50.
Santi watched the assassin carefully as the man weaved through his allies. They all bent away from him, nervous in his presence. A feverish light was lit in the man’s eyes as he began to speak of his Patron.
“You know nothing of our Lord’s power. It transcends the layers of the Universe to bathe us in his holy light. It is our honor and duty to bow before his will and receive his blessings. Your war against us was based on the false words of liars. Your leaders never listened to what our Lord offered and were greedy to hold onto their own power. They are the ones who prosecuted the war, the death, the suffering.”
“You can lie to them all they want, but I was there. I know what you and your people did. The massacres. The forced conversions. I was the first through the Adirondacks. I saw the camp your alchemist had made and the perversions she crafted.”
“Grace was mistaken in her understanding of our Lord’s words. She was punished for her failures. We hold those who break our covenants to a high standard.”
“Did you tell them about those mistakes?” Santi asked, nodding his chin at the others behind the killer. The human members shifted nervously from foot to foot while the monsters didn’t twitch.
“Mistakes were made in the future which won’t be made in the present. There is no reason to fill their heads with false premonitions.”
“Convenient.” Santi was trying to buy time, looking around for a way out. He could always go out the windows behind him again, but he doubted he’d have the same luck he did last time. They were ready for it this time and the building was likely surrounded.
“I wonder how you can stay out of our Lord’s light after the horrors you saw. What you and your fellows did. The Blackheart. The Rockies. Mexico City. The Great Lakes.”
“The Blackheart was your doing. You destroyed a city of women and children. Killed tens of thousands.”
“Is that what they told you? That’s what the Blackheart was?” He laughed, low and slow, his chest hardly moving.
“That’s what it was.”
“Sure. Are you ready to finish this? Has your mana recovered enough?”
“Going to have to be I think,” Santi said through gritted teeth as he looked at traitors. They were the weak link, but he had to get past the Alpha and the Apostate to get to them. He shifted his feet and felt the floor shift under his weight.
“One last chance. Swear to our Lord and all will be forgiven. Stand in his Light and receive his blessings.”
“Yeah, not happening.” Santi lashed out with the morph blade in whip form, arcing it up and under the shield, slashing at the Apostate in an instant. The man twisted, hardly dodging the razor sharp tip from opening his neck. [Crosscurrent-Orb] was cast into the bulk of the bunched enemy while Santi stamped down as hard as he could on the weak floor.
His foot broke through the weakened floor, the entire floor bowing and giving out in an eight foot jagged circle as he cast [Gust] downwards. Santi landed in a rain of debris, his new [Air Shield] catching chunks of the floor and letting them slide to the side as he turned and ran towards the closed door.
A burning erupted across his right flank, the collapsing floor having hidden the Apostate as he leapt after Santi. [Gust] sent the still falling debris and the Apostate sailing across the floor as Santi limped towards the door and slammed through it and into the stairwell. Above him he could hear the roar and pounding of feet on the stairs but he didn’t give them any thought, simply jumping over the rail and falling straight down.
[Air Shield] caught him and then disintegrated as his speed bled away in a heartbeat. He had to cast twice more before he landed on the ground floor and headed towards the lobby.
A single nervous looking human and a trio of apes stood loitering around and they died in lightning blitz of spear strikes, a cracking whip which turned into a razor rope, and finally a large mace that brained the last ape as it closed the distance to him. The entire fight took only a few seconds.
It was enough of a distraction to let the speed based assasin catch back up. Santi bent at the waist and spun on his good leg as he sent a disemboweling sword strike toward where he figured the Apostate was. His brief warning of mass entering his personal sphere barely enough to stop a knife driven through his spine.
His blade tore fabric and scratched skin. Santi could feel the sudden, ravenous, hunger of the morph blade. He could feel it screaming in his mind that it NEEDED the rest of the blood in their foe. It was enough of a sudden urging that Santi’s drive to escape evaporated as he sent a flurry of strikes at the suddenly on the backfoot Apostate.
The man had a feral smile on his gritted teeth as he dodged everything Santi sent at him. A shadow rose to his side and lashed at Santi, stopped only by an [Air Shield] which caused the shadow attack to disintegrate in the tightly compact swirling winds.
Santi cursed as the Apostate’s knife dug a furrow along his right forearm, but he struck back by finally landing a solid blow. He turned the morph into a polearm with a hook and managed to catch the assassin’s cloak and threw him to the ground. The polearm morphed into a cruel pick that Santi wedged through the top of the man’s shoulder and deep into bone.
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The Apostate screamed, a shrill sound of suppressed pain as he threw his dagger sidearm at Santi. Santi had to release his grip on the killer to dodge the blow and by the time he finished his spin the Apostate had fled back to his shadows. The entire fight had been a blur of movement, attack and counterattack happening nearly instantaneously at speeds nobody else in the city could match.
Santi’s chest was heaving as he turned to look at the stairwell as the Alpha slammed through it and came charging at him. A shield of muddy brown energy coalesced around the great ape, similar to that of the Bull Primus, but more potent.
[Gust] hit and thinned the thick shield and then [Crosscurrent-Orb] detonated right under the ape. The powerful explosive blast of wind knocked the monster sideways and bought enough time for Santi to run out of the building and back into the street.
It wasn’t empty, but filled with lesser monsters who looked shocked and scared to see him amongst them. They were slow to react, nervous as Santi dragged his blood drenched body through their masses, only striking when one threatened to slow him down. Most fled from him, too weak to obstruct him for more than a moment. Skills and spells splashed around him as the remaining humans and the few monsters that could use them threw everything they could at him.
[Air Shield] and [Air Manipulation] kept anything from hitting him while [Gust] cleared the way in front of him. Santi could feel the deathly cold ache in his chest as he began to run low on mana. He had never been pushed this far and hard before in this timeline, but he had been slinging spells like he had unlimited mana for almost an hour now.
He was looking around, desperate to find anything at all to save his ass and get him off the street if even only for a few minutes. His eyes landed on a manhole cover and he went instantly toward it. He directed [Gust] downward and sent up a cloud of dust, pollen, and debris into the air in a crude smokescreen as he turned the morph weapon into a crowbar and pried the manhole cover up.
The stench was near unbearable, but Santi was beginning to grow weak from blood loss and he didn’t have any other options at the moment. It was to go down into the dark sewers or get hunted down in the streets by his ambushers. He tucked his elbows close to his body and jumped, sailing into the dark to land with a soft splash.
Santi stretched out [Air Current] to its maximum, holding back a sigh of relief as he was finally able to release his other spell forms as he started to run. He’d hear anything coming down behind him aside from the Apostate and it’d give him the time to cast his shielding spells.
He splashed along, the muddy liquid up past his ankles as he raced on. The skittering and chittering of rodents was obvious and he felt plenty of small presences all around him in his personal sphere as he kept moving forward. He hadn’t heard anything behind him yet, but he knew they’d follow. He just needed to find a spot to claim his rewards and levels for a quick boost and hope there was something decent in the achievements he had earned that would keep him going for a bit longer.
He racked his mind, trying to remember where the stadium was. The warren of tunnels underneath the city twisted this way and that, but he thought he was going in the right direction. If they failed to catch and kill him now, they’d undoubtedly be waiting at the stadium for him.
The minute he caught his breath and managed to slow the bleeding a bit he was going and getting Yesi. There was no way he could leave her in their hands and he had to stop whatever ritual they were planning. His plans for revenge had to be put aside for now.
Santi found a small nook and desperately crawled inside of it and collapsed down. Every breath was fire in his chest and he was light headed from the exertion and his wounds. His limbs were growing cold and numb and he didn’t have much time before he was going to fall unconscious if the blood loss continued. Blood loss that shouldn’t be happening.
Santi refreshed his mind about what skills the Apostate had and came to the conclusion there was a bleeding skill he had or something similar. His wounds should have slowed already, his supernatural vitality and endurance slowing down the blood loss. Instead it was pouring out of him like the wound had just happened.
Santi pressed a hand along the long cut on his hip and pressed down, biting back a scream as pain flared up again. Whatever skill had made the shadow blade it had sliced through him like butter and bypassed his stats.
“Fucking mage killers,” Santi whispered as he leaned back against the damp walls, trying to catch his breath as he scrolled through the long list of kills he had made. None of them stood out as having been significant to warrant an achievement, but there it was.
Achievement: Not Dying
Reward: Loot Box (Minor)
Congratulations, you are an Air Mage lvl. 37
Santiago V. Silva
Air Mage lvl. 37
Strength: 35 (60)
Durability: 35 (60)
Stamina: 37 (62)
Dexterity: 32 (57)
Vitality: 40 (65)
Perception: 32 (57)
Intelligence: 81 (106)
Mana: 100 (125)
Willpower: 81 (106)
Potential: 72%
Achievement: First to 100
Reward: Title (Stat-Padder)
Stat-Padder: The first person to hit 100 points in a single category.
Plus 10 to all stats.
The rush of stat points hitting him made his body bow as he kept a scream of ecstasy bit back behind clenched teeth. The rush of stats was massive and he could feel his body changing beneath his skin. It didn’t heal his wounds, but the mass increase in vitality was enough that he was closer to even with blood loss while the stamina helped him catch his breath.
He was still tired, bleeding, and exhausted, but he had a bit more in the tank now. It was like getting a cup of water in a marathon, refreshing and helped him extend himself, but not fixing the root problems.
The loot box that appeared between his legs was another matter. Blood slick fingers pried it open and he searched inside, a vial rolling over his fingertips and a scrap of paper. He grabbed both and pulled them free, the box’s presence fading away. He couldn’t see what the vial was, but he had to assume it was a healing potion. The scrap of paper was another note written in luminescent ink.
“Dear idiot, I’m bending too many rules to keep you alive. Please be smarter in the future if you survive this. You’re the most entertainment I currently have.”
-Akthyr