The streets around the decimated towers were a frantic bustle of movement and sound, nearly a hundred mortals and a handful of healers rushing to the scene and aiding the nearby wounded. A few heads turned my way in surprise, though no one said anything.
Filled to the brim with surging heart energy that sparked around me like bolts of lightning, I walked up to the nearest healer like a raging storm. My body screamed to join the fight, to taste the thrill and adrenaline of a death battle once more. To prove myself. To test myself.
And, to some more conscious extent, to gain the duke’s trust.
“What happened?” I growled more than asked. She stayed focused on her patient, to the healer's credit, not even tossing me a glance. My head swiveled toward the bazaar I’d walked through only minutes earlier at a bloodcurdling scream and a new pulse of distant heart energy and magic.
“I don’t know,” she said, her breathing becoming labored as her white light continued to stitch together the gaping wound in a golden knight’s leg.
“Who does?”
She turned to glower at me just as her white light faded and the knight groaned. “Can’t you see we’re in a state of emergency? Help out or fuck off.” The raven-haired healer hiked up her red and gold skirt before hurrying away, likely to the next knight in need. I didn’t stop her. If she didn’t know anything, then she was no help. The blunt ache in my leg disagreed, but I ignored it and took off toward the tens of raging heartbeats clashing just south of the capital. What had Nasq said was there… the merchants?
I had barely left the vicinity of the black tower’s decimation when the first waves of warring energies washed over me like a warm gust of wind. I was a blur of motion as I blew past the first few knights in golden armor. Their swords and shields whipped through the air only to slam against the weapons of foreign knights in gray and blue armor, their cores emanating the same low-bronze tier as the duke’s.
Shops and taverns burned with black fires as bodies and blood littered the streets. Even in the shallow part of the war I had entered, the cobblestones ran red, dark shadows dancing and leaping under the full moon as black flames flickered and mirrored against the golden and blue armor populating its vision.
The first knight to spot me was a bronze-core Awakened, perhaps two rings into the tier, and he charged at me with suicidal reckless abandon. His mouth opened to let out a war cry as his large sword plummeted down to lop off my head. The strike bounced uselessly off my shield of heart energy.
I surged forward into the knight’s guard when his move rebounded, using that slight opening to ram the knuckles of my index and middle fingers into the center of his larynx. His throat collapsed inward against the force of my strike and he gagged, his eyes going wide. The knight wheezed and collapsed to the ground, spasming in a desperate attempt to breathe.
I left him to die and continued forward toward the more powerful sources.
A massive source of energy exploded from my left. I glanced toward it to see a massive streak of blue blazing directly at me, powered by a familiar core. Before I could react to the movement, the blue figure slammed into my side and sent me flying into the wall of a nearby inn.
It, thankfully, was not being devoured by the black flames.
I groaned in pain and blinked. My vision swam with dark dots and blurred whenever I moved. As I struggled to my feet, I nearly fell when the world seemed to spin and dance.
A gust of wind. Combat. Strong core.
Dodge.
My instincts kicked in despite my concussed mind, and I leaped to the side just as a dense blade of blue steel cut through the spot I’d just been, splitting apart the inn’s walls like parchment.
I blinked again in a desperate attempt to steady my vision. Unlike the knights I’d encountered on my way, the man… no, the being before me was not wearing gold or blue-gray armor. His armor was a shining, moon white. It all but sparkled under the brilliance of the night’s stars.
Adrenaline and circulating energy cleared my mind and vision, allowing my senses to take the luxury of examining my surprise foe. My previous frown vanished into a smile, lips twitching to hold back a chuckle.
“Another one of you?” I asked, rotating my shoulders to stretch them out a little. That hit had done a rather shocking amount of damage.
“So it was you who killed Ezekiel,” the High Pandorian snarled, dark blue lips peeling back to reveal similarly shining white teeth.
I raised an eyebrow at him and quirked my lips into a half-smirk. “Was that his name? He died so fast I hadn’t had the chance to ask. Quite weak, really. Are you much stronger? If not, I’d prefer if you simply step aside. I enjoy breaking a sweat as much as the next warrior, but I’m in a bit of a rush.” I punctuated the taunt with a dismissive flick of my arm as if shooing a bug away. “Go away.”
Instead of taking the bait, the Pandorian scowled. “We shall see if you can maintain your dignity.”
Two more one- or two-ringed silver-core Pandorians blurred at me, trailed by the screams of bronze-core and magic-sourced golden-clad knights. I noticed that, despite the speed at which the Pandorians charged at me, they took great care in avoiding any knight in blue-gray armor.
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I quickly drew in lunar energy and my core erupted with a blaze of energy and Authority. I managed to use the pressure of my Authority to halt the incoming Pandorians for a split second, causing them to trip in their haste.
Then I was upon the first Pandorian, my energy-fueled fists crashing into him like battering rams. His shield took the brunt of my effort, dents puncturing it like spots on a cow with every strike.
While it absorbed most of the impact, his comrades had managed to regain their composure enough to join the fray, and my offense was soon turned to a wild defense as I fended off the assault of three silver-cored High Pandorians.
Sweat swamped me as I fought and my muscles strained under the taxing effort. I had experience and an abnormal abundance of heart energy on my side, but the Pandorians had numbers, and they had clearly been immersed in high-quality martial arts for decades.
I needed an opportunity to shift the flow of battle so I could go back on the offense. My endurance would hold for now, but they didn’t need to tire me out physically. My focus simply needed to falter once. To let through a single strike that would cascade into more. The burden was on me to keep the dam locked tight.
The four of us entered into a consistent pattern of strike and block, strike and block, the only interruptions being my failed attempts to counter.
A blade of blue Pandorian steel buzzed past, a hair’s breadth from slicing into my ear just as I ducked under it and swatted aside a stab with the layer of lunar energy around my right arm. My left hand darted forward with the stolen dagger toward the stabbing Pandorian’s leg. A third sword intercepted me, knocking the dagger aside, and I used the momentum to twist around the first Pandorian’s downward slash.
The stalemate was broken when an all too familiar berserker came bursting into us from above with a roar of absolute maddened fury. His giant fists clasped tightly together to form a massive ball that caught a Pandorian off guard and bludgeoned straight into his face, pummeling him into the ground so hard he bounced off and spiraled into the stone wall of a smithy.
I knew that wasn’t enough to do more than irritate the Pandorian—Ethan wasn’t at that level yet—but it was enough to affect the flow of battle, and I grabbed the chance.
In that moment of uncertainty and shock, I leaped at the Pandorian with the broken shield. Heart energy swelled densely around my coated hand, and I drove it into a gap in his armor, just under his armpit.
The High Pandorian’s scream was cut short when Ethan’s balled fist slammed into him, sending the Pandorian to the floor with a hair-raising crack. I glanced at the berserker and lifted an eyebrow at his display of monstrous power, way higher than what he should be producing.
In an apparent response to my thoughts, a depthless black window appeared before me, filling my vision with dark red text.
[Name: Ethan Brooks]
[Class: Primal Berserker]
[Race: Human?]
[Level: 43]
[Open subwindow for additional statistics on Paragon 001]
I barely had time to open my mouth to swear before a blue fist punched into my face and knocked me flat to the ground.
Turn off. Turn off. Go away. I thought at the Desire System, nearly panicking in uncertainty until the black window finally faded from my line of sight much slower than usual. What in Ashwash was that? The window had practically blinded me for a moment.
Fortunately, the remaining Pandorian’s advance faltered when a tremendous inferno of red mana engulfed him whole. The Pandorian Ethan had initially knocked away came charging back, a massive purple bruise framing the side of his face that had encountered Ethan.
The berserker met the Pandorian with an exchange of fists and kicks, neither side bothering to block and simply choosing to absorb each strike.
I converted Ethan’s system level to heart energy based on the raw power he was exerting and was surprised to find Ethan’s strength at least equal to a two-ringed bronze core from Ordite. Approximately every 10 levels would equal a heart ring, translating into a core around level 30. That explained how he’d been damaging silver cores, even if they weren't at the level of cores from Ordite. If his growth was anything like mine had been under the Main System, Ethan was going to very quickly become a real potent threat to just about everyone.
Nasq hovered above, sitting cross-legged on a materialized nimbus cloud. He pointed a small stick at the Pandorian still enraptured by Nasq’s inferno, and the blond-haired Paragon shouted something indistinguishable right before another inferno erupted from the tip of the stick and added itself to the first, like a dragon breathing fire atop a burning forest.
[Name: Nasq Delacoire]
[Class: Primal Sorcerer]
[Race: Elf?]
[Level: 39]
[Open subwindow for additional statistics on Paragon 031]
I needed to pay more attention to my Paragons, I realized, gawking at Nasq’s insane growth. Even I had taken some weeks to break through to bronze core. Nasq and Ethan had done it in a single week. What else didn't I know about the Desire System and my Paragons?
If all my Paragons grew at such an exponential rate, I would soon have an army of powerful warriors. Maybe more powerful than myself.
I didn’t have time to labor on the thought for long as Ethan was flipped onto his back and kicked in the ribs. A snap echoed from the impact, and Ethan rolled away, backtracking while clutching his black-and-blue bruising ribs.
The Pandorian’s feral grin was quickly dashed when he saw his comrades, one sporting a broken jaw that hung dislocated and twisted, the other burnt and charred.
The one engulfed by Nasq’s inferno twitched under the flames of magic enveloping him, seemingly in an attempt to take a step out of it when something glinted under the flickering of Nasq’s magic and a spear suddenly appeared, skewering the charred Pandorian through his heart.
[Name: Nida Keys]
[Class: Primal Tigerkin]
[Race: Therianthrope?]
[Level: 41]
[Open subwindow for additional statistics on Paragon 002]
The silver-haired Therianthrope casually slid down the length of a steel slab from the ruins of a nearby building and hopped over to her spear just as Nasq snuffed out his flames. “That wasn’t so hard,” she said with a snicker toward the stabbed Pandorian, removing her spear and plunging it this time through the center of his face. “Very cathartic.”