For the first time in my battles against the scorpions, I was the one bursting out of the sands. I imagine it was less exciting for me, as I was not faced with a surprised human but instead an angry scorpion kaiju. Using the Jingu Bang’s extension to punch a hole in the roof, I leapt out of the underground tunnels. The scorpion queen sagged a distance away, her ruby exoskeleton marred with black striations.
The evidence of my own attack on her was promising, but I stopped myself from getting excited. This was still the most dangerous fight I had ever been in. I didn’t allow myself to forget that this creature could shape the sand to an intensely powerful degree, creating clones of some kind. Likely, it helped her massive body move even now.
“Didn’t have to be like this,” I muttered, dashing forward. There were only a few scorpions still above ground, not including Reysault herself, and they were quickly becoming puddles of acidic and viscous muck as a result of the backlash from Reysault’s empowering magic being turned on its head. It was a grisly sight, but the alternative was myself, dying in a similar state.
I wouldn’t let that happen.
The distance between us was vast. My own speed, coupled with the boost from Haste and the desperate desire not to be crushed in the tunnels below had spurred my footsteps. As the good queen was taking a slight breather herself, I decided to take my time and let a few minutes pass before searing forward across the sands once more. With Merownis’ regeneration alongside my own, I barely needed three minutes to fill my mana pool.
Dragonburn. Mana Bolt.
Bringing herself to bear as she saw me coming, the scorpion queen screamed her defiance. Through me and my magical attack, the Dragon roared back. A large portion of my regeneration was once more fed into the Jingu Bang but I could still throw a starting shot.
I had so much mana to spare compared to when I first used the skill. As the mana turned caustic, influenced by the Aspect of the Dragon, it became heavy. By filling the magic balloon with a touch of Spirit and letting the Aspect do as it did, the orb became a vessel of pure inevitability. The closest I could get to creating a Magic Missile, the Mana Bolt leapt from my hand easily despite the heft required to throw it. Pushing further, my mana surging, the primal energy of my ally flowing into Haste while my own activated King’s Training.
Though it may not bear the name, when thrown, the bolt became a magical missile. Surface-to-air, in this case. The signal flare of power seared through the air at a blistering speed even as I skidded to a stop. With my momentum combined with all of the positive force applied, the Mana Bolt became a comet deadset on bloodying the nose of the massive boss monster. Unfortunately, despite all of the deadly energy I had tried to lace the attack with, it was still a simple Mana Bolt. Powerful and requiring attention but, as one of the towering claws met it and crushed it, ultimately irrelevant in terms of damage.
“Caught you looking,” I called. At this point, I expected she noticed the shadow hovering over her. It was an expensive move, but every second I had been able to funnel my mana to the Jingu Bang was for this. I expected something like this to happen, and was massively thrown off when the Scorpion Queen had appeared as a slender woman. Honestly, there had been some relief when the true form pulled itself from the sand.
A big target was much easier to hit than a small, fast one.
The Jingu Bang stood as full of power and pride as it had ever been while I held it. While she might be as intimidating as a skyscraper, the scorpion wasn’t piercing heaven like I had. Into the infinite, the weapon’s tip shrank to a pinprick, while the staff itself swelling to the size of a rocket. While all of my negativity had been a whip against Reysault, the positives had flowed into the staff.
Confusing as it was, I didn’t hate the System, at least not completely. Moving at ridiculous speeds was fun. Being able to lift boulders over my head was thrilling, and the sense of discovery every day was more alluring and potent than the fear the unknown evoked. In many ways, this attack was fueled by my desire to continue living in the System, one way or another. More and more, the Spirit of this positivity became fuel for the staff, the rising hopes allowing it to soar into the sky. Before the Scorpion Queen could start moving, I did.
“Timber.” It took a Haste-boosted tackle to start the proceedings, but the Jingu Bang did the rest. I could feel the staff itself altering its weight to make the fall quicker and more direct. At this point, though, Reysault had decided she wasn’t sitting still. While it was clearly a great effort, the horrid form of the immense scorpion queen shuffled itself to avoid the falling cataclysm. With my feet pounding the sand, I burned into the last of my mana. Silently thanking Merownis for his assistance, I continued to use Haste alongside my impressive Agility and Strength to get into position.
Mana
48/295
58 per minute
With Merownis’ regeneration on top of my own, Haste became cheaper to use. Though a unit ticked back each second, I couldn’t wait for more time and just had to throw everything I had at my final redirection. From an olympic sprinter’s starting position, with a pair of small Mana Shields for purchase in the sand, I bolted forward with enough speed to rattle my own cheeks.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Caught you looking.” An awful voice, twisted further by pain, screeched in my ear as I was stopped mid-jump by a hand at my throat. I felt something crack, and it became impossible to breathe. Though, that might have been the vice grip on my windpipe. I didn’t have the oxygen or the time for a pithy reply. Clearly Reysault was confident enough to gloat, but that simply made me angry.
Serious Swing.
Like a cannonball being fired, my fist shot forward as mana took control of the situation and decided I was much faster than natural. My fist collided with the jaw of the Scorpion Queen and sent her head flying into a cloud of sand, her body following soon after. I fell to the floor coughing, but I couldn’t stop. Even as the sand around me began to pull in different directions, new clones gathering quickly, I kept my focus.
I had to stop fueling King’s Training to maintain Haste but the regally named skill had already etched itself into my muscles. I had been unprepared for the first attack, but Reysault’s second and third met only air, skillfully dodged despite her overwhelming speed. If the attacks were easy to read, it was a matter of timing more than velocity. With a jumping split kick, the pair were smashed apart easily.
The sand clones were dangerous, but where they shone in lethality, they lacked in the durability department. Though I was loath to spend any of my mana, I shot a bolt into a clone mid-formation. The mana animating it was dispersed and the energy hopefully wasted. My eyes flashed greedily. You might have a queen-sized mana pool, but efficiency is king.
Blazing through the sand, weaving around attacks and destroying as many clones as I could, I didn’t stop. The reason Reysault was willing to throw an assumed tonne of mana after me was down to the threat I posed. Except, that threat would disappear if the Jingu Bang missed its target.
With the final thirty or so mana, I made a bet. It would knock me out, but I used I had left at once, gathering the remaining energy and then subjecting it to Dragonburn. The cost was massive, eating through nearly three hundred mana which I didn’t have but it was necessary. Belatedly, perhaps, I sent a distress call to Merownis. If this missed…
To make matters worse, the tail of the Scorpion Queen finally came into play. Stabbing towards me, though with no effort to truly reach, the space between myself and her tail filled with poison of the darkest green. Remembering the Scorpion Prince which had done similar, and created a puddle out of a stone wall, I grimaced. There was no way to dodge. Well, that makes it simple at least. Blood for blood.
I removed thoughts of failure. In doubt’s place sat fear. Fear is a deeper emotion than doubt, and one with much more power. Spirit from the well joined my attack, happily taking the form of the harrowing burden I had found growing on my back with each day, as my powers grew. The weight of the idea that I might be the most capable person on earth. The crushing trials of the dungeon and the oppressive knowledge that things would likely only grow more dangerous in the future. These dense sentiments wove into the force of my strike as I breathed out the words.
“Heavy Blow.”
Like a gate, rusted from disuse, the skill cracked as I forced it open. My legs did the same as they drop kicked the Jingu Bang, allowing it to chase the skittering scorpion queen. As the bones in my shins splintered, I kept fighting. Even as the massive rain of boiling poison began to fall onto and sear my skin, I kept pushing.
As the staff turned in the sand, collapsing onto the scorpion queen, my vision dimmed. I had spent a lot of Spirit, and my frozen extremities clenched as the ground rushed up to meet me. I was going to fall into the small lake of venom, I noted. Even as my consciousness slipped away from my control completely, I thought that was probably quite bad. Landing with a splash, I didn’t even feel the impact of the falling Jingu Bang.
All I felt was pain.
——————————————————————————
With his mana funnelling into Grant’s core rather than his own, Merownis found it impossible to keep pace with the human’s magically strengthened strides. From much too far away, he watched as Grant’s weapon began to split the sky. The great pole punched through the clouds quickly, the view of the staff’s tip lost within their wispy grasp. In the distance, the gigantic Scorpion Queen was hauling herself out of the way.
Grant himself was beset by sand clones and Merownis found himself furious at his own impotence. However, that negative emotion was nothing compared to the true wonder which bloomed within the Sundercat. He could feel Grant’s drive, shown through their Battle Bond, so fiercely it brought tears to his eyes. His fur damp, vision clouded by the burning salt, it was both that magical connection and his disbelieving sight which confirmed the impossible.
Sight of Grant vanished in a plume of green liquid just as he sent the staff tumbling. There were another few seconds before the weapon’s fall was completed in which the whole dungeon sucked in a breath. The final instant of silence was broken by the start of Reysault’s furious scream of rage, which itself was eclipsed by the world-shattering boom caused as her defeat was sealed. A dust cloud of gargantuan proportions exploded from the craterous collision site. The rumbling shockwave threw even the prepared Merownis backwards into a nearby dune.
He would have happily remained in the sand cocoon. He could rest off the damage in the warm quiet place. If not for the desperate, choked whisper which came through his connection with Grant, he might have. Instead he clawed himself out and began sprinting towards the source of the distress call and his fallen companion. Leaping over the final dune, he expected to see Grant’s melting body in the pool of poison he fell into.
Naea appeared, dropping her invisibility and landing on Merownis’ shoulder with a sigh. “He really is special, isn’t he?”
Merownis said nothing, just nodding his head as an answer. His connection to Grant had frozen, along with the human’s body. In a bowl of sand too even to be natural, A crystal containing the form of Grant Kaeron lay unmoving even as the sand elsewhere continued to shake. “What do we do now?” Naea asked.
Sitting down with an exhausted sigh, Merownis pushed the tip of Severance into the sand and rested the pommel against his shoulder. He looked at the fairy for a long moment before shrugging. “We wait.”