Chapter 355 - Hubris XII

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Dear Diary,

Okay. Nevermind. I hate this place. Not having roads sucks. Why did we even come here?

Lia.

___

The Vel’khanese queen slunk into the shadows as soon as the battle began. A quick look around the crowd confirmed that the fighters were personally assigned; each Cadrian was watching a specific target, and Arciel had no intention of dealing with either of the brutes whose eyes were fixed on her person.

She began by making a show of running away. She hopped from shadow to shadow, retreating from the battlefield as swiftly as she could. Her foes had evidently failed to anticipate the decisive escape, moving only as the commander issued an explicit order. But by then, it was too late. By running off in the direction of her retreat, they had guaranteed that they would never catch her.

Because she had never left the field.

It was a shadow that had jumped from patch to patch, an easy trick that even a fledgling mage could manage.

The real Ciel was tactically hidden beneath Lana’s feet. The enemy’s strategy was to face each fighter with a challenge they were unlikely to overcome, which in Lana’s case was a weakness to area denial.

Surely enough, they had the fault perfectly pegged. A tornado suddenly formed around them, its slicing winds rapidly closing on the wolf’s form. Avoiding the damage was impossible, especially with the caster’s location yet unknown. Without many other choices, she raised her axe like a shield and broke right through the storm.

She scanned her surroundings as she emerged from the wind tunnel, only to find herself surrounded by a dozen blades of wind. She parried some and dodged others, but with her domain not yet deployed, she was unable to escape unscathed. One of the magical attacks dug into her stomach, while another found her leg. Both wounds were still shallow, but her pain tolerance was nothing like the Cadrians’. She couldn’t command her body to recover on the spot; her passive regeneration would take almost a minute to complete the necessary repairs.

But she still hadn’t located the caster.

It was a problem that only persisted as more magic was thrown her way. Perhaps noting their effectiveness, the Cadrian mage repeated the two spells in sequence, with each scoring a few hits and whittling the pirate down. The cycle continued until she suddenly threw her weapon at her shadow’s behest. The massive axe shot straight through a building and made for the mage’s chest. The goat in question erected a wall of wind, but it wasn’t enough to negate the projectile.

Lana’s axe was too heavy. Weighing in at nearly half a ton, the metal mass tore through the barrier and lopped his left arm straight off his body. The mage cried in pain, but he quickly regained his footing, and, raising his wand overhead, called two elements to abide his will. First was the earth that covered the city’s streets. The dirt rose into the space behind him, forming a thousand sharpened spears. The wind gathered around each bullet, wrapping it in a spinning barrel that sucked in the surrounding air.

He made careful note of the distance between them as he built his wall. But it was precisely that excessive preparation which left him wide open. There was a brief moment, right before he cast, where the world suddenly lost its shadow. He recognized the phenomenon. It was exactly as it had been described in the mission’s handbook. He looked around for the signature projectile, but he was unable to find it. Because it had already entered his body.

Having entered the axe’s shadow, Arciel had effectively teleported behind him and unleashed the spell from point blank. The mage’s amulet provided some resistance. He still had a few splotches of vision, but they were hardly effective. The whole world was black and white and his depth perception was moot.

It was clearly the sort of situation that called for one to panic, but the mage remained nonchalant. He was a veteran of a few hundred years, and having lived in the southernmost lands, he had seen and felt the Kryddarians do much worse. He didn’t even acknowledge her, in fact. Knowing that she would struggle to break his defences, he kept his focus fixed on the wolf.

All one thousand projectiles flew at her in an instant. She narrowly activated her domain in time, thanks to Arciel’s interference, but not even the accompanying chronodilation allowed for a perfect evasion. There were simply too many, and their trajectories were already set; there was nothing that the wolf could do with her field of focus fixed to the space in which it was cast.

Rocks pierced her thighs, her calves, her arms, and even her ribs, but Lana endured the barrage through to its end. Dashing out of her zone of control, she closed the distance, grabbed her axe, and swung at his neck.

Only for a rock to impale her from behind before her strike could find its mark.

It was one of the most basic spells. All he did was change the shape of the earth and run it through her stomach. And yet, she was caught, snagged right into his trap.

The Cadrian was on the verge of declaring his victory when he was impaled in turn. Slowly craning his neck around, he found Arciel sitting atop a bloody throne and a freshly crafted praying mantis standing right behind him. It was physical damage—damage that ignored his magical defences—but again, the level eight-sixty mage was not dissuaded. Walking through the fake rhiar’s blade, and allowing it to grind further into his stomach, he pointed his wand at the queen’s chest and blasted her with a massive tornado.

He was certainly annoyed that her opponents had failed to keep her pinned, but it wasn’t as if he had really minded. She had presented herself on a silver platter; he was 300 levels up and far more technically proficient. In a bout of pure magic, she could never compare.

___

Claire’s first attack was aimed between Porcius’ eyes. Moving at her absolute maximum speed, she turned Boris into a lance and delivered a thrust right as his transformation completed. It was an attack to which none of the brigade’s members would have been able to react, but the deer twisted his neck and dodged right out of the way. Porcius began moving his spear to counter the blow, but Claire gave him no such opportunity. She turned her lizard into an axe and drove him straight towards his face.

The attack clearly defied all laws of physics. It made no sense for the weapon to change directions whilst also maintaining its speed. It took him a moment too long to process it. Left without much other choice, he jumped, leaping just high enough off the ground for her weapon to miss his brain.

His neck was claimed instead. The axe broke through his crystalline armour and took his head clean off. His necklace went flying in the exchange, but Claire failed to seize the advantage. The deer’s body continued to act even without its head. It extended both its legs to kick her in the gut and swung its spear towards her chest. Even watching his eyes, she barely summoned another Boris in time to narrowly eke out a parry.

Acknowledging it irked her to no end, but his agility was far superior. Even though she had just recently quintupled the value.

Tightening her grip on her lizards, the lyrkress set her sights on his decapitated head. She wanted to finish him off while he was still vulnerable, but no such opportunity was given. They had only traded three blows; less than half a second had elapsed in total, but she was already surrounded. His men formed a circle of spears around her, each poking and prodding as their ranged companions loosed their spells and arrows. Dealing with the projectiles was easy. She steered them off course with her vectors and sent them into their allies’ backs. Unlike the casters and archers themselves, their attacks were lacking in magic resistance.

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But even if the mages were negligible, the spear wall remained a problem. Two hands were not enough to ward off the incoming attacks, regardless of how many eyes she opened. She compensated by summoning more Borises and steering them with her spells, but it was a narrow road she walked. She could only repel the attacks by consciously negating any momentum transferred to her floating lizard-shields. It was a conscious effort, and there were nearly too many of them to track.

Making matters even worse were the reinforcements. What started as five quickly became twelve as a certain useless maid threw up her arms in surrender.

The circumstances were hardly ideal. It was only thanks to their caution that she warded them off. Each move was meticulous, designed to wear her down so they could finish her risk-free. It was more than just a three-sixty-degree encirclement. There were two layers of fighters suspended in the air, forming a tight, bladed dome that prevented a vertical escape.

She was in check. Even one careless mistake, one brief lapse of attention, would effectively spell the end. But Claire was unfazed. If anything, she was invigorated. The seemingly unwinnable scenario almost reminded her of the time she had spent in Llystletein, surrounded on all sides by borroks ready to spill her blood.

Her chest stirred. Her heart soared. But it was not joy that drove the smile hidden beneath her helm.

She was finally hunting Cadrians, not pathetic shams like her previous opponents, but true warriors who worked towards their goals with their pride left far behind. If she could defeat them and their superiors, then her father would soon be within her reach.

And she was confident that if the status quo were to persist, she would surely emerge on top. Courtesy of her freezing aura.

Centaurs and cottontails were both naturally cold-resistant races. Both species could operate in the depths of winter, but her body’s temperature had dropped beyond the realm of reason. The temperature within the encirclement had fallen a hundred degrees. The soldiers’ fingers cycled between their usual fleshy colours and a deep, frostbitten black. But actively mending themselves each time, they continued their previous routine.

The damage to their hands was largely the fault of their freezing-cold weapons. The crystalline spears may have been magic-resistant, but the chilling effect was not strictly magically derived. The few magical processes were internal to her body; her surroundings were only affected by the second law.

And that therein lay her road to victory. Their already brittle spears were even frailer with the temperature fallen.

Thirty seconds was all it took for the first to shatter. It belonged to one of the more experienced warriors, particularly one more eager and aggressive than any of the others. She recognized the old coot. He was the Opimius family’s head and one of Pollux’s closest aides. It was no wonder that his eyes shone with murderous fervour.

He continued to attack even with his weapon half-broken, but it was a waste of effort. The ruined rod was too short to reach her, and he couldn’t step closer without breaking formation.

But it didn’t matter.

He didn’t need to approach because she immediately closed the distance. Her body grew midcharge, swelling to its full size as she caught him between her jaws. She hadn’t wanted to reveal the function, but she wasn’t confident in her ability to overpower him without the extra weight.

Surely enough, he stopped her even in her true form, sliding only a meter and a half. But that was good enough. She turned humanoid again and slid between his legs, gutting him with her lizard along the way. He tried stomping her to death while she was beneath him, but he lacked Porcius’ speed; she was able to guide his limbs out of her way and retaliate with more strikes of the lizard. It was a shame that she was unable to finish him, but in the grand scheme of things, it was hardly a relevant concern. She had escaped their formation unscathed.

Alas, there was no time for celebration.

The mages bombarded her immediately. Most of them still used the dinky projectiles whose course she easily altered, but one had smartened up and opted for a wide-area attack. It was unfortunate then that the element he used was lightning.

Claire absorbed the blast and made for the backline without missing a beat. She knew from the start that it was a faulty plan. Too many of the warriors had her outsped, and they cared little for the wounds that the lightning inflicted. But damage was damage. The more their allies dealt, the less she would need to finish them.

She negated her momentum and spun around within the static field, catching the two fastest assailants with four lizards apiece. But even pinning them down with her blades, she was unable to perform their executions. Their heads were too elusive; her body blows only landed because her opponents cared little for their flesh.

There wasn’t enough time for a second set of attacks. The rest of the warriors caught up and encircled her again without delay.

Their second formation was looser than their first. The gaps between them were larger, but so too was there enough distance to react were she to attempt another escape.

It was clearly premeditated.

They had suspected that the dome would be invalid and prepared a contingency well in advance.

Still, she wasn’t worried, not even when Porcius flew down from above. She cared neither for the wide grin plastered across his face nor the shieldlance that sat atop his shoulder. He was nothing to her. Not even a post on the way to her goal.

“You’re probably curious about the formation,” he said.

She charged him instead of answering—there was no use in listening to a dead man’s words—but he parried her attack with ease. He twisted and turned his shield each time she manipulated her blades, catching every blow she delivered well before it landed. She tried the transformation trick again and turned a missed stab into a scythe attack.

But he had swapped from a spear to a lance specifically to counter her gimmick.

“This is the one we decided we’d take if you turned out to be weak.” He rammed the back of his shield into her weapon’s shaft and locked the blade in place.

She couldn’t pull it back. The weapon was stuck exactly where she held it. But while Claire’s hands were certainly tied, Boris’ were not. His shaft shrank; he pulled his head towards his butt whilst aiming for the back of the Cadrian’s skull. He almost, almost caught the warrior off guard, but sensing the danger, the cervitaur craned his neck and parried it with his horns.

“Nice try,” he said. “But it isn’t gonna work.”

Still not replying, Claire pressed down on his weapon whilst launching another attack. The remaining seven Borises each targeted him from a different direction while Porcius breathed a sigh.

“Oh, god damn it.” He raised his supposedly restrained shieldlance with Claire still attached and lazily parried her attacks. “Stop playing around and take this seriously. Use the goddess’ living blade and show me what the man who killed the boss is worth.”

He was still expecting more from her, but with his magic-resistant armour in place and her own circuits still damaged, there was little more that she could deliver.

She had to rely on the elf god’s tricks.

Claire freed up her hand for the next exchange and looked for a chance to grab his wrist. She needed to make contact, both to divert his weapon and to steal his resources. One good grapple was still a win condition, even without the steroid she had used to defeat his master.

She focused on the tip of his blade. She focused on the movements of his eyes, muscles, and bones. She knew exactly what to do.

It only came down to execution.

She moved her hand as soon as he locked in his trajectory, but the only result was a slash raked across her shoulder. He evaded her hand with his superior speed and delivered a heavy blow that blew her guard away.

It went through her armour and cleaved her flesh, stopping only because her bones refused to be cut. Had they still been made of their original materials, she surely would have been rent in two. And the assault had only just begun.

Perhaps having expected her to survive, he followed with a straight kick to the gut that sent her flying across the ring, straight into the waiting arms of an extended spear. Another three met her chest as the first passed through her stomach. All before her mind could catch and even consider the possibility of shifting her body with her vectors.

“I told you to stop relying on gimmicks,” he said, with a grumble.

Claire gritted her teeth as she peeled her guts off the extended blades and returned to center stage.

She knew why she was losing. She had been able to defeat the celestials and gods because their ability scores were equal. And if the same rules applied to Porcius, she was confident she could win. But as it stood, he was mathematically superior. Strength, speed, dexterity. His numbers were higher and his technique more refined.

The icing on the cake? He was still yelling for her to show him something beyond a silly trick.

Even though silly tricks were all the caldriess had.