Since it was only Gilliam who had any ideas what he was going to do, Angela and Petal looked a bit worried. He couldn’t blame them as for all they knew they might be caught in some explosion or something.
Gilliam’s goal was to restrict Kintas, but since he was incredibly fast and would probably just cut anything coming his way, the answer was to use something uncuttable. It couldn’t be just hard to cut, it also needed to be able to restrict him, lots of arms came to mind but that was not uncuttable. No, the best idea might actually be some sort of sentient high viscous monster. Instead of a water elemental, something like a honey or glue elemental with multiple stretch limbs to catch Kintas off guard.
Expecting that Kintas would just mess with the spell as it was being cast, it seemed that Kintas had some morbid curiosity to find out what the idea that Gilliam had actually was. Well, this worked fine for Gilliam as he also wondered how well this thing would work on the fly.
Mentally preparing the image and details were simple, a water elemental looking thing with lots of tentacled arms, the whole thing made of high viscous glue of sorts, semi sentient and highly obedient only to Gilliam. An important factor was that it would self-heal or just re-attach to anything that might be cut or torn off.
Activating the creation circle in the coat was not a problem, what Gilliam hadn’t expected was the sudden cost of the summoning. As the circle manifested for only a split second it all happened at once, a large collection of deep and severe wounds opened up across Gilliam’s whole body, it felt and looked like 15 men had a sharp blade each and just cut into his body at various locations at the same time. He yelled out in pain as he fell to his knees, blood practically exploding out of his body into a mix of both red mist but also straight up painting both himself and the ground around him.
This amount of wounds would realistically have him bleed out in no time at all, in fact had it not been for the healing dome he would most likely not have survived as the pain would have crushed his focus and made healing himself very, very hard.
However, since he was in the dome the wounds and pain were temporary, which was why he chose to test in there in the first place. Ignoring the worried looks he got from the girls, and the oddly amused raised eyebrow from Kintas, his wounds were already closing and the blood production was being managed by the dome. It really was a wondrous creation.
In the course of the same few seconds this was going on, the blood that was not already in mist-form seemingly evaporated into the magic circle for its brief existence. It only took a second more for the energy to form a deep dark smoke rising from the ground, into a rough humanoid blob-shape before the black vapour solidified into the final created form.
In front of Gilliam stood a weird creature, it was about human height, but easily twice as wide. It didn’t have too much of a proper shape than a vague silhouette, it was simply a standing blob, being taller than wider so it looked a bit unnatural in that sense.
It was made of a clear substance, it didn’t look exactly like water but had a transparent apperance, much like clear honey so you couldn’t see through it but light passed through it easily enough.
Though it didn’t have any features or sensory organs, Gilliam got a feeling that it was looking at him expectantly.
Gilliam didn’t immediately say anything, a mixture of the not yet faded pain and surprise at the thing he had created had him a bit delayed mentally. Though processing all of this briefly he pointed at Kintas.
“Restrain him.” Though the order was clearly a statement, it had a vague questioning tone to it.
The creature didn’t seem to linger or wait, right after the order was given a bunch of rope-looking tentacles extended from the creature towards Kintas.
Kintas being the combat monster he was, managed to dodge the lot of them, but he didn’t seem to have expected the creature to just move them sideways towards him, they seemed incredibly prehensile.
He dodged yet again but a single tentacle managed to make contact, showcasing its sticky nature and cut-resistance as Kintas’ sword passed through the tentacle only to have it not affected at all. The blade cut through it but the fluid and sticky nature of the goop had it just instantly stick back again, he was forced to create distance again which luckily for him overcame the sticky tentacle.
“Ok... I’ll admit that caught me off guard...” Kintas had lost his smile, but for some reason his eyes seemed more interested than normal.
He followed this up with a quick sentence too muffled for Gilliam to overhear, but immediately after some weird pale white energy seemed to mix into the glue elemental’s otherwise clear body, it seemed to do something with its speed as it was getting a little slower.
It seemed to react to this, retracting all but one tentacle which it moved back and forth in front of what could have been a face on its upper part, almost like it was testing something.
Seeming to have realised something it made its next attack, a much larger number, though thinner, tentacles spawned from its blobby body, all of them heading for Kintas. However, this time they were not heading straight at him, but rather spread out around him almost like an oversized cage before slamming together.
In a swift motion Kintas had swapped out the hexagon gem in his sword’s pommel from the teal one to another multi-colored one, it had a mixture of a similar teal colour but also some white streaks through it. His sword started crackling with electrical arcs jumping both from and to the blade, but also into the air much like a tesla coil. A swift motion later and several of the incoming tentacles were spazzing out in an electrical spasm. He used this opening to dodge the incoming attack but it seemed that even he couldn’t overcome sheer numbers.
One tentacle landed, sticking and wrapping around his foot, this allowed two more to stick to his back and after this he was covered in sticky tentacles to the point of having him forced to the ground, all limbs held individually, barely being able to move at all. Having hand and wrist control he tried to move his sword around to touch one of the tentacles, but this only had the angry goop-monster crush his wrist before forcing the sword out of his hand.
“Well d-” Kintas tried to compliment Gilliam but had his face crunched into the ground. “-... done...” Muttering the end of his sentence through a faceful of dirt he got another thunk of the creature thudding his head against the ground.
Gilliam was ecstatic, but also in somewhat fear. Though this was absolutely a successful test, this creature was amazing and managed to take down Kintas in only a few moves while remaining unharmed, there was the sudden and drastic cost. This creature will absolutely be helpful in a fight but... If he summoned something like this without being prepared he would just kill himself instead...
Walking a bit closer, Gilliam wanted to gloat a little bit at his creation. Angela and Petal looked somewhat uncertain about things, they weren’t horrified or something like that, but they just looked heavily confused and didn’t really seem sure about what to think about this.
Between having his head slammed into the ground, Kintas was saying something.
“Ch-lle-ge a--pted” Some letters disappeared in the muffling but Gilliam prepared himself nonetheless.
Kintas might be in a bad position at the moment but he had shown himself to be a beast before.
Gilliam cast a shield on himself, which prompted the girls to prepare themselves as well. Kintas muttered something else between thuds but this was not something Gilliam caught.
However, what followed was very, very different.
The tentacles holding him down suddenly disintegrated into mist, leaving the ex Inquisitor free to move, his sword had stopped crackling at the same time though he still picked it up. As he darted towards Gilliam, dodging the attack of the girls there were two major things happening. First all following attacks by the glue-monster also disintegrated once they got close to Kinta, and as he got close to the monster it also disintegrated into nothing.
The swift dash towards Gilliam caught him completely off guard, his bewilderment only amplified as his shield spell fell apart into glowing dust as the swordsman came close. In a swift dash he had avoided the girls, taken out the summoned monster, done something to the shield and was now standing with his sword against Gilliam’s neck.
“...What... the... fuck...” Gilliam stated, he knew that Kintas was good but this just defied any logic. What just happened didn’t make sense. How could he do all this in a single movement?
Relaxing his body and getting out of his murderstance, Kintas lowered his sword and said a word Gilliam recognized as ‘Disable’. It was in a language he had not heard spoken before but he could at least understand it.
At this point the air felt normal again, something Gilliam didn’t really realise had happened. Thinking about it now the air started feeling oddly dry and cold, but it wasn’t something he was able to react to at the time.
Kintas smiled widely. “That was a good trick, against anyone else you’d have just won right there.”
The compliment was good and all, but Gilliam broke out in an almost angry tone. “The fuck was that?!”
Kintas smiled even wider than before, being incredibly satisfied and full of himself. “Trade secret.” The smugness was... suffocating.
“No, what the fuck. The hell did you do?” Gilliam wanted answers, enough for him to lose composure and get almost a bit annoyed.
“It’s simple, really. You’re a mage.” His smile grew even wider, to the point that, as the saying goes; had it not been for his ears, it would have gone all the way around.
Gilliam pondered this for a brief moment, and it started making sense. Kintas is an Ex-Inquisitor, the people who are more than ‘just’ trained to fight mages like himself. He might have cheat-level abilities and incredible power, but Kintas was trained and augmented to fight his kind. Given his level of skill, time of training and all of that, things were actually making sense.
When fighting Kintas in the dome a while ago, Gilliam remembered that he wasn’t always able to even cast spells against him, the spell circle destabilised during casting.
“You cheeky fucker... You can use antimagic...”
Gilliam didn’t think it was possible, but Kintas’ smile grew even more smug and full of himself.
“I don’t use it a lot anymore, but it was fun to give it a go again.” His smile faded ever so slightly as it seemed like he remembered something negative.
“Well... If you do that then I suppose I could always throw shit at you, throwing rocks or objects shouldn’t be affected, but... You’d probably just dodge it anyway.” Gilliam had an unamused and almost annoyed expression
“Though... I think I need to speak to Nolis a bit more...” Gilliam looked at his hand and arms, where deep wounds were only a minute ago only proper skin was now. He wanted to find out how to negate this damage in the future. Though he had already had good tests done with using mana crystals, he would prefer to use someone else as a source for this.
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Looking through the barrier he could see that the sun was still high, they hadn’t used too much time in here yet. Which made sense, he really only joined to have the creation magic tested. Though it was stupidly versatile, piggybacking on Nolis’ research in a way that he could spawn things by thinking of it rather than baking his ideas into the circle itself, allowed him to create anything at a moment’s notice. However, given the cost of the glue elemental he needed to find out just how the cost was calculated, but most importantly; how to use an external source for the payment of life.
He had a brief moment where he considered the weight of that question, but as he was only going to use that concept on those he deemed deserving of this fate, it quickly passed.
“You guys keep training, I’ll see if I can find Nolis.” Gilliam stated to the group as he left. Not really leaving them any time to properly react as he didn’t want them to have a chance to persuade him to not go right away.
Patience when something interesting was in his grasp was not one of his strengths...
Exiting the dome he found that there were a large group of students around again, not that this was anything new he still found it somewhat interesting, not letting this stop him he continued at a speed-walking pace towards the central room.
He didn’t properly notice what the others said or how they reacted to his sudden leaving, but in the moment he was too focused on ‘this other thing’ to properly give it any thought.
His mind was spinning of ideas he could summon, all from carnivorous insects to dragons, from large cat-like creatures with fangs and claws to eldritch horrors with blades on the end of tentacles and worse. This could potentially be one of the most dangerous, non tactical-level spells he could end up with, using their own life force against them was an oddly exhilarating and effective thought.
Before he knew it he stood before the receptionist, a young man of 20something, short brown hair and wearing a nice suit.
“Can I help you, Sir?” His voice had an almost impulsive nature to it, almost like he was not yet used to the job, perhaps he was new?
“Hello-” Gilliam responded on auto-pilot without thought as well. “-I would like to speak with Nolis.”
The young mad nodded and started flipping in a large tome, seemingly finding the page he was looking for he read a bit.
“Can I confirm your name?” He sounded uncertain, though he did have a glance at Gilliam’s student badge.
“Gilliam Gibson.” Gilliam briefly wondered if there were many people who didn’t know who he was yet, but he mentally stomped that arrogance down a lot, he didn’t want to become one of those kinds of people.
“Ah, yes. That’s not a problem. He should be at Basement level four, just go down that set of stairs and you’ll find a door marked with B4.”
The young man gave him directions and seemed somewhat pleased with himself.
“Thank you:” Gilliam smiled back, it was oddly refreshing having someone random to talk to, even though it was just pleasantries like this.
Leaving the reception Gilliam found himself in front of the B4 door fast enough, it wasn’t exactly hard to find as the spiral staircase didn’t exactly have many chances to leave it.
Opening the door he came into the familiar smaller room with a guard sitting there, a young woman in the same armour as the others. She gave him a quick glance before giving him a nod of approval.
Not asking any questions Gilliam just continued through the other door. Remembering that it was the third door on the left last time, he walked over to it and knocked it.
“What?” As soon as Gilliam knocked on the door there was a surprised question inside the room. The thick door made it hard to hear who it was but it sounded like Nolis?
It didn’t take more than a few seconds before the door opened, it was indeed Nolis, although a confused one. “Oh, it’s you. That makes sense.”
He left the door open as he walked into his room, seemingly inviting Gilliam to enter.
“I almost never get visitors, and the few that come down here don't knock, so I was a bit surprised.” He smiled as he explained his reasoning.
“What can I help you with?” Oddly polite he got straight to the point.
The politeness had Gilliam pause a bit, he originally wanted to get straight to the point but he stopped himself and changed the subject with a confused expression. “What’s with the strange politeness...?”
“Oh, well. You are the Heptagon Mage, the Gate-Crasher and I heard about your mega fireball from Aeris. So... I thought it was a good thing to keep relations as high as possible, once we’re out of this invasion and we’re done at the academy I would love to keep in touch. To be honest, anything I can do to help you, will just help me in the long run.” He smiled, being almost annoyingly honest.
This was sort of the way to behave that Gilliam expected more people would do, perhaps the others were just afraid or were not acting up due to some rules or something, but Nolis seemed to take this in stride and just went straight up honest.
“Well... I’m fine with that..” He paused a bit before getting back on point, the straight up honesty really caught him off guard. “Ok, here’s the thing. I tried to create something larger, in the dome, and it would have killed me had I not been in the dome, so... Is there a way to shift the life-force drain to an external source?”
Nolis smiled widely, it was not his usual derpy smile but the kind of smile that would normally have you call the police.
“There is, and it’s actually frighteningly simple.”
Nolis unbuttoned his shirt and pulled his left arm out of the sleeve before creating a magical light source he showed Gilliam something. Above his heart was a very complex tattoo, but it was clearly a spell circle. It was tattooed in skin-colour ink, though the ink was not exactly the same tone so now that he knew what to look for he could see it somewhat clearly. The circle had Darkness as its element and by reading the runes he could see that it was a complicated transferring setup, though the source was an external source. A line went down his arm into his palm where another tattooed spell circle was located. The one in his palm was a bit strange; it was another external source tattoo but it had its own complete spell circle inside it.
Gilliam tried deciphering it, as he didn’t get much time before Nolis pulled his hand back; he only understood that the sub-circle created some field.
“Now, what do you think this is?” He smiled a bit sadistically as he looked at the tattoo in his hand.
Gilliam pondered this for a moment, using his own thoughts and logic from all those games and stories he had read to try and inspire the thought behind it. “I am guessing the field that the circle in your hand creates becomes the external source, so the main circle in your hand absorbs from whatever is in that field to feed the circle over your heart with energy that you can in turn use for creation magic?”
He did get a decent glance of things, and though he hadn’t tried out game design much he did know that overlapping fields were used for a lot of simple coding.
Nolis’ eyes widened as his smile faded for a moment, blinking a few times in disbelief his smile grew large and happy, his expression becoming a mix of joy and intrigue.
“That is exactly it! Wow, I was jealous before but this is amazing. You deciphered it that fast?”
Almost as if asking some god their secrets he hinted to wanting to know more about how Gilliam did this.
“I can read the runes, but some of it was guessing based on weird knowledge from home.” Gilliam sported a sly smirk, not knowing if Nolis knew he was from another world or was believing the lie that he went through the Mist. But even though explaining the concept of coding could be a mixture of easy and hard, it was easier to just... not.
Nolis became much more interested in the mystery. “Ok, you’ll have to explain that to me more later, but yes. You’re correct. This is something I devised after years of testing and learning. When I activate it the spell forms a field that consumes life from the targets in the field, not too different from the spell you used to energise yourself when in the demon world-”
Nolis started getting dressed again now after showing what he intended to show.
“-the main difference is that I can control the field, and if I connect to someone before I cast a creation spell the cost will be transferred to them.”
Turning his focus to Gilliam with an incredibly serious expression. “This is a horrible event, so keep that in mind if you plan to use this...” Nolis put heavy pressure on the word ‘horrible’.
“Yeah, I assume as much, but given where I’m going I want every kind of help I can get, besides that creation circle of yours is amazing, if I don’t have to make a large stock of darkness mana crystals, that would be-”
Gilliam was interrupted mid sentence.
“Wait, wait. Hold on.” Nolis’ composure broke completely for a moment. “You... you can make darkness mana crystals?” His face screamed of disbelief but there was a hint of curiosity in there.
“Err... yes? Isn’t that normal?” Gilliam wondered a bit, was this really that strange?
“Or rather, I suppose it’s not a mana crystal per se, it’s more like crystallised blood.”
Nolis’ expression changed again, it was now filled with extreme interest.
“Not many can do that, I don’t think you know how rare that is. Can.... Can you show me?”
He was looking almost desperate to get this confirmed, and to be honest this was not really an issue for Gilliam. He could control this pretty well and a small fragment was not an issue.
“Sure, but only if you help me with that draining tattoo of yours.” Gilliam smiled, trying to form a bargain where he felt like he would earn the larger cut of the cake.
“Yeah, sure, sure. Just... If you can show me and if I can have even just a small one, I’ll fix the tattoo for you.” Nolis sounded extremely desperate, hinting that there was more to this than Gilliam originally thought.
“Great, it’s a deal.” Gilliam smiled as he moved his hands into position to create a small Darkness mana crystal.