Mike rushed at the elemental, using a blast step to propel himself forwards and closing the one hundred foot gap. He had forgotten the change in how much mana the skill now required, and was propelled with much more speed than he anticipated. He arrested his speed by slamming his hammer into the leg of the elemental, sending sand flying in every direction. The leg was blasted off, but when Mike took a step back to get his bearings, the sandstorm around them condensed to form a new leg.
“Shit.” Mike cursed. Last time he had fought an elemental, not counting the one he crashed into when he met Isaiah's party, it had shown itself to have an impressive ability to repair its body. With this foe, that ability was even more pronounced, as it was in the absolute perfect environment for its abilities. The elemental began to glow slightly, and a small wind kicked up all around Mike.
Small particles of sand began scraping every inch of Mike's exposed skin. Each particle didn't do much damage, far less than a single point per hit, but millions of them were hitting him, the damage began adding up. He realized quickly that it wasn't a wind that was moving the sand around, but the elemental affecting them directly.
Thinking quickly, Mike summoned his wings to wrap around himself. It worked, but now he was unable to see around him. He used blast step to throw himself out of the barrage of sand, putting distance between himself and his enemy. When he felt he was far enough, he unfolded his wings, kicking up his own whirlwind from the motion. The wind pushed the sand around him away, but it quickly refilled the space around him. He looked around, trying to get a bead on the elemental when he noticed it hadn't moved very far.
“Just like the earth variant.” Mike said. When the earth golem had manipulated the ground around itself and around Mike, it had needed to stay still to put any real power into its magic. The sand elemental could still move, albeit much more slowly than it probably could when not controlling the sand. He tried running at the elemental once more, dodging around and jumping over walls of sand that formed in his path. He could blast through them with a quick swipe of his hammer and a weak use of cleave, but he didn't want to waste the mana and stamina that would require when he could just go around.
He reached the elemental, aiming center mass as he infused cleave into the strike, trying to have the skill maximize surface area instead of trying to punch through. This worked wonders, and a large crater formed in the chest of the monster. He saw a spot within it that glowed brighter than the rest of its mass, and assumed it to be the core. Mike was forced to retreat as the sandstorm once more came barreling in to repair the damage done.
Mike tried thinking of a plan to take elemental down, but other than ripping its core out of its body he couldn't think of any way to subdue it. He could potentially keep knocking off chunks of its body until it ran out of mana to heal itself, but he couldn't guarantee he wouldn’t run out first. He was already down to 90% of his mana pool, and he knew he would need to get more selective on where each point of the resource went.
He backed up once more, needing to avoid the scraping sand that was now clinging to the elemental like a cloak. The closer he got, the more volatile the sand in the air seemed to get. He observed the shifting attacks, trying to find an opening as the elemental attempted to get closer. He outpaced it quite easily, not even needing to use the blast step as it was just that slow. While searching for an opportunity to attack, he began to notice something he had missed while he was attacking.
The elemental was beginning to glow more brightly, and the air around them seemed to be getting darker. Mike knew that his running through the sand had kicked even more of it into the air, so that had likely contributed to the darkening sky. What Mike couldn't account for was why the elemental was getting brighter. He knew it likely meant it was charging some kind of big attack, but he didn't know what it could throw at him that it hadn't already. It had shown that it had complete control of the sand storm, with that control growing as he got nearer, and that it could make walls rise from the sand. Mike decided that he wasn't going to wait around and find out, so he ran at the elemental once more.
This time he wouldn't be as reckless with the sand cutting up his skin, so he used his wings to blow back a large amount of it from the air around his foe. He dropped his hammer onto the ground, ready to try out a new tactic. Mike used the created opening to jump, reaching the “eye” level of the monster. He planted a foot on its head, using a blast step to kick off and activating one of its new effects. As he performed a backflip in the air, he saw the two foot wide hole that had been left in the elemental from where the spike of mana had lanced through its head. When Mike rotation brought him to his desired angle, he used a blast step once more to launch himself into the hole.
He could get through the first few feet of the monster's head, but he was unable to make it all the way through. His arms covered his face, but some sand still made it through the gaps and left cuts across his cheeks and forehead. He screamed as he activated Freedom, making the head and shoulders of the elemental disappear. He had dumped a quarter of his mana pool into the skill, and now he was falling down straight towards his foes core. It was not exposed, but Mike still plunged his arm down through the sand, grabbing hold of the spherical object.
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He yanked the core out, kicking off the main body again and landing safely on the ground. Mike looked at the golden glowing orb in his hands, which glowed brighter and brighter by the second.
“Where is my kill notification?” He asked the orb. “You are dead, aren't you?”
Mike regretted his question as the glowing of the orb stopped, a small noise like a lightbulb going out accompanying it. Still no notification appeared. Mike was about to try and smash the thing when he heard a horrible noise all around him. The storm was collapsing in on him, and every grain of sand in the air was now converging on the core.
“Clever Bastard.”
Mike curled into a ball as many tons of sand battered him from every direction as it tried to form back around the core. His health began dropping much faster than he was comfortable with, and he began working to kill the core. He wanted to still have access to using after the battle was over, so he tried a nondestructive method first. He may be dying, but he had time at least to save his bounty. He infused his mana into the core, trying to fight against the will of the elemental. His mana did its job admiralty, destroying the hostile mana within the core.
Instantly, the sand stopped shifting around him, and he could feel that it was no longer being controlled. Mike wanted to sigh in relief, but he would inhale a lung full of sand if he tried. He had been buried under so much sand that even with his points in strength it was still annoying to move through. He could use freedom, but if it didn't destroy all the sand above him then he would have even more fall on top of him, and it would probably hurt quite a bit.
Mike pulled himself through the sand, trying to push through the pain of having the particles rub against the hundreds of cuts that now marred his body. He finally made it out of the small hill, sucking in a breath of fresh air as he was freed. He inspected himself for damage, and found that things weren’t looking very good. He had hundreds of small cuts across his body, every inch of his skin was red from where sand hadn't managed to break through, and he was covered in blood.
The worst injury he had sustained was to his left eye. Mike didn't know exactly how bad it was, but what he did know was that he could no longer see out of it. He was half tempted to touch it to assess the damage, but he didn't really want to know the full extent of it.
The pain and agony sucked of course, but Mike's thoughts were pulled away as he looked through his notifications and at the core in his hands, a stupid smile playing across his unrecognizable face.
*Sand Elemental (level 57) slain*
*Class level up x3! Mighty Feller of Giants (level 38)*
*Race level up! Human (level 38)*
Desert Core (Heroic)
A core formed from the combined mana of a weak desert. The exact conditions in which this core forms are common, occurring once every month on average.
Mike began the trek back to Dune, using blast step to speed the journey up. It really only took him five minutes to get back, but it felt like it had been so much longer. He had been tended to by healers quite quickly, but the process to be healed still took nearly an hour as there were no high leveled healers in the entire village. From what he heard, his injuries were even worse than he realized.
Sand had been blasted deep within his body, which none of the healers were able to get out safely. Mike just used freedom to eliminate the foreign particles, much to the delight of the healers. He had nearly gagged when he heard what they were saying about his eye. It had apparently been torn to shreds, leaving a gaping hole in Mike's face. He had assumed it was just so damaged that he couldn't feel the pain, but it had just been absolutely destroyed.
When he left the healers hut, he had left several happy people in his wake who leveled up from working on somebody of such a high level. He looked at the desert core, wondering what he could make from it. It was a powerful item, one that Mike could use to make another heroic grade item similar to his hammer.
“Oh yeah, my hammer.” Mike mumbled. He had left it on the ground during his fight with the elemental, and had completely forgotten to pick it back up. It was probably buried deep under the sand by now. He pulled on his connection with it, happy that he had soul bound the item. It appeared within his soul, and Mike sighed in relief that he hadn't lost his most precious creation. It could rip the tree down that Roots was hiding in, and Mike liked to think about that. A frown crossed Mike's face as he realized exactly what he needed to use the core for. He didn't like it, but he knew he needed to do it.
A few minutes later, Mike met Raj down in his bunker. The leader was working on what looked like a very complex circle of magic, and when Mike got closer he saw that it was actually two circles, stacked on top of one another and offset by a few millimeters. He let the man work, not wanting to disturb him and accidentally be the cause of several thousands of points of mana going haywire. When the man finished his work, he turned to Mike.
“You weren't gone long, I said I needed a few weeks.” Raj said, looking a bit annoyed. “I can't weave together magic at the heroic rarity in just a few hours.”
Mike held out his hand to the man. In his grasp was the desert core, shining a golden yellow. “I brought something that could help with that.” He said. It pained him to hand over such a precious resource, but he knew it was the right thing to do.
Raj identified the core, plucking it from Mike's hands. When he realized what he was holding, he seemed to handle it with much more care than before. “I am sure I could get by without this. Do you not have a use for it?”
“I do, but if it helps to speed up getting this enchantment made then I will hand it over.”
“A noble cause.” Raj said, putting the core down on a nearby table. “You should know however, that helping those people doesn't mean you need to make large sacrifices for them. I can understand you wanting to help, but nobody is making you do this. They have been fine for several months, they can survive another few weeks if they must.”
“I know, but I want to help. The core isn't something that is irreplaceable, but the lives of those people are.”
“If that is how you feel, then I will gladly accept this for use in the enchantment.” Mike was about to leave, when Raj said one last thing. “Just don't get yourself killed over this.”