Eli blinked as the world fizzed out around him. That had been oddly anticlimactic. At least he figured out how he could use Lumencloud Transfiguration to leech off of others and not just heal them.
That massively improved his combat capabilities, both alone and in a team. If it worked on anything with a System and not just living entities, then he definitely could have healed Roman with this easily.
Dante For: [500 GP] [Game Point Balance: 836 GP]> Eli almost wanted to laugh at how easy that had been. Vigilant Muse had inspired him on how to weave together his transformation with Lumencloud Transfiguration so that it flowed between each of its states in a constant cycle. Thomas never even had a chance to burn him, let alone touch him. He returned to the Duelist Dungeon with a smile as the courtyard appeared around him. Eli stood in the exact spot he had been in before. Stellavoltaic Nullspace flexed as he tried to search the crowd with his spatial field, but his powers felt outwardly restricted. Not suppressed or cut off, he just couldn’t push them out easily. “Eli, over here!” Roman called from the fountain, where he had two brown paper bags waiting beside him and two bottles of water. Nora and Dorian sat beside him with their own food, too. “How long have you two been here?” Eli asked as he sat down and took the bottle of water with a grateful nod at Roman. Refreshing trickles of icy water gulped down his throat. “Not too long. We stormed through the dungeon to farm Crystalline Crabs for the easy points. They’re worth about 15 GP per kill and there are a ton of them everywhere if you know where to look.” Nora explained as she tore into her burger with literal relish. Pulped pickle spilled out onto her wrapper. “It’s boring, but it’s an easy way to build up some points to convert the GP into money.” Dorian added while he shoved a handful of fries into his mouth. “The conversion rate is different depending on your wristband, but for you two, it’s 5% for red and 10% for green. It keeps going up 5% until black and white is at 25% in case you ever want to only gamble.” “And that’s worth it?” Roman asked doubtfully. He pushed the remaining bag of food into Eli’s hands. Eli nodded at Roman gratefully while he tore into the crisp french fries with a crunch. Food tasted extravagant in this dimension in general, but he supposed they had two centuries to refine the cooking process with powers similar to Mom’s. “How much GP do you both have?” Nora asked after she finished her burger. Waxy paper crinkled as she wadded her wrapper up and tossed it into her bag. “I have 565 GP, I’ve been saving most of it. Spent some on perks and the food, though.” Roman answered, while he popped his thumb against the side of the water bottle. Eli winced at the familiar sound that had haunted him for years. He had forgotten about this nervous tick of his. “How about you Eli?” “836 GP,” He sighed at having to share. It felt too personal. “Got 500 GP from that duel.” “Damn, that’s pretty impressive. How much did you bet?” Dorian’s eyes widened alongside his smile. “Nothing. He must have bet it all, I guess.” Eli shrugged. He had never been the best at math, but Vigilant Muse helped him visualize and keep track of the numbers. All of what he did was worth $83.60. That explained how Delver’s Dive made a profit considering their enchantments acted as a direct middleman. It had taken every kill from him, so he only got points without the possibility of getting more. “What’s stopping me from trading all my points over to one of you and cashing it out? Or losing a bet and we split the difference?” Eli asked after a bite of his slightly cold burger. He wasn’t able to use his powers externally, but he figured out he could use them internally. Low powered infrared light bathed the food in his mouth while he chewed. “You don’t earn as much beating someone at a lower color than you. You get their conversion rate first of all for those points. And the Dream part of the wristband can read your intention, so it won’t allow you to bet.” Dorian explained patiently. Everyone but Eli had finished eating by this point. He scrambled to hurry, although he wondered if this was actual food or not if this was like the Crucible. Were they in a Dream projection body avatar type thing or were they physically here, but were swapped out at the second of death? “If you beat someone of a higher color than you, you get their conversion rate. High incentive for people to punch up colors and almost none for people at higher colors to accept.” “So. When are we fighting?” Nora grinned. “I want to do singles first with no bets.” Dorian’s smile was ice as he turned toward Eli. “I already saw how Roman fights, but after watching the feed for that duel? I want to take you down.” “You don’t have a code name or whatever?” Eli read through the prompts. Why did he and Thomas have one? “Delver’s Dive staff or the Delving Regulation Committee assign them. Or you can pay and register a name with either.” Dorian’s stare turned unyielding. Calculating. As if he were pinpointing all of Eli’s weaknesses so he could capitalize on them. “Now I’m more curious to see what you can do if you have a name.” “Do you have a preference on an arena or stage? I’m good with anything.” Eli smirked after he took his last bite of food. Not that he knew what stages or arenas there were. He hoped it was all dreamlike and it’d create one individually for them. Anything else would be boring. “What a coincidence. So am I. Let’s do random then. Agreed?” Eli nodded as he accepted the prompts before he was shoved into another cognitive void as his green wristband tugged him somewhere else. Reality stretched as a bubble of Dream surrounded them. Buildings fell from the lightening sky as the canals of streets sliced through the darkness. Street lamps and cars adorned the urban landscape as they plopped straight into a mash up of New Faram and Anchora. He spun with a stumble as he stared up at the familiar sign announcing the name of the sprawling building. Springridge Mall. Vigilant Muse clamped down on his mind as rage and fear boiled in his mind. Memories flickered. Gunshots. People screaming. Glass breaking. Eli winced as Jack’s lightning bubbled his skin like melted cheese. A timer counted down while he stared at the pristine building where everything changed for real. Cartilage grated as he clenched his fists. A twitch fluttered his right eyelid. [1] Stellavoltaic Nullspace stretched to encompass as much of the mall as he could sense. Empty stores, the food court, and especially a familiar department store all beckoned to him. Space tore itself apart as bolts of starlightning shredded through nullspace. He pushed the power as hard as he could while he watched as the unenchanted structure explode from the sudden power. Wind whipped behind him as Dorian shot forward before he screeched to a halt. A halberd tugged back, aborting its swing before it struck Eli’s neck. Radiant tears rolled down Eli’s face while a phantom ache throbbed along his left shoulder. Vibrant white lightning lashed through the crumbling wreckage. Debris swept out of the air as he used the starlightning to hasten the mall’s demolition. Each arc teleported its surroundings into its targets with an explosion that blipped through overlapping space. In moments, only a scarred ruin remained. A cairn to his past trauma. He would not honor his mistakes and sacrifices by repeating a fight there. “You good?” Dorian asked when Eli finally turned around to look at him. He had his halberd slung on top of his armored shoulder, his eyes impassive stone behind the slit in his helm. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! “Yeah. Thanks for not attacking me.” Eli smiled despite the darkening gloom that had soured his mood. “What was that? A bad dungeon or something?” Dorian asked lightly, despite the obvious tension in his joints. He was prepared to strike or defend himself at a moment's notice. “Something like that.” Eli’s spatial field rippled all around him like a lurking thundercloud. A harbinger of storm and ruin. Nascent stars waited to bloom at his command throughout the void shadowed nullspace. “Ready to continue? After seeing that, I’ll even give you the first blow.” Dorian’s helm vanished, revealing his ivory white smile soon to be stained crimson. He held his arms out wide Eli nodded. Vigilant Muse activated. The space between moments and seconds lengthened. Numerous points in space around them strobed scarlet stars cracked into existence. Lumencloud Transfiguration turned him into a solid hurricane of charged radiance. Concrete chipped as he squatted, his heels crushing furrows in the stone. Every empty point inside of his body flashed as a constellation of stars were born filling him with even more incandescence. Veins of starlightning branched from star to star. Rails of starlightning strobed toward the point in space right in front of Dorian’s chest. Eli’s fist drove forward with an explosion of mass, light, and heat. He held nothing back. White-hot radiance consumed the world. Shockwaves blitzed as the air rapidly expanded from the sweltering heat. Buildings twisted as they shed their concrete skin and glass scales. Asphalt bubbled, then popped. Vaporized in the blast. He teleported upward out of the weeping crater, floating in his lumencloud form, reinforced by a gentle reflection on the surrounding matter. Two blocks had been wiped out. Pillars of smoke writhed from the glassed, bulbous landscape. A block further, everything was cracked and shattered. Fire lapped at everything it could. Another block away was nearly untouched except for the drifting heaps of ash that submerged cars and rooftops alike. Roaring laughter echoed over the devastation. Dorian floated out of the desolation as easily as if he stood on solid ground. A scarred dented pit in the middle of his chestplate had folded into his skin. Fragments of metal bristled from his cherry red skin. “That was pretty good.” Dorian smiled. “You look like you were sunburned and that was it.” Eli grimaced. He should have gone for the head, but it was hard to sucker punch someone he knew right in the eye with that much power. Besides, most of the time the chest worked. “What’s your deal?” “Don’t attack me yet, okay? Based on that you probably only have one stat, obviously, since you’re a green band. It’s on the weaker end, so you probably slotted it at evo-1. Still strong though, but lacking. And you have what are either two weak, unoptimized evo-2 powers or two heavily engineered evo-1, evo-0 powers? They’re strong, but they’re lacking.” “So?” Eli crossed his arms. It had been fine when Maeve lectured him, but it irritated him coming from Dorian. He had barely interacted with this guy and now he was acting like a know-it-all. “You won’t be able to beat me. Not in a straight fight like this.” Dorian shrugged as his armor and halberd vanished. “I’m telling you this so you don’t waste time trying to out punch me, but I have both my Body and Mind stats and I slotted them at evo-2. Indomitable Soma and Nimble Precision. Indomitable Soma was a power I built from the ground up since I was eleven years old. It lets me generate, charge, and redirect force within and acting on my body. Only the heat from your attack touched me, and all that force from your blow was enough to cover most of the difference.” “Okay.” Eli frowned. That didn’t sound all that impressive, sure, he’d be almost impossible to move and could probably hit back pretty hard, but that seemed simple. Basic. “Before I had what became Nimble Precision, my power and body were unstable. I did way too much or far too little. But it gave me exact, precise control of my body and Indomitable Soma as a result. That’s plenty. Or if you want a real challenge, I’ll use only one of my other powers.” “A real challenge? What the fuck?” Eli floated forward. “Don’t be a condescending asshole. I want to fight you, not be talked down to.” Herbert’s friends were real dicks. “I can crush you like a bug without even moving, only using my powers.” Dorian covered his wristband with his hand before he added, “All of my combat powers are evo-3, and all of them are ranked Rare. But you know it’s not that simple. Our stat powers are a part of us. They’re always in use.” “I’ve beaten people with evo-3 powers before.” Eli narrowed his eyes, light condensed around him into a series of hard points and edges. Why did everyone have to act like he didn’t know what he was doing? “It’s all the same in the end.” “Sure, maybe. I guess there’s only one way to find out.” Dorian shrugged before a tremendous weight seemed to pierce into the air between them. Force blasted. Eli screamed in surprise as he splattered into the churned pavement. Lumencloud and hard light snapped like glass breaking his transformation. Agony after agony sparked as his muffled nerves reverted to human frailty. Starlightning flickered as he teleported in place stan— Concussive force lanced through Eli’s shoulder with a mangled wet pop. He ragdolled backward through a glowing mist as his body healed. Light condensed into blades along his feet while he stabbed a spear of lumencloud to arrest his tumble. “Good recovery and mobility. Promising destructive potential, but weak considering what you could be capable of if that had been your focus.” Dorian smiled while wires of force looped around Eli. Starlightning roared as Eli teleported above Dorian. If raw force wasn’t enough to take him down, then he’d have to experiment with something else. Lumencloud churned as he pushed his all into the spear in his grip that he aimed for Dorian’s skull. It became a cyclone of incandescent might that crackled with vibrant sparks of electricity of its own from the friction. Stars flowed along the shaft to the tip as he inverted the light, then charged and released it. [Double] multiplied it, but it forced them to overlap with Stellavoltaic Nullspace. Eli plunged his nova lance into Dorian’s thickheaded skull. Fissures crumbled through the structure as it rebounded against his natural defenses. Dorian flicked his hand up and out brushing it aside with a detonation of power barreled into the horizon. Pure charged white light and starlightning branched across the sky while natural blue and yellow arcs crackled through the vented lumencloud. “Good. You cut me.” Dorian touched his fingers against his crown which came away stained red. “I was curious if that would work.” “Um.” Eli pushed at his stored light directly with Photon Shot while Vigilant Muse and Lumencloud Transfiguration sped up his thoughts and perception. One of his stored stars ripped out of his void in a cannon blast. Eli was sent careening from the impact. Nullspace narrowed around Dorian even while lumencloud spun to slow his velocity. Dorian howled as searing light turned his clothes to ash. Tumor ridden burns charred across his skin. Droplets of blood rolled from the cooked crust of his chest. He had only been pushed back a couple of feet from the photon blast. Eli had charged and compacted that star ever since he slotted Photon Shot into Body of Light. And it still hadn’t been enough. He stumbled to a stop high above a city full of lopsided buildings melted like the candles on a birthday cake. Horror ripened in his gut at not only what he could do, but what others must be able to do. Dorian appeared in front of him with a shrill cry of wind. Middle finger cocked back by his thumb, he flicked Eli on the forehead before he could react. Only the combination of Lumencloud Transfiguration and Vigilant Muse let him keep up. Dream jerked Eli away by his wrist before his brain turned into slurry. He woke up in his tutorial booth with his head leaned back against a pillowed section of the wall. Nausea roiled through his gut as he recalled the sheer indifference Dorian had displayed. He pushed out of the small cell desperate for fresh air. Short-fuzzed carpet gave way to the plush padding of the lobby as he read the signs on the walls pointing him to a recreational area outside. Eli ignored the copious packs of adults huddled in groups with their cigarettes and alcohol. Neat artistic statues held court hedged between carefully cultivated bushes and hedges. He dropped into a bench while he rubbed his forehead where Dorian had flicked him to death. Ignoring any looks, he drew in and guided light toward the creation of a new star in the void in Photon Shot’s heart. Faint shimmers shone across his skin, but he knew it would hardly be noticeable. It wasn’t like Eli’s trembling hands and tapping foot were any less conspicuous. He took several minutes to calm himself down while he let himself simmer in his soup of disappointment, anger, and fear. At some point he had let himself believe he was almost untouchable. If he could teleport anywhere, heal from immense injuries, then what did it matter if his damage output was on the lower end? Sure, he had been catching up with enchantments and Lumencloud Transfiguration, but now he realized how far he still had to go. Dorian beat him with nothing more than his fucking stats His control was exceptional. Perfect. Eli took a deep breath in while he glanced down at his green wristband. He checked his status with a smile as he noticed everything was no longer blocked despite an additional message. [Stats: Body: Light (Photon Shot) Perks Equipped: [Glow] [Reflect] [Amplify] Mind: None Will: None ] [Equipped Power List: Slot One -- Stellavoltaic Nullspace Ev. 0/Lv. 5 (Maxed) Perks Equipped: [Double] [Control Light] Slot Two -- Lumencloud Transfiguration Ev. 1/Lv. 3 Slot Three -- Vigilant Muse Ev. 0/Lv. 2 ] [Unequipped Powers: Refinery's Alteration Ev. 0/Lv. 2 Hunter’s Bounty Ev. 0/Lv. 0 Warlock's Sanctum Ev. 0/Lv. 5 (Maxed) ] He snapped off a quick message to everyone still in the game with the wristband’s interface to let them know he’ll take a little bit. Eli swapped out Stellavoltaic Nullspace for Refinery’s Alteration. It should be a cinch to push Refinery’s Alteration to max quick enough for him to free up his spatial powers. Refinery’s Alteration sank its hooks into the molecules in the air as it improved their quality and purity with his every breath. He split its attention to include the light he absorbed and split into Photon Shot’s storage. Eli hurriedly pushed himself up to his feet so he could head toward whatever concessions he could find. He needed another bottle of water or two. It was time to push the quality of materials he took in for Lumencloud Transfiguration and powerlevel Refinery’s Alteration. Flows of the power split off as he continued to guide it to work passively with the help of Vigilant Muse. Threads in his clothes grew sturdier and cleaner. His shoes became more flexible and resistant to wear and tear. After he used some of what remained of Herbert’s cash, Eli bought a bottle of water. Refinery’s Alteration pushed itself into the marrow of the enchanted plastic and fresh water. He felt the synapses of the recyclability of the plastic so it would break down while also keeping the water stored inside cold and refreshing. It refined alongside the water before he took a drink. The vast amounts of lumencloud that Eli had at his disposal grew firmer. Better. Eli pushed only pushed the power harder. Light, air, water, his clothing. Herbert’s wallet and phone. The bits of space he knew were around him despite his inability to feel it without Warlock’s Sanctum or Stellavoltaic Nullspace. It almost felt like he still had the natural spatial awareness the powers provided even with them unequipped. He improved it all before he felt the power start to vibrate into the very materials and fibers of his being. This wouldn’t take long at all. Eli chuckled to himself as he sat back down at his bench with a bottle of water cradled in his hands.