The elemental loomed above him even though it was still fifty or so metres away. All around the valley the piles of ice that littered the ground were coming to life, whether it was because the reconstituting monsters had detected the being who had almost killed them and were coming alive to defend themselves or because of something else, Leif didn’t know.
The icy mist that was ever present within the valley now swirled and rolled across the ground, the mist’s presence making the already frosty landscape reflective with newly formed ice. With every step the ground cracked beneath his feet, the wooden sword hovering above his shoulder dipping and rising like a fish swimming through the sea.
Leif’s amber eyes were locked onto the elemental he had chosen as a target, golden motes of light drifted around his form and his aura fought back the rising chill that suffused the air. A series of cracks reverberated through the valley as a cluster of ice crystals the size of a house broke apart, the group of smaller elementals that emerged gliding across the icy ground and heading in Ram’s direction.
He ignored them, even if the monsters came after him instead they were unlikely to pose a threat. Unsuppressed and ready to go all out Leif only cared about the towering elemental before him. It stood as tall as the crystalline structure the smaller elementals had emerged from, unlike many of its contemporaries roaming the valley this elemental seemed to stand on two legs three times as wide as the domain tree.
Its upper body had no discernible features, the monster having no head, arms or anything that couldn’t be described as a massive collection of shifting shards of ice larger than Leif’s entire body. With every step Leif drew closer, his aura pushing against the elemental’s own. It felt as immovable as a mountain, and as unstoppable as a glacier. But its presence was unfocused, more intent on blanketing its surroundings than trying to combat him directly.
That began to change as Leif broke into a run. The spriggan wasn’t fast by any means, but calling the elemental’s anything other than ponderous and lethargic would be incorrect. As Leif charged, aura pulled tight around him, glowing amber lights cutting through the billowing mist, the elemental noticed him.
It didn’t growl, but the sound of its colossal body shifting to reorientate on him certainly sounded like it. Two points of ice blue light began to concentrate above the monster's body, the mist swirling as if agitated as the energy gathered. Leif made it five more steps before two beams of ice and light flashed down, cutting across the ground where he would be in a sweeping x.
The golden barrier of [Under my Protection] rippled into existence, the shield cracked and buckled under the twin beams but held long enough for the elemental’s attack to dissipate. Leif ran through the falling chunks of barrier and dissipating essence of the skill without slowing his stride.
A follow up attack from the elemental came only a handful of seconds later, once again Leif’s shield blocked the attack and he didn’t stop. The elemental seemed to possess the presence of mind to know its strategy wasn’t working as the spriggan drew ever closer, so it began to condense four attacks at once.
Leif didn’t stop, even as the beams of white light flickered down to freeze his body solid and shatter him into a thousand pieces he never stopped moving forward. The light cut through the place he had been without meeting the resistance of his shielding skill. But Leif wasn’t there, [Amber Steps] had carried him back over thirty metres in a blur of golden light.
The crystalline body of the ice elemental ground together and crunched as it shifted to reorientate on Leif’s new position. The spriggan hadn’t stopped running, even if his progress had been stalled. The elemental rumbled forward, its legs piercing the frozen earth as it lumbered towards him.
Five beams of light condensed above its form, then once again flashed out to exterminate the small creature who dared to challenge it. A veritable forest of conjured limbs met the five beams, frozen chunks of golden power fell to the ground and shattered as glowing hands and forearms met the elemental’s attack and were cut through, but not without bleeding away much of its energy.
Leif burst through the cloud of white and gold, ice falling away from his body and bone chilling mist surging around him. He didn’t stop, he hadn’t slowed at all. Then he blurred forward in a stream of golden light and appeared under the elemental’s towering body. Leif twisted his body and conjured another forest of golden arms.
Empowered by a not inconsiderable portion of his cultivated vitality and strengthened by a spell command the two dozen or so arms twisted and wove together. They conjoined into a single massive arm twice as long as Leif was tall, then a fist glowing with power smashed up into the elemental’s body causing the monster’s form to crack down the middle.
Air blasted away as the world around the elemental became vacant of mist. The elemental’s entire body groaned as it toppled forward, but the monster was nowhere near dead. A barrage of spear like icicles fell like hail in a storm towards Leif as he twisted and swung the massive arm in a sweeping motion, many of the icicles were battered away but that wasn’t his main intention. A massive fist slammed into the elemental’s right leg and cracked the limb like it was a pane of glass.
Then the skill’s working dissipated as Leif stepped forward and blurred away. The elemental crashed to the ground, its body already shifted and moving the damaged components, but where it had fallen was right next to where the spriggan reappeared. Leif hauled himself up onto the elemental’s body, even as it shifted and moved his footing remained firm. He reached up and grabbed the wooden blade that still floated dutifully over his shoulder.
There was a limit to what Leif could move with him when teleporting with [Amber Steps], but things he was connected to, in this case with his [Wood Manipulation] skill, would do so if they were close enough. Leif flooded the weapon with healing energy to fortify its structure, reversed his grip, then plunged the blade down on where the monster he was standing on might have had a head.
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The blade stuck a foot into the elemental form, causing a spider web of cracks to rapidly spread from the location of the injury. Spikes erupted from the elementals body, stabbing up at him only to be stopped dead in their tracks by a golden barrier. The shield strained against the force of the blow but held. It wouldn’t do anything to save Leif from the walls of jagged ice that rose up to flank him on either side.
Hands sprouted all over Leif’s body like the branches of a tree, shooting out to intercept the elemental’s latest attack as it tried to crush and impale him in equal amounts of intensity. The arms flexed, struggling to restrain the sheer weight of the ice, and they would only hold for a few seconds more. In that time Leif stabbed down over and over with this wooden blade, each strike doing more and more damage as the elemental cracked and broke apart beneath him.
Its aura rose then, like the furious fist of a mountain trying to swat away a fly. It pushed down on Leif, trying to crush him into submission, to suppress him so the walls of ice closing in on both sides could slam together and end his existence. The aura fell, and hit an invisible barrier that was the spriggan’s own.
For a moment their presences were locked in place, the elemental’s pushing down while Leif used his like a shield, bright and noble. Both combatants fought on two fronts, the physical and the esoteric. Then Leif sharpened his focus and struck back, an effective [Charisma] of almost two hundred punching a hole right through the crude control of his opponent.
The elemental’s aura flinched back as if in shock, its form stiffening and its defensive assault faltering in an instant of instinctual hesitation. Leif stepped forward and blurred backwards, [Amber Steps] carrying him away just as the elemental slammed its body down on where Leif had just been standing.
Leif rematerialised in a blur of golden light behind the monster, he raised an ivory fist and reached out with his mind to where the wooden blade, practically bursting with amber vitality was now embedded under several tonnes of living ice.
“Expand.” He commanded, clenching his fist as if to give the spell working emphasis. The sword’s structure did so, its compressed form, condensed by Leif over several hours and reinforced with his vitality, detonated. The elemental shuddered, the cracks that lined its body flashed with amber radiance. For a moment the towering creature shifted, a sickening grinding sound coming from its body. The damage to its structure was considerable, but by no means life threatening.
Then its aura retracted, as if no longer interested in this conflict, and the monster fell apart. Ice crystals clattering to the ground as what had once been the elemental became inert and still. Leif stood there for several seconds, gaze flickering around to look for any incoming attacks or any sign that the monster’s apparent defeat had been a trap. But it hadn’t, the elemental had simply capitulated instead of continuing the fight.
Leif straightened and dusted ice off his shoulders. He was honestly disappointed it had given up so quickly. His soul was only slightly aching from the rapid use of so many skills, but he felt as if he could have kept fighting for several more minutes, maybe longer if he had paced himself.
Level up! Class [Amber Blight Spriggan] is now level 19!
For matching a powerful foe in combat and forcing it into capitulation instead of wasting its energy fighting what it couldn’t defeat you have gained a level!
+1 [Willpower] +5 free points!
Leif couldn’t help but feel like the system seemed to have shrugged its metaphorical shoulders when granting him that level. He knew that the system only described the primary action that resulted in the level gain, not every tiny thing that had added up to enough experience to gain the level. But still, that message certainly didn’t look impressive.
But by this point he had spent several days battling and testing himself against the elementals within the valley. If Leif was being honest with himself, he somewhat doubted his ability to deal enough damage to the elemental to have destroyed it completely. It would have been a gruelling battle of attrition, one that he would have needed to play safely due to his inability to drain life-force to sustain himself.
I suppose that if I were a being capable of breaking apart and reconstituting after some time had passed, I probably wouldn’t feel like fighting an extended battle that was ultimately meaningless. He mused, stepping over a pile of now inanimate ice. He stretched and began to march towards the edge of the valley. Time to refill my cultivation pool, then find something for round two.
And so he did, and with each victory [Amber Blight Spriggan] drew closer and closer to level twenty. Leif challenged an elemental that was slightly smaller than the one he had defeated to reach level nineteen, unfortunately the battle had drawn the attention of another of the colossal monsters and Leif was forced to retreat under a hail of ice beams.
After letting himself thaw and fully recover from the failed attempt, Leif used his aura to draw an elemental to a part of the valley that he had cleared in the days of fighting prior. This one was far more aggressive than any other Leif had fought up until that point. It attacked and attacked, never letting up a near constant barrage of ice lances and crushing blows.
After a ten minute back and forth battle, Leif stood atop a trembling pile of cracked and shattered crystals. Amber arms tipped with spear points plunged down over and over, each penetrating blow driving further down into the elemental’s body. The entire time it’s aura crashed against his own, like an avalanche trying to sweep him away.
Leif resisted, though his soul ached and his mind wavered, the elemental was unable to suppress him. “Just… die… already.” He groaned, driving four spiked fists into its increasingly damaged form. Leif sent a silent thank you to the elemental that had given up only a few minutes into the battle, this slog was just tedious.
“If you can’t beat me… and you’ll just reconstitute later…” The spriggan growled. “Then...” A crack split the air as the elemental’s body fractured down the middle. “Just…” Its entire body slowed, no longer attempting to withdraw the damaged parts. “Give!”
The monster stilled, and the pressure of its aura slackened. Leif let his amber limbs disperse into essence as he sagged, breathing heavily atop his conquered foe. Then the elemental’s body began to glow, brilliant white light shining through the thousands of cracks and gaps in its body.
“Please don’t.” Leif said, feeling the creature’s intent with [Amber Sympathy] moments before it happened.
The elemental rudely ignored him and didn’t stop. The brightness grew, its entire form trembling. Leif sighed in resignation and summoned a golden barrier. Then the elemental exploded.