Returning to his body felt like finally waking up after sleeping for far too long. The vision of a blonde Cleric and her ongoing trials faded as a dream of its own, bringing him back into his body with a rush of breath. Zahn’s limbs felt distant, tingling with blood flow as if each were still dormant and he was only just able to move. The smell of smoke and burned flesh remained - still stinging his nostrils as the foul fumes wrapped around and by on the hot breeze. Light seemed to creep in resentfully, dim shades of yellow and orange off to the sides that looked like shadows compared to the radiance he held at his fingertips.
Yellow and red mixed beacons shone glaringly in his eyes as Zahn peered to the side to see his right hand and arm sat engulfed in flames he couldn’t feel. The ruddy fires growing and whirling to his left seemed dim, almost smoky and smoldering. Shapes low to the ground past the red swirling cloud cast dark shadows by the glorious light, making it hard to see even without his distorted vision. The vibrant cords wrapped around his elbow to erupt from his wrist and form a great pole hovering just past his fingers, its tip pointing to something far ahead of him. The waiting spell looked like his Bolt had been stretched and ballooned up into a great thin pillar half the length of an electric pole. Zahn’s vision seemed tight, focused, almost tunneled as the details around his target were distorted. Only the central bubble of where he looked was clear, causing something to clash in his head as very wrong but he couldn’t begin to place it.
Voices shouted out to him, echoing as if whispered in a cave. The distorted sounds rang with a vibration that he felt in his teeth, sounding like someone had turned all the settings on a radio to its highest pitch. “Finally! That foul Player is back in control! It’s over!” One’s voice warbled to a shriek as she exulted, the rippling echo coming from somewhere to his left.
A pair of voices shouted together, their cries overlapping discordantly. “Is that demon fucker gone?” “It’s there! The demon! Eats our souls!”
Zahn staggered under the mental barrage, his wobbly legs shaking as he tried to stay upright. Just balancing the heavy spell to his right already left him reeling, and the constant pressure of voices wasn’t helping.
“You fool! Strike!” A deep shout broke through the wail of noise, landing like a punch. He didn’t recognize the speaker, their strange voice shifting between a dog’s howl and the shrill cry of a bird, but knew who it was instinctively. “Do not waste this time, mortal! I have given you a window, now you must strike!” Eight’s rumble shook the world, vibrating Zahn’s vision to snap into clarity once more. His field of view seemed to expand, as if the focus he had before leaned back and zoomed out to show his very active HUD and blinking icons calling out from beneath his view.
“Strike now or fail your own first Task! Damned useless mortal asshole!”
Leaning forward to stand on both feet again, Zahn whipped his arm forwards and let the charged-up spell release. He had to blink as he watched the red streak’s afterimage, the magic fires punching a wide hole into a growing red magical barrier. Blinking harder and sucking in a breath, Zahn finally got a good look at the battlefield his body had caused under the Chaos Lord’s control.
The Ringmaster lay flat on his back, gasping for air a few dozen feet ahead and surrounded by blackened sand like a star’s corona. One leg was half missing with his burned limb writhing, the other bent sideways as he struggled to rise. His portly body bore a wide scorch mark down the front, cutting his crimson robes to tatters and leaving a distorted picture of where the burnt clothes ended and burnt flesh began. The fat man’s wheezing was slowly being covered by the translucent red shield standing out around him, looking much like a massive barrel rebuilding itself. The translucent red shield wrapped from behind the fallen man a good ten feet out, the layers separating the combatants reforming nearly a foot each second. The panels grew and snapped into place in thin chunks nearly a foot long and gave a clear visual as to the short time before the Ringmaster would be safe once more. Within the protective shell of his magical shield, the Collisae Boss’s health bar stood out as a thick pulsing red given its own wrought iron border. The glowing crimson skull replacing the man’s level showed the differences in their power clearly, but his bloated health bar stood at just over a third with the latter half completely blackened away. His body carried a dull outline of blood red that extended to his nameplate, showing without hesitation this man wanted the Player dead.
Glancing down to his left, Zahn’s eyes slid over a blinking icon in his HUD that he wasn’t used to seeing. As he processed his left side was, too, engulfed in flames he tried to shape the same long javelin he’d held a moment ago but found his mind stuttering and pulling back. Against his will he found his gaze locking onto his HUD, stopping mid-combat to read a fucking popup.
His internal ire sputtered out and was replaced by panicked adrenaline as he processed the words.
*Relentless [1] (834): Continuous attacks are (834)% more effective. [Damage +834%, Hit chance +83.4%, Additional Effect Chance +8.34%] 3s*
Blinking hard and choking down, Zahn sucked in a breath and whipped his left arm high, desperately trying to cast anything to keep the buff active. “Fire Bolt!” Feeling the spell discharge, the Player watched the tiny missile dutifully streak across the intervening distance to smash into the re-forming shield. The mana pulled out of his cloud was negligible, barely even a tangible difference in the cottony mass wavering around through the air.
The effect on the shield had far more impact than the spell’s minor cost implied. The dart exploded against the pseudo-wooden panels, sending a handful scattering away as the Ringmaster’s body bore a series of light flashes in response. From the sagging tattered robe and even from bangles dangling on the fat man’s wrists came tiny red blinks of light that began to repair the damaged shield the very moment it was struck.
Heat built within Zahn’s skin, seeming to pulse faster than his own heartbeat. The constantly rising temperature felt like a scorched fever bristling inside his limbs and screamed for release. For half a breath, the Player’s voice joined his magic’s.
Making impact with the Bolt caused Zahn’s buff to refresh, bringing its counter up to eight hundred thirty-five and bringing the one second timer back up to five. Running the numbers quickly, Zahn realized with the clock just now showing an even nine in the morning his body had been hurling magic twice every three seconds before he resumed control. Remembering how he’d practiced casting spells from each joint in his arms against Two, the Custom tried to recreate that setup while spitting enough magic to maintain the power-up.
“Fire Bolt! Fire Bolt! Fire Bolt!” Spewing tiny spell after spell, the little magical dart gained a cloud of red around it as the fiery missile streaked across the air. The tide-like cloud surrounding his left arm shrank with each cast to spew the spells as the pain and heat slowly bled out through his casting. Finally able to see what he was doing with his vision mostly restored, Zahn was able to watch the difference between his unmodified spells and after over eight hundred constant casts. Where each missile cast normally seemed something the size of a pen and moved a tad faster than a stone’s throw, these empowered spells were launching out of the red nebulous cloud to his left like tracer rounds out of a mounted turret. The darts were thicker and more detailed, with the Relentless buff’s effect rendering each cast into complete crossbow bolts the length of a man’s forearm bearing a spiked broadhead and dense fletching, complete with intricate swirls of orange and gold on the red shaft. The entire spell was crafted from various shades of glowing crimson with the brightest red-orange bead at the leading tip and sheathed in a billowing red cloud of mana that chased the spell to target.
Each impact broke away more of the repairing fire shield, even as the downed master’s protections continued to rebuild it. Casting as many copies of the spell as he could at a time left Zahn’s flaming clouds spread over both his arms and still not spitting enough missiles to fully break down the growing barrel of protection. The pain built in his chest as heat, raw endless heat poured out from above his stomach to follow the paths he’d unwittingly carved in every direction through his torso. He was already trying to recreate the larger ballista-bolt spell when a new wave of voices crashed against his psyche.
Through terrible pain, through a gut-wrenching blend of shame and anger, he felt a voice laughing.
One’s projection came loud and clear, as if she were shouting in his ear. “I can’t believe it! Just like that! Ahahaha! This is amazing!”
Squinting against the light his own magic generated, Zahn tried to find her by volume but her voice only continued to echo around his mind. He couldn’t find her signature silver scythe, or any sign of the powerful Gladiator near her master.
“He can’t even break through! Bahahahahahaa! The warding is enough, just like that foul Mage said it would be! This is the best day of my life! Die and fail, you wretched Player!”
Finally looking at the pair of smoldering masses not even ten feet away, Zahn’s eyes found the warriors. One and Five lay prone just out of reach, both of their powerful bodies blackened and burned. Five lay on his back, his breath coming shallow as he peered up at the sky listlessly with both arms burned away at the elbow. One similarly lay on her side, wheezing through a bloody grin despite having lost her left arm and leg. Her remaining arm shuddered and shook as she aimed a trembling middle finger through a squinted eye at the struggling Player. “You lose.”
Already panicking and stressed, Zahn’s temper flared and he replied with a breath. Snarling a dose of Fire Spit felt good and just, only to scare the hell out of him when the wildly flaming meteor nearly punched out his teeth before shooting straight into One’s good eye and sending her tumbling backwards past Five through the scorched sands. Oh yeah, he admonished himself as his wide-eyed stare returned to the Ringmaster. All my spells are stronger. All of them.
Hurling a constant stream of Bolts from his arms took chanting ‘Fire Bolt’ so much he was certain he’s mis-cast, but Zahn was already focusing on his next spell too much to worry about the feedback. Stomping his feet heavily into the ground, he felt the warmth of packed mana take with it sudden searing heat as it flooded out as if he’d fallen into a snowbank as he pushed magic into the ground. Stomping again and sliding his foot forwards, the Player wove his arms wildly as he cast Bolt after Bolt to maintain the desperately short window for his Relentless buff.
Watching the blue mana sluggishly meander through the heavily singed sands, he missed two spells in a row as he tried to double-cast and nearly choked on his panic. Throwing Bolts from both arms simultaneously was the only saving grace to keep his buff active with the spells flying each second and most splashing harmlessly against the still repairing shield. “Sand Spear!” Waving both hands forwards he almost cheered out loud when the sandy construct erupted just before the shield and passed through it, slamming into the Ringmaster’s body and making him stumble back again. Zahn’s enthusiasm quickly died as he saw the damage didn’t even make the fat man’s health bar twitch. Eight’s possession had given him the incredible advantage of blackening nearly half of the obese manager’s health pool but the sand magic didn’t seem capable of even making a scratch. Behind the fat man’s massive ward against fire, a much smaller green dome flashed back into invisibility after blocking the desperate attack.
Worse yet, as the robed body started to writhe on the ground after being struck by the spear, Zahn’s eyes caught dancing sparks of green and gold bounce their way over the fat body and begin restoring the boss’s health.
Screaming his frustration wordlessly, the Player let his mana build in his throat before pausing his tantrum long enough to take in a deep breath. Break the fuck through! Fuck you! Half choking on the heat and pain he opened his mouth wide and channeling mana through the gathered flames, he saw the red mana of Fire Spit forming before he forced the spell into its new channeled version and breathed true flame. The wide, red barrel-like shield nearly finished reforming, its planks slapping together to form multiple red layers to repel most any Fire-type attacks shuddered and twisted under the spell’s assault before the barrier broke and let the Stream through to slam into the Ringmaster.
Zahn watched a red popup try to tell him about resistances and debuffs of his targets before forcing it into the waiting stack down by his fast action bars with a blink. He didn’t need anything to tell him the fat bastard had protections, and he wasn’t about to let the five second timer on Relentless die because of some label with attitude. Taking another deep breath, Zahn eyed his buff’s timer and unleashed another Fire Stream spell from behind his teeth as the time remaining hit two seconds.
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Having taken the time to aim instead of letting the spell slam into the shield directly, the Player’s second try actually shot the Ringmaster’s body and scored a line as his accuracy wobbled. The diagonal scar nearly touched the most heavily burned parts of the portly man before his reforming shield had recovered enough density to fend off Zahn’s waning attack. He couldn’t hold the spell longer than a count of seven, but still noted the buff ticked up each second he could maintain the spell. Between his Bolts and Streams, the Relentless buff had risen all the way up to nine-twenty-three but his mana was refilling slower and slower as the fight went on.
Glancing over his HUD again for anything new, Zahn found a debuff he hadn’t seen before depicting a blue outline of a person with a saddened face and downwards arrows.
*Mana Exhaustion (4): Your magic is weakened (4) times! [Mana regeneration down 40%, Mana pool capacity down 40%] 4h*
The debuff was as unforgiving as Relentless’ bonus was wonderful, and he didn’t have a clue when he’d picked the damn thing up. Ending another Stream, Zahn found himself almost breathless as he watched the buff’s five second timer once again begin ticking down. I can’t kill him like this. The moment he stopped venting the terrible heat welling from inside, the pain began to build anew and merciless.
The thought echoed in his mind as the Player faced the regrowing shield once more, helplessly watching the Ringmaster’s health once again rise. He’d managed to expand the blackening of the foul man’s health when he hit center mass, but striking through the repairing shield deflected most of the damage and made striking with precision almost impossible. If only I’d been attacking like this when the shield was gone. The gap was bigger than fatass there, and now it’s smaller than me! Even with both arms loosing a barrage of half-aimed Bolts, the Player could clearly see he was running out of time.
Blinking at his own train of thought, Zahn fought the urge to slap himself as he spewed yet another wave of Bolts from both arms to keep Relentless active. Using his mental digit to scroll the logs section of his HUD, the Player desperately looked for what the evil demon had cast to break the shield in the first place.
Splitting his attention once again, he found himself spewing casts of Fire Stream as he threw Bolts and tried to scroll the Logs to find something useful. With his constant casts and the almost impossibility of missing the shield, he was doing enough damage to the barrier to break off large chunks of wall and force it to spend more and more time repairing itself. Sadly, even with his Stream spell punching past the ward to hurt the Ringmaster the fat asshole’s health bar continued to refill towards the blackened half.
Finally his distracted scanning stumbled past something he couldn’t read, along with a section indicating a window wanted to be opened for more details.
*Ringmaster dealt 408 Fire damage! (80% increase from Burn degree 3)
*Ringmaster falls Prone!
*Zahn[#%#&%@*#&] Casts #$%^!* &^#^&%^# at Ringmaster!
You have unlocked a new spell!
You do not qualify to learn the Tier (3) Searing #$%^!* &^#^&%^# at this time.
You do not qualify to learn the Tier (2) Flame @$*$*@@ #*%(#*$ at this time.
You qualify to learn the Tier (1) Fire variant of this spell!
Expand window for more?
*Ringmaster is dealt 1,026 Fire damage! (80% increase from Burn degree 3) Critical hit! You[#%#&%@*#&] have intensified the Ringmaster’s Burn!
*Ringmaster falls into Shock!
Staring at the words garbled together, he tried to understand what was missing when a new error introduced itself like a cheeky child.
You do not know this word!
You do not know the name of this language!
Your Linguistics Ability is not high enough to parse this word!
You do not know this language!
Educate yourself to know more.
“So… weak…” The taunt reached his mind as Five’s warbling voice laughed at him silently. The Player’s focus shifted past the open windows to glare at the downed fighter, the muscled man laying prone as he cocked a half grin up from the sands.
Turning back to the Ringmaster and his own five-second buff timer, Zahn tried to send out the same shape he’d seen as he woke up without knowing which spell had been unlocked. “Fire Stick! Fire Lance! Fire Ballista!” He felt like an idiot shouting random words as he was forced to stop casting Bolt long enough for each attempt. Even with the ongoing Relentless buff being sustained with the too-sparse spell landing he knew it was utterly futile to just shout to the sky.
Half choking in his frustration, the Player could only watch as the mostly dead Ringmaster rose to his ponderous feet to glare at the offending challenger. The man’s gold-green sparks continued to bounce around his belly and shoulders as the burned flesh slowly knit back together. His crimson drape had been charred away to expose his belly, which bore a thick black weeping wound.
“Do you see what you’ve done to me?” The portly master’s voice came thready, but strong enough to carry across the arena. “You’ve dared to hurt me. You. A foul. Filthy. Player.” Spitting the last word, the Ringmaster swung his arms to spread wide and summoned a long thin whip to his right and a strange rotating trident in his left hand. The weapons shimmered with an orange glow at their respective business ends, but the obese warrior was still half a battlefield away. Even with the constant stream of weak Bolt spells, the warding shield continued to grow and repair under the assault.
“I’m going to hurt you right back,” the Ringmaster’s voice shook in the air, rising in volume and dropping into a rough baritone. “I’m going to rip off your arms. Tear out your tongue. I will flay!” He raised both weapons and shook them, causing the rotating trident head to spin faster while the whip writhed on the burned sands. The orange glow spread from both tools to cover the master’s body giving him a dull copper look to Zahn’s eyes. “I will flay the flesh from your bones! There won’t be enough of you to respawn before I let you die, you foul fucking Player!”
Yeah I’m not letting those hit me. “I’m gonna do a lot more than just hurt you, you fucking psychopathic cock-gobbler!” Roaring back his best improvised taunt, Zahn spewed another Fire Stream spell and enjoyed the satisfaction of a direct hit as the flaming bombardment shattered the protection right in front of his target’s wound and dealt another direct hit to his third-degree burn. With arms spread wide for his display and shit-talking, the Ringmaster was wide open to being shot in his gut. His opponent’s new grapefruit tinge did nothing to stop the damage, and seemed to be pushed away from the impact before slowly refilling the damaged torso.
The Ringmaster, rolled back on his heels with the hit, his health dipping a finger’s breadth each second as he withstood the ongoing Stream attack.
As his seven seconds expired, Zahn panted for a breath as he ensured his Relentless buff continued to grow and admired the damage dealt from his success. The attack drained a good quarter of his available mana, with the debuff slowing down his replenishment at the same rate as it capped his maximum; it felt like he had the same coursing level of power on hand but even smaller pipes to channel it through. The pain and heat continued to build, irreverent to his endless spellcasting and sapping his energy as much as a day’s sprinting ever could.
Flicking his shaking vision back to the still-open HUD box, his eyes slid over the spell’s description uselessly again as he railed at the lack of comprehension. I already cast this! I was fucking holding this! The magic didn’t care for his objections, and Zahn was ready to scream the unfairness to the skies when a resource he didn’t know he’d spent returned.
(+1) Willpower recovered!
Blinking stupidly at the message, the Player almost forgot to cough out his ongoing utterances of ‘Fire Bolt’ as he tried to parse what it meant. You only spend Will through Investing. But when could I -- answering his own unfinished question, Zahn glared at the gibberish words in his log. Fuck you, Eight.
The constant building pain had distracted him from feeling his mental state, and the Custom’s internal reserve felt filled to bursting as if he’d tried to choke down a bite too large and his throat was nearly torn. Knowing somehow, without deigning to tell his host what was going on, that insufferable demon had used his Investiture to cast a more powerful spell than he’d been able was beyond irritating. Since Zahn had awoken from his fever dream scrying he’d been in endless pain, under mounting pressure and held against the metaphorical wall while the job of finishing off the damned Ringmaster was still unfinished. All he’d wanted to do was beat the absurd fight he’d trapped himself in to finally leave the stone prison he hadn’t even wanted to be in, and in course of killing the wretched human who’d handed him the Player-only contract he was being burned by his own magic while --
Your own magic can’t hurt you. Discarding the self-pity party he’d fallen into so easily Zahn buckled down on what he knew he could do in that moment. Gritting his teeth against the pain he knew was coming, the Player growled out another series of Bolt spells as he swallowed against the lump and pushed on his mana pool.
The paths down his arms that felt far too small rippled, pulsing with blue light to Zahn’s magic sensing eyes as power forced its way through a tangled web of veins and down his limbs. The power-filled paths bulged under his skin, distorting new veins down his forearms as he forced more mana through the narrowed paths filled to bursting and out his hands like a vent. The clouds of fire surrounding his forearms flickered and bent as he unleashed his torrent of weak spells before blooming into a sudden crash of light.
With his magic ripping out of his arms, the slowly dwindling mana bar began to quickly fall, passing the halfway mark in seconds and rapidly draining.
Focusing his intent on the desired shape, Zahn vividly pictured both his modified Sand Spear spell and the last time he’d tried to bend Earth and Fire magics together. I have to feed it enough, or the damn thing will just freeze midair. I can’t even cast ice magic - I have to hit him with as much heat as I can.
Whispering a final Bolt, the Player reached for the choking mass of energy in his throat as he slapped his hands together and tried to shape the flames manually. The image of the Sand Spear stood out in his mind’s eye, brightly shining as a long green-and-tan stalagmite bursting from beneath. With the sheer magnitude of fires before him, he could easily substitute the ground for the churning cloud but knew he was running out of time.
Relentless [1] (998) 2s
Trying to tear his Willpower point out of his throat was fruitless until he exhaled the fire magic just behind his tongue, finding the shining pearl of white flow outwards as naturally as sighing. With the white core in his palms the fires he could hardly see past molded like putty to his will, warping and wrapping around itself into a mighty pointed lance with a shaft longer than he was tall.
Hesitating no longer, the Player whipped his arms around and forwards, finally casting the upgraded spell with a shout. “Fire Spear!”
A number of notifications tried to block his sight only for the Custom to blink them away, feeling even more energy crashing against the inside of his skin. Regardless of how much it had hurt to strain and force the energy out through his arms, even more mana slammed into the thin barrier of his hands from within as if the power demanded its target to burn.
The missile streaked across the sands, scorching a new furrow of char in the ground as it tore into the portly Ringmaster’s shield and cut straight through it to tear into the man’s left arm. His mighty whip went limp and dark, the arm supporting it tumbling away as the upgraded spell bisected his elbow and discarded the offending limb.
Like a rising tide, mana continued to rage and crash against the inside of Zahn’s palms as even more fiery magic burst from beneath his fingers. The mostly spent clouds of fire magic regrew like bushes of bamboo after a storm and raged, whipping about on their own winds and screaming in the Custom’s ears for more. More. Always more, endlessly more. Zahn’s mana bar plummeted, falling to less than a tenth of the remaining.
Everything burns.
Knowing his brief power increase could only fade, Zahn hacked out a wet cough as he staggered back from the recoil of his cast and clapped his throbbing hands together again. Pulling against the same spot as before, he felt his Willpower give in like a pebble sliding along the bank of a river. Another gleaming silvery white nugget escaped his mouth and gathered flames, taking the heat from the air around him entirely as it fed and grew into another great javelin.
Straightening up and letting his eyes flicker over his active buffs, he tried not to get distracted blinking at the shimmering icon showing his Relentless had reached a full nine-ninety-nine stacks and was throbbing with a pulse of its own. With a second to spare, the Player pivoted like his favorite werfer and pitched. The red-and-gold missile screamed as it flew away, taking the heat from around him and leaving his body shaking from the sudden cold, hardly able to gasp out the spell’s real name.
“Flame. Javelin.”
The mighty spell howled as it ate the air, slamming through the partially-reformed center of the great fire shield before crashing into the center of the shocked Ringmaster. With his sudden mana depletion, Zahn collapsed onto the freezing scorched sands as he stared desperately at his enemy’s convulsing body.
For a long shaking breath, it looked like the fat man had tanked his attack head on. His right arm still held the trident high with its sickly orange glow, his robes still waving in the churned breeze, his face a snarling rictus of hate and pain.
Finally, Zahn’s magic sight showed him hope.
The Ringmaster’s active fire shield flickered before shattering, the great man’s massive health bar plummeting as he gagged on the still-burning spell pouring ever more fire into his belly and lungs. The fat man spasmed, choking and spitting blood and smoke before he fell backwards from his uneven feet to collapse on the ground. His health bar filled with black from the far end completely covering what little red had remained, showing the Player - and all who could see it - that the foul Ringmaster could not heal, and would never rise again.