The initial clash started with a bolt. Piercing the air, it barely missed Robert’s head, who was in the process of charging. At least it was how it looked from the side. Rob simply couldn't miss an aiming figure, moving to the side right at the moment when the trigger was pulled. Fainting another clumsy step, he avoided a fire arrow from the mage. Both shooters started to insult each other’s aim, but Rob wasn’t listening.
Making a wild swing with a mace to stop the simultaneous approach of the melee fighters, he had to quickly put his shield against the thrusting attack from the rogue, who nimbly ducked under the swiping arc. Two daggers clanged loudly, unable to penetrate the steel. Not losing momentum, the woman made a fast motion as if she was going to roll only to change her action a moment later. However, this time her attack was interrupted when a shield bashed her in the face, throwing her backward. An attempt to follow with a mace was cut off by a loud yell from the tank.
“Taunt!”
Despite the stupidity of a such shout, Robert felt as if something tried to seep into his mind. Turning his head to the side in search of the source, he focused his gaze on the figure with a tower shield. Just a single glance made him tremble from anger. Her appearance, her posture, even her smell – everything in this woman made his mind boil from the insane rage and disgust, demanding to crush her immediately. Rob’s vision became like a tunneled one, showing only the enemy and erasing everything else. Then he blinked.
Oh, fuck!
Raising his mace, he managed to deflect an axe swing by hitting its shaft. Striking the chest of its wielder with his elbow, Rob made him stumble backward as the chainmail was the best defense against blunt attacks. However, he didn’t have the opportunity to capitalize on it as the tank was already thrusting with its sword. Shining with light, it pierced the air with lightning speed. The moment later Robert felt a pain from the cut on his cheek. Gritting his teeth, he hit the stretched arm upwards making an opening.
The awfully loud yell from the side shocked his inner being, halting his motion for a moment. Working like a sound blast, it disoriented him for a moment, which almost led to fatal consequences. Flying over the head of the front tank, the bolt was aimed at his face. Only his quick reaction saved Robert when he conjured a thick metal mask. An impact pushed him backward, helping to avoid the strike of the axe. Catching his balance, Rob noticed how the floor underneath him started to change color.
Leaping outside the possible trap, he crashed into something invisible. It took another moment to realize that it was the rogue, who somehow became almost transparent. Instinctively covering himself in steel, he blocked the daggers before once again punching the woman in the face. This time she was in a process of dodging, rolling backwards. The addition of the outer force turned her motion into somersault and the rogue ended gracefully on her feet. Flickering a few times, she once again became visible, showing a bloodied angry smile.
“The Boss seems to have a passive protection. It may work as a hidden health bar. We need to deplete it to open his flesh for a killing strike,” using the pause in the battle, the mage announced loudly.
“But I cut him,” the tank disagreed, while making a step forward.
“It might be a critical effect… Also, he seems quite resistant to a status effect from the War Cry. Nath, try not to use it freely. The cooldown is too long,” the mage added, pushing Rob’s thought process in that way. His runes didn’t have such a setback, which was his advantage. Unfortunately, that was it. The coordinated work of the group was hard to ignore. Only their underestimation might help him to survive this, but he needed to act fast.
Copying his own start of the fight, Robert made several wide swings in an attempt to keep them in the distance. The following bolt and fire arrow came as expected, trying to cover the rogue’s lunge. Almost hugging the ground, she pushed herself forward, aiming at his legs and using the very same set of motions. With projectiles above and herself below, Rob had limited options to maneuver. Not with two more melee fighters going for his life. At least, that was what the rogue thought as Robert had a different opinion on the topic. He wasn’t a random mob, who would fall to the same tactic twice in a row.
Dispersing the mace, he deeply squatted before lunging right to the rogue. Using all his leg strength, he pushed himself into a short flight that ended with a crash when he smashed into the woman. Rob still felt a dagger cut along his side, but the rogue got it worse as multiple timely conjured spikes made quite a few holes in her body. Still, not stopping on this he picked up her body and shoved her directly onto the tank, before jumping from the knees.
The instincts of the frontliner worked before her mind managed to process what was happening. Raising her shield upwards, she blocked the body of her teammate. The obstruction of sight, the painful groan from the rogue, and the suddenness of the change in the situation led to a loss of time. The time, which was used by Robert to fullness. Lunging himself forward, he conjured a long spear in his left hand before thrusting at the axe wielder. The latter immediately reacted, redirecting the attack with the shaft of his weapon. Maybe he wanted to follow with his own attack, but Rob was already conjuring a mace into his right.
His downward motion with a weapon, which started to glow with a sinister green light, made the man change his focus on the defense. Simultaneously raising his hand and putting the shaft under the mace’s handle to limit the motion, he activated his War Cry once again. The loud yell shocked Rob but didn’t manage to stop as the huge earplugs were already protecting him. Right before the impact, when the increased weight was already adding a force, Robert willed the steel to move. Not wanting to compete in strength, he simply created a long spike on the ball, instantly turning the mace into a pickaxe. A moment later it pierced the skull of the axe wielder from above, killing him at once. The loud shout from behind came a bit too late.
“Taunt!”
Hastily turning around and smiling like a wild beast, Robert charged. His weapons barely disappeared, following his order, when the tank’s sword lunged at him. Pushing it above the shield as if the woman was too scared to stay without protection, she additionally summoned her skill. Still, knowing what to expect, Rob was ready. Tilting his head to the side to avoid a shining strike, he gripped the shield frame and pulled. As the tank’s hand was almost tied to the handle, she had no choice but to follow the motion, losing her balance. Before she knew it, the woman felt a tight grip around her palm on the sword. A moment later her own blade was entering her neck.
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However, instead of celebrating, Robert felt pain in his leg when a lying rogue had dug her dagger into his body. Kicking her in the face, Rob had to duck under the flying bolt, which went dangerously near his face. Conjuring a steel boot and adding his single rune on top, he smashed the chest of the rogue with it, cracking her ribs. And it appeared to be a lucky choice as he was fast enough to notice a sign of the incoming spell on the floor. Tuning around, he sent the trophy sword flying in one swift motion. Not even making a single rotation, the blade pierced the air only to end in the skull of a surprised mage.
That is why you need to wear a helmet, dumbass.
Pushing the corpse of the tank to the side, Robert rushed to the last living enemy, ignoring the pain in his leg. The man was already reloading his crossbow by unbending his body while gripping the hook on the metal string. Unfortunately, being in panicked mode, his motion went awry, damaging his back in the process, despite all the increase in the stats. Therefore, Rob a single swing of the mace that crashed his bent figure was enough to finish the fight.
Making some distance from the fallen, Robert focused on self-checking. Despite the pain in his leg, the wound wasn’t so deep. Somehow, after basking in demonic energy and getting his new reddish skin tone, it increased his protection from the cuts akin to what the demons had. It wasn’t on a similar level, but enough to ignore the possibility of any random cuts while using a knife. Maybe more. Rob wasn’t planning to test it as it was always better to avoid the damage completely than to naively think that he could tank it directly. Even if he indeed could do it.
There were indeed much stronger… I guess it is now my new base level of enemies. And such danger wipes any thoughts about the sureties with ease as I simply can’t feel it as a murder but more like a fair fight… Okay, I hope with danger comes a reward. Or not.
Looking around the chamber, Robert was disappointed to see the quantity of loot. The crossbow without a single bolt. The leather vest from the rogue that he couldn’t even dream to wear as it was too small. There was no magic adjustment as far as he noticed, leaving him in his old green shorts, which now looked like tattered rags. The white t-shirt didn’t survive at all by this point. Another staff from the mage. The big axe and the shield. However, the last one appeared to be an artifact with a potentially wonderful effect. The biggest joke was that the tank blocked only one attack and that was her own teammate flying onto her.
Shield of Protection
The wooden tower shield with a metal edge is meant to increase its toughness. Heavy, and huge, it is hard to use freely during the fight but is perfect to grant protection. The latter is further improved by an addition of the “Reinforcement” rune to increase the resilience of the gear and turn its wielder into an insurmountable wall. The activation command for the inscribed rune is “Reinforce”. Needs mana to sustain the effect with the cost of 2 mana per second.
Activating the item and watching as engraved runes were shining with pale blue light, Robert sighed with relief. It was a possible way to increase his power, which was going to be needed with a rise of the enemy’s level. The “Meditation” was not only useless during the fights, but also it was hard to learn it as to see the runes clearly Robert needed to power them up. But while doing it, he was set under the effect of the haze, completely immobilized and almost blind. He simply couldn’t learn it as easily as it was with “Heavy”. Rob failed to realize it at first, thinking the process would be the same. The new addition to his arsenal was finally making him move forward, pushing out from the stuck position.
Okay, so few more thousands of attempts to remember it correctly. Let’s start then. Hopefully, I will get more useful things soon… like clothes.
Of course, he didn’t. The following few dozen fights gave him a lot of different things, but not what he wanted. Some of them also had special effects from the runes, but the activation cost crushed all his dreams of using them. There was an “Absorb” which worked almost like a knight’s imbuing from the first world. Taking a set number of mana points, it completely neglected a proportional amount of incoming damage, no matter what the source was. The problem was that it had a minimum cost of 50.
“Create an illusion,” “Blinding light”, “Haste” – there were so many interesting effects that he could obtain if he had any mana capacity to actually use them. Rob failed even to properly learn them as an inability to activate them was messing with precision in the creation process. He just wasn’t sure he was doing it correctly. Another thing was a lot of drops that were rigged as hell. Around 80% of the items he got were weapons, which he didn’t need at all. The other 15% could be any part of the gear, and only the last 5% were something from the backpacks. Obviously, most of his trophies were plain and ordinary things.
After long searches, he managed to get a pair of brown pants and a linen white shirt, but it was a skill book which made him happily jump on the spot like a puppy in front of his favorite treat… only to bring real devastation to his mood a few moments later. The skill itself wasn’t anything special, just a common “Fire Bolt” that he saw plenty of times on the staves. More likely it was the reason why it wasn’t learned by a former owner. That wasn’t a point as his attempt his attempt to learn was met with a short message from the System.
Attention! The action is invalid. The Transcendent doesn’t have a needed affinity to learn the spell. The restriction cannot be bypassed as the Transcendent ignores a part of the System’s authority on his own powers.
Are you fucking with me? How convenient to have a limitation where you need, a stupid robot!
Therefore, Robert was left on his own, having only runes to increase his battle power. At least they were both useful. The “Heavy”, despite switching his focus of weapon choice on blunt types, added strength to his hits, while “Reinforcement” gave an ability to his shield to directly deal even with skill-based attacks or low-rank spells. The only problem was that it took slightly over the half of energy flow, leaving him with one free protection gear to cover his body in case of emergency. The last part went to sustain the base for the runes – the steel itself.
The more he got acquainted with rune usage, the more he noticed different nuances. Each separate steel part had to be engraved separately to have a magic effect, but Robert could combine both his runes into one piece. The other pleasant observation was no dependency between the scale of effect and the size of the conjured object. The huge shield under “Reinforcement” had the same level of protection as a tiny one. And if “Heavy” increased the weight ten times, the effect was the same no matter what the base weight was. It defied the logic, but it worked, granting more options. Unfortunately, his energy color on runes remained to look directly from a necropolis, shining with a sinister toxic green light.
It changed nothing in his training regime. Repeating the cycle of rune’s recreation an unknown number of times until it became so mechanically easy that Robert could do it any time and under any condition while taking a short break to meet another team of challengers, he finally got what he silently hoped – a System message. However, this time it caused a real cascade of them, obstructing the surroundings with a wall of text on a transparent screen. Quickly looking through it without stopping on details, he paused on a single word that almost breathed a new life into him.
Fuck yeah, a class!