A familiar tension returned as the final shapes formed from the ice. Instead of letting the pressure make me flinch, I allowed it to wash over me. This is nothing, I told myself, just the calm before the storm. I laughed at my own joke. The trial of the Storm Dragon had nearly cost my life just for entry, but I felt casually confident against the horde of ornery snowmen all the same.
It occurred to me there was not going to be a starting bell, yet I waited all the same. My mana was flowing in perfect order, Infusion and Kirin Strikes ready to go. The cold air burned my nose and tried to freeze my eyes. I was as calm as the sculptures, a room of absolute stillness. From behind, the sound of shattering.
Then all frozen hell broke loose.
As the wave began in full, the temperature dropped again. Naea swore in my ear, her head buried in my shaggy hair for warmth. The first attacks began to come my way but I skated around them with ease. I let a ripple of mana course through me, a droplet from the well. Naea he sighed happily as my skin warmed. Frost which had accumulated on my joints steamed away as my blood started to boil in jubilation. I understood why down to my very bones.
Staff Mastery had been missing a vital component up to now. The Yo Staff in my hand sang in harmony with my tempo as I used it like a ski stick, flickering through the onslaught at breakneck speed. The weapon drank from my mana perfectly, a constant shift to its weight allowing me to perform beautiful acrobatics.
My attributes had never been so well used, down to even my mundane senses. The whole place was a gorgeous sight to behold. A strange light permeated the stone of the walls, illuminating them and the walls in a plain white light. I saw the genius of the minimal tower design as rainbows glittered across the walls, floor and ceiling. It’s a work of art.
I rose above the growing crowd with a vault. Two birds shot from above without a sound, casting blinding light from their wings. I laughed at the challenge, smashing one before it got close. The second caught my shoulder but I wanted its momentum. I pulled my legs to my chest to dodge a razor-sharp greataxe aimed for my jumping form. The Yo Staff became an immense weight and I flipped to the ground with a slam.
“Warm up finished. Hold on tight.” As much for myself as Naea, my solo ballet of the ice warrior had proven to us she wouldn’t get thrown away if I cut loose. My scalp wasn’t thanking me. Hopefully a sore head would be the worst of my worries. My heavy fall had buckled the nearby attackers, but more were on me in an instant. I span, extending the dense weapon.
The Yo Staff gleamed with rime, the cacophony of clattering ice only increased. I became a tornado of pure energy and lost myself to the rhythm of battle. It wasn’t all easy going once the army of ice’s strategy came into play. I had taken note of the different forms, but once the melee descended to madness, the variation became more problematic. For each hit which landed on me, the battalion got thinned into small, snowy pieces.
Hits were landing, which sucked. The ice weapons didn’t cause bleeding, but the areas they slashed froze immediately. My blood became sluggish in my veins. Naea’s hands thrummed with a discordantly peaceful energy and the blockages of chilled blood were dealt with as quickly as they came. I still avoided damage like the plague. For one, it really hurt, but more importantly Naea’s mana wouldn’t last forever. “You hanging in there?”
“Is that a crap joke?” Naea shouted. She didn’t need to as she was right next to my ear but the room was pretty loud, so I forgave her without comment. Also, it had been a pun, so I had no leg to stand on. “If you would just share, then you could get sliced all day!”
“Share what?” The massive ice animal I saw earlier charged. Definitely a rhino. I hopped to the top of the staff, balancing on it straight up. I placed a healthy amount of mana into it and watched as the rhino ploughed right into the now impossibly heavy staff. The snowbeast was cleaved in two by its own momentum, pushing the staff just slightly. I rode it to the ground as it fell, careful to hop off as it made the tower shake with the weight.
“Your mana!” She replied with a kick to my back. “You can pump that stick silly, but none for little, ‘ol Naea? Typical boy, only interested in his stick.” Her admonishment was mostly jovial, but I could hear the exertion as she joked. I hadn’t used Infusion or Kirin Strikes so far, pushing myself deeper into Staff Mastery but the cost wasn’t just a few uncomfortable moments of pain.
“I can do that?” The inanimate object in my hands was one thing, but I instinctively recoiled from sharing it with Naea for some reason. The idea felt far more… intimate. Mana was a representation of the soul in most of the ways which counted.
I wouldn’t blame Naea for distracting me, but I caught a heavy blow to the back of my knee. Instead of being crippled, the fairy on my back reacted instantly and I was able to dodge with time to spare. I jabbed the staff through the ice swordsman and it fell into a thousand pieces. The herd had thinned considerably, so I gained some breathing room.
The fuck are you waiting for? I admonished myself. If I died, Naea would die. The Dungeon’s creatures already saw her as an enemy but now she was in a trial with me. Because of me, I corrected. Baring my soul was the least I could do. “I hope you like what you see.”
The actual process was simple. Whether I could have done the same with words was a question for ex-girlfriends, but Naea was already connected to my soul through the familiar contract. My own hesitations weren’t in the way, neither were preconceptions from her. A small lump sat quietly in my soulspace, her presence bringing wildflowers to my inner world. It was just a small change to create and open a door. A shiver deeper than any cold tickled over my soul.
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Skill Upgrade - Healing Bond (Dragon) has upgraded to Battle Bond (Dragon)
A bond forged in battle is as strong as they come.
Effect: Patron and Familiar may share mana, for various effects.
The System didn’t like to hold hands, did it? It was better for it to be vague, I decided. The healing capability of the ability hadn’t been impacted, but experimenting would have to wait. “Is that better?” I asked. Naea would have the same ability evolution as I did. She just whooped loudly in response. A strange moment occurred as my own mana returned to me with a distinct flavour. Naea’s touch tasted like fresh river water and smelled like pine sap. The healing was increased by volume, but I barely felt the difference to my reservoir.
“Monster,” Naea whispered. I was starting to agree. I knew for a fact I was ahead of the pack outside the Dungeon, but it was impossible to know by how much. I shuddered, picturing a world of people with strength like I was capable of. Historically, random people finding power with no oversight was not a good thing.
Slowing down wasn’t an option. Now that Naea had no complaints, I dove through the rest of the enemies. One use of Infusion made me unstoppable compared to the relatively slow ice creatures. Only as the last one fell did I notice something felt off. “Hold on, where are there nameplates?” The floor rumbled and I groaned. “Is comedic timing a setting I can turn off?”
The temperature in the room jumped dramatically which felt nice for about two seconds. Sweat dropped from my skin and Naea peeled herself away, gagging. All the ice in the room became water, and that water was rushing to the centre of the room. Once it arrived, the temperature dropped again. My wet clothes froze in place from the dramatic shift.
I expected Naea to run back under my shirt but she shimmered with heat and confidence. Being stealthy was one thing, but hiding like she had hurt her pride. Good, I nodded, let it push you, too. I stepped next to her, giving her a quick fist bump while we watched the ice smash itself together. “Oh, this one has a nameplate.”
Monster - Ice Elemental (Level 30)
“I think maybe they were all this one creature,” Naea chimed in.
“No way,” I yelled, though I immediately felt she was right. “That’s really, really cool.” I couldn’t help but be impressed. Whatever controlled this creature had a crazy amount of control over its mana if the army I had just found were basically puppets. I wanted to study its technique, but there was the more important task of survival higher on the priority list.
A massive fist smashed down. Naea and I dashed in opposite directions, easily avoiding the attack. We circled the massive amorphous form. Mostly, the Ice Elemental looked like the top half of a human, minus the head. A huge torso with two flailing limbs. It moved at surprising speed, but only compared to my old self. With Infusion running at full capacity, it really might as well have been frozen.
My eyebrows shot open in surprise as the large arms shrank into the massive form. At once, long whips of snow and ice exploded from the base of the elemental. I retreated but Naea didn’t have the same good sense as me. I shouted a warning which went ignored, but I acquiesced as my doubts were quickly proven wrong.
The “trick of the light” I had noticed when I healed Naea returned. I could sense her use my mana to perform an Infusion of her own. As she did so, her wings took on a more leathery appearance, ridges and spikes appearing. Her large eyes took on a cat’s slitted quality and her form even looked to bulk out a few inches. The effects of my draconic mana were pronounced in her features.
Naea dove into the shredder face first, and I followed. My movements were influenced by the advice of Staff Mastery, while the ability to perform the spins and flips suggested came from my attributes and Infusion.
Unwilling to be outdone, even as I felt some pride of my own at the fairy, I activated my offence. If Staff Mastery and Infusion were my set up, then Kirin Strikes was the hammer which struck the nail. The violence of a storm coursed through my arms and into the weapon. For good measure, I placed my three free attribute points into Mental.
The jump in acuity was just enough for me to realise my earlier arithmetic had been wrong. I opened and closed the System prompt which had appeared as my attribute reached the threshold. I howled with laughter against the gale of attacks, blowing them apart with a thunderclap from the Yo Staff. Yellow and blue light flashed all over, arcs of energy expelled between myself and the elemental. The collision would have smashed open a bank vault, but the elemental was barely phased. Without leverage, I flew backwards until I collided with the wall.
I wasn’t aiming to be the star of this show, anyway.
Naea had drunk deeply from my well, and I encouraged it. Like a bloated mosquito, she approached the elemental. Unlike the mosquito, she moved faster than even my eye could follow. Free to use her new ability with abandon, Naea jolted past the attacks and closed in on the elemental. Sickles and projectiles raged around the Ice Elemental to no avail.
The fairy, her form tinged with draconic features, rose to the ceiling and removed her trump card. The small sabre was comical, invisible from this distance, but I could feel the movement of mana from here. Naea was about to burst, even with her wanton use of my mana to this point. All of that pressure was countered happily by the Chibizashi.
Finish it.
The cold hadn’t touched me while my mana was flowing but a shiver ran through me all the same as Naea lifted the sword in the air. I could feel every movement, although there was quite a distance from myself and the battle now. So I knew it was over, even if the Ice Elemental did not.
The wording on the Chibizashi was similar to the Yo Staff. As the energy within the blade reached its peak, Naea slashed downwards. She wasn’t anywhere near the elemental’s form but that didn’t matter. The magic of the sword was supercharged by the power coursing through it. A snikt sound overpowered all other noises, ushering a silence into the room. After a few heartbeats, the quiet was again broken.
This time, it was the tinkaling of a chandelier falling to the ground, maximised by the enclosed space. The elemental split down the middle, the frozen blade of the Chibizashi shrinking back down to size. With her downward slash, Naea switched the shrinking aspect of her sword to the exact opposite. The elemental didn’t know what hit it.
She barreled into my unprotected chest, my hands protecting my ears from the sound. I looked down into the fairy’s normal eyes. She was shaking with exertion and the comedown of adrenaline. “See?” She spoke quietly into my chest. The words might not even have been meant for me. “I’m not deadweight. I won’t slow you down.”
Ah, I realised, the shattering sound is my heart. “I couldn’t have survived three days in this Dungeon without you, Naea. I promise,” I put emphasis on the word. An important word to the Fae. “Promise with all my heart, wherever I go, you go.”
“Good,” she whispered, still stretched across my torso like a particularly loveable limpet. We said nothing else as the room fell soundless yet again. The temperature returned to normal and all which was left of the Ice Elemental was a massive, undraining puddle. I brought my hand up to embrace Naea and fell back onto the damp floor.
We couldn’t stop here. “Five minutes. Then, we move on.” My head fell into an icy puddle but I ignored it. I was tired, but smiling. I only had eyes for the achievement I had received mid-fight.
Achievement Unlocked - Centennial
A single mistake can bring death on the road to specialisation. Achieved for reaching 100 effective attribute points in a single attribute before gaining a Class or Race Evolution.
Effect: Attributes +10%
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Name - Grant Kaeron Race - Human (Grade 0) Level - 29
Title - Dragon Slayer
Fortitude - 20 Speed - 20 Mental - 73 Will - 30
Free attribute points: 0