The two moved towards the entrance. However, before they could take more than a few steps, two hooded men appeared before them with sinister smiles. Their robes were emblazoned with the Order of Eternal Night's insignia, and red threads ran throughout the fabric.
Alex and Melodi instantly knew what they were dealing with and prepared themselves accordingly. "There you are! We were wondering if you might follow after your ally, and lo and behold, here you are!" said the man on the left.
"You're going to have to come with us now! That is, of course, if you don't want us to hurt you!" added the man on the right. Alex and Melodi exchanged a quick glance and pulled forth their weapons. If it was a fight these guys wanted, then it was a fight they would get!
The battle started without warning. Alex charged forwards toward the man on the right, and Melodi aimed her drawn bow at the one on the left. Just as quickly, the two Acolytes drew their weapons and entered the fray. It was a somewhat even battle. Both sides consisted of Rank-One Conductors, though the acolytes were slightly stronger. Both of them were at the peak of the first rank and on the verge of pushing through to the second.
Still, where they had the advantage in terms of power, they lacked true skill and mastery over their abilities. Melodi and Alex had trained under one of the most thorough combat teachers the Guardian Hall Academy had ever seen. Glenda was quite direct and wouldn't let them achieve a passing grade in her class unless they could leave three consecutive marks on her body.
Glenda herself was a Rank-Three Conductor, and both Alex and Melodi had been able to pass her class with flying colors. Sufficed to say, these two Academy Conductors' technical skill was far above that of the two Order Acolytes. Still, the battle was tough.
More so for Melodi than Alex. Alex was easily blocking the attacks of the knife-wielding Acolyte. It was strange to see such a large man using such a small knife. However, the answer to that oddity was soon revealed. Alex went in to slice at the waist of the man with his Scal'tar. However, the small knife instantly grew to the length of a regular sword and parried the attack. It returned to its normal size, and the man using it grimaced in anger.
His surprise had been revealed all too early, and now the enemy knew of his ability. Alex chuckled and narrowed his eyes, thankful that he had managed to spring that trap early on. Had it come at a more inopportune time, he might have suffered a serious injury. Still, Alex had the better reach and was now wary of the extending blade.
Melodi, on the other hand, was doing a bit worse. Her axe-wielding opponent couldn't seem to catch her, but neither could she land a hit with her arrows. He would approach with his axe held high, and she would dash away, causing him to strike the ground where she had once been.
Every time she would turn to fire off a volley of arrows, but the man would deflect them each time or block them with the side of his sturdy axe. The arrowheads couldn't pierce the thick steel of his weapon, but like this, he also was unable to hurt his opponent, which quickly began to annoy him.
He slammed his axe into the ground and let out a mighty battle cry as Melodi leaped out of the way. However, this time, he followed it up with a spell. He hurled a barrage of pointed stones at her, and due to their speed and catching her off guard, several of them embedded themselves into her thighs.
She let out a howl of pain and quickly used her Zight to force them out of her body. They clattered to the ground as she popped a healing pill, and the gashes began to close. But at that moment, the man charged forward and brought his Axe down toward her head. She raised her bow and caught the handle of the weapon stopping the sharp blade an inch from her face. It was a feat of great speed and dexterity as she had to maneuver the bow past the curved blade of the axe to catch the handle. She raised a leg and kicked the man away with all her strength, her blood sloshing into the air as she moved.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He soared through the air and slammed into a cluster of tombstones before rolling to a stop. Melodi didn't let that chance pass and fired off her own barrage of spell-enhanced arrows.
“Puchi!”
“Puchi!”
“Puchi!”
“Puchi!”
Each one carried the ice bolt spell, and as they sunk into the flesh of the acolyte, his limbs were coated with a layer of ice. The arrows didn't sink too deeply thanks to his wards, but those same wards were useless against the ice that was quickly engulfing his limbs. Had they been geared more toward arcane protection instead of physical damage neutralization things might have been different.
He cried out in agony as the ice spread and slowed his movements while dealing small amounts of cold damage, but his pained lament was silenced rather quickly as an arrow pierced his left eye. His wards stopped it from sinking too deeply into his skull but before he could even compose himself another arrow shot through the first, traveled all the way down the shaft, and pushed the first arrow deep into his brain.
He struggled to let out gasps and incoherent speech but was silenced forever as the spell laced into the second arrow finally took effect. A cascade of ice spikes erupted from his skull and exploded outwards covering the ground and surrounding tombstones in slushy blood and fragments of ice and bone. He fell back and lay sprawled on the ground. Melodi let out a sigh of relief as the man died, and she turned her attention to Alex as her wounds finished healing.
Alex was doing much better against the acolyte with the extending knife. He had learned quickly to keep his distance and use the length of his Scal'tar to attack. However, that wasn't all. Alex was eager to catch up with Ulric, and he held nothing back as he fired off a stream of fire at his opponent. The bright flames blinded the man and left his robes smoldering. Alex fired off a fireball before leaping over him and beheading him with a single swipe of his Scal'tar.
The man's wards tried their best to stop the attack, but they were helpless against the force Alex was exerting coupled with the blast of the fireball spell. His wards were torn apart and made a sound like cracking timber before his head rolled from his shoulders and toppled to the ground.
Blood sprayed from the wound while the body fell over and twitched. The battle was over in only a few instants, and if Glenda had been there to witness it, she would have been quite proud of her two skilled students.
Alex motioned for Melodi to approach without even pausing after beheading his opponent. She hobbled over to him before the last of her leg injuries finished closing, and the two stared down into the black depths of the ruin’s entrance.
The battle had only lasted for a few moments, and their reserves of Zight were still nearly full. Alex was quite masterful at using his Zight Stanza, but his Scal'tar had been specially layered with enchantments and gems that allowed him to store Zight inside it.
Cypher had shown him a few tips about energy conversion after their run-in with Louis. Alex took steps to improve his battle prowess by increasing the amount of available energy he could access. However, there was only so much energy he could store within his trusty weapon at his current level. If he had been able to afford the services of a more powerful enchanter, that limit would have been greater.
However, as it was, he had expended the entire supply of latent energy within his Scal'tar with that last attack. Still, his Zight was nearly full, and he was still in top form for battles to come. Melodi was a little worse for wear, but her injuries had healed completely at this point. However, her Zight was at about 68% of its maximum capacity after her arrow barrage.
As they stood above the entrance, the two could hear the faint sounds of a battle coming from inside, and they paused as they considered what that could mean.
"Should we help him? Or should we stay out of this? We have no idea what he's facing down there, and from the sound of it, he's quite far into the ruin already. Maybe it would be better if we turned back now," said Melodi, a sense of nervousness in her voice.
"No," answered Alex. "We won't let him die. After all, if the Order gets ahold of the artifact, who knows what they might do with it. We still don't even know what it is, but if it can generate such a powerful field of Zight, then it's best we don't let it fall into the hands of those hooded goons. It might be out of power now, but who's to say it can't be replenished?
"We'll help him if we can, but if things go south, we'll get out of there as quickly as possible. Anyone who's capable of fighting him for this long is just as powerful. Still, I don't like taking chances like this..."
With that, the two steeled themselves and leaped inside the black maw of the entrance. They didn't know what they would be facing, but they did know that if the Order was behind the Slingate being sealed, then helping Ulric to defeat whoever was down there would help them return home sooner.