Revelate!
Name: Armoured Skeleton Simulacrum
Race: Mana Construct
Level: 22
Tier: Novice
Health: 300/300
Mana: 0/0
Description: A simulated opponent for use in training.
That description was repeated across the hovering text around several of the other Simulacrums, and so Aurelian turned his gaze to the ones that had not yet been ‘tagged’ by his Revelate as identical, and checked in on them as well.
Revelate!
Name: Spellcaster Skeleton Simulacrum
Race: Mana Construct
Level: 26
Tier: Initiate
Health: 450/450
Mana: 200/200
Description: A simulated opponent for use in training.
Aurelian barely had time to call out in surprise at the lethality of the remaining four skeletons before he had to throw himself aside to avoid not one, but two firebolts aimed at his location. He buried his complaints about Tarixi’s sadism beneath his focus and keyed his Iron Will to full strength so that he could focus.
His Tactician skill passively ramped itself up and clarified his situation in his mind, and Aurelian acted by rapid assessment as much as by rote muscle memory. Mana cycled through his body in a way that was almost instinctual by that point, and he shot his right hand out at one of the approaching skeletons to meet its charge with his magic.
“Firebolt!”
The gout of concentrated flame smashed into the skeleton’s skull and blew it from its neck, killing the simulacrum and dispersing it into an array of effervescent blue lights, each of which were drawn immediately back into the generator. It was a recycling mechanism, Tarixi had explained, which allowed the generator to subsume whatever mana remained after a construct was destroyed. The sooner it broke, the more mana was recovered—though it always recovered less than it had initially used to form them.
A shard of ice smashed into the floor near his feet and Aurelian backpedalled away from the impact point, narrowly avoiding a raking claw from one of the other armoured skeletons, and darting in-between another two to avoid both their attacks as well.
His movement took him into and then out of a sudden melee, and he started to turn mid-step while jumping for the air in the same motion.
The Acrobatics skill helped immensely with what he’d come to call a ‘bunny hop’.
Mana roared through his body, and he extended a hand towards both a Spellcaster and Armoured Skeleton and discharged two attacks back to back with a sudden and perilous drop of his mana reserves.
“Firebolt!” followed by “Firebolt!” again rang throughout the area.
The Armoured Skeleton staggered back, hurt but not downed, and the Spellcaster did the same—though in its case, its greater fragility meant he at least snapped off an arm for his trouble, though he didn’t wait to see the limb turn to motes.
By time the arm had dissipated Aurelian was back on the ground, and running as fast as he could in a wide circle.
He had learned quickly that the undead were both intelligent enough to try and attack as a group, and stupid enough to chase him in a relatively consistent pattern— especially if he widened the arc of his pathway just enough to make it seem as if he were actually running away. He had learned to use just such a method to corral the creatures many times during training, and he anticipated the newest instance to be no different.
He was, unfortunately, proven quickly wrong.
Aurelian cursed when the undead split up and moved to cut him off, half of them positioning along the narrower path to intercept him, while others maintained gait at his rear.
A glance at his mana showed him down to two thirds.
It was an improvement from his original expenditure, thanks in part to his levelling of his spells, but was not ideal for what he was facing.
His mind worked furiously while he assessed the now-adapting undead, and quickly he found a logical hole he could exploit. Tarixi had forbidden use of his Runesword to engage the undead, but she had said nothing about his body.
An amused huff erupted from him at the thought of what he was about to do, and Aurelian threw himself, in an abrupt about-face, towards the pursuing skeletons.
In the process, he also forced the ones swinging around to pincer him out of position.
More spells were flung at him from the more cautiously moving spellcasters, but Aurelian dodged them or weaved through them carefully.
His focus remained locked on the lead armoured skeleton and, moments from the second of impact; he leaped into the air and summoned mana into his right hand.
He did not unleash it however, and trusted his Pain Tolerance to help him ignore the immediate pressure-pain that built from the sudden ‘blockage’ of flow.
The distance between himself and the skeleton closed rapidly, and upon reaching his target Aurelian extended his right hand and—with a snarl of effort—slammed his palm into the Simulacrum’s skull.
The resultant force of his Strength Attribute and far more muscular body forced the skeleton backward off of its legs, and Aurelian slammed it into the ground.
As he did, he growled out the ignition phrase with every iota of his Intent behind it.
“Firebolt!”
The creature’s head detonated against the cavern floor, thanks to the concentrated mana he’d painfully coalesced into his palm; and Aurelian was thrown backward from the blast with a hiss of pain.
He flew through the air for almost three seconds before smashing into the rocky ground, and only had time to check his health—it sat ten percent lower—before rolling away a little too slowly from a discharged shockbolt.
“Fuck!” he shouted in pain-fuelled anger as his leg spasmed and collapsed under him.
“That fucking hurt!” he complained, even as he rolled away to dodge another volley of magical attacks, and attempted to orient himself on the closest enemies: two Skeletons charging him from his rear, two from his front, and the spellcasters encroaching from his right.
Picking his targets quickly, Aurelian threw himself to his right and rolled up to his feet with his hands already held at his sides. His legs pumped as he sprinted, and his stamina burned dangerously low while he forced mana to cycle inside of his body.
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His regeneration was keeping up, somewhat, but he was still below half and had to make it count. He’d need to buy time, make space, and give himself enough breathing room to recover… and that meant two of the spellcasters had to go.
“Ash fucking Williams…” he mumbled to himself in reminder while closing distance.
Aurelian’s approach had not gone unnoticed, however, and the spellcasters reacted accordingly. Two of them flung ice spikes in his direction, a third cast a crackling shockbolt, and the armless one on the far right threw a firebolt at him as some sort of karmic retribution.
Or perhaps it was pissed, if mana constructs were even capable of such.
He was uncertain.
What he did know was that he had to eat at least two of the spells in order to complete his own attack run with any success.
This will suck. He thought to himself, at which point he suddenly threw his body into the path of the ice spikes.
Lightning and fire cascaded past him and burst somewhere behind, and Aurelian gritted his teeth a moment before the slightly slower air and water mana—formed into shards of ice a foot long and half as thick—slammed into him with the force of rubber bullets.
Aurelian staggered mid-stride, and barely managed to keep balance, while his lungs struggled to restore the air that had been punched out of them.
He managed to retain focus only through a combination of his Iron Will, Pain Tolerance, and stubborn refusal to surrender.
Ice Resistance is now Level 5!
Aurelian put on a final burst of speed, and bled his stamina dry as he closed the distance, all while mana cycled rapidly into his hands.
Instead of attempting to take the skeletons down as before with his weight, he shifted position mid-run and threw himself to his knees. He ignored the pain lancing across his flesh when his pants were shredded further, and the skin beneath grazed and bloodied by his incredible momentum.
His eyes were locked solely on the two undead.
With his hands slightly angled outward to avoid having to dual-cast an ability he still hadn’t mastered—and his activation timing gracing him with a solid one second of error, Aurelian bellowed the ignition phrases as he passed by the staring undead.
“Firebolt!” he shouted, and a gout of flame exploded from his left palm into the skull of the first skeleton and dissipated its body instantly into azure energy, followed by another “Firebolt!” that triggered the second blast to erupt from his right hand and consume the head of the second spellcaster in an inferno, one which detonated the more fragile skull into a spray of bone and subsequent eruption of mana motes.
Aurelian barely had time to do more than huff in victory before he was scrambling to his feet again, and wheezed while his stamina flashed angrily at him in his HUD.
He had burned it down to three percent with his last mad stunt, and even with the regeneration he knew he’d need to find a way to buy time until it resolved itself into a position he could put it to proper use again.
Or in simpler terms; he needed to take it easy until he caught his breath.
The implacable quartet of armoured skeletons were already closing distance, the spellcasters were reorienting, and he was almost bottomed out on mana.
It was a dangerous situation, and one that Tarixi had warned him could happen in a real engagement. That was the point of training, after all: to prepare for the worst and learn to take advantage of it.
A quick bit of haphazard mathematics told him the melee skellies—he suppressed a tired chortle at the thought—would intersect with him in roughly eight seconds, and the spellcasters that remained would volley again in three.
Aurelian had focused inward while his mind calculated those numbers, and leaned into his new ‘Breath Control’ skill. It had been part of his learning when figuring out how to control and weave his mana, and had been another Cultivation-themed skill he’d found in common with many of the fictions he’d read.
Breathing, after all, was a core component to any meditation.
His eyes closed despite the situation, and he felt himself calming and his stamina regeneration ticking along solidly while he relaxed away his subtle, jittery tension and found a kind of ready calm.
Aurelian’s eyes snapped open three seconds later, and he looked up as a firebolt and shockbolt were conjured in the hands of the spellcasters. His gaze narrowed in focus, and he could almost hear his own breathing.
Inhale. The spells materialised. Exhale. The spellcasters raised their arms. Inhale. The fire and lightning started to discharge. Exhale. The magic arced through the air with bleeding contrails of light and mana. Inhale. The spells crossed the intervening distance to his position like quarrels from a crossbow. Exhale. His stamina finally hit twenty percent. Inhale.
Aurelian exploded forward with a surge of Strength and Agility, faintly cracking the granite under his ruined shoes, and more launching himself at the two undead Simulacrums than sprinting at them.
The ground behind him exploded when the spells hit, but he was already gone.
He extended his palms outward as he accelerated and reached out to grip the construct on the left—the shockbolt spellcaster—by the shoulders with a grunt of agony in his wrists at the impact. Trusting in his Pain Tolerance and Durable skills to see him through, Aurelian smashed his knees into the creature’s torso.
The spellcaster went down with Aurelian riding shotgun, and before it even hit the ground Aurelian was tensed.
Brawling is now Level 14!
The moment the creature was crushed by his velocity, weight, and the unforgiving power of inertia into the stone; Aurelian threw himself at the one-armed Simulacrum that remained. He reached out to grip the creature’s already-conjuring left limb, twisted it around towards its own face, and shoved its igniting palm against its skull as it detonated a firebolt.
The creature’s skull vaporised under the power of its own spell, and Aurelian snarled in satisfaction while turning to his left…
…directly towards the imminently approaching quartet of charging skeletons.
His stamina was alarmingly low, his mana was barely at twenty-five percent, and his hands were already starting to shake. He did not have enough mana for more than two firebolts, but perhaps he’d only need two. Aurelian’s mind whirled as Tactician fed him information in a passive process and he broke into a run to meet the charging skeletons.
The first to come he ignored entirely and threw himself into a powerslide between its legs, bypassing it completely and rolling out of the slide to dodge the reaching claws of the one behind it. Aurelian’s mana had already been cycling as he’d moved, and he pointed his hand up at the skeleton while it bent towards him.
“Firebolt!”
Its body started dissipating the moment the flames blasted through its skull, and Aurelian turned to face the first and now-encroaching skeleton, while also being fully aware of the two coming at him from his rear. He wasted no time while glancing at his Stamina, and used a burst of Strength and Agility to duck under the skeleton’s grasping arms and grab it by the hips.
The construct’s claws tore at his exposed back, and Aurelian—completely lost in the moment—bellowed “John Cena!” with a howl of rage, pain, and focused aggression while lifting the creature bodily from the granite and suplexing it into the waiting bodies of the two undead already upon him.
Condition: Bleeding (Minor)
The tactic barely worked as the three skeletons collided in a mess of mass, and while it didn’t take down the new pair nor kill the suplexed skeleton, it did give Aurelian time to roll away and scramble to his feet with a heavy, exhausted breath.
He could feel the burn on his spine where the creature’s claws had raked him, but he refused to let it distract him, and instead rapidly assessed the three skeletons already recovering to come at him again.
Aurelian winced at the feeling of his body’s screaming protests and, ignoring them, threw himself at the skeletons again. They each were of a height with him or slightly shorter, but that only helped his efforts.
Using his superior agility, Aurelian ducked under the two rapid swipes thrown at him from the closest creature and kicked out to his right to leverage his power and push away the second.
The suplexed skeleton started to approach and Aurelian chose to give it no time to act as he charged after the kicked Simulacrum and threw himself into the air and wrapped his arm around its head. A snarl of pain was pulled from his lips as the creature bit down on his right bicep, but Aurelian was not to be denied.
His Iron Will, Durable, and Pain Tolerance skills flared in unison while he used his weight to force his arm down and around the creature’s neck, turned so his feet hit the floor, and then heaved to bend it over backward.
Strength has risen to 59!
Brawling is now Level 15!
Brawling is now Level 16!
Condition: Bleeding (Moderate)
A terrifyingly audible crack resounded throughout the cavern, and Aurelian tore the skeleton’s head from its spine in a spray of razor shards that gouged his own abused flesh, and tore open his cheek before the entire creature faded into motes of mana.
He needed to catch his breath but had no time, and instead scrambled to his right with a stagger and a cry of pain as another clawed swipe tore open his left shoulder. Blood arced through the air and Aurelian used the adrenaline, fear, and rage to focus on his task.
The skeletons were already pivoting to face him when he moved in and, with the last dregs of his stamina, weaved an elaborate Z shape around their slashing claws to emerge behind them both. He received another vicious cut to his lower back as recompense, but the flank succeeded in buying him two precious seconds in which the puppet-like creatures were forced to shift awkwardly to face him, now at their backs.
Aurelian used the investiture of his Strength Attribute to the fullest and, when they turned, stepped forward to grip the right arm of the right one and left arm of the left one.
With them held As they attempted to gauge him, Aurelian forced both arms and bodies together as they attempted to gauge him, and used them as leverage to swing himself up and straddle the right one around the hip.
His core muscles screamed while he pulled his wounded body up to allow him to face them both from a side-on mount, his head coming up level with the grappled skeleton’s own.
Both heads turned to face him at once.
Aurelian pointed his right hand at the head of the one he had mounted.
“Dodge this,” he snarled as his mana blazed. “FIREBOLT!”
Both skeletons’ heads were obliterated by the blast of close range magic, and Aurelian smashed into the unforgiving rock below while his body went into mana overdraw deprivation and his stamina bottomed out.
Firebolt is now Level 14!
“Get Trinity’d,” he croaked with a deliriously bloody smile, laughed, and then succumbed to unconsciousness.