The concept of being resilient to fire and thunder seemed new to Timothy, and it seemed new to Skendus as well. They were aware that plenty of types of defensive magic existed, but this one that Ortana possessed, tipped the bucket in the power-scale!
Fire couldn’t hurt them, thunder couldn't hurt them, and that was what helped them feel very special, they felt Immortal. They charged towards the enemies, with every ounce of confidence that immortality could offer to a fish!
Tim put those fragile muscles of his into use, and pierced through the waters as efficiently as a disk-shaped fish could pierce it. He was excited, and he was ready to wave his tail around, as his tail was his only weapon for the time being, on the count that he lacked mana. Tim felt devolved when he thought about using his tail to fight, but the situation demanded it so!
“Yiaagh!” He let out a battle shout, after two bolts of thunder clashed against his head.
The bolts were ineffective, they couldn't stop him! Tim then clashed with one of the enemies immediately, though he wanted to maintain minimal contact with them, because they were all green and gross. These resurrected fish were tainted with the liquids from the anti-mana pool, it was visible on their skin even, so it would be really stupid for one to touch them for longer than a second!
Tim was strategic about it. He charged at the enemy at full speed, slid right below the enemy, and then ran the tip of his solid, sharp barb across a very soft-looking area of its flesh! He sliced through the target's belly, and rendered it completely immobile, all while ignoring multiple fireballs!
The executed target's internal organs poured out of its belly, most of them at least. They were all green and gross too, undoubtedly really hard to look at, so it was great that they just floated down towards the pool below afterwards, right where they belonged!
“Haha!” He celebrated, from a distance, and then he tried to make a U-turn, to swim back to the battle.
The system, in the meantime announced. [You just re-killed a resurrected anglerfish, but the reward isn't any greater due to the resurrected anglerfish being very weak to begin with. You won 300 system points, and accumulated a total of 2,963 of them. At your convenience, you should look at the available purchase options again, you can buy one of them.]
“Thanks for letting me know,” He followed along, though he was simply being nice, because he didn’t really care about any upgrades right now.
Anyway, all in the meantime, Skendus the sawfish didn’t have as much of an emotional buildup along the way. He strode to battle in a calm demeanor, because he felt confident with his abilities to do damage, as he had a two-and-a-half foot long weapon as a nose! He was a big sawfish, after all.
Skendus ran his nose against an enemy, and tore it into several pieces! The fifty teeth he had on his nose were very effective at shredding things, and his three-meter long body allowed explosive and strong movements too. One would even say that he was a tank in this reef, and only a few mere beings could mess with tanks!
Anyway, he then tried to kill the only remaining, physical enemy, but then something weird happened. He saw a bunch of huge goats, in the waters! They were gigantic, intimidating, but most importantly, they had no business being here! He was very aware of the latter.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
“Goats? Well they can't be real, because they're not suffocating.” He muttered.
Unlike his friends, Skendus was a really logical guy, so he immediately figured out what was going on. He pieced the puzzle together, and got rather irritated too.
“That entity has stolen our powers, hmm… or at least they're imitating our powers?” He guessed, “They stole all of our mana, so I wouldn't be surprised if they stole our powers too. Bastards! This certainly ironizes everything they feel about mana.”
Skendus was a contemplative guy, but as it would appear, he was a really good fighter too. He had ignored the goats, and then he destroyed the last remaining reborn enemy! He was quick with it, and all at the same time, he had contemplated the matter of anti-mana. It was really easy to think about anti-mana now that there was an entire pool of it right below them!
Furthermore, he managed to put a little plan together. He looked at the entity who was frantically moving around, and locked in on it, he decided to chase this entity!
Within seconds, he managed to shift his entire body into a ghostly state. This magical ability was called atomic shifting, and it didn't cost a single mana point to cast. It was very useful because he didn’t have to leave his own body behind in order to be a ghost, but rather, his whole body shifted into a phantomized form, as mentioned!
This way, he could fight the green entity head on. It was the most effective way to do such specific damage!
“You may have taken my mana, but you can’t take my essence points, haha!” He threatened.
Then, he attacked! Skendus blasted the entity out of the waters, with the help of a phantomized, fireball-like attack. Being an adept explorer of such soul-based abilities, the damage he managed to deliver was destructive and efficient! The entity was destroyed, and hopefully gone forever!
After he succeeded, the salty waters themselves started gurgling, so in a way, the waters were responding to the death of the entity. This was weird, but then it became even weirder once a stream of blue, transparent content expanded within the waters, at the very spot where the entity was destroyed. This was scary, but it didn't take long to figure out that this was just stray mana, and it was likely mana that the entity had been stealing, and hoarding!
Skendus shifted back into a sawfish seconds later, and then he started feeling instantly more powerful, or at least, he felt perfectly competent. He could use his magical abilities again, and this was the greatest indicator that he got a bunch of mana points back, he absorbed it!
“Looks like I killed a queen of some sort. It has to be it, I mean, we had to kill her twice, so she had to have had a title of sorts.” He muttered.
Anyway, Timothy swam over and took a whiff of the same, funny business. He absorbed the mana like a sponge, and got fifteen-hundred points of them back. Ortana was full of mana already, so she didn't intervene whatsoever.
Skendus’ mana pool was much more expansive, however, especially since he was a huge sawfish now, so he only managed to refill half of his mana pool. He was still happy about it, however, as six-thousand points were pretty substantial!
Anyway, since they gathered up all together, this was the best time for them to discuss their next course of action. They had initially planned to flee, but now since they got their mana back, it may be worthwhile to hang around the pool for a little while longer. They came here to figure out how things work, and yet, they haven't really learned anything so they had to stick around!
The team was willing to learn more, except for Ortana, who really wanted to flee, so they bickered about the matter for a moment. Then, all of a sudden, they heard a smug, loud-ish voice near them, a voice that they surely did not recognize! This put their bickering into a complete halt!
“You guys were pretty brave, there!” It said, “I don't know so many sane fish who'd approach psidium mana willingly!”