Kelsey’s blood ran cold. The world around felt like it froze as her mind was trying to process what she had just witnessed. He was running... He was helpless... Why? Why would you do that?
As she watched Kaydeth walk slowly towards her, Kelsey's mind filled with a mixture of rampaging emotions. Guilt, anger, fear, pain. But most of all; Rage. Rage at Kaydeth, rage at the spatial mage for running away instead of just teleporting, but mostly, rage at herself for not taking her opponent seriously. She was the reason that the spatial mage was dead and she knew it.
Kelsey’s shoulders slumped and looked down at the ground below as she let the rage she was feeling overtake her. Without really thinking, she activated her manipulation and grabbed hold of as much air as she could. With the air under her control, she pushed it towards Kaydeth in one giant blast, ensuring to aim it high enough so that the spatial mage’s body wouldn’t be hit by her attack.
The air rushed from Kelsey’s outstretched palm and slammed into Kaydeth with the force of a wrecking ball. The powerful burst of air launched the blindfolded man several hundred meters south before he was able to turn to shadow and begin making his way back. Seeing that she had a few moments to spare, Kelsey warped to the side of the fallen mage and teleported his body to the entrance of the floor.
No need for his corpse to get desecrated.
As Kaydeth arrived in the form of a shadow, Kelsey created a large cone of light and blasted him with it. She had expected this to force him out of his shadow form, but it was seemingly completely ineffective. He closed the distance between them, transforming out of his shadow state and swinging his Scythe directly at Kelsey with much more power and speed than he had before.
Reacting quickly, Kelsey created a steel wall in front of her hand with the intention to block the scythe, but at the last moment, the entire scythe turned into shadow and passed straight through her steel defenses before reforming on the other side and piercing directly through Kelsey’s chest, exiting through her back, sending a shower of hot blood cascading into the sand below. Her Armor of the Magus had slowed the weapon down, but not nearly enough.
Kelsey was in the process of reacting to what had happened, her mind trying to piece together how the scythe had ignored her defenses, as Kaydeth continued his assault. With the scythe still embedded in her chest, shadows surged from the handle of the impractical weapon and formed into dozens of spikes which began stabbing at Kelsey’s body furiously.
He’s stronger than I expected.
As she was being repeatedly stabbed, Kelsey grabbed the scythe by the blade and pulled it out of her chest, activating flight in the process. Once the blade was free, she flipped backwars in the air, using the motion of her swinging legs to send a quick, powerful burst of air at Kaydeth’s chest.
The small blast of air knocked Kaydeth back, giving her a few moments to go on the offensive, which she used to channel a cone of fire at the shadow warrior.
The roaring inferno exploded from Kelsey’s outstretched palm in a torrent of flames that instantly melted the sand beneath her feet turning it into glass.
Reacting quickly, Kaydeth’s shadows moved to protect him, creating a large shadowy wedge in front of him, splitting the cone of flames down the middle.
Kelsey continued pouring mana into the attack, hoping that sheer output would eventually break his defenses down. It was no use. Over thirty seconds of continuous flames seemed to be no more than an inconvenience to Kaydeth's seemingly impenitrable defenses. She would have continued, but she was forced to release the skill when she began to feel a twinge of pain in her head from the constant mana use.
The moment she stopped her skill, Kaydeth burst into action, the shadows that had been forming the wedge surrounded him and coalesced into a set of shadowy armor that clung to his body like a second layer of skin. The moment the armor formed, Kaydeth's speed increased, and he closed the distance between them more quickly than Kelsey could react. By the time she realized what was happening, his scythe was already whistling through the air, the tip of the blade on a collision course with her head.
Kelsey knew there was no point in trying to block the deadly scythe, so instead she backed away, dodging the blade by mere millimeters. He didn't let up however, his scythe switching directions faster than should have been possible. She dodged again, the scythe's blade landing a grazing blow across her chest. It was by no means lethal, but had the scythe hit its mark, it would have been.
This back-and-forth dance of Kaydeth attacking and Kelsey dodging continued for several seconds, neither of them able to make any meaningful progress. Kaydeth was unable to hit Kelsey with anything more than a superficial wound, and she was unable to activate her warp and gain any distance due to the constant pressure of his scythe. Each time he attacked; she escaped death by the thinnest of margins.
She didn't even have time to attack back, as a single moment of mana manipulation or creation was a moment she simply didn't have. It was taking every single iota of concentration just to stay alive.
If I don’t do something quick, I’ll make a mistake and that scythe will take my head.
As Kelsey continued to dodge, a plan started to formulate. She knew what she needed to do, but it was going to be risky.
After dodging for another thirty seconds, Kelsey found her opportunity. Kaydeth sent a horizontal slash in her direction, with the intention of cutting her in two. Instead of backing away to dodge as she had done so many times before, she stepped into the attack, allowing the shaft of the weapon to slam into her waist, and placed her hand on his chest before sending a massive blast of telekinetic energy into his chest.
The explosive power of the attack launched Kaydeth away from her, but as it did, his scythe followed. The large scythe blade that she had stepped passed was behind her, and as she pushed him away, the bottom blade of the scythe bit into her waist and cut clean through until it exited her stomach, once again spilling her blood across the desert sand.
That was exactly what Kelsey had intended. Her regeneration was already working to repair the damage to her body, but she worked even more quickly and started weaving her magic into a series of large attacks as she activated her flight so she would not be forced back to the ground.
The first thing she tried was sand magic. As Kaydeth landed in the sand Kelsey quickly manipulated the ground around him, wrapping him in a large cocoon before closing the distance and using fire to melt the sand into glass. As she did this, she began reinforcing the glass itself with mana, making it more and more difficult to break.
At first Kelsey thought that this might work, but a few seconds later she saw a large shadow spike pierce through the top of the glass cocoon as an explosion of shadows covered Kaydeth and violently pushed the sand and glass away from him.
She then moved on to metal, she summoned dozens of steel great swords and manipulated them to attack just as she had done so many times before, this was also ineffective. Kaydeth didn’t even have to move a muscle to block every single one of her attacks, his shadows seemed to effortlessly deflect the blades before they even got near him. The entire time he was slowly making his way towards her, prowling like a predator on a hunt.
Telekinetic projectiles were the third thing she tried. She held out her hand and began launching as many telekinetic spears as she could directly at her opponent. They didn’t get within 10 meters of Kaydeth before once again being easily deflected out of the sky by a series of shadowy tentacles.
Those spears had enough mana to level a mountain range and he is just casually knocking them aside? What the hell kind of class does this guy have?
Activating her Warp, she set her destination to directly behind the scythe wielding madman, harnessing the power of electricity as she did so. Once she appeared, she raised her hand and launched a bolt of lightning that connected squarely with Kaydeth's back, sending him tumbling into a pile of smoking skin and clothing.
At first, she thought she had won, as Kaydeth lay, unmoving for a moment longer than she would have expected.
She was wrong. As she approached, with the intention of separating his head from his body, hundreds of shadow spikes grew from her own shadow and began relentlessly stabbing her, most of them targeting vital areas like her eyes, and joints.
Activating her warp in a panic, Kelsey placed herself over a kilometer away, where the shadows lost connection with their maker and fell still once again.
Fuck me... I can't even get close to him. I also need to make sure he can't get close to me.
As Kaydeth stood up, a shadow flashed across his body, turning the once charred and burned skin into fresh, healthy skin, free from any damage.
His shadows heal him too... Shit.
Kelsey glanced around her domain and found Gwen finishing her fight against the woman with the daggers. The woman was on her knees, panic in her face, clearly begging for her life as Gwen slowly walked towards her and jammed a metal short sword through the woman's eye.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Alright, my turn. I can do this...
Deciding to play it safe, Kelsey switched her fighting style to simple, long range, mana intensive attacks. She figured that if her class was going to be about mana regeneration, she may as well use it and deal with the inevitable migraine that fighting in that way caused.
Over the next thirty minutes Kelsey used every single trick she had learned over the past year of practice with her Magus skills. Water, fire, air, earth, metal, wood, ice, electricity, crystal, light, sand, glass, gemstone, spatial, and even shadow magic were all elements she tried, but each and every one of them was nullified by Kaydeth’s shadow skills in some way. No matter what kind of attack she used, she was simply unable to damage him permanently.
The fight would have been over nearly instantly if it weren't for one important part of his shadow skills, which is that they could defend and attack without his intervention. She tried sneak attacks, traps, and feints. Each and every time his shadows reacted perfectly despite the clear look of surprise she could see on his face.
During this time, she learned that not only did the shadow body make him faster, but it also healed any damage done when he transformed into or out of the form, including lost limbs. He also didn't seemingly suffer from the blood loss issue that she had with Mageblood Regeneration before reaching Immortality. His shadow magic was the perfect defense; he was hard to hit, durable, and could regenerate without limits.
It was like fighting a specialized version of herself.
The third floor was beginning to look like a battlefield where Classer armies had fought. For roughly three kilometers around where their fight began the sand had been turned into glass by Kelsey’s frequent use of fire magic. There were large lances, spears, swords, and bullets of every elemental variant scattered through the landscape. Pools of water from failed attempts at using water magic, and large craters in the floor, walls, and ceiling from her use of various force-based magic like air and telekinesis.
Kelsey was running out of options and Kaydeth didn’t seem to be slowing down at all. He hadn’t been able to reach her in the past half hour, but he was continuing his assault like a crazed animal with seemingly no end to his energy reserves. Over and over again he would rush towards Kelsey, and she would use her magic to slam him back into the ground, or against a sand dune, or up towards the ceiling. Every time he would get back up and charge her again. Her head was throbbing from the constant use of magic, and she wasn’t sure how long she could keep her attacks up. She knew that if this continued much longer, she would most certainly die to a single moment of distraction.
But, she did have one more option.
It was something that she knew was possible but had been hesitant to try due to the potential side effects that could be caused from the skill. She had even come up with a way to achieve her idea back when she was in her isolation.
Destruction magic. The conceptual opposite of Creation magic. In order to create, one must turn mana into something else. In order to destroy, one must use mana itself as a weapon.
It was something she had seen evidence of being used in the past and she was sure she could pull it off too. While she may not be the best at manipulating raw mana, she certainly wasn't the worst.
Realizing that she had no other choice, Kelsey stopped her assault, dropped to the ground, and let Kaydeth approach her unimpeeded. She saw the man hesitate for the briefest moment before charging directly at Kelsey once again in his armored shadow form.
Once he was within a few meters of her, Kelsey held up her right hand and forced mana to exit her body in a large cloud. Once the mana was outside of her, she willed the mana to latch on to his shadow body’s mana. Once it had, she commanded the mana to disappear.
*ding* You have learned the Class skill Destruction - lvl 1
Disperse mana to destroy matter, energy, and foreign mana.
The moment she did this, Kaydeth’s shadow body dispersed, and he stumbled to the ground, immediately suffering from the blowback of his skill being destroyed.
Game over.
Not wasting a moment, Kelsey grabbed the air around Kaydeth in a single massive manipulation of mana and froze it solid, not letting a single molecule of air move.
As she did this, Kaydeth tried to move, struggling pointlessly against the flood of mana that she was using to maintain her skill.
He was unable to move and was completely under Kelsey’s control. Using air manipulation, she moved the air around, forcing Kaydeth to stand, bringing his head up to hers. Once he was standing, she reached out and carefully removed his blindfold, ensuring to manipulate the air in such a way that he would still be unable to move while she performed her task.
Kaydeth was a young man, no older than 18 or 19 years old. One of his eyes was missing, and the other had the distant appearance of an eye that couldn't see the world in front of itself. It was a light green color, but clearly damaged.
He must have gained his shadow healing after the accident. A shame, really.
“Hello Kayden.” Kelsey said gently.
As she said his name, Kelsey’s Senses of the Magus spiked, and she knew that he was going to try to turn into shadow again, which would allow him to escape. She reacted quickly and used Greater Manipulation of the Magus to rip control of the skill from him and crush it, stopping him in his tracks. Despite the fact that he would have suffered blowback from her ruthlessly crushing his skill, she was till forced to do this dozens of times more before the young man gave up and realized that now that she had him, escape was impossible.
The pain he must have experienced from having his skill dissolved over and over again must have been extreme. He was sweating and crying from the exertion and panic that he must be feeling. There was a small part of Kelsey that almost felt sorry for him.
Once Kaydeth was reduced to a blubbering mass of sweat and tears, Kelsey spoke. “Do you know the concept of Karma?” she asked cooly.
She knew he couldn’t respond of course. The air around him was completely frozen. He couldn’t breathe, let alone speak.
“Of course you do... It’s the idea that any good, or evil action you do will be spread into the universe, and eventually, something good or bad will happen to you as payment for that deed.” she said calmly.
“I don’t believe in Karma... Never have, never will... I’ve always believed that good things happen to good people because other good people help each other out.” she said, trying to keep her voice even. "Humans, by default, help each other out. Call me naive, but I believe that most people are good. I believe that in a civilized society with well educated people, someone is much more likely to be supportive of other humans than they are to be antagonistic."
“I’ve always felt like I had some sort of innate sense for who is good and who is evil, just by looking at them. I'm usually right.” She paused, letting her words sink in before continuing.
“Today, my instinct was wrong.” she said sadly. “I didn’t think you were evil... I just thought you were broken and hurting, trying to cope with a tough situation. But, after what you did to those people back at camp, and to the fleeing spatial mage... I realized I was sorely mistaken. Only someone truly messed in the head could stoop to the levels that you have. It's honestly embarrassing for me to have been so wrong." Kelsey said with a shrug, carefully controlling the rage that she was still feeling.
She wasn't sure why she was wasting her time talking to Kaydeth when it would be much easier to simply kill him, but it certainly wasn't for him. All she knew is that talking was making her feel better about what she was about to do.
After a few seconds of letting her last sentence hang in the air she continued softly. “Do you want to know why I think bad things happen to bad people?”
Before she could finish her thought, she heard a loud noise coming from her captive. He was trying to scream without being able to open his mouth. His face was contorted with rage, and he was crying tears of anger and frustration. He clearly wanted to yell and scream about being a god or some other such nonsense.
As she looked at his angry face, she thought back to the descriptions of torture that Gwen had gone through at the hands of Kaydeth and his followers, who were now mostly dead. She thought back to all the times he must have had other people in the exact situation that he was now in, and he had the audacity to be angry about it?
It was at that moment she lost control, and her rage once again took over completely.
“It’s because I think good people step up and stop people like you from ruining the world. I think good people with power fucking hate people like you.” she said, her voice filling with fury as she spoke. “And today, I’m the one with the power, Kayden.”
All at once Kelsey stopped her channeling, letting the young man drop to the floor and gasp for air as she moved up towards him and kicked him as hard as she could in the jaw.
As the kick connected, she heard the sound of shattering bones and Kayden was launched through the air, colliding moments later against a nearby sand dune, sending multiple tons of sand, dirt, and glass scattering into the air.
Following him in her domain, she saw him skip along the ground before finally coming to rest in a pile of sand over 300 meters away.
Kelsey was over him in an instant. She grabbed a fistful of his clothes and used it to throw him upwards into the ceiling above where his body formed a small crater in the yellow crystals that were used as the imitation sun on the third floor. He was still alive, but unmoving, his eyes distant and unfocused. She waited for a few moments for him to begin dropping towards the ground.
Instead of waiting for him to reach the ground, Kelsey teleported above him and put the full force of her mana regeneration behind a blast of air that sent him barreling towards the ground faster than the speed of sound. As he slammed into the sand below, the entire floor shook from the force of the impact, yet he was still alive. Barely.
Kelsey used her manipulation to clear the air around him, moving the sand and other debris away as she flew down and landed beside him.
Once she was standing over him, she knelt down and turned his body over so she could look at his face as she killed him.
“Any final words?”
He took a few seconds to respond before saying through a mouth of blood, “Fuck you, whore.”
Sighing deeply, Kelsey reached out her hand, activating her Destruction skill.
A massive wave of mana exploded from her outstretched palm and surrounded the broken man in an instant. As the mana touched him, it vanished, taking whatever it was touching with it.
Within a fraction of a second, Kaydeth was destroyed, his body was no more, and the fight was over.
*ding* You have defeated a [Immortal Savant of the Night - lvl 307].
*ding* Immortal Magus has reached level 251 - 30 free stat points have been awarded!
*ding* Greater Creation of the Magus has reached lvl 1 -> 4
*ding* Greater Manipulation of the Magus reached lvl 1 -> 3
*ding* Greater Domain of the Magus has reached lvl 1 -> 2
*ding* Body of the Magus has reached lvl 1 -> 2
*ding* Armor of the Magus has reached lvl 1 -> 2
*ding* Greater Flight has reached lvl 1 -> 2
*ding* Wind Resistance has reached lvl 9 -> 11