Chapter 145: Involuntary Waterboarding
The trading ship was beset by monsters from the sea. Water elementals, of ocean blue, gushed up from the churning surface. Their bodies were mixed with the particulates of the ocean—microscopic creatures, flecks of seaweed, and even smaller fish trapped inside the elementals as they had formed, inadvertent casualties of the oceanic battle.
One by one, the other two teams dove beneath the water, with supernatural speed and accuracy mirroring that of a professional diving team.
“If this was a diving competition, they’ve won ten out of ten based on water entry.”
With her Cosmic Path, Nara danced across the surface, using the dual machine pistol form of Nirvana she had gained while ranking up.
The shots of the dual pistol were rapid firing, like the shots of a pulse pistol. She had no need to reload, able to continually fire, though it drained mana. The quick shots were a great way to quickly inflict instances of her Blade of the Boundary afflictions and Thanatos’ umbral flame, if they did damage. The shots were incredibly light, setting its advantage of speed with the disadvantage of pittable damage.
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Ability: [Umbral Wolf]
Familiar (ritual)
Cost: Extreme Mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Summon a [Umbral Wolf] to serve as your familiar.
* Can utilize [Umbral Flame] to perform long-ranged attacks and enhance melee attacks. [Umbral Flame] deals disruptive force and fire damage. Enemies damaged by [Astral Flame] are affected by [Vulnerable] and [Umbral Burn].
* [Vulnerable] (affliction, unholy, stacking): All resistances are reduced. Additional instances have a cumulative effect. Consumed to cleanse [Resistant] on a 1:1 basis.
* [Umbral Burn] (affliction, magic, fire, stacking): Suffer ongoing disruptive-force and fire damage. The mana cost of abilities is slightly increased. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
* Can dematerialize and travel in shadows but cannot attack while immaterial.
* Can change the size of its form, up to a limit determined by rank.
* Can be subsumed within the summoner’s shadow. When subsumed, the Umbral Wolf can launch attacks from the summoner’s shadow. Additionally, denies shadow-based abilities from taking effect on the summoner’s shadow.
Effect (Bronze):
* Can unleash a howl, spreading [Umbral Flame] in a wide area around itself. This effect has a 5 minute cooldown.
* [Umbral Flame] can ignite the ground, inflicting continual disruptive-force and fire damage to enemies that pass through.
* When subsumed into the summoner, the summoner can imbue [Umbral Flame] in normal and special attacks for a low mana-per-second cost.
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Thanatos’ umbral flame made her pistol bullet glow with swirling black and blue energy and a matching flame effect for any form of Nirvana she used. With the flame, she also dealt disruptive-force damage and fire damage with her sword, of which the disruptive-force damage fared better against the water elementals, while the fire damage sizzled out against their mass of water. If she was a fire specialist, she could set water on fire, but she wasn’t, so she had to bear the pitiful sounds of water droplets sizzling out of existence on a hot pan.
None of Nara’s abilities were tailored towards ranged attacks nor boosting ranged attacks. They revolved around melee—parrying, countering, redirecting, and dodging attacks up close. Nirvana may provide her with versatility, but the additional forms did not offer additional power, nor capitalize on most of what her ability set offered.
Against water elementals with no defense, however, the weapon suited the job. She loaded up larger elemental with afflictions with a spray of bullets that matched their sprays of water.
“That’ll do—”
A watery tendril wrapped around her ankle, then snap-plunged her through the surface of the water. Her Cosmic Path blocked abilities from manifesting directly beneath her but didn’t prevent physical grapples. What a fun way to be reminded of that vulnerability.
She got a glimpse of the other teams, at home in water as they were on land. One shot through the water in a bubbling torrent, skewering serpent-fish monsters on their trident one by one like a reenactment of Poseidon’s battles. A shark familiar followed close behind, eating the kills of its summoner, gradually growing in ferocity and size. Once it had grown enough, it shot off like a savage shark torpedo, a trail of blood and half eaten bodies in it wake, drifting down towards a watery abyss.
Nara’s abilities didn’t work well in water. She was a physical combatant, and the water impeded her swings. Still, she had her ways (Sen made sure of that).
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Sacrificing a few of her boons, she enhanced her leg with disruptive-force damage, twisting and kicking to sever the water-tendril on her ankle.
Several new transparent tendrils shot towards her, she partially phased through all of them, triggering her Cosmic Path to push herself towards the surface of the water, just high enough to reach a node above.
Just as she vanished, she sensed another adventurer had been about to come to her aid. Since Nara had freed herself, the adventurer focused on the water tendril forest, turning the sea against it. The tendrils began to rapidly freeze, frost traveling down each of its feelers like icy watercolor spreading across a wet paper. The frozen bits burst, shattering sharp shards of ice against the main amoeba body, and restarting the process of freezing in a deadly cascade of shattering ice.
On the surface again, Nara was more vigilant of the tendril attacks. She used the new effect of Phase Shift to avoid them, phasing only her shins and lower.
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Ability: [Phase Shift]
Essence: Dimension
Special Ability (dimension)
Cost: Extreme mana-per-second
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Phase shift into an adjacent dimension. While phase shifted, your abilities and attacks will not affect non-phase shifted targets. In this state, non-phase shifted abilities and attacks will not affect you. You are harder to detect while phase shifted. Mana cost increases as duration increases.
Effect (Bronze): You can partially phase shift. Phase shift cost is reduced proportionate to the area phase-shifted down to a minimum of moderate mana-per-second, but the non-phase shifted locations can be affected by abilities.
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As usual, Phase Shift was a double-edged sword. Partially phase shifting reduced costs but left her vulnerable to attacks targeted towards the rest of her body. However, she could also receive beneficial effects from allies such as healing and boons in this partial state, where previously she would not receive them at all.
The minimum cost, moderate mana-per-second, was enough for a segment of her arm or leg. A full leg upped the cost to high mana-per-second, and her entire torso cost very high mana-per-second.
It was a hard effect to manage. Phase-shifting parts of her body in time with teleportation, parries, spatial manipulation, light manipulation, and attacking was taxing on her mind. They’d come as she increased her abilities, but there was no convenient Racial Ability evolution this time to deliver a power present. She messed up not a few times, pulled once again beneath the water. She reacted faster those times, phase shifting out and teleporting to the surface once again, economizing by letting undestroyed nodes be. Sen would have suggested staying underwater to practice water combat, but after her involuntary waterboarding (though she had no lungs), Nara was now sour with that thought.
“You stinky water balloon bastards are getting. On. My. Nerves!” Nara yelled, hacking though one water elemental after another, which exploded into watery mist from her rending damage that tore them up inside out. She wasn’t entirely sure how she could’ve torn water apart otherwise, so she was grateful for the effects of the affliction Sunder from Astral Judgement.
“The elementals are some of the few that don’t stink,” Chrome said, flatly. He had no ability to run on the water and defended the deck of the ship with flying swords. “You couldn’t have chosen a worse phrase.”
“They smell like fish! That was an unnecessary comment!” She replied back as she hacked though a watery body which drenched her as the monster discorporated. She was feeling a bit like a grumpy wet cat.
“Bemoan your narrow vocabulary and weak creative mind,” said Chrome, unfazed. A gold sword flew, elegantly slicing up a water elemental like a ninja sushi chef.
Elementals didn’t dissolve into rainbow smoke, as they were natural abilities infused with magic, an atypical, but common type of monster. Elementals were mindless even at high ranks. They just attacked mindlessly, lashing out with watery tendrils and blasting with powerful jets of water at whatever they recognized as an enemy and not a being of their own.
Nara had two main methods to fight with her abilities. The first method was to rely on Dimensional Instability, which increased any rending damaged she dealt. This fighting style focused on dealing damage, using powerful strikes and cleaving through opponents. The second style focused on stacking Dimensional Instability for Dimensional Rupture, then using light attacks to trigger the damage aftershock of Dimensional Rupture.
The more efficient style was the first, which benefitted from her enhanced damage. The second option was safer against tough opponents.
Water elementals were not tough. Nara danced across the choppy water, slashing through one water body after another with her sword. Her sword met no resistance, the enhanced damage flinging droplets as it passed through the other side like a dancer spinning in the rain.
*****
She thanked the adventurer that was about to come to her aid, though she didn’t need it. The adventurer was more than happy to help, and thankful for the looting ability in turn (it did still work on elementals, even if the majority of their bodies were natural matter.)
Nara settled into a meditation, mirroring what many of the other adventurer escorts were doing. Familiars often kept watch for their summoners during this time. Caspian had grown up enough with his rank up to assist Sen more in both battle and adventuring. At iron rank, since bonds could die, they were kept extremely safe. At bronze rank, with the accelerated growth provided to magical beasts by ranking up, Caspian had reached the youthful stage of wanting to ‘help’ Sen with everything, exhaustively so.
A Simurgh in the sky as their eyes was welcome to Sen to exhaust some of Caspian’s boundless energy and put the familiar to good use. He circled above the galleon, a blotch of red against a boundless sky of blue.
Nara found meditation fun, not the actual act of it, but the result; Meditating didn’t gather any energy but did sort of transform experience into power.
“It’s like leveling up when you rest at an inn.”
“It’s not,” Chrome denied.
In meditation, her awareness was simultaneously introspective and expanded outwards. At the edges of her perception, expanded and sensitive while meditative, she felt something. The auras of many.
“Sen, I feel something,” she told him over voice chat.
“What is it?”
“A bunch of auras at sea, headed our way. Hostile, I think.”
“Pirates,” Sen declared. “Prepare for battle.”