Chapter 354 - Hubris XI

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Dear Diary,

I still can’t really spell this weird country’s name, but it isn’t really as bad as I thought. Everyone seems a little cautious, and the kids don’t really come out to play, but it’s really nice and quiet, and no one bothered us when we walked around.

They were even nicer when it was just me and Ms. Olga. They still seemed a little quiet, but they talked to us a lot more than when we were with Master. It’s probably because they know he’s a huge perv. I bet they can smell it.

Lia.

___

Matthias was the first to join the fray. He leapt into the melee with his cloak on his shoulders and his hood pulled over his head. Its invisibility function kicked in as he approached the closest enemy—a peculiar-looking rabbit with a cocky grin. The man in question was a clear outlier. Unlike all the others, who wore heavy crystalline armour, he alone was dressed in the leather strappings that embodied an engineer’s garb.

That was not to say he was any less protected. There was a reactor on his back, a pair of goggles on his face, and two full sets of tools hanging from his waist. His wrists were further decorated with strange devices. Each of the array’s members was wired into his portable energy supply. Matthias knew it from the illustrations he saw in Panda’s documents. The rabbit was an artificer, specifically one of the rare variants specialized in personal combat. If his outfit didn’t make that obvious, the protective field around him certainly did.

The raccoon had described the artificers’ most common technologies and highlighted their key functions, but the details were still beyond the rhiar’s understanding. The only device whose ability he recalled was the retractable claw attached to the rabbit’s elbow—an electrical weapon capable of delivering a shock powerful enough to melt his carapace.

But even so, Matthias crashed down upon him without a hint of fear. He was a warrior and engineers were backliners. That was all that mattered.

Watching the rabbit’s eyes, Matthias determined that his invisibility was most likely negated. The artificer was trying to follow him, but he was too fast for the man to keep up. Suddenly appearing right behind him, the mantis raised his scythes overhead and struck at the Cadrian’s barrier.

He almost got through it. The cottontail opened his eyes wide as the blades exposed his face to the air. Only halfway through his swing was the mantis’ arm stopped—the shield had held just well enough to prevent the warrior from ripping out his throat. But while he was certainly surprised, the artificer was far from frozen in shock. He grabbed an item off of his waist and chucked it towards his assailant.

Matthias cleaved at it instinctively, realizing his foolish impatience only as it exploded into a splash of water. But by then, it was already too late. The mantis was soaked and the artificer had completed the circuit.

Electricity coursed through the rhiar’s body, frying him from the inside and out. His lightning resistance skill did nothing. All of the mana in the surrounding air was converted into a raw, negative charge that nearly reaped his consciousness then and there, but clacking his mandibles together, he forced his mind to remain. Panda was right. The electrical attacks were too potent to handle. A single hit had caused his resistance to jump from level eighteen to twenty. He didn’t want to imagine what a second or third would entail.

It was fortunate then that he could compensate for the damage taken. He used the Cadrians’ own trick against them—bearing with an even more extreme burst of agony, he instantly recovered from his wounds and lashed out with his inbuilt blades. The first tore the shield open again, while a second wormed through the gap and caught the tiny rabbit’s jugular. He twisted the blade and moved to remove the cottontail’s head, but the engineer smacked his wrist with a wrench and broke the scythe before he could.

Without any warrior classes, the Cadrian was unable to regenerate his flesh immediately, but he stuck a syringe into the side of his neck and stopped the bleeding. The stimulant came with the added effect of dilating his pupils and overstimulating his brain—an artificially induced adrenaline rush.

Matthias matched his pace—he fixed his broken weapon and quickly resumed his assault. He wasn’t so foolish as to try the same strategy thrice, even if the prior repetition had netted a half-decent result.

He spread his wings instead and gave them a heavy flap. A wave of sound exploded from his abdomen and swallowed the cottontail whole. The attack coursed right through his bones and targeted the base of his brain, shaking it just violently enough to stun him momentarily. It was a racial ability—a skill that his species often used to capture its prey.

Against such a high-level foe, it worked to little effect, freezing him in place for only a fifth of a second.

But that was long enough.

It bought Matthias all the time he needed to assume one of the ridiculous stances that his most powerful skill required. His arms were held overhead with his blades extended, while the rest of his body was straightened so he stood as high as he could.

There was a clear reason for his recent, rapid growth. Like most thrice ascended, the mantis had possessed four classes before his queen had taken the throne. His primary was based in the martial arts. It allowed him to weaponize his body and make use of the deadly scythes that extended from his wrists. The other two had started as warrior and knight, with the former shoring up his effectiveness in melee and the latter empowering him at his queen’s behest. The last class he acquired prior to the revolution was in the rogue—assassin—grouping. Each was an independent set of skills that bettered his ability to see his job through. But then they were suddenly combined.

They merged into a single class, Blade of the Bloodsoaked Queen, upon his master’s victory and freed up the rest of his slots for a set of new selections. But while his acquisitions certainly enhanced their abilities, they still fell short of his unique primary class. It had come with its ars magna already unlocked, the concept of which was to serve as a weapon tasked with eliminating her foes.

He was not quite like Boris, who was a weapon in the most literal sense, but he did need to shape himself like one in order to activate the skill. The precise shape he chose decided the result, and by becoming a scythe, he could cull with the reaper’s might.

His limbs were filled with power. Each of his ability scores increased tenfold while his body itself was also changed to match. His colour went from green to black, his scythes were dyed in a crimson shade, and his bulging muscles grew compact.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

He closed the distance and nearly felled the engineer with a single swing. His arm went right through the barrier and even the accompanying device; the magical engine was split in half and taken out of commission. The cottontail managed to get away with just a shallow cut himself, but with no reactor to fuel his devices, he was good as dead. He needed to call down a replacement for the power source his enemy had broken.

It was fortunate then that he was not alone.

The only thoraen warrior on the battlefield stepped between them with two swords, two shields, and two spears at the ready. He used each of the weapons in turn, parrying Matthias’ scythes without much trouble, in spite of the mantis’ enhancements.

The cottontail’s pod dropped a moment later, making it two against one, even discounting the battleship’s support.

___

Jules clicked his tongue as he scanned the centaurian crowd. It was packed to the brim with cowards. Every single one of the enemies that fell from the sky was decked out in magic-resistant equipment. It wasn’t just the charms, nor even the armour. Their weapons were forged in such a way that he couldn’t quite easily destroy them.

He lamented his ability score spread as he observed their lavish and otherwise ineffective protectors. The Cadrian soldiers had completely forgone their physical defences in favour of repelling their magic. They even wore enchanted helmets, as if protecting their minds from adverse effects. It was something that would never fly when facing off against an equal; any decent melee fighter could punish them for the absurd, stupid choice. But with how poorly his allies were doing, Jules suspected that they were unlikely to emerge successful.

He didn't even want to begin to imagine the expense that came with arming their assailants. Each necklace and brooch was made with a perfectly cut gem no smaller than a fist, and every soldier had at least two to his name. The price of even a single item was twice that of his hometown’s annual budget. And needless to say, they were not just for decoration. He could feel it from the way that the mana around the soldiers was so easily repelled. They were powerful enough to completely gut his magic.

That was why he refrained from casting or otherwise drawing attention immediately. He focused on staying alert, watching as the others jumped into the fray, just in case his allies happened to shatter their opponents' crystalline defences. But the initial clash ended with no Cadrians scathed. His attention, likewise, suffered. It was pulled away, forcefully drawn to a distant archer.

He spotted her as soon as she crested the tallest building—a large supermarket with three full stories of goods—and drew her weapon from her back. The bow was not magically resistant like every other piece of equipment but magically empowered instead. It was made of wood instead of crystal, specifically a bright hickory that largely went uncoloured. The only shade to violate its light brown was that of the line that ran right down its center. Glowing a deep, emerald green, the magic circuit revealed the might of the tree from which its length was carved.

Warned by his instincts, he threw up a defensive spell just in time for the centaur to loose an arrow. Her hands were so quick that they vanished. There was no indication that she had even reached for her quiver. Her wobbling bowstring was the only evidence of her attack.

That, and the explosion his shield produced.

Blinded by the resulting smoke, he saw nothing but flashes of light as she pelted his barrier over and over. The arrows were fast. They moved so quickly that they nearly surmounted his defences.

His incantation created a ten-meter boundary around him, its function to explode on contact with an inbound projectile. The defence was powerful enough to repel Krail’s talisman-driven barrages. But the centaur’s arrows were practically making it through. The scattered bits revealed that only the tips of their tails were broken. They likely would have found their marks had they been the slightest bit faster.

Sweating but safe, the clam took a breath and worked on a counterattack. Linking nodes one, four, and twelve in his mind, he flooded her surroundings with his crimson explosions. He was fairly certain that the blasts had landed on target, but when the dust settled, it revealed no wounded archers anywhere to be seen.

That was when she struck. An arrow wedged its way past his spell and through his back, leaving a bloody bloom in the middle of his shell. And then a second from his side, and a third from its opposite.

His barrier was still up, but its effect was never triggered. Her arrows never passed through the threshold because the archer was running circles within it.

Irritation pulsed through his mind.

He couldn’t stand it.

The last thing he wanted was to be outdone by half a human strapped to half a horse.

Clutching his arrow-laden stomach, he channelled his magic into the shield and turned it into a ten-meter bomb. It should have swallowed his opponent, but she dashed out of range right as it triggered and fired another projectile straight into his chest. Jules winced at the pain but raised his wand and weaved his next spell. He already had it ready; it should have come out in the blink of an eye. Had the poison not finally kicked in.

His vision suddenly went hazy. Blood started leaking from his skin as his shell rotted from the inside out. He started coughing, practically uncontrollably as the rest of it worked its way through his system. His consciousness was waning. Rapidly. But clenching his open fist, he fixed the flow of his mana and assembled the spell again.

It was a storm of red and blue. A thousand orbs chased after his enemy, half exploding, the other half shooting blades that inspired erosion.

She avoided them all. Sprinting across the city, she escaped his range completely unscathed. None of Jules’ attacks could touch her.

But she couldn’t evade the harpoon that suddenly found her brain.

Technically, it was an arrow. And technically, it was a spell. But being one that conjured a physical object, it was able to forgo her magical defences and apply its damage in full.

It was almost, almost enough to kill her, but she grabbed the crow-footed ars magna, tore it out of her face, and bid her body to recover. Jules gave her no time to return to her feet. Conjuring two embodying abilities of his own, he leveraged the concept bestowed by his primary synergist class to fuse them both together. The first was meant to illustrate the concept of explosion. It was a tiny projectile that caused everything inside of it to undergo a nuclear fission chain. The second, water-based spell furthered the idea of gradual diminution and afflicted anything he touched with a powerful withering effect.

By taking their strengths and fusing them, he created a bomb that applied the same effect to anything caught within its explosive radius.

Everything in his field of view was dyed in a mix of reds and blues. His shell rattled and shook, threatening to crumple beneath the force of the shockwave. His magical senses were overloaded by the sheer amount of magic produced.

Grinning, he looked towards the ally that had provided the opportunity. He was almost ready to admit that the old elf was more than just talk, but all he found was the man in question with a blade in his stomach and blood streaming from his face. His tongue lay on the ground, severed and completely destroyed.

He couldn't cast; he was thoroughly silenced until his flesh returned.

Jules immediately moved to aid the elf, only for another arrow to find him. Emerging from his nuclear explosion, damaged but still alive, the archer closed the distance again and shot a wave of blades that pierced him right through. He was unable to react. He might have been able to follow up and deliver another attack had he kept his eyes on his foe, but looking towards his ally had sealed his fate in stone.

The poison kicked in again and sent his mind into a hazy, downward spiral. His enemy lost her shape. She went from a horse glued to a person to an amorphous blob, unrecognizable as the buildings and streets all around.

He still tried to weave a spell, but a hoof to the back of his shell cut him short. Stumbling forward, he ducked under the arrow that followed and spun around with his wand alight.

There was fight in him yet.

He had sworn to himself, on the day he first took up his magical tomes, that he would never lose to anything as primitive as a bow. And that only went double if the worthless weapon was used with the intention of seeing his people oppressed.