Nymin’s midsection felt crackly and thin, like old parchment. Around half of the mana that flowed through the damaged area leaked out into the air, and the rest was consumed to begin the slow process of recovery.
In the heat of battle, she hadn’t gotten a good feel for the skill that the purple snake head had blasted through her, or its affinity. Rather than cutting or smashing, it had warped the area and pulled it out of alignment with the rest of her body.
It was like a cancer, turning her flesh against itself.
Nymin was certain that the only reason she was still alive and conscious was her unbalanced spread of attribute points.
* Name: Nymin Farlight
* Level: 4.1
* Experience: 33%
* Attributes:
* Hunger: 1.002
* Integrity: 3
* Cunning: 1
* Release: 1
* Perpendicularity: 1
* Talents:
1. Gain the physiology of a mana-fueled Wraith.
1. Your body is intangible and immune to all physical damage.
2. You may expend mana to exert limited physical force.
3. You do not naturally regenerate mana.
4. Your Attributes have been altered.
5. Your health, stamina, and mana pools have been combined into a single mana pool.
6. Gain Skill: Wraith’s Hunger. (This skill occupies your level 1 skill slot.)
2. You have increased maneuverability and proprioception while in flight.
1. Gain Skill: Wraith’s Flight.
3. Gain Skill: Banshee’s Wail
* Talent Skills:
* Wraith’s Hunger (Unique):
* Type: Drain
* Affinity: Hunger
* Range: Short
* Cost: None
* Effect: Absorb mana from nearby creatures or objects or gradually absorb nearby ambient mana. This effect scales with the Hunger attribute.
* Wraith’s Flight (Unique):
* Type: Mobility
* Affinity: Pure
* Range: Self
* Cost: Very Low Mana.
* Effect: Fly for a negligible mana cost while intangible.
* Banshee’s Wail (Unique):
* Type: Attack, Ranged
* Affinity: Song, Death
* Range: Medium
* Cost: Moderate Mana
* Effect: Use your voice to produce high frequency sound that has a destabilizing effect on mana constructs, including spirits. Effects vary.
* Skill Slots:
* Occupied by Talent Skill: Wraith’s Hunger.
* Obfuscation (Uncommon):
* Type: Manipulation, Stealth
* Affinity: Shadow
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Mana
* Effect: Reduces your visible profile by warping nearby light and shadow. The mana cost of this ability scales inversely with light level.
* Crystallize Pure Mana (Exceptionally Rare)
* Type: Conjuration
* Affinity: Pure
* Range: Short
* Cost: Moderate Mana
* Effect: Condenses the user’s mana into pure affinity mana crystals.
* Empty
Her highest attribute, integrity, had a function similar to an ordinary human’s vitality and toughness attributes. It determined her ability to resist and recover from damage.
Cunning was her equivalent to mind and perception. It enhanced the aspects of her mind and senses related to hunting, such as situational awareness and mana senses, more than general aspects, like memory.
Hunger governed her ability to drain mana, including the strength, speed, and reach of her mana drain, and the ability to convert the mana to be compatible with her own mana pool. Nymin was still concerned that it remained a fraction above one. She’d heard of a couple talents that allowed attribute points to be divided into fractions, but she didn’t have one. Her only guess was that the experience from the monsters that had died from her accidental mana drain while advancing the hunger attribute had been added along with what she’d gathered before.
That seemed like a good thing, but she’d already been nervous about increasing her hunger attribute, so any deviation from her expectations put her on edge.
Release was the mirror attribute to hunger. Instead of pulling in mana, it increased the rate of mana release, strengthening her skills like the magic power attribute, but by pushing it out more forcefully, rather than increasing her mana’s density. Nymin wasn’t entirely sure what governed her mana’s density, other than the density of the mana she chose to absorb.
Integrity, hunger, and release all contributed to the size of her mana pool, which was already extremely large for her level, since it included what had previously been her stamina and health pools.
Her last attribute, and the one she understood the least, was perpendicularity. Even immediately after advancing the attribute, Nymin hadn’t noticed any changes. There had been occasions where she thought she felt something from that portion of her spirit, but the sensations had been so faint and ephemeral that she’d dismissed them.
In fact, there had only been a single time she’d felt any significant feedback from the attribute, and it was right now.
It wasn’t anything as obvious or clear as the ravenous need of hunger, or the smoothness in her mana channels from release. The sensation was like a subtle lack of pressure, as if a solid barrier she’d been leaning against her whole life had gone soft and pliable.
The feeling varied in intensity proportional to her distance from the Evolved False Hydra and, perhaps more importantly, the glowing green mana node, hovering above its guardian like a sickly sun.
Her current position, phased past the chamber’s stone wall and into the earth, wasn’t close to the mana node, but it was still close enough to feel that same pliability. Functioning on instinct, Nymin reached out with Wraith’s Hunger and pulled at the node’s mana directly. She was too far from it to drain more than a few bits of mana, but those motes burned in her spirit like tiny suns.
Her spirit struggled to convert the strangely potent mana to something she could use, but once it processed the first, Nymin was glad she’d put in the effort. The mana, powerful in a way distinct from level or sheer quantity, proved far more effective at repairing the damage in her midsection, pulling a small piece of her body back into alignment with the rest.
It would still be slow going, but hopefully she would be back in the fight soon enough to make a difference, assuming of course, that neither of the kids put themselves in significant danger before she recovered. She was keeping track of them with her spiritual senses and interface messages.
If they needed saving, she’d be there, regardless of her injuries.
***
Dyani could only endure waiting a couple of minutes for her mana pool to reach a quarter full before she returned to the fight.
Peeking out from her alcove, she saw that the Evolved False Hydra had surrendered its stationary position below its shining mana node in favor of climbing down towards Pikawon, who was climbing down the root in turn. It shot occasional attacks, but Pikawon was a difficult target, since he was navigating through the center of the tangle of roots, where the hydra couldn’t fit.
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The hydra also had limited means of attacking, since most of its heads were occupied, biting down on woody roots to anchor and move its body.
Dyani was grateful she had hands for climbing instead. That couldn’t be good for its teeth.
Her friend obviously noticed her, since she received a message seconds after coming into view.
Pikawon Billbrook: Nice of you to show back up. I figured you were taking the rest of the day off.
Dyani wanted to roll her eyes, but she kept them locked on the hydra.
Dyani Farlight: Needed to take a mana potion. How are you on mana?
Pikawon Billbrook: Fine for now. What I really need is a big flat surface to fight on. Only reason I’m not hydra food is that this saint's damned piece of drake shit isn’t a great climber either.
Dyani Farlight: How much more damage do we need to take it down?
Pikawon Billbrook: At least four or five more combinations of me slashing and you burning and freezing. That was terrifying, by the way. But we should focus on removing heads instead of doing damage for now.
Pikawon Billbrook: If it can see or attack, we can take it easily with a little time, unless it has some crazy power we don’t know about, which it probably does.
Pikawon Billbrook: Why are we doing this again?
Dyani ignored that last message. She’d have been more worried if he hadn’t been up for joking.
Dyani Farlight: My skills aren’t good for head chopping. Drag and Drop?
Pikawon Billbrook: If you mean where you grab me and drop me over the monster, yes.
Pikawon Billbrook: But we aren’t calling it that. How about Meteor Strike?
Dyani Farlight: Drag and Drop in two minutes.
Pikawon Billbrook: We’ll talk names later. Leave me on an upper root and I’ll drop on my own this time. I want to lure it further up to give me more room to slow down.
Dyani wasn’t budging on the name. Meteor Strike was already the name for a fire and earth skill, actually of her father’s favorites. It conjured a massive ball of burning rock several miles above the target. It took several minutes to reach the ground, but when it did, it apparently did an amazing level of damage. Rotomin hadn’t been able to use the skill at full strength, but even half a meteor was enough to kill just about anything.
It would be confusing to name a battle tactic after a skill that wasn’t involved and they didn’t even have.
Dyani found herself wishing she had a similarly powerful skill. Feverchill Bloom had proven itself to be more powerful than she’d expected, but it was still unable to do much against undamaged scales.
Meteor Strike itself wouldn’t be a good choice, since they were underground, and the impact would do nearly as much damage to the city as the potential flood of monsters from the mana node fully forming, but she could think of several other skills that would work very nicely.
Mirror Wall could reflect the hydra’s attacks. Pyrejelly could coat it with sticky, incredibly flammable substance that could burn even underwater. Blade Storm could slice the monster like Pikawon had, but continuously and from every direction.
By the goddess, even the relatively common, Plant Manipulation would’ve been invaluable. They could use the skill to strangle the hydra with the very roots it was using to maneuver.
Dyani resolved to drastically expand her available skills if she survived today. With sufficient mastery of her skill creation abilities, she could just keep a skill slot open to create the perfect skill for any opponent and situation.
Unfortunately, she still needed to actually power the skills she created. Even if she had Meteor Strike, it took more mana than she had in her entire pool to activate, but she could at least create a weaker version of it, or whatever skill best suited her needs at any given time.
But this was a time for action, not wishful thinking. She could revolutionize her magical abilities when her family was safe.
She watched the hydra advance and Pikawon retreat, mindful of the distance between them. Her mana was still increasing at a prodigious rate. She estimated that she had enough to perform the drag and drop maneuver.
However, Dyani knew better than to assume everything would go to plan, so she wasn’t comfortable acting until she had a comfortable buffer of available mana.
It was a prudent tactic, especially since Pikawon wasn’t in immediate danger, but her hand was forced when she heard shouts from behind her.
She spun to see a flood of city guards approaching with various animals. Human shouts and animal equivalents rang out, drawing the attention of the hydra. It stopped its pursuit of her friend to turn several heads, including the purple snake that had dealt Nymin enough damage that the level 4 woman was still recovering.
It was possible that the purple snake head’s beam attack was more effective on intangible creatures than flesh and blood, but Dyani wasn’t willing to take that chance.
She flung herself to the left of her alcove, using Mana Jump to propel herself further down.
The guards who had been so thrilled to finally catch up with one of their quarries were suddenly met with a barrage of exploding mushrooms, a lance of purple light, and even a volley of needle-like hairs.
A man in the front with a bandage around one hand was struck by the purple light. He lost all control of his limbs and fell into the open air. His screaming reached a crescendo of snapping bone as he struck an angled wall.
Dyani winced, but even if she wanted to, she wasn’t fast enough to save the man from rolling into the lake of sewage.
There was a brief silence from all parties, before one of the smaller roots shuddered. A bulging shape ascended the root, like the mushrooms traveling up the hydras necks, but without release. In a brief, terrible span of seconds, the unlucky and hopefully already dead guard was sucked past the ceiling and out of sight.
The hydra was the first one to break the silence, screeching in displeasure at having its prey snatched away.
The assembled guards backed away, many injured and afflicted with Rat Back Poison, and the rest wary at becoming so.
A single, commanding voice cut through the disorder.
“Flanking maneuvers. I want two defenders and two casters at each alcove. Scouts, find a team and guide them to one of these openings. Mages and anyone with wind skills, keep the air clear of poison.”
“Anybody else, you’re support. Keep our frontlines full of mana, tie ropes around their waists and keep them from falling like Chitto. Healers, you know what to do.”
The panicked mob didn’t quite transform into a well oiled machine, but it became at least a functional one. From her limited vantage, Dyani couldn’t see everyone, but she did see two burly men crouch down with tower shields, which shimmered with a thin, blue barrier of protective mana. She could make out two guards behind them, ranged attackers, one with a bow and one with glowing hands.
They didn’t attack, waiting for the other guards to take similar positions at other alcoves, but the noise and shine of mana was still enough of a distraction that Dyani took the chance to jump to Pikawon.
As this was the second time doing so, she retrieved him more quickly and smoothly than before, but didn’t get out unscathed. She was hit by two hairs launched from the Tanglepillar head, straight and sharp as needles, which stabbed through the padded cloth armor on her upper thigh like it wasn’t there.
The hair needles went through her leg, and had the momentum to shoot straight out the otherside, but some magic effect stopped them when an equal length of needle was sticking out from each side of her leg.
Dyani was more grateful than ever that Mana Jump didn’t require her to use her legs, as that would allow the embedded needles to do even more damage. The pair jumped up to the open space the hydra had originally occupied, and Dyani dropped Pikawon, trusting him to catch himself while she collapsed on her side that didn’t have any needles in it.
Even so, the movement of the needles on impact made her sick to her stomach.
The wounds were barely bleeding, since they were small and plugged with the same projectiles that had caused them, but the sides of the needles were nearly as sharp as their tips, cutting the insides of her muscles. Dyani would’ve traded them for a deeper slash in a moment
“Remind me to wear knee pads next time,” Pikawon said. He turned to her with a smile that vanished as soon as he saw her injuries.. He rushed over, fingers hesitating beside the two needles.
Dyani didn’t trust her voice, so she used her interface to message him to pull them out.
“I’ve got you.” He pinched the first needle, then swore and pulled back bloodied fingers. Unlike a mundane needle, the Tanglepillar’s hair needles were infused with blade mana that made them sharp along their entire length.
He reached out again, and Dyani wanted to protest. She didn’t want him to hurt himself for her sake. Instead of pinching with his fingers, Pikawon charged the claws on his thumb and forefinger with a trace of blade mana and used their sharp edges to pinch the needle.
Pikawon’s blade mana was enough to resist the cutting force of the hair’s blade mana. He slowly pulled the first needle free and tossed it aside, but as he went for the second, a chorus of hydra heads made themselves known.
The monster had nearly reached their level, and the city guards had yet to attack and distract it, not that she wanted to be out in the open when they did.
She didn’t trust their accuracy or intentions.
In a single, fluid motion, Pikawon pulled the second needle free. She bit her tongue and tasted blood, but at least she could move again without slicing her muscles apart.
Instead of carelessly tossing it aside, Pikawon closed his eyes. His pointed ears twitched and swiveled like a dog’s. Once he pinpointed his target, he cast the needle like a tiny spear.
Less than a second after a Fungal Rat head stretched into view, the needle stabbed through its head and lodged itself there. The head retreated, letting out pained squeaks, but there were more where it came from.