With our mobility no longer hindered, Merownis and I were able to harass the scorpions while keeping ourselves at a safe distance. The sun was at our back, and the stomping of the many legged Scorpion Princes was a healthy motivator not to stop and turn around.
At least, that was the plan. “Fuck,” Merownis cursed, surprising me. He must have picked up the foul language from me, the word rolling off his tongue in an unnatural way. I brought my attention forward, however. A scuttling sea of giant scorpions approached from the front. Turning around, I squinted. Against the backdrop of the sun, the golden Scorpion King was planted.
A tendril of sickly black mana, difficult to see against the glare, extended upwards from its shining carapace before falling into the ground behind the massive scorpion. Now it was my turn to glare, returning my attention to the swarm. That same oily mana marked the approaching horde like a miasma. I had compared the princes to lieutenants before, but I realised now that the King was truly their general.
It had brought its army.
“How is your mana doing?” I had taken over the pressure on the approaching princes while he focused on recovering his energy. Even a single unit’s worth of mana in a Mana Bolt kicked with the force of a donkey and was enough to slow down the scorpion princes. “Do you think we’re worth a whole army?” I asked flippantly. The horde wasn’t a real threat, but I was wondering something. This was a dangerous situation, but it was also an opportunity.
Merownis looked at me like I was crazy, panting and shaking his head. “Nineteen a minute. Seventy mana out of two oh five.” After quickly giving the details, Merownis face turned serious. I refrained from saying it out loud, but that was disappointing. Our short escape across the desert hadn’t amounted to enough time before the fighting would begin again.
Unless…
The dark misty mana which the Scorpion King was using had given me an idea. I had mana recovery to spare. If I could share it with the Jingu Bang, then what about Merownis? Giving it across our connection should be possible. Yet, as I tried to send mana across the bond, I received a whiplash that stopped me in my tracks. Frowning, I activated Haste at a low level. I didn’t recover enough mana per second to make it “free,” but it gave me time to think. The world around me slowed, but my mana moved with even more acuity than normal.
As everything dulled, the sounds of the desert extended. The drone of the approaching army and Merownis’ garbled speech became background noise as I attempted something new. It was spur of the moment, but this opportunity wouldn’t come again easily. This had to be a sizable amount of the desert zone’s power. If we could turn this around and crush these enemies…
But I couldn’t do it alone. Merownis was powerful. While his attributes were clearly not at my level, his control of mana was still a level above mine. With chagrin, I wondered if the tables were turned, would this imperceptible barrier be enough to stop him? No, I decided, and it won’t stop me. I might not have the quality control which he did, but I had something else.
Overwhelming force.
Again, the Dragon within me rumbled. Mana was my domain within the dungeon. I had chosen my path. While I didn’t picture myself as a wizard, my heart was set on magic. It was a new building block to life, but it made up the whole dungeon around me. the monsters attacking me, as well. Even my teammate Merownis had been the same, though after his evolution that had changed. He was more solid now. Which in itself was an example that this should be possible. With the right manipulation, mana could be used to do anything. I refused to let myself be stopped by what seemed to be a whim of the System.
The barrier between us felt artificial, and the river of my energy angrily smashed against it. As I tried to send mana across the bond, there was a very clear feeling of the System taking control away. The mana slipped out of my grasp.
In my head, I took a view of the whole battle and saw my place within it. A king and his princes were bringing their army to kill me. Beyond that, a “god” had decided to intervene and make my life harder. I had to laugh. Wasn’t that perfect? Wasn’t that what was required… to stop a dragon?
The Aspect within me stirred. That’s right, I agreed with the roused energy connected to my soul. Without using it to influence my skills, I activated Dragonburn. The idea came easily, and the result was just as fast to appear. The thought was a simple one, but the chain reaction it led to was spectacular even for me.
What if I didn’t use it to power up a skill, but instead to direct my mana?
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The response from within my core was immediate and intense. With a roar that rippled through my soul and out of my mouth, I aligned with my Aspect and found the infinite well of power within. I had fiddled with the inner world a lot to get my imagined expression of the Aspect into something I could control. As I raged against the constraints on my mana, and the hubris required to amass against me, that tinkering paid off.
The painted world within shuddered. While the physical space around me was still slowed, the planet orbiting my soul began to go through an accelerating loop. Faster and faster it rotated around my core. The shadow of the cage around the sun at the centre seemed to extend on the world, even as it flashed over and over. A faux day-night cycle appeared. The grass began to rustle with wind. The rivers began to flow, unfrozen from their false imagery into something more real. The hills and mountains became locked, no longer simply “in the distance.” Deep within the molten centre of the planet, power burbled happily.
The power was mine to command. Only what I could withstand from the Dragon. Only what I could claim as my own. It was enough. With a thought, I blew the top off one of the mountains in my mind. Before, this action would have been akin to tearing away a portion of a sticker. A portion would have been lost, and the base image would have remained the same. Not so any longer.
Tearing off the top of a new mountain had consequences. This was a living, breathing world now, with physicality of its own. I would no longer be able to alter my perception of it to fuel my mana better, but I didn’t think I would need to. It felt correct, like I had been building to this without knowing it.
The volcano erupted, and I gathered the lava.
Instead of a river of cool, watery mana, I slammed into the connection between me and Merownis with dense, flaming force. The System’s barrier crumpled, the new form of force applied causing it to melt away quickly. The limiter on our connection broke, and Merownis’ eyes widened as I deactivated Haste. Even before the System prompts appeared, I felt my mana channels shifting to enable my newest skill.
I rolled my shoulders, spun the Jingu Bang and opened my status page. I quickly dropped the floating thirteen attribute points I had into mana regeneration. From what I could tell about this skill, I would need it.
Congratulations! Skill created due to cohesion between your skills!
Dragonburn + Mana Savant + Party Leader
Congratulations! Skill Created - Battle Bond (Rare)
Those who look to claim a place at the top do so at the expense of others. Without allies, the sea of challengers will drown even the mightiest leviathan. The potential of a Battle Bond grows over time.
The flowery language didn’t explain much, but I could experiment later. For now, I held up a fist. As the Sundercat’s larger hand fistbumped mine, I sent a full one hundred mana to Merownis, causing his already shocked expression to become comical. It may have been my imagination, but when the Magic Missiles formed around him in the air, they seemed to have a slightly amber tint to them. “You, my friend, are terrifying.” Merownis drawled his words, looking between the three silver scorpions and the approaching legion of lessers. “Which side do you want?”
I was glad to see his confidence had leapt to about where mine was currently sitting and that he saw what I did. “The big ones are mine. Can you handle the small fries?”
“At this point,” Merownis answered, each word punctuated with a Magic Missile streaking into the distance to find a kill, “I’d be embarrassed if it took me ten minutes. Your mana feels like this all the time?” He loosed another three, whistling quietly as he reformed them quickly in the array behind his head.
I shrugged. “Uh, I guess? Why?”
“It’s like holding pure lightning,” Merownis answered. Then he burst forward, leaving me with what I thought was a compliment along with a mouthful of sand. I scowled after him. His Magic Missiles seemed stronger, at least. I turned to face my own enemies, cycling my mana through my whole body to shake off the feeling of newness within my mana. Altering the make up of my inner solar system had effects beyond facilitating the arrival of Battle Bond.
Without any other way to describe the difference, the magic was simply more potent. It held a new, more defined weight, like each point was more valuable now. I had shifted from a pure energy to something more draconic in nature. “He wasn’t wrong,” I agreed, conjuring a Mana Bolt. An orb of pure amber energy arrived in my hand. More destructive at its base. It was only worth ten units of mana, but I hurled it at the nearest Scorpion Prince with overwhelming faith. A layer of dust wouldn’t be enough to stop this one.
My aim was slightly off, and I was fairly sure that was the only reason the creature wasn’t crippled out of the battle. As it was, the bottom half of one large pincer was absolutely shattered, the hinge which snapped the devilishly sharp claw shut was destroyed. There was a moment of near silence as the battlefield seemed to reckon with the change I had undergone while upon it. I could almost hear the complaints of the princes as the tables flipped entirely.
“If I ran, it was only to make room for me to turn around and skewer you.” They probably couldn’t understand me, but I was making a stand here. The dungeon would push me as far as it could, but this was my response when challenged. I was getting out of this dungeon, no matter what. If a barrier appeared before me, I would smash it in two before walking through the gap I created.
With a sigh, I threw two more Mana Bolts at the undamaged princes. I was shocked to see them actively dodge, one of them going so far as to jump out of the way. It was a shame they had gotten savvy, but at least they weren’t insulting me by trying to take the attacks head on any longer. As the three Scorpion Princes slowed and watched me, my attention was on the stationary general at the back. “I’m gonna make a helmet out of you,” I promised the Scorpion King before leaping forward and turning this ambush on its head.