I'm glad Terrence looks perky again, but I'm pretty sure he's still thinking about what he said to me a couple of days ago. It's hard not to guess that when I keep noticing him staring at me.
Though right now, his tail is wagging quite hard, and I'm kind of amused by that. He really is excited to get to let loose with fire magics.
We're standing in the large clearing the tower of undead rests in. The tower itself is around a hundred and fifty feet in diameter and over roughly hundred feet in height. Based on the windows, there are twenty floors in total. The stones it's built from are black with grey flecks, and the cracks between them are barely noticeable, even with my high Perception allowing me to notice the small details better.
More than two hundred undead mill about, wandering the large clearing – it's over seven hundred feet in diameter, so there's plenty of space. These undead are just skeletons with crimson lights in their skulls and chests. Most of them look like beastkin, though I can see a few human-looking ones.
Some of the undead wear metal or leather armor and have weapons, while others are simply themselves. Warriors, rogues, archers, and mages. Silvia mentioned that undead can use their dark magics to heal other undead as well.
Though undead were formerly people, only the more powerful ones retain their memories and sense of self. The ones like the three death knights and the death mage. However, they can all use darker magics, including curses and corruptions. Those same things which harm us heal them. I'm sure a few of them are the undead version of healers – if they aren't just mages who have powers that go both ways.
Not retaining their memories and sense of self doesn't make an undead stupid, however. Lesser undead obey greater undead, but they do still possess some intelligence and they can learn new skills and spells. Only the lowest of undead are stupid.
If I hadn't cast a [Light Cloak] around us before we arrived, we probably would have been spotted already.
Inhaling deeply, I prepare myself. Then, I slowly exhale as I open my up [Air Scan], pushing it out. After becoming more familiar with it during my training yesterday as a break from dimensional magics, I can extend it out to almost a thousand feet away.
The entire clearing is within my range, as is the entire tower. I can sense every room, every brick, every book, every candle, everything.
"Three hundred and eighteen lesser undead in the clearing," I tell Terrence. A [Wind Barrier] keeps us from being overheard. "There are between five and fifteen on every floor. There are also some on the roof."
"The roof?" Terrence asks.
"Yes," I confirm. "I can sense the three death knights and the death mage that Silvia mentioned. At least, based off the equipment they're wearing. There are ten additional undead people up there. I'm going to assume it's undead that became heavily boosted during the Slip, and so have advanced into being a higher stage."
Silvia mentioned that's a possibility. Lesser undead are essentially just general classes, middle undead are the dark knights, dark mages, and so on, while greater undead are the ones like death knights and death mages. Which one they are is determined by their level of power, and if they advance a level of power during a Slip, they'll retain it after.
"And they're all on the roof?" He asks. "Can you sense any others you think are middle or higher?"
This is mostly me guessing. I'm assuming that the four in the center are the four higher undead due to the fact that they're all facing each other in a circle (square? diamond?) and the three knights among them each have three swords. One on each hip and one across their back. For the other ten undead up there, they're standing in a circle around the four central ones, but everyone is facing inward, so I don't think it's a power conflict.
It's not as if I'm actually sensing their power levels or anything. If I could, I'd probably have better estimates of the distribution of the undead.
"No," I tell Terrence. "I can't tell that much. According to Silvia, you should be able to handle middle undead without too many issues. Even if there's a surprise, you should be fine."
"So I'm taking the clearing," he says. "You're taking the tower?"
"Nah," I say. "You take the fields. I'll take the top of the tower. We'll see where the undead inside go. Let's try to avoid burning the inside? Silvia does want a look at the books and other materials inside."
"Alright," Terrence stretches for a moment. "Ready? Set? Go!"
He charges out of my [Light Cloak] and immediately launches into a frenzy of attacks, casting dozens of fire spells within five seconds. I snort, then cancel my [Light Cloak] before jumping.
With 2,108 Strength, jumping is all I need here. My muscle strength alone is enough to jump hundreds of feet in height and length.
I actually accidentally jump too high, but my angle is perfect. As I drop down from more than a hundred feet above the tower's roof, I see that they're doing some sort of ritual on the roof. If I'm not mistaken, that's actually a summoning ritual.
The undead here are trying to summon someone from another world? An [Archon] of their own alignment?
"Nope!" I exclaim, using my slightly-Southern accent, as I land on the center of the ritual, seven [Stone Spear]s piercing into it as I land. "Sorry, but your summoning's over, boys!"
The undead all stare at me as I stand with a smile on my face, then the four greater undead attack.
The three death knights all draw their swords as shadows begin to flow around the blades, and the mage begins casting sickly-green bolts at me. Maybe I should have learned holy magic before coming here, or maybe these things aren't quite prepared to take on a Level 100 [Archon].
A vortex of flames forms around me, swirling at a high speed. Holy magics are the best way to deal with death magics, but that doesn't mean fire doesn't have some use. These also aren't the flames of a normal mage.
These are the violet flames of true magic, something few outside of dragons can use.
With a thought, I expand the [Flame Vortex] outward. It burns through the magic cast at me, melts the swords of the death knights, and turns to ash the middle undead surrounding them.
+486% Experience! You have gained 4 Levels.
My [Flame Vortex] doesn't kill the greater undead, but it does char their bones and even badly destroys a few of the bones of the mage.
There's no trace of the magic ritual left, my arcane flames incinerating every last trace of it.
Greater undead really are something if they can survive arcane fire like this. I suppose it's natural, though, considering they aren't actually too far below me in power right now.
"Don't mistake me for a normal mage," I tell the undead. "I am an [Archon], and my magic cheats."
A three-inch orb of swirling violet flames forms in front of me, and I teleport two hundred feet up and use [Flight] to remain in place. All four undead try to douse the spell and stop it from landing, but their attempts fail.
Then the [Fireball] erupts, its violet flames violently expanding outwards.
+497% Experience! +459% Experience! +488% Experience! +494% Experience! You have gained 20 Levels!
That seems like quite a lot of Experience, but considering that it normally would have taken someone who's Ranked Up two or three times to kill those, it makes sense. The sheer amount of base Experience they granted is what gave me so much Experience on its own. The same goes for the ten middle undead.
Well, that's before factoring in the multiplication to them from being an [Archon]. With my level of power and what I can kill in relation to my Level, gaining Levels is going to be extremely easy for me. Much more so than it was before, and it was already easy.
I love cheating when it comes to magic.
I also love it when my experiments work. I've never used [Flame Vortex] before, nor have I used true magical fire. That was actually purely an experiment, but I knew I was fast enough to dodge the mage's spells if my attempt at using arcane flames didn't work.
Why did I decide during the battle to do that? Because I've heard that dragon flames have the power to consume magic. Silvia said that their flames are true arcane flames, rather than magic's imitation of fire.
Attempting to use it during battle was purely on a whim.
When the flames fade away, I find that I destroyed half of the tower. The [Fireball] did stretch out a hundred feet in all directions.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Well, Silvia can deal with the fact that she's not getting much from here. Most of the resources I could sense were on the upper floors.
If she really wanted this stuff intact, she shouldn't have asked a sixteen-year-old [Archon] to handle this place. Seriously. I'm a teen, we're known for doing things on a whim and for going overboard when it comes to putting down monsters.
Speaking of putting down monsters, Terrence is doing a pretty good job at it. He's primarily using [Fire Bolt]s and [Fireball]s, sending the latter at groups of monsters while using the latter to take out lone monsters or drive them into groups. It's a pretty efficient strategy, and he's already taken out around fifty of the undead this way.
They're being forced to choose between grouping up and getting wiped out together or spreading out and wiped out individually. With his wolfkin senses combined with his high Perception, Terrence is keeping track of all that's going on around him, and his reflexes combined with his Agility allows him to dodge attacks and react quickly to strike down targets.
Lesser undead haven't reached even 500 Points in their highest Attribute. They can't keep up with him. When they realize this and start to flee, I spread my hands out, creating a violet [Flame Vortex] around the entire clearing.
None attempt to brave it. Good. Let Terrence get the Experience from you, you undead beasts.
I maintain the [Flame Vortex] as Terrence works on killing the undead. It takes him around thirty minutes to finish killing them, and only then do I release the [Flame Vortex].
"New spell?" He asks as I land in front of him.
"Yeah," I answer. "How'd you do?"
"I gained seventeen Levels," he answers. "Pretty good. You?"
"I got twenty-seven," I grin at him.
"Of course," he snorts. "Fewer monsters, but tougher. Why were the flames purple?"
"Arcane fire," I hold up a hand, generating a small amount of it above my palm. "I can probably shift it back to looking normal, but I only just learned it."
"A dragon's breath looks normal," he says. "But I remember hearing they have that breath plus a purple flame breath. Their all-consuming breath is probably the purple one."
"Probably, since that's my arcane flames," I say. "Want to know something else?"
"Sure," he says. "What?"
"Silvia said that wyvern we faced was a mid-tier one before the Slip," I tell him. "Which means a low-tier one is probably weaker than me. And it would probably jump me up to Level 200."
"You're just having fun now, aren't you?" He asks, and I can detect a trace of hope in his voice.
"A little," I admit. "It's fun being powerful, though I'll have to be careful once I return home. From what I can tell, I'm going to keep these boosts – or at least, the ones to my magical power and my mana capacity and recovery – once I return to Earth. Even at just Level 100, I'd pretty much be god-level there."
With the amount of power at my fingertips, especially if I reach Level 200, I'd probably be more powerful than any weapon on Earth, too. Including nukes. If I actually put in the effort, I could probably destroy an entire city on my own.
That [Fireball] only cost me 2 Mana, and I can make it far, far larger than this clearing.
"I do really just want to fight a wyvern on my own," I tell Terrence. "To see how I fare against it on my own, without being boosted by a mysterious boy deity, before I return home."
"How about a dragon?"
"Facing a dragon? During a Slip? Have you lost your mind?"
"No!" He laughs. "But I was hoping you hadn't! Besides, dragons are extinct these days. There hasn't been one spotted since before the current calendar, after some [Archon]s slayed a bunch of them. Probably all of them."
"Yeah," I say. "Out of the Slip, I wouldn't mind fighting them."
"To be honest, I kind of wish they were still around, just so that I could get powerful enough to take one on," Terrence admits. "I thought you were focusing on helping out while working on figuring out the spell? Now you just want to have fun?"
I stretch out [Air Scan] once more, to see if there's anything dangerous around. From what I can tell, it's just normal wildlife in the forest around us, so we're safe.
That means no interruptions.
I hold out my right hand and focus, channeling my power.
"You know I'm just going to ask you again once we go through the [Gate], don't you?" Terrence asks. "And you can just teleport us without an issue. Wait. This is taking longer. What are you-"
A huge amount of my Mana drains as the spell completes, a gate four feet wide and eight feet tall forming in front of us – but it lasts for less than a second before I'm burned out of Mana. I was also at nearly full Mana, as I've already recovered what the [Flame Vortex] took out of me past my recovery.
[World Gate] learned
"What… was that?" Terrence asks. "I saw a room that didn't look like a room. It reminded me of stuff from the ancient ruins. Did you open a gate to the ruins of the Ancients? No, that room looked too clean."
"That was my bedroom," I tell him, and his eyes widen. "Back home. I figured out the spell yesterday, but knew that its Mana cost is intense just from how it looked."
Silvia let me look over everything she had on dimensional magics – including the summoning ritual. That ritual was the key for me to figure it out, as it contains a modified version of the spell. I didn't want to use it just yet because I wanted to see if I could improve the base of it.
Due to the amount of work I put into improving the base of the spell yesterday, it's at Level 2 starting out. That's not some random thing, that's because I already knew the base version of the spell, but used an improved version of it.
It cost me 2,300 Mana just to open the [World Gate].
"I know the spell," I tell Terrence. "Now, I just have to keep visualizing it and working on improving it. Sure, I can make it so that I can keep it open for a few seconds, but what I really need is to improve its stability it so that I can maintain it while I pass through. That's something I can work on while doing other stuff, like traveling. And gaining Levels means having more Mana to put into actually keeping it open. That way, I only have to work on the stability and not on reducing its Mana cost."
"Makes sense," he says, enthusiasm drooping a little. "Well, I don't know where any wyverns are."
"I know," I tell him. "But I'm sure we can find out in town. Before that, though, I want to try helping out with some of the more normal jobs, though. With the Slip going on, there's bound to be a need of help from people at our power. I was thinking of doing a couple of those, then looking for a low-tier wyvern to kill."
"You just want it to get a little bit stronger so it's more of a challenge, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Let's go tell Silvia you destroyed her tower."
I give him a light punch on the back of his head, then open a [Gate] to Silvia's clearing. We step through it, and the twins almost immediately charge us, tackling Terrence. They really want to try to take him down at every opportunity, don't they? Even their attempted sneak attack wasn't enough, though.
"How did it go?" Silvia asks.
"Reid demolished the tower," Terrence tells her as he throws the twins into the pond.
"Correction," I say. "I destroyed half of it with arcane flames. The top half. That was actually the half which had the most books and resources according to my [Air Scan], so I do apologize for that."
"Arcane flames?"
"I decided to try learning that on the spot instead of holy magics," I tell her. "I was so absorbed in working on dimensional magics yesterday that I hadn't thought about learning an entirely new type of magic. But I was thinking about what you'd told me about dragon flames and decided to give it a try."
"You're ridiculous."
"I'm an [Archon], it comes with the territory," I tell her, and she just snorts. "Terrence, go change into your swimming shorts if you're going to be jumping into the pond."
Terrence looks down at his outfit and remembers that he's still in his normal outfit. The twins had already changed because they expected to get tossed into it, so they're okay. Terrence, on the other hand, complains about getting his clothes wet – or at least, his boots – if he jumps into the pond to play with the twins without changing.
"Anyway," I tell Silvia as Terrence rushes into the house. "Sorry. I wasn't expecting my arcane flames to destroy the stone, too. I'd only used it on magic the first time around. Well, magic and undead."
"It's okay," she says. "I'll see what I can salvage from there. When do you plan on returning to town?"
"Need me to do something?" I ask.
"No," she answers. "But I've learned enough about you this past week to know that you're planning on returning to town. You want to do some jobs from there to get more experience while working on improving your magics. I wouldn't be surprised if you've already figured out how to create the gate to your world, but need to work on it more before you can pass through."
"Yeah," I admit. "I'm at that stage. It shouldn't take me more than a week to be ready to leave, and I want to help out the others a little bit before I go. It'll probably be once the Slip ends, things seem… strong."
I'm not referring to just the increase from the Slip. Some instinct in me says that the Slip is worse than normal – that is, that the increases will go higher than they usually do for a Slip, on top of faster.
Maztlit even brought in an [Archon], based on what he said the other day. I'm going to assume they're elsewhere in the world, though, and not in this region of it. He probably would have mentioned if there was another [Archon] I might run into.
"I agree," Silvia tells me. "So you're planing on staying to help us deal with it?"
"Just until the end," I tell her. "I miss my family and friends and want to go home, but I'd feel bad if I didn't help out."
Shaking my head, I look up at the clouds in the sky.
"Something tells me there's going to be a major danger here," I say. "Something that no one in the kingdom can handle."
Silvia is quiet for a few seconds, then asks me if I'm sure.
"Positive," I tell her, then kneel and place a hand on the ground. "It's… just a feeling. I've been having a lot of these lately, like something in the world is speaking to me. The feel that the Slip is stronger than normal, the coming of a powerful threat… it doesn't feel like a world-ending threat, but I'm pretty confident it's too powerful for the kingdom to handle."
"Anyone else saying that," Silvia tells me. "And I'd say they're just looking to cause worry. An [Archon], on the other hand… I'll look into places that should help you gain Levels quickly. Same for Terrence and myself."
"And the twins?" I ask.
"And them," she nods. "Give me a few days and I should have plenty of things ready. If we can all get in another Rank Advancement Trial, then maybe we can handle it. I'll also request the aid of the other Tier IV, and alert the king. Does your feeling tell you where it's will arrive? Or a general location?"
Closing my eyes, I focus on this feeling of mine. As I follow the threads I'm sensing, the ones telling me of this danger, I realize what I'm sensing.
I'm sensing the flow of Mana in the world, the way they're shifting together and coalescing. This isn't even a short-range thing, I can sense this flow for miles, and the disturbances in it that tell of monsters forming or becoming stronger. The stronger the monster, the further the disturbance will be.
"Not for sure," I tell Silvia. "But it's coming from the direction of town. I can't tell for sure when it's going to appear, but we definitely have a few days. Enough time for another Trial… I don't know."
"Alright," she says. "Then in a few days, we'll see if you can get us a better read on when it's going to appear."
"I will," I say. "And after it's dealt with, if I'm not feeling like there's another major threat, then I'll be leaving."
"Thank you," Silvia says. "For helping us out."
"You're welcome," I tell her.
I wouldn't feel right leaving when I know about this threat. Even if I've really only interacted with a handful of people so far, letting the kingdom be destroyed just because I left a few days early wouldn't sit right with me.
"Now," I stretch a little. "Want me to open a [Gate] for you to go to the tower? Or what's left of it?"
"No," Silvia answers. "It's lunchtime. I'm hungry. I'll eat, then I'll go to the tower."