Adam landed with a thud on the orange rooftops of the east side. He slid down the slope of where he had just landed with his overly exerted kinetic force jump and rolled down, falling off of the edge and right in front of someone’s home. Adam was brutally winded, the air fleeing his lungs as he landed on the dirt ground. Adam was so relieved, the man he was chasing and had pulled down with him wasn’t moving, that means he was extremely winded too, or worse. He hoped not dead levels of worse, he needed answers. Adam and the stalker he had chased both lay on ground, looking up at the clear, blue sky, there was something slightly off about the clouds here, they were close, but just not quite, enough that he would question himself if he didn’t know it was another planet, another universe.
The man scrambled up to his feet, breathing deeply he propelled himself forward with his hands as he gained his footing, Adam still couldn’t move, but he didn’t need to, while he couldn’t see properly or focus on his abilities properly, he could at least throw out a simple wall of force for him to run into, he smashed his head, grunting in pain at the collision with the wall of nothing and fell down to the ground again. Adam slowly stood up, he definitely had copped it worse with the fall than this guy, whoever he was, or this guy just had incredible stamina. Adam gathered himself, his bearings and looked around. He was outside another home that looked very similar to the Townstones home, but they were definitely in a different area, he had lost track of how far they travelled along the rooftops. He saw some wooden shutters open as a woman from inside the house looked out at the commotion. She quickly closed them again after making eye contact with Adam, she didn’t seem to want to get involved. Adam hobbled over to where the man was laying and panting, he prepared his truth compulsion, searching for his access point into the mind of the stalker, he was small, much shorter than Adam and stick thin. At this time he heard something behind him, he was still facing down at the ground, hunched over with his hands on his knees at this point so he decided to use his truth compulsion to search for any other minds behind him, in case what he heard was someone else sneaking up on him. He couldn’t sense anything else mentally and felt relaxed for a moment, the moment he realised what it was, was the moment his head got impacted by a huge fist and he went flying across the dirt. It was the man from the inn who they had fought off, or more accurately, who Matilda had fought off for her drunken, foolish friends.
He raged, he seemed more fuelled by emotion than the last encounter they had, or maybe Adam’s memory of that fight was flawed. He wore the same large trench coat, Adam remembered that much. Adam’s head was ringing and he felt trapped in his own thoughts on the situation because he couldn’t even react to the punch he had just received, he lay sprawled out on the ground. He heard the large creation stepping over towards him, he then also heard the spy he had knocked to the ground before, scrambling back up yet again, he could the man slowly walking away from the corner of his eyes but it was hard for him to focus on much right now. He turned his head to the more imminent threat, even though he knew he could not possibly lose his main target. The large constructed human reached for him, picking him up and holding him up with the same ease as he did in The Foxbox. Adam summoned up the mental energy to build up two walls of force, one large but thin one blocking off the direction the stalker he was pursuing was heading and another smaller but thicker one between himself and the fist from the menu named creation that was heading towards his stomach rapidly. His fist completely smashed through the wall he had made with seemingly no effort which snapped his focus on the other large, thin wall he had made to block out the stalker as well. The fist kept on travelling into his stomach, taking the life out of him, he coughed and choked, some blood spattering out onto the dirt below. He dropped Adam onto the ground below, letting him writhe in pain and shake out of panic. Adam was truly scared, he thought of his sister, he thought of home and cursed himself for being so reckless, was he about to get himself killed like this? There was nothing he could do, he felt far too depleted to do anything physically or mentally. He just lay there twitching in pain.
The stalker now approached him, walking over shakily. “Nice try. Delfo, pull out your sword, this one needs to die, a random hiker on the east side like this, no one will even question the murder with everything going on lately.” He smirked at Adam laying there on the ground as Delfo, the large, wide creation reached for his sword on his hip. Adam smiled back as he saw the man from the townstones house, Peth snuck up and pulled Delfo into a tight squeeze hold, reaching around his entire torso and arms and hugging him tight from behind. Peth had veins popping out, on his arms as well as his bald head as he grunted and held Delfo with all of his might. The stalker seemed scared now that east side residents were here and interfering, he began running away.
Adam felt some relief at seeing the panicked reaction of the stalker, the commander of Delfo apparently, he didn’t really know what he was doing and wasn’t prepared for someone else to show up like that. Adam tried to throw up another blocking force field to stop the man from running away while Peth was otherwise occupied but he failed, technically the force field was successfully created but the man barely felt a bump as he shattered it, he was far too weak. An explosion knocked the man down to the ground as he continued trying to scramble and slither away, he looked back incredulously, surely wondering what caused an explosion near his feet and knocked him down, he saw an axe stuck into the ground as Brian sprinted at him, they hadn’t levelled up yet, Adam wondered how it worked to use his explosive strike as a throwing weapon attack. Adam crumbled to the ground again, he had exerted himself beyond his limits, all the agility in the world couldn’t save him in a situation like this, after taking the beatings he had taken. Matilda tried her hardest to catch up and come running around the corner a few moments after Brian had tackled the man to the ground.
Brian dragged the small, bony man towards the group behind him after picking up his axe. “You see this guys hiker menu log?” He asked Adam. “You look rough, sorry we took a while to find you guys. You just took off so quickly.”
“What do you mean hiker menu, what does it say? I was really focused on just chasing him down and then fell off of the rooftops with him.” He tried to flick his wrist and take a look himself.
Target: Taj Manno
Class: Artificer
Level: 4
Quest: Defeat Taj and his creations.
“You’re a hiker too. What’s your deal, why did you kill Gavvey Townstone?”
The man flashed a depraved smile at the group. “Oh, I didn’t. This monster Delfo did.”
“It’s no matter now, we can hand you in or hand Delfo in, whatever it takes and get Vincent out of trouble. What’s your agenda anyway?” Adam snapped at him.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Wouldn’t you like to know? You won’t get to stick around to find out.”
Peth groaned in pain as his grip on Delfo released, his knees fell to the ground as he knelt on the dirt, an arrow sticking out of his chest, dark blood soaking into his shirt.
Matilda shouted “Take cover, it said creations, plural.”
Adam wavered in place, still trying not to fall unconscious out of pain and exhaustion. He looked around through blurry vision. There, on the rooftops above them, from where they had fell, another man, very tall and lean, quite a wiry frame, he dropped the bow down facing into the top of the roof. Adam still had his menu from his wrist open, he checked his status page.
Magic Pool - 2/100
He couldn’t do much with that but he used his last remaining juice to blow some force at the man on the rooftop, he couldn’t really aim with any level of precision but it was enough to hit into the centre of his body. He dropped the bow which slid down the roof, stopping at the gutter. He leaned down to pick it up as a radiant burst hit him in the top of the head, sending him toppling over the edge. The mans head smashed into the house below as he landed worse than any of the others had, face first into the dirt they heard a crack as he landed on the ground.
Creation Defeated!
500 xp granted! (3700/6000)
Weapons clanged as Brian fought the huge brute, Delfo. Axe against sword, Adam had no idea where he had actually picked up any sort of technique but Brian looked quite impressive in his fighting style, though there was a real chance he was delirious at this point. Matilda was trying to tend to Peth but called out “There could be more, stay alert. I’m focusing on Peth.” Adam looked around, seeing that everyone was already occupied. A large crowd of east side residents had now formed with all the commotion and fighting. The woman whose house they were just outside of had opened her shutters again, watching intently.
Adam tried his best to just stay alert, watching intently near Matilda as a focal point to try and notice anything out of the ordinary, to watch out for more creations. He glanced over watching Brian spin his axe into Delfo’s blade, they seemed at a stalemate so far, parrying or dodging each and every attack they sent at each other. Sparks flew and explosions blew as Brian tried to weave in his abilities into the mix. He couldn’t seem to get an upper hand no matter what. Focusing back on Matilda as she removed the arrow and tried to heal the gaping, bleeding wound he noticed something strange. He thought it was just his eyesight getting weird because of the injured state he was in, but he kept noticing it several times over, dust on the ground being disturbed, grass being flattened by nothing. He watched as this little trail approached from the crowd of people, or just in front of it at the start of the yard of the house, and got closer and closer to where Matilda was healing Peth.
It clicked, it was like invisible footsteps on the ground, he felt so proud of himself as he took in the situation and thought of the perfect solution so quickly. He pressed the tiny bit of magic pool that had regenerated since his last usage of psychokinesis into a tiny pocket right inside the arrow wound in Peth’s body, he applied the coin sized force, pushing it in as hard as he could, it didn’t need to be too thick either, just enough to create high pressure. The blood sprayed out of the wound, towards the crowd, soaking some of the front of the crowd in blood, but more importantly soaking the invisible creation in blood, revealing its shape and form. In shape at least, it was human looking like the others. It reached out to stab Matilda with a dagger, she would have been gone if he didn’t reveal it as she rolled out of the way just in time, throwing radiant bursts in its face, some of the copies of the spell that split off from her skill point investment into the triple cleave on radiant burst rushed into the crowd. She continually threw out the balls of light right at the blood soaked form, it was still completely invisible but the outline was clearly visible with the amount of high pressure blood that had sprayed over its body.
It also seemed blinded by the blood, some must have got in its eyes Adam realised as it indicated rubbing its own arm into its eyes, trying to gain back vision. Meanwhile, Matilda pelted him with holy magic as he fell to the ground. The crowd was screaming at what Adam could only guess was the overall chaos of the scene.
Adam felt relief, he checked his status again.
Magic Pool - 0/100
There it was, absolutely zero energy left. He sat down on the ground, watching Brian fight with Delfo some more. Delfo fought robotically, using his great strength and size to add a lot of power to his attacks, but he seemed to have little idea on how to really wield a weapon. Brian was no master of weapons since he had only picked up an axe fairly recently, but he already seemed more proficient than Delfo from a technical point of view. Maybe he just hadn’t seen an actual, really good fighter yet. That might make more sense than anything else he thought. His head dropped and he fought to keep his eyelids from falling. Brian finally started landing devastating blows once Matilda had moved on from the invisible assassin creation who was now paralysed on the ground and started pelting more radiant bursts at Delfo from behind.
As the balls of light connected into the back of his head he lost his balance and focus, Brian swinging his axe right into the soft area just above his waist, on the side of his body. He yelled out, their actions and sounds were definitely human but according to every other classification from Adam’s hiker menu and their complete lack of a mental presence they were definitely something else. Brian carried his momentum from the successfully landed blow and swung his body the other direction, yelling out “Primal Slash” his body gained speed and power as he swung the axe in the same spot on the other side of his body, mirroring the large, dripping wounds. Adam wondered if there was really a point in Brian yelling the name of his abilities while he used them but he didn’t complain, they were wrapping up this fight as the victors.
Looking over to Matilda’s direction, closer to the crowd that was still growing in size, they saw Peth holding the blood soaked, invisible assassin from before in a chokehold, similar to how he was holding back Delfo before Brian showed up, hugging him and locking his arms from movement. In his baritone voice he yelled out “He got up and almost killed her!” He looked around the yard, looked back at the crowd behind him and threw the coated shape of blood down onto the ground and continually stomped down on the neck of the assassin, veins bulging out of his forehead as he shouted in rage while stomping as hard as he could.
Creation defeated!
500 xp granted! (4200/6000)
A billow of smoke blinded the crowd as it rolled from the house to the street, Brian’s explosive strike hit Delfo’s sword. Everyone then heard the death throes of Delfo as Brian hacked away into flesh, Adam presumed it was into his neck or head somewhere.
Creation defeated!
500 xp granted! (4700/6000)
Quest complete!
2000 xp granted!
Level 5 reached! (700/8000)
Peth fell back to the ground, his wound barely healed from Matilda’s attempted healing, it seemed like he ripped it open again or made it worse since he was bleeding quite heavily again.
Matilda went up to him again, continuing her healing process, placing radiant burst energy into his arrow wound, trying to seal it up. Brian walked away from Delfo’s corpse, swinging his axe through the air as he walked over to Adam, he extended his hand and helped him stand up on his feet again. Brian then walked over to Taj, the man behind all of these fighters, these creations, who was still laying on the ground, cornered in the yard of this house and barely able to move from the injuries Brian had inflicted on him. Brian dragged him over, past Adam and headed towards Matilda and the others.