was surrounded by three players, each attacking in turns. She was flawless while taking them. She even managed to guide some of the players attacks to hit each other.
I could no longer deny that she would be helpful on my journey. With her protection, I wouldn’t have to deal with very much danger in my day to day life at least.
Without even opening my eyes I began to take in the earth mana in the area. EDI was slowly being overpowered. I didn’t pay attention to any of this though. I concentrated all of my mind on the earth mana.
Eli increased the flow of earth mana into my body by 100%. I fixed the exact equation of the earth mana I needed in my mind. It was much easier than creating a building from stone at least.
Drake and Tear did their bests to put a strain on the bodies of the enemies. Sol kept a constant healing aura on EDI. Her wounds were closing faster than she was getting them. The only problem was her stamina.
The people eventually began to swarm behind EDI. Although she obviously wanted to stop them, she couldn’t. She had managed to kill a dozen people since they started to group up on her. Even killing one or two in this circumstance is an amazing feat, but it wasn’t enough to stop the ever present flow of killing intent.
As the people began to part around her and the four people she was attacking, my second layer of defense kicked in. Golem and Moro tag teamed the people. Even though metal and nature don’t tend mix well, they did their best.
Moro was agile as all get out. The monkey fairy could swing between the people faster than they could react. By the time they noticed Moro, the nature fairy would already be gone.
Moro carried Golem, who was the main attacker. Every time Moro passed someone, that person would be impaled by a small metal spear. The spears did minimal damage, but caused a nice amount of pain.
This only stalled the group for a few seconds though. I was getting close, but I needed another thirty seconds to complete my project.
Just as the group got to me, the wind mana began pushing them away. At the same time Eli stopped funneling earth mana into me. The people that were being pushed back by the wind were assaulted by the metal spikes, but they tried to ignore them.
Eli gave them something they would be unable to ignore. The same moment the earth mana stopped being channeled into me Eli summoned dozens of earth spears. The spears slid into the stomachs or legs of many of the people.
Golem coated them each in metal mana as soon as they were summoned. The added attack force made the earth spears do a bit more damage at least.
Eli wasn’t using elemental mana, just internal mana. Player afeter player was impaled by the spears. At the same time, EDI was finally finished killing the four surrounding her.
She began to stealthily kill the players from behind. That’s an assassin class for you I guess, I thought to myself approvingly.
The players quickly realized they were being attacked from behind. About half of them turn around to see EDI. They roared as they attacked her.
The twenty players were too much. EDI was fighting nine, and my fairies were fighting eleven. The fairies were going to be quickly overwhelmed.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The wind barrier was getting weaker and weaker as time went on. SparrowHawk could only take so much energy from the wind before tiring.
The players attacked the wind barrier viciously. It began to flicker. Soon it would go out completely. One of the players noticed this, and raised his large flaming sword.
As he struck down, he stopped and gaped. All of the players, EDI including looked around. The area had become completely black. No light whatsoever made it through.
All around us were giant stonewalls, walls that formed a perfect dome. After a moment, someone used a light spell.
The man that lit the spell laughed. “This was your big plan? To put yourself in a confined area with us?” His look of disdain made what was about to happen that much sweeter.
Even EDI had a look of concern on her face. Hey, if you want to chill with me you can’t question me. Rule Number 1.
Space seemed to warp. A voice that seemed both old and young, masculine and feminine spoke out. “I’m here. Who do I kill.” The voice was mysterious but the tone was clear. The being only obeyed because it had no choice.
“All of them but the girl with the Sai.”
He nodded and began to work without further speaking.
Four people died before anyone realized what was happening. The quasi Chaotic Lifeform dealt nothing but critical hits to vital areas. It seemed to have a skill similar to my inspect.
In a handful of seconds the entire enemy base was gone. No one was left but me, EDI, and the chaos boss. The boss quickly teleported away after finishing the group off.
That’s right. My plan was simply to stall for time in order for my dungeon boss to get here. The dungeon boss couldn’t leave the dungeon, but he didn’t have to. The dome was technically part of the dungeon.
EDI continued to star, blank faced. I smiled as I let the earth dome fall apart.
“See? You can trust me to always have a plan for victory.”
She slowly nodded, still obviously processing the scene. “Voice… that guy…”
I shrugged and changed the subject.
“So can we take these monsters or what?”
When the people jumped or dismounted from the birds, the birds landed and stayed there.
EDI shook her head to clear her mind.
“Well if you were a monster tamer we could take one or two, but since neither of us are, we can’t control them. We can kill them pretty easily though. They won’t move until directly attacked.”
My eyes lit up when I heard her said that.
I sent my thoughts to the quasi chaotic lifeform.
“Hey Chao, want some cool birds and rhino looking guys?”
For the first time since Kretchof forced him into existence, I sensed a bit of excitement from him. I gave him the nickname Chao. He hated it.
“What do you want in exchange?”
The reply was expected. He knew what I was like. Even after only a few days he seemed to understand me better than most people. His personality must be similar to mine. He knew I wouldn’t do this for free. Even if I would benefit from it either way.
I gave him a brief list of things I wanted. One of them, the biggest one, he had refused to let me have since I gave him control of the dungeon.
I wanted to see him teleport about a hundred times. That way I was guaranteed to learn it due to technique thief.
When I first asked for it his reply was, “I will NOT! This is the highest level ability from my race’s secret class. Only True Chaotic Lifeforms are worthy of using it.”
His view was that everyone was beneath True Chaotic Lifeforms. He put himself in that category as well, despite only being a Quasi Chaotic Lifeform.
I could move pretty fast, but not as fast as instantaneous teleportation. He reluctantly agreed, but with some conditions. For the next month I was going have to play gopher for him. Then he would agree to my requests.
I dislike being ordered around, but I would have to agree for now.
Over the next month I was attacked several times. Chao and EDI were always there with me though. With them there, I hardly had to do any work.
Every time the players attacked I would give the monsters left over to Chao. They tried many tactics, but none of them worked. I stayed around the general area of M’ Path, but went around it in circles. I collected every monster I could get my hands on.
My level stayed exactly the same. I didn’t kill any of the monsters. I sent them all into the dungeon.
Chao slowly divulged about himself over that month.
Chaotic Lifeforms can’t die. They can only be taken out of existence for a period of time. Eventually they will reform, but only after they gain a bit of ‘pure mana’.
They had been killed before. By one that could suck the pure mana right out of their bodies. This figure took all of the ‘pure mana’ and created the Elder Gods from it. Then this person made it impossible for the Chaotic Lifeforms to collect ‘pure mana’. So they were reduced to simple bonds of mana types.
This information was slightly different than what I was given earlier.
Chao wanted to create a world where his brethren could live in peace. Inside the dungeon he wouldn’t be detected by the gods. Dungeons were developed by Chaotic Lifeforms to hide from the gods, but they never got to use them.
So I collected the monsters for him. In exchange for every few dozen monsters he showed me his teleportation technique once. They monsters all had to be the same kind though. I didn’t ask about how the dungeon was progressing.
I wanted to be surprised by the changes when I saw them. What I did know was that Chao had a huge amount of ways to manipulate the dungeon. He made the tunnelers create new paths to find me a perfect place.
The place he found was next to two streams of water. The two streams met and formed a large river. It was surrounded by mountains, plains and forests, just like Rand. I liked it mostly because it gave me the ability to build a castle on a mountain and over look my town I’d be making.
When that area was found for us, EDI and I went there using the tunnel system created under Chao’s command. It took us a couple of weeks, but Chao led us there the entire time. Every time we were attacked EDI and Chao would decimate them.
In a month total we had found the area, and made it there. It was perfect. I began to use my calculate skill right away to pick out what I needed to do to make this city work. I had many interesting plans for it.
I may have ‘accidentally’ stolen EDI’s ability. It costs too much stamina for me to use though. I can only activate it for a total of one second. That is an instant for everyone but me. A second extra is great, but not enough to aim so perfectly with ranged weapons.
On one final plus note, I had learned one unique ability of the chaotic lifeforms. Teleport! It could work like the teleport to a town function, but only teleported a distance set by my intelligence. I could teleport a total of 328 feet each time. It cost 3280 mana to do that though. So each foot cost ten mana to teleport.
The upcoming days were going to change from how they were in the past.
A little abrupt, but there you have the end of the first arc. I’m going to admit. I got stuck at this part for a while. It didn’t help that I had no time to write it. The next chapter is going to open a new adventure for Voice.
I actually had to cobble this chapter together. With all the stress I was having lately I was actually debating stopping this series altogether. I decided to just put out one not so great chapter and create a new era though. I hate giving up an MC I’ve put so much effort into.
A bit of forewarning. He is no longer going to be a push over, but one of the major powers. It was bound to happen. Thank you all for reading this far.
I hope you will continue to read even though the MC is no longer going to be the 'underdog'. Trust me on one thing though. That guy isn't going to lose any of his mental capabilities.