Ray really, really couldn’t be blamed for staring agog at the sight he had been presented.
The Floor Lord had come to him. The Floor Lord, the Sylvan who had been missing all this while, the strongest being on the entirety of the Second Floor as far as anybody knew, was now standing before him.
He really couldn’t be blamed for just being frozen for a few moments. Like a deer caught in the headlights of a car about to run it over.
His thoughts were running, though. All the questions about the guard himself had transformed to the ones he so dearly would have liked to ask the Floor Lord directly.
Had she really been a minor soldier within the Everstead kingdom all this while? How had she held onto a changed appearance like that for so long? Mimic Mana, of course, but the use case seemed extremely powerful. And most importantly, why was she hiding? Why was she biding her time and secreting herself when there were others of her kind sacrificing them—
“The Fleshcrafter,” Ray said. His voice was actually shaky, so he cleared his throat and was happy that it steadied itself. “You’re so bent on working for the Fleshcrafter that you’ll let even your fellow Sylvans die at the hands of the very enemies you want to kill.”
“Your pointless accusations have no bearing on what I asked you,” the Floor Lord said, impatience growing on her face and her words. “Answer me. Will you cease, or will you die?”
She took one step forward. Her horns glimmered under the day’s dying light, dark as jet and reflective like obsidian. Ray was a bug caught in a spider’s web. He wanted to continue the conversation so he’d have time to actually see what this Floor Lord was capable of with Primordial Gauge.
“I don’t think my options need to be so black-and-white,” Ray said. “I was doing all this to help your followers.”
“Your assumptions were greatly misplaced. But I am not here to entertain them.”
“But you are here. You presented me with a choice. And my choice is that I don’t want to die. But I still want to… help the Sylvans against the Everstead kingdom who stole the Floor from you.”
“What makes you think they stole this Floor?”
Ray straightened, storing that tiny bit of information away. “I heard you had an argument with the leaders of the Everstead. That you—”
“Enough. What gives you the right to assume you deserve to know anything, you mere insect?” Unlike her form as the guard, she definitely wasn’t shy about showing emotions now. She hid nothing of her disgust for Ray.
“I—”
“You are an up-jumped little Denizen who delved into matters far above his station. That I even give you the opportunity to live is more than you deserve. I will ask one more time, and if you do not promise that you will cease, if you do not surrender your Tower Nodes to me immediately afterwards, then I will pick them out of the remains of your shattered corpse.”
Ray’s heart spasmed again like he was about to go into cardiac arrest. Alright, Gritty had been absolutely correct. This Floor Lord was undeniably insane.
He made a show of being scared. It wasn’t hard to make his legs shake. His every sense was telling him that he was outmatched, and his best bet would be to comply with her and get away. But she had not only demanded his unconditional surrender, she was also determined to take away all the Tower Nodes he had earned.
No fucking way.
Ray used Primordial Gauge while trying to look like he was scared but still attempting to think things over. What he found only made him shake harder.
[Primordial Gauge]
Fyrlea Erd Seventh-sealed [Denizen]
Race: Sylvan
Path: Path of Core Growth [Epic]
Class: Cosmic Caller [Epic] [Tier 5] at Level 55
Skills:
Call of the Cosmos [Tier 7]: Summon a pool of the boundless void upon the battlefield. This simulacrum of the cosmos allows you to extend the reach of all your spells by acting as a medium to use them from. At Tier 7, this spell creates cosmic blobs of up to 2 meters in diameter at a distance of 21 meters from the caster.
Sylvan Dominance [Tier 8]: Aura of astral projection that automatically refills Mana. This Aura manifests in the element of the wielder’s Path. Your extended presence will note the aura of other beings in your aura’s vicinity. Domination ensures your aura will supersede any Aura up to a Tier above. At Tier 8, this spell’s range extends to 40 meters.
Void Perception [Tier 7]: Claim absolute detection of any living being under the eye of the heavens within this spell’s range, including precognition of any Mana conjured into an ability. At Tier 7, the spell’s vicinity extends to 35 meters.
Shattered Cosmos [Tier 9]: Rip a rent in the heavens to rain down the wrath of the cosmos. At Tier 9, this spell creates a rent up to 18 meters in length and at a distance of up to 18 meters away from the caster.
Armoured Growth [Tier 8]: Imbue yourself with Growth Mana to create a slowly-growing encasing that negates incoming damage. At Tier 8, 16% of all incoming damage is negated per minute of growth.
Weaponized Growth [Tier 8]: Turn your Growth Mana into an armament. At Tier 8, this skill creates a weapon with maximum mass of 16 kilograms.
Gravity Well [Tier 10]: Set a well of gravity that negates and replaces all other gravity in the area. At Tier 10, this spell can cast a well of gravity at a range of up to 20 meters with a maximum radius of 20 meters.
Comet Strike [Tier 9]: Wreathe yourself in the burning power of a comet before hurling it at your foe. At Tier 9, this spell unleashes a comet that travels up to 45 meters away.
Growth Flare [Tier 8]: Unleash Growth Mana that causes all nearby matter to grow beyond their proportions. This spell imbues Growth Mana into the caster’s surroundings at a range of up to 16 meters.
Growing Star [Tier 10]: Summon a star that grows over time, increasing in size and power until it collapses. At Tier 10, this spell calls forth a star that grows up to 20 meters in radius a distance of up to 10 meters away from the caster.
Damn, there were so many skills. No, not even skills. Spells. Apparently, this Floor Lord’s class was a caster type one, just like Ray’s.
He didn’t have time to carefully read through the whole list. The Floor Lord was approaching with great impatience. Ray had to answer or be killed. Not that the answer he had settled on was going to spare his life, especially since he saw that his would-be opponent was over level 50.
“I will take your silence to be an admission of rebellion,” the Floor Lord said. “Die then, mongrel.”
Ray acted quickly. His heart beat faster than it had done in any other fight he had ever been in and his blood pumped through his veins like they were being driven by a waterfall. All his thoughts narrowed to one objective—survive.
He cast Soullife Cloak and called up Soaring Wings with Primal Spiritcraft. As he flew back away from the approaching Sylvan, he cast Mottling Spiritguard as well. The Chaos orbs immediately took to circulating around him like overzealous moons of a demanding planet. Half continued flying with him, while the other half went straight for the Sylvan.
None of them did any damage. As soon as they reached the Floor Lord, Growth Mana burgeoned off her shiny silver breastplate. Glowing, spiralling growths jutted out and stabbed into the orbs a few feet before they contacted their target, making them explode.
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The Floor Lord walked through the detonation like it was nothing.
But Ray had used Vengeful Plunder. With the skill’s Tier having gone up a few times over the last couple of weeks, he felt the benefit of the Spiritguard orbs reaching their target immediately.
The Floor Lord was moving. Fast. She was real fast. Ray had flown back, attempting to maintain some distance between them, but she had begun to gain on him.
That had changed when more Spiritguard orbs made contact, each “successful” strike raising all his stats by three points. In no time at all, Ray was able to keep up with the Floor Lord’s speed. Yes! He could maintain proper dist—
She cast Gravity Well. The placement of the spell was basically inch-perfect. A bloom of deep blue energy in the middle of Ray and the Floor Lord immediately caused the gravity to shift around them. Ray’s flight was unceremoniously halted as all his momentum disappeared. The whole world turned. He was falling. Falling straight towards the Floor Lord.
It really was a blessing his thoughts had sped up. Even as he desperately summoned Impervious Shell as a last-gasp defence, he realized what exactly was going on.
Having skimmed through Gravity Well’s description definitely helped. The spell really had replaced all the gravity in the vicinity. Where it normally acted so that everyone was dragged towards the ground, it was now all coming from a point several feet above the earth.
This meant that not only was Ray dragged horizontally towards the new centre of gravity in his local universe, but so was everything else in the vicinity. The land started fracturing apart as nearby rocks took the air. The Floor Lord’s speed was enhanced ever further as she was dragged in her intended direction.
For Ray himself, his wings had been creating elevation from the ground. Since they offered nowhere near as much force to fly horizontally, it was no wonder he was now being tugged backwards.
Thankfully, Impervious Shell manifested just in time. As Ray reached the location of the deep blue pulsing orb, the pure black shell appeared before him.
It couldn’t have come at a better time. The Floor Lord had used Weaponized Growtht to create an enormous, curved sword of glowing Growth Mana. A sword she slammed in as Ray neared her.
The Impervious Shell shattered.
As much as Ray’s stats had grown even in that tiny time since the battle had begun, the potency of his spells hadn’t grown a ton. Neither had his Resilience. He had underestimated the sheer power that the Floor Lord possessed.
The Impervious Shell broke first. What broke next was Ray’s arm. He was just lucky that his hastily summoned defence had absorbed the worst of the Floor Lord’s blow.
He did scream as he flew back at the impact. Flew towards his original direction, against the new flow of gravity. Flew so far that he actually escaped the range of the artificial gravity set by the Floor Lord and crashed down to the ground, all his senses rebelling against the sudden shift. He was going to be sick.
Ray pushed some Recovery to fix his arm and tried to concentrate. The Floor Lord was already preparing her next move. If she was surprised that he had survived that blow, she didn’t show it.
Once again, Ray’s defence was instinctive. He barely had any time to think. The Floor Lord’s attacks were relentless.
Comet Strike had created a whirl of burning blue in her hand. She fired it, sending it streaking at her target with a speed reminiscent of its namesake. Ray just managed to cast Mottling Spiritguard to make all the orbs gather up and stop the flaming comet.
He survived again, but the detonation had him flying once more. At least he was able to tamp down the urge to scream, even if it would have been one of frustration rather than pain.
Ray was able to gain control of his flight thanks to his wings and because he had been thrown far enough from the Sylvan by that blast. It gave him some breathing room. Just enough space to summon up his constructs with Lifeblood Soulform.
They began flying, receiving an order from Ray to shoot their laser breaths at the Floor Lord from two different directions. But they flew only for a second.
The cosmos came to life around Ray. Clouds of dark blue and purple bloomed to life around him, glinting with the tiniest of stars and streams of colourful nebulae. And then the Growth Mana weapon burst out of them, striking down the constructs with ease.
Ray gawped a little at the sheer power behind the Floor Lord’s blows. The first strike had basically flattened one construct. Her second had stabbed through the other one’s mouth to emerge from the back of its head.
She was a fucking monster.
Ray knew that he could still gain the momentum of this battle. He just had to seize it.
The Floor Lord fired off more comets, but he was prepared. Mottling Spiritguard threw out several sparking chaos orbs. Ray didn’t simply make them defend him. He sent out actively, so that when they collided with the comets and set off the explosions, he wasn’t as adversely affected as he had been the first time.
Which gave him a clear opportunity to use Primal Spiritcraft. Two more draconic maws formed, burning with chaotic black-red energy. Ray quickly aimed them forward and fired.
It was one of his fastest attacks. The laser breaths should have shot to the Floor Lord and punctured through any defences she could have summoned. But they never reached their target. All because gravity had once more been manipulated.
A Gravity Well had popped up somewhere overhead. Since Ray had allowed the momentum of the firing laser breaths to throw himself back, he was safely out of range.
But the attacks he had fired weren’t. Both lasers bent upwards, missing the Floor Lord completely.
She was smiling fiercely as she used her next ability. Reality cracked apart, revealing two billboard-sized rifts on either side of her. What was that spell called? Oh, right. Shattered Cosmos.
Well, Ray was pretty much about to be shattered if the energy streaming out of those dark rents were any indication. They weren’t even dark for long. Light burned bright white and golden, shining harder and faster, before they emerged in a torrent of pure destruction.
Ray didn’t have the time to tell if it came as a burst of lightning or a fiery laser like his construct’s breaths or what. All he did was hunker down and cast Mottling Spiritguard thrice.
The orbs were switched to defence. He gathered them close and formed a three-layer shield. Even then, they probably wouldn’t have been enough as the Floor Lord’s spell crashed in like an avalanche of obliterating energy. It was probably only the fact that he had used the Mana Infuser ring to raise the spell’s Tier to 7 that saved him.
The impact was deafeningly loud. His ears were definitely doing strange things, sound rising to an impossible volume before completely disappearing. Everything was shaking hard enough to tear apart.
But Ray was safe from the Floor Lord’s attack.
That had cost a lot of Mana, though. Ray quickly crushed a True Mana shard, then used the Mana Infuser ring again. This battle was his for the taking. He knew it. Believed it.
His Spiritguard shields cracked and broke. But they had withstood that devastating blast from Shattered Cosmos.
Ray rose, only to see the Floor Lord bearing down upon him, her Growth Mana sword raised high. Fuck, she was already so close. So much for taking the fight’s momentum.
The Floor Lord had shot to his exact location while he had been busy defending himself from her devastating spell. He had expected something like that might happen, though, just hadn’t wished it had. So, just as the Sylvan was about to slam down her oversized weapon, Ray summoned and thrust two draconic maws straight at her.
“Got you!” he shouted.
He shouldn’t have underestimated just how fast the Floor Lord could react. Even as the draconic maws forming over his hand opened their jaws wide to crush her, Call of the Cosmos went up around them all. That was when Ray learned that it wasn’t just the Floor Lord’s spells that could teleport through the cosmic clouds.
Anything she targeted could as well.
Which meant that Ray’s draconic maws disappeared inside the deep blue clouds in front of the Floor Lord. Then they reappeared on either side of through the clouds stationed there.
Mouths bristling with chaotic fire, they were about to unleash their leasers on their summoner. Ray was about to attack himself instead of his opponent. All thanks to the Floor Lord’s tricksy powers.
Ray blessed again the fact that he was capable of thinking quickly. Project Presence and Spectral Step were all that saved him at that moment.
He disappeared, only to reappear about a dozen feet ahead of his previous location. His lasers had still fired off behind him in his original location, though. The detonation was proof of that. It wouldn’t have been a problem, since his teleportation had brought the draconic maws on his hands along with him—their fiery breaths had sputtered out already.
But the Floor Lord had been attacking in that instant too, bringing her massive, flame-wreathed Growth Mana sword down.
The collision of her blow and the Comet Strike infused into her sword turned the blast of Ray’s chaotic flame into a titanic detonation. One that ripped him off his feet, the shockwave hammering him with such force that his legs felt crushed and his head buzzed with agony.
His flight was incredible. Impossible. He had been flung hard and fast, so there was no way for him to control his motion with his wings.
But what was worse was that even if he couldn’t control his motion, the Floor Lord still could. Ray swung this way and that, like he was in the grip of a giant, invisible dog using him like a chew toy. It was too late by the time Ray understood that she was using a series of Gravity Wells to jerk him about this way and that.
It was too late by the time he realized he was being inexorably and irrevocably being pulled towards her.
Ray screamed as he swung about in a weird arc, up and down completely out of whack, as he flew back to Floor Lord. Right into her sword.
A sharp clang preceded her Growth Mana weapon stabbing into his back. He screamed out in pain, though somehow, her words cut through his screech.
“Strange shield you have there,” she said.
And then she was slamming her sword around, sending him flying in a different direction. Ray had retained just enough concentration to cast Mottling Spiritguard in an effort to take advantage of the tiny, tiny window he had. The pain was great, but his Valorous Back Shield had stopped the worst of the Sylvan’s blow.
But then he was sent flying far too fast, his concentration on his own cast quickly dying. Instead, Ray focused on casting Soulstrike to craft two True Mana arms. They buffered his landing, making sure he didn’t hit the ground and crush every bone in his body.
The pain his guts was bad, though it was quickly taken care of by his Recovery. Almost half his Recovery. Wasn’t the Valorous Back Shield supposed to have saved him?
When Ray looked up, the Floor Lord had retaken the entire momentum of the fight again. Worse, she was intent on finally finishing him. Shattered Cosmos created half a dozen enormous rifts in the air over Ray. Then they fired all at once.
Ray was hopeful of protecting himself with his spells. He had done so once already, hadn’t he?
But the Floor Lord wasn’t targeting him. Instead, she threw her power at the cliffside.
A hundred bolts of furious energy crashed down to the earth, forming a ring of light around Ray. He was blinded, forced to squint even as he called up his Spiritguard orbs in a defensive array. But it wasn’t enough. The whole cliff began collapsing. He started to fall.
Fuck. When had he been driven this close to the cliff’s edge? Ray screamed as the edge of Cliff One shattered, and he began plummeting back to Cliff Two.