Tom was woken up in the morning by the new method that Harry had switched to. His shoulder was being prodded gently enough that it didn’t even trigger his more deadly self defence instincts. That or he was starting to get, more used to being around others and didn’t assume he was going to be under attack every time he was woken up.
He sat up and ate the food provided before recounting the details of his dream.
Rahmat listened intently the entire time. “That man sounds scary, but you know I never had that level of skill.”
“I’m just telling you all what happens in my dreams.” He grinned at Rahmat. “You can read into it whatever you want. On an unrelated topic, you have two months.”
The other man visibly slumped. “Very funny.”
Everlyn went over the plan once more.
This was it. The culmination of the zone. A final set of battles to secure the critical stones to allow them all to leave.
“We’re going to go in hot. Overwhelm them with our siege spell, then switch to the second target and then hopefully hit the third before they can respond.”
“Hopefully?” Michael asked.
“Well yeah. I’ve scouted the boss. Or at least the mid boss version of them. The full one will be stronger. We don’t want to fight it in a direct battle. The aim is to ambush and blow them to bits from a far. This plan is all about giving us the best chance of doing that.”
“I mean what’s your fear. Are you concerned that the third boss might get warned and plan for our arrival.”
Everlyn looked straight at Michael. “That’s exactly what I’m worried about. If there was a realistic way to speed things up, I would do it.”
“Tom could get his levels early. Even fifty mana will reduce his regeneration time requirements by a sixth.”
“You’re right. I should have thought of that myself. Do it..” Everlyn demanded, turning on him.
“Are you serious?”
“yes.”
“Right now?”
“Might as well,” Everlyn said. “I know it’ll cost you experience, but this is a case where speed matters. And reaching the third boss a minute earlier is a golden opportunity to ensure all three fights are trivial.”
He looked between all of them and it was clear they were supporting Everlyn.
“You were probably planning on getting levels in both your classes.” Michael said finally. “You don’t have to change that strategy, and right now you only have to level the elemental summoner one.” He shrugged. “It will hurt your experience but not by a huge amount as you’ll still be under levelled.”
Tom did the calculations. He would need four levels to get a bonus to magic. It was a rank and a half increase and given the gap that would remain, Michael was right it wouldn’t hurt his experience that much. “If you guys think it’s necessary. I’ll do it.”
They stared at him their posture making it clear what they thought.
Resigned, he shut his eyes and appeared in his system room.
“Buy four levels of Elemental Summoner.” improved.
Classes Level – Thirty-Nine
Lightning Tank: 18 () - Expert
Elemental Summoner: 21 (+4) – Expert
Breadth of Serendipity: 0 – Legendary
Attributes
Strength: 132 (+2 Title: Strength Spring, +3 Title: Tripled Class)—Rank 15
Vitality: 155 (+4 Title: Vitality fount)—Rank 18
Agility: 133 (+8 Trait: Fates Agility, +1 Title: Tripled Class)—Rank 16 (+1)
Magic: 159 (+22 Class)—Rank 19 (+2)
Fate: 232 (+8 Trait: Fates Agility, +4 Title: Competition Shaker (I))
Mana Pool: Magic * 2 = 318
He hesitated for a moment. Usually, he put all the class skill points toward passive skills, but with almost five hundred mana being available Tom felt like he should aim for more.
“Buy the class skill Summon Elemental and assign the rest of the class points as normal.”
There was the slightest of pauses and then information on how to cast the new spell was downloaded into his brain. There was more to it than he expected. It wasn’t just about punching through to the higher elemental planes. There was knowledge on how to protect himself from the environment along with abilities to mask his mind from the elementals. Then there were extra twists on the contract to give more freedom, ways to entice and, in some cases force the elementals to do his bidding.
Once all the twists and changes were incorporated there were effectively no similarities left between his new spell and summon wisp.
He hadn’t realised how much work his title and fate dumps had been doing when he had summoned elementals from the higher planes.
Job done he left the system room. Everlyn smiled apologetically at him. “Thank you for doing that Tom, and I’m sorry you had to. Now we need to get moving.”
Thor winked at Tom. “Wait, you didn’t tell us what the boss was like.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She said in exasperation.
“Well, what?”
“Fine,” she grumped. “What I saw was a mid boss, so weaker than what we’re facing. It was rank twenty two had eight separate abilities which were a mix of offensive and defensive types. Attribute wise it had similar speed to the normal loaka but significantly higher vitality. It wasn’t something which sneezing on could kill, anymore. Basically it was extraordinary, no larger than usual but really resistant to physical and magical damage. These bosses will be stronger again. Which is why it’s a good idea to let Tom’s meteorites finish them. Happy?”
Thor grinned and nodded.
“So? Can we go now?”
“Yes, we certainly can.”
They got onto the chosen and Everlyn made a point of getting him to sit on the Eldest, and she joined him. The route they took was not a straight line. It curved around some ponds and went right over others..
“That’s the target,” she pointed at a distant glint of water. It was about three kilometres away and had only just become visible. But as was consistent with the strange nature of the mist every metre they got closer the details; he could see improved until moments later it was like no mist existed. the effect was magical. Normal mist on earth didn’t behave like that. On earth, if he was able to see perfectly for three kilometres, he should be able to see shapes for ten. Here, that relationship broke down.
With nothing inhibiting his vision, he studied the target. The den was positioned like it had been drawn. In reality, it was a section of curated bushes that let him see flashes of the dirt, which was a rarity in this zone.
She nudged him. “Do you remember the plan?”
“I’m not incompetent.”
“Really? When you ran to save Toni and Harry you sort of convinced me otherwise.”
“That was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”
She smiled. “Yes, I was just surprised that you of all people dropped situation awareness like that.”
“I didn’t. I still had an Earth Sense perimeter up and I was watching what was happening.”
She looked sceptical but did not dispute his statement. The elder, as planned had moved away from their formation to ten metres in front of everyone else. The five meteorites orbiting him at his mental command spread apart to make use of the extra space. They went from whizzing close to him to stretching out to be over five metres distant. The extra width would make the aiming easier. This was it.
Everything had been planned carefully. They were two hundred and fifty metres up, which was the perfect distance to maximise the power of each rock. Tom imagined exactly what he wanted, and he waited until he was right over the top.
Whoosh.
Then there was a roaring sound as all five meteorites shot down towards the ground.
A small part of him screamed in excitement. This was how the spell was supposed to be used. There was something extra that was brought out by being up this high when triggering it. The entire thing felt more powerful in a way that even shooting from a high hill didn’t mimic. Tom imagined that mages who had mastered the ability to fly got the most out of the spell. They could execute the simple strategy of zooming up high in the air and unleashing death from above down upon their enemies.
The moment his first spell passed out of control he started to cast the second.
While the channelled proportion of the spell flowed through, he half watched the descending holocaust.
The stones sped down through the air, accelerated by his magic and gravity, and as they moved, they grew in both size and heat. Below in the camp, between the bushes at ground level, he noticed movement. The backs of the loaka with their snail like eyes pointing up at the sky, were emerging from the dens to study what was happening.
They seemed more curious than afraid.
The devastating meteorites struck the ground.
There was no noise. For now he was too far up for it to reach. But earth fountained out of the direct points of impact, the meteorites themselves broke due to their red hot heat and splashed outwards. Finally, the earth itself shuddered in response and there was a distinctive ripple that went under the ground, spreading from the impact points. A shock wave that made vegetation vibrate as it radiated out from the point of the collision. It moved fast easily reaching out over two hundred metres in a second. The wave had a secondary impact as there must have been burrows in the curated den area because sections of earth collapsed.
Then a tsunami of water swept out of the pond.
Boom!
The noise struck them even two hundred and fifty metres up in the air. It was like he was standing right next to a bass speaker at a concert. His sternum vibrated under the noise and wind and heat washed over his face.
“Wow!” Everlyn whispered.
Tom had muted most of the sensation to concentrate on casting the second spell. It took another fifteen seconds for it to finish and then five more glowing rocks plummeted downwards. Three to demolish the middle and two to seal the perimeter.
A scattering of loaka had come up from their burrows. They seemed to be cognisant of their situation. At first it was one or two, a trickle amongst the wider numbers, who identified the gap and a path to freedom. They started to head that way. But in what felt like no more than a second, but must have been longer the others noticed and then in moments all of them were rushing toward the gap.
And right into…
The ground shuddered below him under another impact. The shock wave through the earth occurred, but there was no tsunami this time.
In his head, he counted to three and then braced himself.
Boom!
The second sound wave crashed over them and brought with it more heat and wind.
Below them, it was apocalyptical.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
The chosen spiralled down.
Everlyn had her bow out.
Crack.
The bow shot sounded almost subdued after the previous explosion. When usually it made him almost jump this time, it inspired no such thoughts. The shot, however, was magical. The arrow she had fired split again and again until there were eight duplicates. They slammed down close to the pond where there had been wet, bedraggled, struggling bodies.
As far as he could tell, every one of them hit a target.
She smiled grimly as she knocked another arrow.
While they had been first earlier, they were now last to descend. Partially, that was a practical decision to protect Tom from the temptation to join the ground fight and secondarily to give Everlyn extra chances to use her archery. The vanguard had already landed. Barriers created by the chosen went up, sealing them and the loaka into the hellhole. They had acquiesced to the request to enclose the battlefield but were not uniformly happy with the decision.
They walked a moral tight rope.
This barrier was not an act of war, it was not them choosing a side. They were freezing the battleground and preventing reinforcements from arriving whether to be killed or to kill. The barrier was justifiable because it reduced the number of combatants so was aligned with their aim to help sapients..
They were still a hundred metres from the ground but dropping rapidly.
Crack.
Her shot once more duplicated itself on the way down. Once again, there were eight arrows, but this time they only hit six of the loaka when two wriggled out of the way at the last moment. Keikain and Harry had dismounted first and the rock under them had immediately boiled and created a flat, smooth surface. Harry was already busy scratching out the mana recharge ritual. It was where Tom was deposited. His job was simple. He needed to stand here until he could summon another Harness Meteorite and then wait the extra minute until his mana was greater than a hundred once more. The ritual under his feet despite its casting time would save almost a minute and as Everlyn had stressed every second was precious.
He stood there his spear in his hands just in case but nothing attacked. Patiently he waited while all the other humans went around the camp executing the shocked and hurt loaka.
Tom raised a hand to signal Everlyn.
“Move, Move, Move,” she yelled and then they were taking off again.
Once more she was on the same Chosen as he was. As they rose into the air, she frowned as she studied the vegetation. Tom couldn’t see anything, but the scout had clearly spotted something.
“They’ve got scouts out. We will beat them to the second boss. But I’m not sure if we can outpace them to the third.” She flashed him a smile. “I hope your sacrifice was not in vain.”
The next target came into sight.
“Don’t hesitate. Unleash the moment we’re on top of them.”
The den was effectively the same as the previous. Its positioning relative to the pond had changed because it had less of its borders along the dam edge even if it was a similar size.
It didn’t matter. The same technique he had used earlier would work.
The meteorite streamed down and just like the first time a few of the loaka saw but did not react.
Boom!
The massive explosion shook them in the air. A large group of hurt monsters once more surged towards a gap he had deliberately left.
Boom!
They died, and he was flown down to stand on the ritual circle that was being rapidly constructed. The others killed and he got his siege spell ready.
“Move, Move, Faster,” Everlyn yelled and even though not all the injured loaka had been hunted down, they took off. She looked stressed. “We’re still on track.” She flashed him a smile, and then a horrified look crossed her face. “No!” she screamed.
He turned to look.
A single monster was flying at them. It was some type of twisted griffin.
“I…” her hands flapped as a sheet of paper was extracted from magical storage into them. “We’re too far away. This doesn’t make sense. Why is it here? how is it attacking us?” She glanced behind her. “What the?”
A series of black spots had appeared on the horizon in that direction as well.
“Blessed one, the chosen will take care of these two threats. Conserve your power for the final battle.”
“Maybe they’ve come because of some hidden zone feature,” Everlyn muttered. “There
s no way we aggroed the Emerald Health Steal lizards we haven’t got within six kilometres of them.”
“The loaka” Tom suggested quietly.
“What are you talking about.”
“The loaka did it, not a hidden condition.”
The blood drained out of her face. “Surely not… um… that would be unprecedented.” She stared down at the approaching threats. “It doesn’t matter. We can still do this.”
Her weapon was out.
The swarm flying at them and the single large monster was met by a storm of magic.
Crack.
Her arrows flew glowing with more power than usual. The chosen moved with ridiculous speed. It was probably a demonstration of their attribute advantage, but the monsters couldn’t touch them, and their magic kept smashing into them. Over and over, their magic crashed against the flying monstrosities and the wounds on the griffin grew while the lizards fell from the sky. The engagement took a precious minute, but both groups of monsters were torn apart. The bodies of the creatures falling broken from the air.
“Go,” Everlyn commanded, smacking the Elder like you would a horse. There was no need for the prompt because it was already moving as fast as it could. “No. Not that way. Go the direct route.”
“Why?”
“We were going down the griffin and we don’t have to anymore.”
The chosen flew and Everlyn leaned forward her eyes straining to spot any sign that the scouts had beaten them. “We might be able to do this. But you’re going to have to release early.”
“Why? That seems crazy at best it’ll save ten seconds at the cost of a significant amount of accuracy and power.”
“Because seconds matter.”
“This is crazy.” He spluttered. Sure, mathematically it was easy to construct a scenario where seconds would matter, but the key word in there was construct. In real life, statistically, it made no sense to him. Scouts, from the first boss they had taken down must have been running for ten minutes. The chance that such messengers and his own raid group would arrive at exactly the same time or close to it was almost non-existent.
“I’ve got skills,” she told him, sounding annoyed. “And I’m telling you it’s a matter of seconds. I don’t think it’s in our favour, but it might be. That’s the pond.” Everlyn pointed at a small patch of water that had just become visible through the ever present mist. “Get ready to fire and launch.”
They were five hundred metres from the target and he planned exactly where he wanted to hit.
“NOW! Shoot now.” she screamed.
He unleashed knowing that he was going to lose almost the third of each stone’s power because of the distance, and he couldn’t guarantee his accuracy either.
They shot away, and he started summoning another set even as he watched to see if they would miss.
His first volley was surprisingly accurate. A couple hit a few metres wider than he would have liked, which left gaps that were probably large enough that the loaka could survive between them when on the other sites they would have died.
The noise of the collision reached them, but they were so far out that the wind barely ruffled his hair and he couldn’t sense any heat in it.
The second volley hurtled away from him.
“Good job,” Everlyn said immediately.
“Did we kill the target?”
She shrugged in response. “We’ll have to see. Hopefully, we’ve hurt it at the very least. Get ready to fight just in case.”
The chosen spiralled down together. There was no vanguard of Keikain and Harry this time, as there was no need. When they reached the ground, they would be on battle footing immediately. The group of them targeted one of the gaps his imprecise aiming had left on the edge of the inner ring of destruction.
The moment he got within two metres of the ground he leapt free spear in hand. Instincts took over, and he bent his knees as he landed, but only slightly in order to respond to anything. The force went through his legs, jarring them, but he ignored the discomfort.
It was hot and steamy a result of the flood of water from the pond being vaporised on contact with the meteorite. It meant that with the mist and the acrid smoke from the charred bushes visibility was severely limited. He couldn’t even see three metres in front of him and his eyes watered. There were thumps as the rest of the humans came down near him and then the chosen rose straight up into the sky The boss fight was too close to one of sapiants versus sapiants for them to stay around. The faster they cleared the space the less chance that they would feel compelled to heal the boss.
The third elder had even offered to stay behind if Everlyn would agree not to fight them. She had refused outright and said irrespective of the chosen’s actions the humans were going to kill the boss monsters because their honour demanded it. Tom was pretty sure all the chosen had known it was a lie but had been happy that she had taken the hardline position.
Using his soul bound mana crystal, he placed down a single turret. The rest of his reserves would need to be kept for emergencies, and he looked around at the surrounding devastation. There was a pit nearby where one of the meteorites had landed. Tom could feel the latent heat radiating from it like it was a huge bonfire. On face value, the meteorite shower had been as effective as at the other sites, but he knew better. They had struck with less force than previously, and the deeper burrows might have been spared.
They had fanned out on the landing to form a loose circle. Clare on the opposite side to him. A deliberate choice to split those capable of tanking. Rahmat, Thor and Everlyn had each taken a point around the circle with the pure spell casters at the centre where theoretically they would be the most protected. “Let’s sweep.” Everlyn said finally.
The turret next to him suddenly started firing.
“Clare!” Keikain yelled in concern. Tom deliberately did not turn to look and two loaka sprang out of the mist at him. One of them glowed in a suspicious manner. Time slowed, and he used the reprieve to apply Channelled Damage Reflect to it. He optimised the skill by feeding the information about the unstable energy that cloaked the glowing monster into the mirror. He bent his knees and swung the tip of his spear from waist height to closer to his ankles and pointed it to the side where the other one was coming from.
To his perspective the non glowing loaka was impaled in slow motion as the more dangerous magic using one got closer and closer. His alarms were blaring, but he had already shifted enough so that it would only clip his hip.
He teleported, and now it was not even going to touch him. Clink, Bang.
The mirror broke and the glowing enemy exploded as a proportion of the power of its own spell was transferred back to it.
Time returned to normal and out of the corner of his eye he watched as magic exploded around Clare. It was a mighty conflagration of offensive and defensive spells. His turret and the magic of the other humans successfully mitigated a lot of the enemy’s attack but not all of it. Some got through to hit her directly.
He hoped she got her magical shield up in time.
“Cover me,” he ordered over party chat as he made a snap decision. Whatever had targeted her had been too powerful to be from a normal loaka which meant it was probably the boss and if that was the case he was required to be there to blunt its attacks.
He sprinted at her and pushed another precious surge of mana into his crystal and unleashed Lightning Enrage. If it was the boss, he needed it focused on him. If it went after anyone else, there was a chance it would be powerful enough to kill them, and judging on the attack Clare had just weathered, that chance, was probably closer to a certainty. He had to intervene and protect them.
Then he was next to her. He didn’t pause, but he noted that she was still alive and the glow of her long cool down shield still protecting her. The ramifications of that magical attack and its power were clear.
The ground under her feet glowed radioactively, and it did damage at the same time. It was nothing that Touch Heal couldn’t easily overcome, but it was burning him both his skin and his insides.
Whatever it was Tom was very glad that her shields had worked. Having that inside your body would not be a good idea.
He searched for the enemy and took a step away from Clare, toward where he suspected the boss was.
Time slowed to the maximum it could and all of his alarms went off.
The boss was coming, but he did not panic he just assessed what was happening.
First, where was it.
Then he saw it, or more precisely all the information his skills fed him told him where it was. A single monster, rank twenty two and filled with fate. Then there were the spells that covered it. A spectral weapon and then multiple overlays of powerful energy. There was the radioactivity, several tier three poisons, some sort of shield breaking power and fate was leaking out of it and starting to influence the battlefield.
It had a pool twice his own. The monster was dangerous though the fur over its hind quarters had been burnt away and it was missing one of its four eyes which gave him some hope.
His meteorite shower had damaged it.
Tom blinked.
His mind sluggishly processed the threat. He mentally trialled different ways of dodging. None of them worked no matter where he moved. It followed. Somehow it had managed to link to him with a homing ability. With growing alarm, he realised that his new phasing out of the way of attacks wouldn’t work against this creature. It had a spell active that would do more than just hurt him if he was in the phased out form. He had a magic shield that theoretically could block a magic attack, but the shield breaking power made that impossible. Even his spear lunge couldn’t burst him clear.
It was like it had discovered the perfect combination to thwart him.
His eyes narrowed.
All that fate and this was hopefully the final boss of the zone.
With a mental thought, he activated his ring and a spike of energy shot straight at the incoming loaka.
An epiphany filled him. It calmed his mind and provided crystal clarity of thought. There were lots of actions he could take and various cool downs he could burn, but no matter what he did it was going to hit and it would be enough to kill him.
Using his various skills would be wasteful.
He hated to rely on his life saving skill but he had no choice. It was going to be used and none of the tricks he had available would change how it worked.
All he could do was trust that it would do what it promised.
Instead of focusing on mitigating or evading damage his thoughts went the other way.
There was an enemy to hurt. His mind completed a stock take of available skills that had a chance of damaging it. One by one they were discarded because he had no time. It was upon him and all he could do was spin his spear and empower it with Power Strike.
His muscles reacted slower than his brain. It was moving too fast, and his weapon wasn’t going to get into position in time. No! he thought, but his initial calculations were right. With the benefit of his dodge skill slowing time, the mathematics was easy. The tip of his blade was going to swish past it. Missing by two centimetres… unless… a thought occurred to him… could it really be that simple? He was almost hitting it already, and he had a skill that could slightly shift his spatial positioning… It would work he realised to his surprise. Grinning manically inside himself, he teleported back eight centimetres. His near miss was turned into a solid hit.
The fate spike struck the boss and instantly the fate it possessed and that which it had recently used got stripped away.
The weapon stabbed into its hip. A number of different things could have occurred, with a single proviso. Every single scenario had the destructive spells and skills continuing on to hit his chest. That homing spell’s magic was absolute and even killing the monster wouldn’t stop it. But as for his attack... the creature could have battered it away with its incredible strength for its size or its vitality could have prevented it from cutting and made it bounce away or even been significant enough to cause the wood itself to crack and break.
None of those happened.
It was completely fateless and unlucky. The spear caught it midway on its body. Power Strike ensured the tip dug into the creature despite its enhanced vitality, but it was still caught up by the homing magic unable to stop.. It was impaled. The spear tore through flesh as it kept moving unslowed by the impact. A widening cut was created while the tip of the spear continued into it to catch on the hip bone.
In the state of slowed time, he saw everything. There was a jerk and either body or spear had to yield. Two of Tom’s fate went against a true zero representation from the loaka. It’s body gave away, with the crisped skin breaking along the burn lines. The entire back leg was torn off. In a way this was mutually guaranteed destruction, he thought as he saw it come inexorably onwards.
Then it struck him in the chest.
Boom!
Bright lightning sparked around him. He found himself five metres in the air and falling towards the still burning meteorite. He used his spear to push off it and got worried for a moment when the hard spear end split the melted stone, pushing five centimetres in before finding purchase. He shoved and altered his trajectory but despite his best efforts, his feet still landed right next to the hot molten ball and he screamed in pain as his sabatons did nothing to stop the heat in fact being made of metal they probably made it worse.
He stumbled away and remembering the boss spent ten fate to protect himself. The meteorite had created a crater just like the real life ones did, and he scrambled up it while expecting to be attacked at any moment.
“Spread out and kill the rest.” Everlyn ordered. “The boss is dead. There shouldn’t be anything else too powerful here.” There was a pause. “Tom? Can you hear me? Do you need support?”
“I’m good.” There was a hurt loaka in front of him. It had lost its back legs and could barely move. He stabbed it through its heart and moved on. His feet were singed his mana was low, but apart from that he was great. He could hear the sounds of the others fighting. They weren’t far away. “I’ll work my way in your direction.”