Five bosses slain, three more remained. The delvers were out of food and Solace out of mana. It took an average of a day and a half to replenish one’s mana pool, and it was only a bit less than that for him if he put all of his essence into his spirit’s mana core. He couldn’t afford to wait that long. Time wasn’t on his side with their limited supplies.
Xu Wei had fallen asleep during the recovery and cleaning period after his fight with the leaping spider. The boy clutched spools of Tier 2 silk wrapped around used water bottles as he dozed against the wall of the antechamber.
For a long while Solace thought about leaving the challenge. A boss with a perfectly synergizing [Skill] like the last fight had nearly beaten him, afterall. But at the same time, he still had some strategies and tricks to give him an advantage over the remaining spiders.
Ultimately, he decided to push on—to at least defeat the next boss.
Solace moved to wake up the boy, lightly tapping his shoulder.
“I need your help,” Solace said once Xu Wei got his bearings.
“Y-you want me to fight with you?”
The tone of the question was tinged with something Solace hadn’t expected.
Elation.
“No,” Solace replied. “You don’t have the armor or other weapons besides your knife. I need you to go gather stones from the hybrid’s room. Search for ones that can fit easily in your palm and are as oval shaped as possible. The shape and smoothness are very important.”
“Oh… okay,” the boy said as he walked off to do just that.
Xu Wei’s eagerness to fight was a bit concerning, but Solace shrugged it off. It wasn’t his place to worry about those things. Instead, he focused on what he had to make in order to use the stones.
Solace grabbed the tattered remains of the net and inspected it closely. The lattice that it once had was made out of silk interwoven into strong cord. Using his knife, he cut out three of the still intact strands of silk cord from the net and cut them to an equal length of five feet.
While he did this, he used his Talent to change his allocated essence from regeneration to mind and dexterity. They would help the most with the task at hand.
When he had the three lengths of the silk cord evened in length, he tied the ends together with double fisherman’s knots to effectively make one larger piece. He then began to weave the cord in the middle with itself until he had a thick pad of silk at the center of the item. He finished by making a knot at each end of the item to make gripping the ends of the cord easier.
Solace had effectively made a shepherd’s sling.
“Here you go,” Xu Wei said as he returned with one of their bags full of rocks.
“Thank you,” Solace replied as he stood up to accept the bag. Taking a stone out, he loaded the sling and spun it at his side experimentally.
The item performed to his satisfaction; the knots balanced on both sides and the pad of silk holding the rock was perfectly in the center of the rope.
After a few spins to build up force, he let go of one end of the rope, launching the rock at a spot on the wall that he had aimed at. The increased allocation to dexterity made up for the fact that he was out of practice with the weapon.
“Does this mean you’ll be fighting the spitting spider next?” Xu Wei asked.
“Yes.”
The spitting spider was exactly what it sounded like. A monster that spat venom laced, sticky silk at its enemies. The venom was especially dangerous since flesh easily absorbed the stuff on contact.
At Tier 2, it was a hard but manageable fight since the spider’s range was within throwing distance of his glaive. But at Tier 3 with an unknown [Skill], he didn’t dare try to fight it without a proper ranged weapon of his own.
Of course, a sling with inconsistent projectiles could hardly be called proper. The stones would never be able to outright kill the spider unless he got lucky, but it was all he had or could make in a timely manner.
Solace spent several minutes practicing his new weapon, shifting some allocated essence back to other areas from mind and dexterity to simulate his cultivation spread in combat. The stones gave sighs of rapidly displaced air before crashing into the wall with resounding clacks.
It wasn’t the best, but good enough for what he needed.
Solace put all of his gear back on, securing armor, sword, knife, glaive and spear. He then tied one of the rags they had brought into the rift onto his sword sheathe’s strap to form a makeshift pouch. He loaded it with as many of the stones that were optimally shaped as he could—eleven in all.
He made his way to the next boss’ doors and pushed them open. A wave of humid air greeted him as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer crystals within. The interior of the room was shorter than others, with the ceiling only twice his height and populated by sparse stalactites. The floor was a much more treacherous place. It was a thick layer of mud broken up by infrequent areas of solid stone.
Solace carefully took a step inside. His foot sunk such that the mud reached past his ankle, a certain impediment to movement. The depth would most likely be that way for a good portion of the room, but he didn’t doubt that it could be deeper.
It was a terrible place to fight a ranged boss with a [Skill], but he had an idea on how to mitigate the terrain’s impact on him.
With an armful of rocks he deemed suboptimal for slinging, he began to trudge in a semicircle around the entrance, marking the more shallow areas of mud. He worked his way inwards, also using stones to indicate easier routes to the areas not covered in mud. When Xu Wei saw what he was doing, the boy silently moved to get more rocks for Solace.
After several trips back to the antechamber to load up on more rocks, Solace stopped to survey his work. Roughly a third of the room was now navigated and marked to make it easier for him to fight in. He would have happily filled more of the room, but that would take too much energy and time as well as risk nearing the center. Starting the fight prematurely would be terrible.
But that worry was no longer a problem with his finished preparations, so he began to make his way towards the middle of the room. With rapid breaths, he toed the center with his foot before sprinting towards the stone area which stood nearly equidistant from the center and the exit. It was the safest spot to initiate the fight, with space for him to react to the unknown [Skill] and retreat or properly battle.
The spitting spider came from his right side, a multihued brown creature with long tapered legs that skittered towards him on the ceiling.
The moment he heard it, he turned to face the boss with his shield. He began to swing his weapon to build up the stone’s speed.
Though a Tier doubled one’s strength, it didn’t necessarily double everything one could do. The biological mechanism of the spitting spider’s attack meant that it should be able to spit only roughly one and half times as far as its Tier 2 counterpart, a fact Solace kept in mind as it approached.
Twenty five strides away from him, it launched its attack. In the instant it took for the boss to stop to aim and fire, he had already released his sling. Stone met netlike silk in a cloud of venom. His projectile’s momentum was much greater than the spider’s, causing the whole mass to be sent back towards the monster.
There was a crack of rock on chitin as the stone, webs and all, clung to the spitting spider. But before Solace could take advantage of the situation, the boss quickly retreated behind a stalactite.
A moment’s debate had him leaving the platform to find a better angle at the now hampered monster. He loaded another stone in the sling and began to take steps in a semicircle towards the stalactite the spider was hiding behind, sabatons squelching in the mud. He fully expected it to take advantage of his less advantageous position and hoped to bait out the use of its [Skill].
The boss didn’t disappoint, sending another glob of web the moment its head peaked from behind cover. It was too fast for him to launch a counter, so he merely moved his shield to meet the attack and block it before mov—
His upper body involuntarily contracted for a second as the mass of venom and silk met his shield. He instantly recognized the sensation, the mild agony emanating from his shield arm. Electrical current.
The spider’s [Skill] could charge its attacks with electricity.
Solace recognized the danger of fighting something that could penetrate his protective gear with ease and began to make a retreat. But before he could get far, the monster had emerged from its cover to launch another attack.
He quickly sidestepped the projectile only to be brought down by the current traveling through the mud to his legs. His lower limbs seized against his will, and he collapsed backwards.
He grit his teeth as he fell, the cold sensation of the mud matching the chilling feeling in his stomach. As fast as he could, he began to reallocate essence into durability to help him endure the shocks and perhaps still work his way to the exit.
Unfortunately, everytime he managed to get up and away, another projectile landed to bring him back down. The spider always took the moments in which he was momentarily paralyzed to close the distance he had put between them.
This is really bad…
More a wordless thought than anything coherent, it resounded in his head as he tried to find a way out of his predicament. The doors were an eternity away, so he made his way to another stone area to hopefully get out of the mud. His movements were slow, jerky actions inhibited not only by the intermittent electricity but also by the webs now coating several parts of his armor—to say nothing of the venom seeping into his gear or the mud he was mired in.
Once he hit the stony platform, he allocated all of his essence into mind, dexterity, strength, and durability from everywhere else. He raised his shield as far out from his body as possible and flung his stone at the spider. He loaded another as quickly as he could with the one arm, and then another. If he couldn’t move, he intended to try to place the spitting spider in a position where he could kill it before the creature could do the same to him.
It was a brutal exchange of stone and silk, armor and chitin. One that he was losing as the shocks prevented him from landing a majority of his shots.
He glared at the spider as he loaded his last ammunition and gathered speed for it in the sling. After he launched it, he’d use his glaive and spear. If those two failed…
It would be over.
Scarcely an instant after he had that thought, a rock came sailing in from behind Solace. A stone which bizarrely moved in a straight line rather than an arc as it flew at the spitting spider. Rather than smacking into the boss and immediately falling to the floor, the projectile pushed the monster backwards.
“Come on!” Xu Wei shouted. The boy had taken several steps into the room, throwing rocks that provided cover despite their lesser accuracy and power.
Without hesitation, Solace launched his last stone and sprinted back towards the room’s entrance. Only one of the boss’ errant shots at his retreating back managed to get close enough to him. He stumbled forward rather than fell at the attack, quickly recovering.
And then he was past the doors and back into the antechamber. With Xu Wei’s help, they slammed the doors shut and leaned against them to keep the entrance closed.
Solace turned onto his back and slumped against the door, breathing heavily. “Thank you, Xu Wei. I hadn’t prepared for a [Skill] like that.”
“It was… shocking,” Xu Wei said in the Corporations language, hesitantly.
Solace looked at him in disbelief for a moment.
“Did I—was that correct?” The boy asked.
“Yes, yes it was,” Solace said with a shake of his head. “Could you…” He stopped to take another breath, “get me the antivenom, please?”
Xu Wei nodded and moved to retrieve the serum. It was an almost clear fluid inside of a capped syringe. Solace had bought it from an alchemist for a princely sum of sixteen Tier two stones worth of credits and several vials of venom as an insurance in case any of the people he had carried got bitten. His reputation as reliable was more important than that amount of money.
For a while he had suffered from buyer’s remorse, but those feelings were nowhere to be found as he felt the burning of the venom affecting his body. Taking the offered syringe from Xu Wei, he removed his upper armor to get at his right arm. Carefully, he located the large vein within the crook of the elbow, uncapped the syringe, and injected the antivenom.
The solution was a mix of Tier 2 alchemical healing agents and mundane venom-specific antibodies. It had been designed with the intent to mitigate damage from the venom with the expectation that the recipient would be sent to the hospital as soon as possible. For Solace, that could be as long as a couple of hours from now. He wasn’t too worried about things like infection from the way he had self-administered the serum.
He’d either get to a healer before it became a problem, or it wouldn’t matter.
Solace quickly shifted his essence allocation to favor durability and regeneration in order to stave off some of the damage the venom was no doubt causing before the antivenom could finish its work. Because of this shift, the entry wound from the syringe quickly clotted up once he removed the needle.
As he took off the rest of his armor and cleaned it up with the blowtorch and rag Xu Wei retrieved for him, Solace studied the boy for several long moments before voicing a question.
“Xu Wei, you threw those rocks with the help of your Talent, right?”
“Yes,” the boy said hesitantly.
Solace chewed his lip, thinking about how to phrase his request. Asking about Talents was a terrible faux pas, and he didn’t want to put himself in a position where he was obligated to reveal his either. At the same time, there was no way he could beat the spitting spider without the boy’s help and knowing the extent of the help that Xu Wei could provide.
Eventually, he decided to be honest.
“Xu Wei, right now, there’s no chance I can beat the boss without your help. I know how important keeping one’s Talent a secret is, so I won’t ask for that. But would you be willing to help me by using your Talent in the same way that you’ve already done?”
“Does that mean I get to fight?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes!” The boy said with a pump of his arm.
“But you have to follow my lead,” Solace warned.
“Of course!”
“Then gather up a few rocks. I need to see your accuracy.”
A plan was already forming in Solace’s mind as the boy moved to retrieve some stones.
—
“Ready?” Solace asked.
“Yes!”
Solace nodded and pushed one of the doors slightly open. He needed to make sure that the spitting spider wasn’t immediately waiting behind it in ambush. When no attack came, he opened it a bit more, gradually widening the opening in this fashion until he could squeeze past with the two spears on his back. His eyes scanned the surroundings all the while, but he never sensed the boss.
It was an expected outcome, so he moved onto the next part of their plan. With careful steps, he trudged his way through the mud and stone until he was fifteen strides in.
“Here,” he said. “This distance.”
“Okay,” came the reply.
Solace continued walking forward afterwards, gradually approaching the center when his spiritual senses detected an attack from his left.
In an instant, with emphasized cultivation in mind, strength, and dexterity, he brought his shield to bear. The attack slammed into it. There was the sound of crackling electricity, but he felt no current. The layers of silk collected from the trapper’s walls and attached to the shield acted as an insulator against the [Skill].
“Working,” he confirmed aloud.
“Where?” Xu Wei asked.
Another glob of silk and poison came Solace’s way and he blocked it the same as the first. With the two shots, he was able to quickly confirm the spider’s location.
“Left, half a turn,” Solace answered.
He jumped backwards and to the left to dodge another attack, timing his leap such that the current within the projectile fizzled out before he landed.
“I see it,” the boy said.
“Go.”
A rock came sailing in from behind Solace. Though it was thrown by a mid-Tier 1 boy, Xu Wei’s Talent and physical cultivation emphasis had the stone speeding along in a line instead of an arc.
Solace swung his loaded shepherd’s sling in an arc, building momentum. As the boss tried to dodge Xu Wei’s rock, his stone came rocketing in to meet its movement. A crack of chitin and stone sang out in the otherwise silent room.
“Yes!” Xu Wei cheered.
“Focus.”
More attacks came, each Solace met with his shield or leapt to avoid the shock. He would move while loading his sling, waiting for a chance to retaliate.
Xu Wei, for his part, provided those opportunities. A carefully aimed stone or rapidly thrown volleys, the boy’s Talent enhanced rocks meant that either the spitting spider had to dodge, take cover, or be hit. And though the stones weren’t thrown with enough force to really harm Tier 3 chitin, their strange properties of inertia would push back the monster in a way that Solace could take advantage of better than if the spider dodged the rock.
The best part? The boy was completely safe if the two delvers coordinated their movements. Xu Wei was always out of the spider’s range and Solace was always between the two. When the spitting spider tried to rush past him in one of the exchanges to get at the boy, it was quickly met with a stone and then thrown glaive which took out one of its legs. The monster quickly retreated as the spear plopped to the floor.
“Retrieving,” Solace said, loading another stone into his sling and moving towards his weapon.
“Covering!” Xu Wei called back.
A larger spread of rocks flew in to distract and pin the spider as Solace retrieved the weapon.
“Reset,” he said, sprinting back to a proper position between the boy and the boss.
In this fashion, the two began to ground down the spitting spider. Every option available to the creature countered by perfect spacing and simple but careful communication.
Whenever Solace or Xu Wei were running low on stones, they’d shout it out and space their projectiles to allow for a safe retreat to the antechamber to reload or resupply from the hybrid’s room.
It was only a matter of time before the cracks in the spitting spider’s defenses widened and eventually, after seven rounds of fighting and reloading, the thing collapsed to the muddy ground in a bloody heap.
Solace didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until after he felt the rush of essence from killing the boss with his glaive; but when he did, it was a large one. With Xu Wei’s help, skill had triumphed [Skill].
“That was easier than I thought it’d be,” the boy said, trudging up to the corpse and crouching to inspect it. “I didn’t know fighting was this fun.”
Fun?
Solace gave Xu Wei a sidelong glance. There were so many things wrong with what the boy had said. Fighting was not easy, it was not fun. There were several instances in the strategy against the spitting spider where lethal danger was one error in positioning or throwing away.
He wanted to say it, explain and expand on every single nuance, but ultimately just shook his head. The amount of time and mental energy wasn’t worth it at the moment, and Xu Wei was probably just feeling the rush of victory and adrenaline.
“A solid plan certainly helped,” Solace said, turning to walk out of the room.
Once outside, he began the usual routine of removing and cleaning his armor while recovering using his Talent. Though his gear was coated with silk and venom, the blowtorch’s heat meant that it could be safely wiped off once burned.
When he finished with the cleaning, Solace cultivated his newly acquired essence. The amount of time it took for him to do that meant that, by the time he was done, his stamina was almost completely recovered.
He began to prepare for the seventh boss.
From his armor he detached parts of the steel gauntlets from the leather beneath, setting the plates of metal that covered everything above the wrist into one of the bags.
He then visited the trapper’s room once more, collecting handfuls of the remaining dry silk on the wall to use it to grab one of the overhanging globs of sticky web and cut it free.
“Xu Wei,” he called.
The boy poked his head through the entrance to the room.
Solace shook the glob of web in his hand. “Could you hold this please? And the next one I cut off.”
“Okay.”
With Xu Wei’s assistance, Solace was able to cut out the remaining two overhanging bundles of sticky silk within the room. The boy held two, one in each hand, while Solace clutched the last as they exited.
With his free hand, he began to load the globs of silk with some of the remaining stones they had collected from the hybrid’s room, turning the things into sticky, cumbersome weights.
“The next fight is the marionette,” Solace said. “You probably won’t be able to help me, but I’ll be leaving those two with you. Throw them if and only if I tell you to. The marionette can slip past me, so it’s important you don’t draw attention to yourself until the optimum moment.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“I understand.”
With a nod, Solace set down the glob of web he had on a pile of stones to put on the rest of his gear. He left certain clasps and straps looser than normal.
Maximizing freedom of movement would be very important in the next fight.
He used his Talent to readjust his cultivation towards an emphasis in flexibility at the expense of his mundane senses. The essence allocation into mind was more than capable of propping his spiritual senses to cover for the deficit in information.
With his preparations finished, he grabbed his bundle of silk and stone before moving to the marionette’s doors. He pushed the entrance open.
The interior was a spacious place with a shorter ceiling reminiscent of the spitting spider’s room. Unlike the previous boss, however, a lattice of thick ropes of silk stretched above, just in arms reach if Solace jumped. The stone ground was flat and textured like large grit sandpaper.
He made his way inside, his steps loudly clattering against the rough stone. His glaive was clutched in his shield hand while the glob of web was in the other. His spiritual senses confirmed that there were no obvious traps or threads meant to hamper him.
The peaceful silence was swiftly broken the moment he reached the center. A soft sigh of movement, a near imperceptible growing of darkness around him, the marionette fell from above.
Humanoid in figure but with six arms, the boss was a palm sized spider which operated the human sized marionette from within using silken mechanisms. The body was composed of thorny, segmented chitin that vaguely resemble armor. A false face with eight slitted holes for eyes “stared” at him. Four curved shortswords were held in two pairs of its hands, each brought to bear as the monster descended right on top of Solace.
He was prepared for it, of course, stepping backwards the moment his foot touched the center of the room like usual. The movement backwards became a leap as the marionette crashed into the stone with resounding clacks and clangs from its chitinous body and Tier 3 steel.
As Solace was midair from his jump, he threw the mass of silk and stone in his hand. At such a close range, it was impossible for him to miss or the marionette to dodge.
So it didn’t. Instead, the creature flicked up the swords in its lower arms. As it did so, blades made of shadow appeared parallel to the steel, intercepting Solace’s attack and turning what was supposed to be a guaranteed ensnarement of several limbs and weapons into a pile of stone and silk on the floor.
It was an unfortunate development, but at least Solace knew what the boss’ [Skill] was now. A sort of shadow attack which appeared to the side of the actual strike. The dimensions and strength would need to be determined, but now he didn’t need to worry about a projectile or enhancement [Skill] like the last bosses had.
With a flick of his shield arm, Solace sent his shield flying back towards the entrance of the room, away from his and the boss’ reach.
In a fight like this, the creature’s advantages were its inhuman flexibility, multiple arms for attacks, and a body which felt neither pain nor could be truly maimed. The advantages Solace held was his superior dexterity, reach with his glaive, bladework, armor which limited the areas he could actually be hurt, and continuous mobility that the silk mechanisms couldn’t match. Using the shield would only play to the monster’s strengths and not his own.
He grasped the glaive in both hands to meet the attack of the now charging marionette, thrusting the spear forward to catch the crook of one arm while stepping forward and angling the haft of his weapon to meet the wrist of another attacking arm. The shadows wreathing the blades also stopped short, barely moving past where the physical swords were.
While the creature had four swords, it could only ever effectively attack with two at a time without its limbs getting in the way of each other. But that didn’t mean the extra arms were useless, as the second pair of swords came whistling in seamlessly after the first.
With his wrists and fingers, Solace twirled the glaive like a staff in a half turn, building enough momentum to stop the attack much like the first. The boss’ third pair of unarmed hands shot out to hold the glaive as the first pair reeled back for another strike.
Solace leaned backwards and to his left, his bodyweight and muscles weren’t strong enough to pry his weapon from the Tier 3 marionette’s grasp, but it was enough to tilt and slightly lift the almost hollow creature’s body. With one smooth motion, Solace’s right leg shot out to kick the marionette’s torso while letting go of the glaive.
“Throw!” He shouted right before his foot connected with the monster.
The marionette was only partially able to react, its second pair of blades and shadows slammed heavily into his leg, bruising his limb through sheer blunt force.
Solace fought the urge to react to the pain. It would not help him.
And then the boss was in the air, unable to move as the silk and rocks thrown by Xu Wei flew towards it. The creature tried to twist its body in order to evade the projectile, but was still struck in the lower body and limbs.
As the marionette fell, Solace quickly pulled the two pronged spear from his back and surged forward to attack before his opponent could get up.
The glaive was still in the boss’ hands, but Solace wasn’t concerned. The boss wasn’t better than him at the spear and certainly wasn’t capable of incorporating it into its four sword fighting style. The creature seemed to know it and threw the glaive at him like a javelin in an effort to slow him down. With his allocations in mind and dexterity, Solace deflected it without slowing his advance and began attacking the monster once it was in range.
Still on the ground, the boss blocked his assault. It used four arms to parry, three with swords and one with his glaive, while scuttling backwards in an awkward crabwalk. Because of the silk and stone, its defenses were lopsided lest it accidentally become stuck to the floor.
Solace abused this in order to land hits on the marionette. The heavier Tier 3 weapon was ideal for smashing as well as piercing, and he used it to great effect as he wielded the spear like a hefty quarterstaff. He crushed the elbow joint of one arm, and then the forearm of two other limbs in rapid succession.
But though he was winning, it was a temporary position. He could tell that the boss’ [Skill] shined when on the offense, so he tried his best to keep it on the defense. Unfortunately, sprinting after the Tier 3 monster while attacking as fast he could was a tiring and unsustainable course of action.
So when he tracked the spider puppetting the marionette from inside with his spiritual senses, he made an attempt to end the fight. He batted two swords aside with the back half of his spear before lunging forward to drive the front end into the marionette’s torso and the spider itself beneath the shell.
The monster was ready for the attack. It used one of its legs to viciously kick up at Solace’s head. Shadow copies of the foot also formed around the counter, forcing him to abort the thrust and roll to the side.
The two combatants scrambled to their feet simultaneously. With that last exchange, the momentum was broken and the fight reset. But not without some changes. One of the marionette’s arms was nonfunctional and two others barely usable while Solace was winded and without his glaive.
Solace let the marionette be the one to close the distance, taking deep breaths as the second round of fighting began in earnest.
—
Xu Wei
Don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep, don’t fall asleep.
Xu Wei tried his best to keep his eyes wide open as he heard the sounds of fighting resume. He had closed the doors after throwing the first pile of web and rocks, knowing that doing so would deter the boss from trying to turn and attack him since it would have to push open the doors while Solace was behind it.
There was something wrong with Xu Wei, the boy knew. All of this exhilarating combat, exactly like the stories he grew up on, and it was all he could do to stay awake when the fighting wasn’t immediately in front of him. He had always been like this, sleeping the days away much to the chagrin of his ambitious family.
The thought of sleep made his eyes droop, and for a brief moment he considered sitting down to bring some relief to his bone deep wariness that never seemed to completely disappear.
Don’t be lazy.
He forced himself to stand up straighter. He lifted the remaining weapon entrusted to him with one hand while smacking himself awake with the other.
He was not lazy, he was not! He couldn’t afford to be, his Talent made it so that everything he did was twice as hard to stop or change. It affected everything, mentally and physically, making it both a boon and a curse. It meant that he could no longer be the chronically sleepy boy he once was if he wanted to advance.
No more daydreaming.
Like he was doing at the moment…
Another slap to the face, and then he leaned forward to place an ear against the door. The fight beyond had gone silent for a moment, but it quickly picked back up as he listened.
Xu Wei cracked one of the doors open and peaked through. His eyes widened at the sight.
It was a battle with swords glinting in the crystal-light as solid shadows beat against steel in a maddening tempo. It was a tempest of blades that no normal person could hope to navigate.
But the marionette’s opponent was no normal person.
Within the hail of attacks, Solace was holding his own. The dark spear in his hands spun in tight arcs and loops as the man fought off three blades with none. His body perpendicular to the boss’, he used his weapon to block attacks from his front and back as if he had eyes in the back of his head. Swords were stopped or allowed to strike harmlessly against the plate armor.
With how he was handling the attacks and shadowy [Technique] while occasionally lashing out with his own strikes, Solace was in complete control and victory looked to be inevitable.
Or so Xu Wei thought.
In truth, he had no idea if Solace was winning or not; the fight was simply too fast and too complicated for a mid-Tier 1 with no real combat experience to keep up with. But the man had to be! The boss had various injuries in its limbs and cracks spidered up the length of its body while Solace was unharmed.
The feelings of fatigue lessened as Xu Wei leaned forward, subconsciously opening the door wider to get a better view of what was unfolding before him.
The monster had lost complete functionality in three arms now, each dangling on its body like real broken limbs.
But all was not going well, Xu Wei realized. Solace’s movements were becoming easier to track, and not because Xu Wei was getting better at viewing. The man was tiring. The boy gasped as the marionette managed to sweep Solace’s legs from underneath him.
A turning point in battle, as Solace had often spoken about. When the flow shifted in a combatant’s favor.
But it still wasn’t the marionettes’. Mid-air, sideways, Solace continued to find a way to turn the tables. He plunged the spear deep into the chest of the monster and used the haft as well as his upper body to pivot himself such that it was the boss who was knocked off balance while he secured his footing.
The man let go of the spear, drawing his sword in a flash and struck at one of the still working limbs from behind. With his free hand, he viciously pulled at the arm until it was ripped off the body.
He was forced to retreat as the marionette recovered its balance and warded him away with its remaining two blades.
“Throw!” Solace shouted.
It took Xu Wei a moment to realize who he was talking to. In a panic, he swung the glob once and then sent it flying. Unfortunately, his hastily thrown projectile went wide, ending up going between the boss and Solace. It only made the marionette momentarily pause rather than hit it.
The monster came swinging in high with one blade, which Solace parried with his own. But then its second and final sword came at him from the opposite side. Without a spear, it seemed that the man was unable to dodge or block—
Xu Wei blinked as a second sword flickered upwards to catch the attack.
He’s taken the boss’ own sword!
The two combatants began to engage in a duel of dual wielding. Solace had apparently been pretending fatigue like he had during the jumping spider fight because his speed was suddenly as fast as before. In addition, he must have cultivated some of the essence from previous bosses directly into flexibility, because he was able to match the marionette’s oddly angled attacks.
The remaining moments of the fight would forever be remembered in Xu Wei’s mind. A tangle of limbs, steel, light, and shadow that made it difficult to tell who was the man and who the monster. It was like a stormy night at sea, the tides of battle ebbing and flowing as the two went back and forth.
And then it was over, a locking of one arm under another, a lodging of a blade through the loser’s chest from the side. The victor towered over his enemy’s defeated form.
Xu Wei cheered, a wordless shout that echoed through the walls as Solace pulled his sword from the lifeless shell of the marionette.
“You did it!” The boy said.
“Yes,” was all the man said, planting a foot on the boss’ remains to pull out his spear.
Xu Wei dashed to help Solace clean up, He retrieved the glaive, an errant sword dropped by the marionette at some point during the fight, and the shield by the room’s entrance. For once, he didn’t feel sleepy, the final moments of battle making his heart race with exhilaration.
The two delvers left the room once they had recovered and looted everything they could from the boss.
“I missed with my last throw,” Xu Wei apologized, “I should have aimed better like you had taught me.”
“It was good enough,” Solace said. “It gave me a moment to get a good grip on the sword I took.”
The man sat down and leaned against the wall the moment he was in the antechamber. Xu Wei had carried the bags to be near the doorway, so Solace was able to pull out their last water bottle and drink his fill once he took off his helmet.
“Will you be able to beat the last boss?” Xu Wei asked.
Solace closed his eyes. “Probably.”
Probably, Xu Wei repeated in his head, going silent since Solace was most likely beginning the process of cultivating essence and recovering like all the times before.
The final fight was both the simplest and the hardest. A massive, looming tarantula spider. From past experiences, Solace could not trick or outskill the beast. He had to face it head on and fight something much larger and stronger than him.
But Xu Wei had complete faith in the man. He had just defeated seven bosses one after the other without receiving a single wound, afterall. Solace was just like the people in Xu Wei’s stories, tackling the challenges thrown by the Heavens without hesitation or qualm.
The boy hoped to stay by the man’s side at least a little longer, at least until he could learn and emulate even a fraction of Solace’s strength.
And he would do his best starting this moment, moving everything they had so that the man wouldn’t have to get up if he needed anything while resting. Xu Wei then set about getting more rocks and whatever else he could think of—anything to be useful. He tried to pry the silk and stone things used in their latest fight, but they were firmly stuck to the ground.
It was tiring work for him, but he wasn’t lazy, couldn’t ever be lazy again. Not like the days he spent back in the Sects. When everything was done and he could come up with no more ideas, he sat in front of Solace, and waited.
After what felt like an eternity but could not have been longer than an hour, the man finally got up.
“What do you need?” Xu Wei asked, jumping up to his feet himself.
Solace silently waved him off, grabbing his weapons both old and new. Xu Wei watched as Solace used the sling as a rope to make loops from which all four of the marionette’s swords hung. The man then tied the sling around his waist.
“The last fight,” Solace began as he bent down to retrieve the metal pieces and set about reforming his gauntlets, “is the hardest, of course, but it will also be the fastest. There’s really only one way to beat it, and that’s facing it like I normally do.”
“But what about it’s [Technique]?” Xu Wei asked. A head-on assault seemed foolish to the boy.
“I’ve spent the last thirty minutes thinking about it, Xu Wei, and the only way out is through if I want the rift’s rewards. It will be hard, but it is possible, if you do one thing for me.”
Now finished with reattaching the steel for his hands to his armor, Solace riffled through their bags to pull out the blowtorch and the empty bag of flour. He used his knife to cut the open side of the bag into ribbons of dusty fabric. Then, he loosened a few screws on the blowtorch and pulled out a pin before nesting the device inside the tattered bag.
“Take this,” Solace said, “and throw it when I tell you to. You must aim for the eyes and make sure you hit them. It’s imperative.”
The pressure made Xu Wei hesitate. “I might miss like last time. Why can’t you throw it?”
“I won’t have time to pull the maneuver off if I do.”
And so, the boy grabbed the item, gripping it at the trigger and base of the nozzle at Solace’s direction to prevent its flammable gas from leaking out.
Solace slipped on his helmet once more. “Throw when I say so, and call out the moment it leaves your fingers.”
They moved to the front of the final boss’ doors and Solace pushed them open. It was the largest room yet, nearly half as spacious as one of the sports fields he saw on Corporations sponsored television. It meant that, once Solace had reached the center, retreating from the Tier 3 monster would be impossible.
And, Xu Wei swallowed, he would have to be pretty far from the doors in order to have the boss in throwing range. There was a moment of fear, quickly consumed by the adrenaline that edged him onwards to be a step behind Solace as he walked forwards onto the gravelly terrain. He wouldn’t even be that close to the spider, logically. And he would, of course, run away immediately afterwards to not get in the way.
His heart beat loudly in his ears as they neared the center. He almost bumped into Solace when the man stopped to indicate the distance Xu Wei should keep behind him.
“Got it?” Solace asked.
Xu Wei eyeballed the distance between them and the center, and nodded.
“Then let’s begin.”
The man took several deep breaths, seemingly doing some sort of mental ritual, and then stalked forwards with his glaive and shield.
Like all the times before, the boss made its appearance the moment Solace reached the middle. A massive spider crawled down from the wall directly across from them. The moment it touched the floor, it broke into a run towards them.
“Match the distance,” Solace warned.
Xu Wei merely let out a low whine in confirmation. He had never seen the boss this close while it was alive. A body and a half taller than him, it was large enough to swallow the boy in several bites. The fear came rushing back.
But he held his position.
Xu Wei waited for Solace to give the command, but the man said nothing. He was merely waiting with what seemed to be complete nonchalance as the boss bulled towards them.
It took six seconds, long enough for Xu Wei to take in the ugly bristles on the creature’s body, its large cruel fangs, and his reflection in the monster’s beady eyes before Solace ran forwards.
Fighting the fear, Xu Wei ran after the man, he needed to keep the exact distance. Internally, his mind was screaming.
“Throw!” Solace shouted.
And Xu Wei did, with all his might and aiming it as best as he could, he released the incendiary. He found it impossible to say anything in that moment, and so instead gave a guttural shout the moment the thing left his fingertips.
Immediately after, he turned and fled. He looked back in time to see the start of the fight.
Thankfully, the throw flew true. The blowtorch hit the creature right above its mouth and burst into a torrent of flames. Solace perfectly timed it such that, the moment the device made impact, he was already close enough to the creature to enact his plan. With one smooth motion, he planted the butt of his glaive into the ground and used it to vault onto the charging spider, letting go of the weapon in the process.
For a brief moment, Xu Wei feared that the boss would chase after him now that Solace was no longer right in front of the creature, but that worry was quickly assuaged. The boss was rearing back in pain, not just from the flames but also from the two pronged spear Solace had pulled off of his back and had impaled it into the spider’s.
Though it tried to shake the man off, he was able to use the planted spear as a means of stability. With one hand grasping the spear, Solace drew his first sword and began to viciously hack away at the spider.
Xu Wei stopped running once he was close enough to the doors but still able to see the fight well.
Without vocal cords, the boss attempted to violently dislodge Solace in near silence. With the way it bucked and shook, no one should have had the amount of balance, strength, and dexterity needed to actually cling onto the boss in this fashion. Yet, somehow, Solace was managing it.
This was to be the hardest and fastest fight, Xu Wei recalled.
And then the spider began to glow red, giving off a crimson aura that Xu Wie had once seen before. It was [Vermillion Retribution], a technique which temporarily boosted one’s strength, durability, and speed after being struck in proportion to the damage it took. And with this [Technique], it was finally able to shake Solace off, sending him careening to the side.
The man rolled until he regained his footing, of course, but was not able to recover as the spider was immediately upon him.
With its front limbs and pedipalps, the monster tried to seize Solace and force him towards its fangs. The man resisted with all of his might, pushing the fangs away with his arms, but it wasn’t enough against the [Technique] empowered Tier 3.
Gradually, horrifically, the man was being crushed, his armor bending. In what seemed to be a desperate move, Solace shoved his right arm wielding both his shield and a sword into the boss’ mouth, wedging it in and open. The Tier 3 metal shrieked as it folded and ultimately shattered, allowing the mouth to snap shut around the offered arm.
It was the first time Xu Wei ever saw Solace wounded. And, inexplicably, it seemed like it didn’t matter to the man. Because even though his limb was crushed, the boy could see that Solace was still using it. Left hand grabbing at a fang to both keep them at bay and as leverage, Solace was clearly rooting around with his right arm.
Suddenly, the giant spider began spasming, legs and body scrambling wildly before seizing up. To Xu Wei’s disbelief, the monster crashed to the floor, dead. Solace had killed the spider from the inside.
In the wake of its death, Xu Wei saw Solace momentarily slump over. The boy ran forwards. By the time he reached Solace, the man had already straightened back up and was removing his arm from the spider’s mouth.
“Xu Wei, get the weapons, would you? I’m going back to the other room to gather our things.”
The boy inspected Solace as he walked away, eyes roaming over the dents in the armor. In one spot on his back, there was a puncture hole with blood slowly trickling out. For a brief moment Xu Wei stared at the mangled arm but turned away. Even looking just made him feel a phantom pain.
And yet, the man himself was walking with his back straight, stride even. It was as if he was completely fine.
Does he even feel pain?
Xu Wei quickly set out to retrieve the two spears and three swords Solace had dropped over the course of the fight. When he was done, he ran back towards the antechamber.
Solace was waiting for him by the exit, which had spawned in the middle of the room. He accepted the weapons in Xu Wei’s arms while hefting one of the bags.
“You’re free to extract whatever else you want from the rift if you want, Xu Wei, but I’m going to the hospital now. Before I leave, hold out your hand.”
Xu Wei frowned, but complied. Solace dropped three mana stones into them. They were Tier 3.
In surprise, the boy wheeled around, searching for the rift reward distortion but not finding it.
“It gave me eight Tier 3 stones,” Solace confirmed. “Quite the sum from a Tier 2 rift.”
“But not for a Tribulation!” Xu Wei protested. Though all rift generated mana stones were the same size and weight, these ones suddenly felt far heavier in his palm. He tried to hand them back. To take the spoils from someone else’s trial was one of the greatest taboos in the stories he loved. “I can’t take these.”
“It’s payment for helping me.”
“But I didn’t do much!”
“Xu Wei, sometimes, a little can do a lot, and your help was the only way I could finish the challenge.”
Without waiting for the boy's reply, Solace stepped through the exit. Xu Wei could only stare after him, and then the stones in his palm.
Do I really deserve these?
He didn’t know the answer, didn’t know if he ever would. He briefly turned around, looking at the doors which led into one of the eight terrifying bosses that the rift had to offer. In that moment, he decided he wouldn’t think any of it for at least a bit. The whole experience had left him drained and he could always return the stones later.
It took a moment for Xu Wei’s vision to adjust to the world outside the rift. As it did, he could hear Solace talking to the person guarding the rift. It was a bunch of quickly fired questions answered by short replies in the Corporation’s language, so he couldn’t understand everything. From what he understood, it sounded like Solace was downplaying the experience and lying about having a foolhardy accident.
When the guard was apparently satisfied, Solace began to walk away before quickly stopping.
“Xu Wei,” he said while turning to the side. “When you get back to the complex, can you let the ones that I was supposed to carry for the rest of the week know that I have to cancel? I won’t be healed for at least a few days.”
“I can do that,” the boy replied.
“Good.”
And then the man resumed his casual pace towards the hospital. The sun was beginning to set on the day, casting hues across the surroundings and sky. But all Xu Wei could see was the silhouette of a man who seemed to never stop in spite of what the world threw at him.
—
I can’t do it anymore.
Sitting down, legs pulled in front of him, and his back leaning against the wall, he stared. At the torches. At everything. At nothing.
I can’t. It’s too much.
The silence was deafening. In the eerie nothing, he could hear things. Things of the past. The laughter. The shouts. The screams.
“I can’t do it!”
His vision blurred, but not from pain. The ground around him grew wet as tiny droplets fell. He lowered his head as sobs wracked his body.
Someone. Anyone. Help me. It’s so hard. It hurts so much.
There was no response, only silence and the sobbing. The sounds echoed through the room, through the doors, through the floors, reaching throughout the Spire.
And it responded with silence, waiting for him to try again, and to die again.
Solace awoke to the sound of knocking and, for a brief moment, he forgot where he was. Then he noticed the hospital bed he was in.
He had been in the infirmary for half a day now. While this reality had magical healing, it was limited by something called a healing cooldown. When someone tried to magically push past this limit, the body outright rejected the attempt and sometimes undid the effects of its most recent healings. And with a crushed arm, several lacerations, some torn muscle, dozens of bruises, and a handful of fractured bones, he wasn’t going anywhere until at least tomorrow.
Healing cooldown was affected by cultivation, of course, so reallocating essence to reduce it was completely possible. However, Solace had decided that it was best to leave it alone so that there was no abnormality in his medical records. Keeping the details of his Talent a secret was that important.
His thoughts of healing were quickly pushed aside as the knocking which had woken him up repeated itself.
“I’m awake,” he called out.
The door opened and a nurse's head popped in. “You have visitors,” he said.
Solace frowned.
Who would want to visit me?
His question was swiftly answered as a gaggle of people entered the room. He only recognized a couple. Gao Xieren, Xu Wei, and a few of the ones he had carried through rifts.
“What are you all doing here?” He asked.
“We heard about your injuries, and so wanted to wish you a swift recovery in person,” Gao Xieren replied.
One of the other people, a child, walked towards him with a lunchbox. He took it and undid the zipper. Within lay a large bowl of fried rice along with a card that had images of flowers on it. “Get Well Soon,” it said. The names of various people were signed around the message.
“You didn’t have to do this,” Solace said.
Gao Xieren scoffed. “Of course we did! How can we expect you to get better when the hospital serves such terrible food? The new year is also around the corner, and it’d be a shame if you weren’t healthy enough to join the celebration.”
She turned to the rest of the group gesturing for the door. “But for now, we take our leave so that you may rest.”
After that, everyone began to file out. A few briefly stopped to personally express their wishes, and then they were gone.
In the silence, Solace took out the bowl of rice. It was still warm to the touch.
That was… nice? Nice, I guess.
Grabbing the spoon in the lunchbox and undoing the lid on the bowl, he was about to take a bite before remembering something. Putting his left hand to his mouth, he spat out the object that he had stored at the back of his mouth underneath his tongue.
The color of a mana stone, it was an oblong shape, a little less than an inch long and a quarter-inch wide at the middle. Solace briefly examined the [Skill Shard], the true reward for the rift challenge, before popping it back into his mouth to keep it relatively secure while he was healing in the hospital. Once he got out, he would go have it scanned and then use it.
He only had to wait another twenty four hours at most. And while everything so far had been slow going, Solace had a feeling that things would only speed up from here.