Even as Sean summoned up another shield he had to admit, he loved it when a plan came together.
Momentum Shift
Description: Gain the ‘Momentum Shift’ passive ability.
Effect: Allows the user to redirect damage that has been successfully resisted into their next attack. Redirected damage potential is capped at the user’s maximum damage resistance. This effect may be turned on and off at will.
Mana Aspect: Death
Bones of the Risen
Description: Hardens your skeletal structure against all types of external trauma, reinforcing your bones with the inevitability of the Risen.
Effect: Minor increase in damage resistance given for each point in the toughness attribute.
Mana Aspect: Death
When he had hardened his skeletal structure before, first with ‘Thick Bones’ and then again with the rather unimaginatively named ‘Thicker Bones’, Sean’s body had reacted by increasing its own mass. New bone had flowed out of every inch of him in a surge of liquid that had taken a few seconds to fully form. This time there was no new growth, and the change happened all at once.
Sean’s entire body cracked with a resounding boom. The sound emanated out across the cavern like a rolling thunderclap, his bones tightening in on themselves in an instant. They squeezed together with such force that it actually popped the spores, dirt, and other debris that had settled onto him over the course of the fight right off. A small cloud of detritus puffing away as new lines of an even deeper white traced their way all across his hardened body.
His opponent must have seen this as some form of attack, because the hulking undead finished its power up and brought down its sword in a thunderous forward swing. The air rippled between them, but Sean was ready for it. He dodged to the side and brought up his freshly summoned bone shield, newly reinforced by the ‘Bones of the Risen’ node he had just acquired. He had hoped that his bone shield would change with the node’s effect, since it ostensibly based on his bones, but that didn’t appear to be the case. His current shield wasn’t any bigger than his previous one had been, so Sean still didn’t expect it to stand up to the full force of the undead’s attack. All he was really hoping for was that he could use the damage it would soak up to fuel his next attack – which if it worked, meant that his momentum shift ability didn’t require him to literally face-tank blows to get any benefit out of it.
The result was even more beautiful than the fledgling gelaton could have hoped.
What he had planned to take as a glancing blow on the side of his shield stopped dead in its tracks, the rippling air billowing back out and blowing spores in the opposite direction. The mutated undead that had launched the attack raised one saggy, hairless eyebrow, and Sean twisted his wrist back to inspect the damage.
His shield’s exterior, now laced here and there with pearlescent white, was all but pristine. Untouched. The relief that flowed into Sean in that moment began to bubble up and he couldn’t help it, he began to laugh. Across from him, their hulking undead opponent hesitated at the unexpected reaction. Which gave Sean time to do something he hadn’t been able to do since his post-evolution feast had been so rudely interrupted.
With a quick mental flex, Sean brought up his most recent damage prompt for inspection.
You have been struck by an unknown ability of an Inmortu (Tribody) for 0 damage (0 total, 14 base halved due to slashing damage resistance, minus 7 due to shield toughness).
Inmortu? ‘Tribody’? The name stuck out at Sean for some reason, and he was sure the ‘Tribody’ listed in parenthesis was probably important as well. But since it had no bearing on the battle that he could discern right now, Sean shoved that thought to the side. The real beauty of the prompt was that it told him they now finally had a way to block attacks – or at least, one of the thing’s attacks – without taking direct damage. There was also a second prompt waiting, and this was the one Sean had been hoping for.
Your bone shield’s toughness has negated 7 air-aspected slashing damage. Momentum Shift has automatically empowered your next blow with this attack potential.
“Now that is what I’m talking about.” Gel said, finally get a pair of eyes in place to look at their undamaged shield. “Smashing our opponent’s attacks aside, and turning them against them.”
“You saw my prompts?” Sean asked, a little surprised by how fast his friend had caught on to his node choices.
“I saw our prompts.” Gel corrected. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, but becoming an even more glorious version of ourselves came with a few perks. I can see all of your prompts, and I’d bet this guy’s liver that you can see mine if you tried.”
“Well, isn’t that handy.” Sean said, taking mental note of that information and ignoring the wellspring of combat prompts still waiting on his attention. Not far away, the Inmortu’s hesitation had apparently fled and the hulking undead was striding towards them once more.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Sean asked his friend, raising his bone shield in one hand and extending his freshly healed right hand out in the other.
With a surge of mass, Gel formed a crimson-tinged battle axe out of the base of Sean’s right palm. The action felt so smooth and so natural that Sean didn’t even have to think to grab the weapon’s handle before it fell. He just gripped it tight as it appeared, and gave the weapon a half-twirl to get its sharpened edge in the right position. Over his shoulder, Gel’s crimson whip manifested a dagger of the same color at its tip.
“If you’re thinking: ‘Let’s chop him into steak-bites’, then yes. Absolutely.” Gel affirmed with a savage glee.
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“Close enough.”
The gelaton charged forward on the offensive, and the battle between the two evolved undead resumed once more. His first heavy blow caught the undead’s sword in mid-swing, and the air rippled in its face as the energy from the inmortu’s earlier attack was released. Black blood sprayed the cavern floor as a nasty rent appeared across its face, and Sean’s non-existent heart began to flare with a sudden hope as he felt the tide of battle finally turning in their favor.
Then the inmortu’s heavily muscled frame flexed, and Sean’s axe was knocked to the side. If it weren’t for Gel’s dagger-whip lashing forward towards the undead’s eye, its next attack might have done some real damage. But instead it was forced to step back, and Sean mentally thanked his friend for the assist as he resumed their offensive. He brought the axe back in for a diagonal slash, only for the undead to batter it almost dismissively with its blade once more.
Whatever this creature was, its combat experience with weaponry far outstripped their own. But it was still slow, and it only had one weapon. Now that they had a way to mitigate some of the threat that black blade posed, the pair were able to begin holding their own more often instead of giving ground each time. The difference that made in battle wasn’t huge, but it was there.
It just wasn’t enough.
As their battle continued, the inmortu’s regeneration continued to outpace even the heightened damage Sean was able to put out with momentum shift. Its flesh knitted together almost as fast as they could open it up now, and when it stepped back to power up once more the gelaton used that pause to think. Cold logic emanated from deep within him, keeping Sean’s emotions cool… though that particular trait apparently did not extend to both of them.
“This thing is really starting to piss me off.” Gel said in frustration. “How many times do we need to carve it up before it finally stays down?”
“I feel like we’re missing something. It can’t possibly regenerate forever, right?” Sean watched as dark mana covered the inmortu once more. “Where is its mana coming from?”
“I don’t know.” Gel admitted freely. “But I hate it. We have to work for our mana. Get up early, chase it down, and eat it whole. And this cobbled-together thing over here just keeps spending it like it’s getting it for free! It’s cheating somehow, and I don’t know how to stop it!”
“The prompt called it an ‘Inmortu’. Any idea what that is?”
“None. Though the ‘tribody’ bit probably refers to how many bodies were sacrificed to make it.”
Sean gave a mental whistle.
“Bancroft must want us dead pretty bad if he’s willing to sacrifice three of his minions.”
“Honestly, I’m not sure that all three of them were–” Gel began, but he was interrupted by the sight of a distant figure across the cavern falling down through the hole in the ceiling where the ants had poured out of. “Oh, come on. What now?”
The pair of them looked towards this latest new entrant, already mentally preparing themselves to fight another opponent – assuming this one survived the fall. Instead of falling to the ground however, the figure twirled, spread its wings, and flew directly towards them. A pair of small, armed creatures held tight to each of its outstretched wings, and there was an almost painfully bright light emanating from one of its hands.
“Is that… Saren?” Sean was about to cheer at the thought of new allies joining the fight, but his metaphorical heart fell when he recognized what the paladin was carrying.
Even from this distance, the disgust and revulsion Sean felt from that light was all he needed to know that Saren was bringing the bar infused with life mana down here. The owlen also appeared to have shoved the bar through the head of a thick plank of wood somehow, turning it into a crude sort of hammer. For a moment, Sean wondered if the paladin was going to attack them.
It would make sense. Even though they had technically rescued the paladin earlier, the owlen belonged to an organization that almost certainly hunted down the undead with fervor. What kind of paladin would Saren be if he left a powerful undead creature roaming the land? Promises had been made sure, but who really cared about honoring their word with a monster?
Sean also knew that despite the evolution they had just undergone, neither of them would survive fighting the paladin and the inmortu at the same time. The owlen was a powerful caster, and that bar of life mana had practically incapacitated them earlier just by looking at it. Just one questing touch had been enough to instantly burn away some of Gel’s mass, to say nothing of what a blow with it attached to a weapon might do.
These fears and more ran through Sean’s head as the paladin shot towards them, and he glanced over at the inmortu. It was still powering up, but it would be done soon. Maybe if they could take out Saren and the fennekians first, they might–
Saren shouted something, and the hated light shot towards them. Sean’s attention shifted back to the owlen in an instant, only to see that paladin had decided to throw the hammer of life mana at them. Its blinding light enough to make the gelaton wish he could close his orbs.
“What did he say?” Sean demanded, raising his shield as the hammer shot towards them. Maybe I can bounce it off my shield at the inmortu, then we can–
“He said: “Catch!””. Gel shouted back, and Sean’s thoughts froze.
“Wait, what?”
“Catch!” Gel shouted again, louder this time, and this time the word penetrated through Sean’s confusion.
Scrambling into action, Sean realized that the arc of the weapon wasn’t headed directly towards them at all, but over them. He raced towards it, all the while looking back and keeping his eyes on the light-cursed hammer as if it were a football. Crouching low, Sean bent his knees and leapt with all of his newly enhanced might. He stretched out the fingers of his right hand, but the glare from the weapon was too bright and he had misjudged the arc. He pulled his hand back at the last second, afraid of melting his own fingers off and losing the arm a third time.
Gel’s whip shot past him, catching the hammer right at the plank. The slime let out a whoop of victory as they landed.
“Now this is a weapon!” Gel said with true excitement. “It’s so amazing, I can’t even look at it.”
“Ugh, neither can I.” Sean said, disgust in his voice coming from somewhere he didn’t recognize. There was anger there too, but the gelaton quickly squashed it as he raised both of his hands, shielding his orbs from the bright light. “Point that thing away from me, will you?”
“How about I point it towards him?” Gel said, raising the hammer up out of Sean’s line of vision.
Through their bond, Sean felt the life-cursed weapon’s direction change as the slime pointed it towards the inmortu. The hulking undead had finished its standing power-squat routine and was striding over to them, its midnight blade held casually in one hand. Ugly face as unharmed and implacable as ever.
“Oh yeah, that’ll do.” Sean agreed, readying his shield once more as Saren and the fennekians circled above them.
“That’ll do just fine.”