Jonathan Tillman Level 13 Son of Flame
“What do I do?” Tilly shouted from his newly received position in the Bastion formation.
“Stand behind the guy with a shield and hit as many enemies as you can. You don't have to kill them, just participate. You’ll see!” Threstus shouted over the melee, already thrusting over a combatant's shoulder to impale two separate corrupted like a macabre shishkabob.
Gorock had already unslung the huge shield from his back and jumped the line, swinging his sword in punishing arcs as he cleared the area directly in front of the right corner of the formation. He acted as a tide breaker against the enemy, trusting the men behind him to take out anything coming for his flank.
Tilly added his desperate thumping attacks to the rhythm of butchery being played out in front of him. Any time an enemy flung itself onto the shield wall or reached through to attempt a grab or swipe, Tilly was there. His weapons bit through corrupted flesh and bone alike. It was chaos.
It was horrifying.
It was glorious.
Then the ground trembled with a deep crashing reverberation. Tilly threw his head back and looked up, craning his neck to a painful degree. There, towering seventy feet in the air was the Colossus. It had finally gained its feet and victoriously released a booming roar that sounded like a fog horn the size of a city bus. It had been formed from thousands of bodies, and while it didn't have eyes, Tilly felt it when the protrusion that seemed to be its head turned towards their dwindling formation that still managed to block most of the gate.
This was it.
They were out of time. Bile rose in Tilly’s throat as he realized he had failed. Even if he activated now, he doubted he would be able to make a dent in that thing without being able to overcharge the Ability far past his limits. He roared in frustration, furiously redoubling his hacking, taking swipes and bites from the enemy as his pace became more reckless.
He had given these men hope…
He had lied to them.
Tears started free-flowing down his face as he viciously hacked at every enemy in reach. Each chop of his weapon did nothing to reduce his growing certainty that he had failed. He railed against the unfairness of it all, flailing almost wildly over the shoulders of the shield bearers in front of him.
Then he felt the mental ping that indicated a level-up notification. His icon was blinking, but that couldn’t be right. He had only done a fraction of the work that should have been involved to get the last chunk of experience. He gave the command to place all of his free points into Endurance and pulled up his log.
Congratulations! You have Regained a lost Title, [Resolute]
Threstus noticed him stepping back from the line in confusion and yelled over. “It's the Line. We all share in the experience as we fight! Did you get it?”
In wonder, Tilly looked over at him, and nodded dumbly, before reaching into his fantasy fanny pack for the Microcosm. Threstus' gore-covered face, flashed white with a smile and he yelled over to Commander Linus, “Commander! Its a Go!”
Another earthshattering footstep sounded out through the battlefield, as the Colossus lumbered forward.
“Collapse the Square! Four by Four!” The blood-covered commander shouted. Exhausted Bastions threw off the weight of the tide one last time, and stepped back smartly, covering each other with thrusts and stabs as they collapsed the square to half its former size. This exposed open portions of the gate to the enemy, and some began to slip in past the much smaller formation.
Tilly saw none of this as he watched his Mana tick up to 50%.
It was time.
He held the orb in front of him and activated Flame Expulsion. With his newly developed internal awareness, he saw his mana pathways light up with a blue fiery glow, as they sent energy to his core, and his core itself began to condense the building pressure to forcefully expel flame at the apex of the Ability. Time slowed as the magic of the orb activated.
It began to burn in his hand and the markings across its surface began to shine and whirl. He felt its magic entering his body, and race along his pathways, creating a shadow network of the ones already activated by his skill. Just as he reached the point of full compaction at his core, something happened, and all of the energy drained into the shadow pathways much more rapidly than it had compacted.
“Wait, wha-” He began to exclaim in disbelief before his Mana suddenly pounded back into his activated pathways, twice as dense as it had been before. It reentered his pathways with an almost physical blow to his body and he flinched as he attempted to channel it back towards his center. It was uncomfortable, but not impossible and his awareness of the outer world dimmed as his inward focus grew sharper.
“Gorock, I think it's your moment Big Guy!” Threstus shouted as another step from the Colossus shook the ground.
Tilly gritted his teeth and pushed the newly condensed mana back through his pathways to the center where the Ability took over and began to condense it. As it reached its climax, the mana drained away again into the shadow pathways of the Artificial Endless Path, leaving Tilly feeling like a wrung-out dishrag.
The feeling lasted another hollow moment before Mana crashed into his pathways again. At four times the normal load, the metaphysical blow doubled him over like a punch to the gut. As the impact disgorged its payload, it felt like molten lead flooded his veins. He screamed as he forced it back down along his pathways to his core. The Flame Expulsion took over and condensed it again. At this point, the Microcosm Orb was shining like a miniature star, burning the skin off of Tilly’s clenched hand. His consciousness receded, and he dimly realized that if he wanted to stop the feedback, he would have to let go of the Orb. His body was on fire, ethereal flames licked up and down his torso, as he bore the weight of twice his normal mana capacity.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The Colossus took another step towards the formation, its movement deceptively slow as it lifted its tower-sized leg and slammed it down just twenty yards away.
Tilly's whole body locked up as he screamed tortuously fighting with everything he had to compress his supercharged mana fully. As soon as the Ability reached its threshold, the immense pressure momentarily lifted from his aching internal network as the Artificial Endless Path drained it all away. In the clarity of that aching emptiness, Tilly activated [Resolute], the ragged scream dying on his lips.
Gorock had, at some point, arrived beside him as the Bastions fought on, their formation slowly eroding before the endless tide of the enemy army. He stood by, watching the approach of the Colossus with unbridled glee.
[Resolute] slid into place, encasing Tilly's body and mind in an impenetrable moment. In a single shining flash of clarity, Tilly understood many things at once. He was about to get hit with Mana eight times denser than his pathways were designed to handle, and while he was sure [Resolute] would protect him from the effects of such an overload, he was not confident in his capacity to control such power. Even as he had this thought, the burning orb in his hand began to turn to slag, the enchanted metal melting in between his fingers.
“Throw me, NOW!” He shouted, his eyes flying open. What had felt like a burning liquid in his pathways previously now hit his network like a living bar of plasma. His pathways would have disintegrated except for the intervention of the many-hued energy that had reinforced his network like scaffolding, holding them up under the load for a single cycle. The rainbow coalescence coated the insides and outside of his pathways, guiding the destructive force all the way to his core where it began to compact a final time.
Gorock lifted him with ease and reared back before launching him into the air with terrifying speed. A scream once again tore itself from Tilly’s lips. He was mid-arc, flying directly toward the chest of the Colossus when time stopped.
Tilly’s awareness was once again elongated and deepened as he became locked in the crosswinds of Space and Time. He could still think, but it was not a linear experience, instead different aspects of his situation bloomed in his consciousness at once and he processed them simultaneously.
First, something had gone wrong with the feedback loop of the Microcosm. He assumed that almost any foreseen use of the item had not factored in the presence of a title such as [Resolute] and thus it had failed when pushed past a third feedback loop. The Mana had returned to him at the appropriate density, but the item had melted to his hand, leaving him unable to drop it and break the connection.
But something else was happening, as it had melted, the enchanted hyper-imbued metal had made contact with his sleeve and a notification had appeared on his log. One that he was able to comprehend instantaneously once he understood its existance.
Congratulations! You have been subjected to an extreme environment while wearing Origin’s primitive leather armor, activating a hidden growth prerequisite. You are currently caught in an infinite mana feedback loop and have provided your armor with an enchanted material to pattern a new form. When in Mana Overdrive, your armor will take on characteristics of the Nullspider hide. The enchantment found on the item sacrificed to your armor will be overlaid on the Nullspider hide in this form allowing a full Experience to Mana conversion at 100 Exp - 1% Mana Regen. Conversion will continue until Mana usage or Experience flow ceases.
His leather armor had turned matte black all over with silvery metal inlays that looked suspiciously like a mix between the surface of a computer chip and the nerve-like pathways of his mana channels. These newly carved paths had taken the place of the Microcosm in the feedback loop and were still pushing extremely dense mana through his battered, but thankfully protected mana channels.
Finally, his was not the only hidden surge of mana on the field of battle. Tilly was able to sense a steady but dense flow of red-aspected mana flowing from the front lines of the battle back toward the ranks of the Cult's true army. There, they had set up some sort of large ritual and it was feeding off the deaths of this conflict.
These realities settled into his consciousness and then time hiccuped forward, like a CD skipping. The Colossus’ foot was lifted to its apex, ready to slam down and crush the entire Bastion formation, while Tilly flew past in an arc that would have him hitting the creature center mass. All of this as his Flame Expulsion finally reached its pressure limit and his world exploded in blue flames.
Some distant part of him noted the feeling of impact upon a solid perpendicular surface, but most of him was consumed with the raw terror of being a conduit for impossible amounts of energy. As the initial wave of his ability released at eight times its normal magnitude, the lines on the new form of his armor lit up and began to receive an influx of… Experience. It was taking this source of energy and converting it to raw mana that continued to power a channeled version of Flame Expulsion. Until the ability ran out of enemies to consume, he was trapped, frozen in a vortex of influx and output.
To make matters worse, [Resolute] had stopped protecting his pathways after the initial wave and they were being put under extreme pressure from continuously casting his strongest ability. He tried to scream, but there was no oxygen, his flames had consumed it all. He persisted there in this confluence of power and agony until suddenly the influx stopped and he began to fall, his unconscious form limp as it crashed to the ground.
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Threstus Marcellus level 44 Empire’s Bastion Subcommander.
Two minutes earlier.
Threstus wasn’t sure what was going to happen when Gorock tossed the human at the disgusting monstrosity. He knew that the man had been gathering mana for something he referred to as a bomb, but he didn't know how effective it would be against this creature. No, this was where the Bastions would make their end.
'Gods, how had it come to this?'
At least he could die here with his brothers and do his duty one last time, making some small atonement for the incredible debt his family now owed the empire and all of its citizens. To think they would stoop so low for the favor of such a power was horrendous. Thinking about his past as the previous heir to that death trap of a family was one of the few things that could darken his otherwise cheerful demeanor.
He was about to continue to fight on the line, to hold for a few minutes more when the unthinkable happened. The human's attack exploded into the form of a blue shooting star, hitting the Colossus in its center and then releasing an expanding mass of blue flames. The creature let out a much higher pitch call of distress before stumbling back. All the while the flames continued to grow into a miniature sun.
“Commander!” Threstus shouted looking over.
“I see it. Bastions, PROTECT!” The last of the collective Unit Reserve Mana washed over the formation and they all withdrew even tighter into the square with supernatural grace. The second rank unslung shields and held them above their heads while the first rank continued to guard against outward pressures. A golden aegis much more potent than the slowing effect of the shield wall was projected in all directions and the entire unit hunkered down under extremely dense layers of protection.
This formation had been developed hundreds of years ago to protect against large-scale destructive attacks that could sometimes be unleashed by an enemy. They had pulled it up just in time, as flame began to rain down all around them. None of them felt the intense heat behind their collective magical shield, but outside their formation, they could hear thousands of the creatures release a collective screech of panic and pain.