Zed turned and a scraggle was tossed into another one. Both scraggles collided with force and went flying into a tree. Free of them, he struggled with one currently pulling at his hair. His scalp burned as he pulled it free and he hoped it hadn’t come away with locks of his hair.
Tomahawk in hand, he kept the others at bay, waving it about. He threw aside the one that had been in his hair and swung his tomahawk against another, connecting with its side where his blade buried itself.
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* You have defeated [Scraggle (Beta, category 2)].
* Defeat [Scraggle] 3/13.
* You have gained +41 [Exp].
* Exp to category 2: 0538/2500.
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Ash was claiming the brunt of monster lives. She mixed her specialization of water magic with spellforms Zed barely heard. She gathered orbs of water around her, lips moving in almost muted chants. Before she completed her chants she would send the orbs flying at her targets. Finishing her spellform as water shot through the air as if squirted from an extremely large water canon, each one would freeze into deadly icicles. What would’ve once been water would become sharp and strong. Spikes designed to kill.
In this way most of their opponents suffered injuries and some of them died. Zed, however, spent his time in the troublesome task of killing with strength over finesse. The scraggles were quick to protect their vulnerable bodies with their stone limbs and he found he wasn’t quick enough to swing the tomahawk faster than they could. Thus, he took advantage of their pride in the solidity of their stone body and cracked grooves in their heads.
“Is this going as planned?” Zed asked Ash as the back of his tomahawk sent a scraggle stumbling. He scowled at the creature’s refusal to fall and struck it again, ducking into a roll as another went for his head from the top of a tree. “And why the hell do they keep gunning for me. You’re the icicle stabby princess. You’d think they’d realize you’re the threat.”
“First, there was no plan,” Ash said, spinning an orb of water into a flat disk so that a scraggle rebounded off it. “Second, don’t call me princess.”
“You take offence at being called a princess but not being called icicle stabby?” Zed asked, surprised. “Your priorities are misguided, Ash.”
A third swing drilled into another scraggles head, sending it limp.
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* You have defeated Beta rank monster [Scraggle].
* Defeat [Scraggle] 4/11.
* You have gained +46 Exp.
* Exp to category 2: 0584/2500.
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They hadn’t been fighting for long but Zed could tell Ash was already losing steam. She wasn’t sweating, because as he’d come to learn from their running sessions, mages did not sweat. At least not so easily. But her breathing was heavier, and while he could still feel the discomfort of her aura, it seemed hollow.
Above them there was a loud explosion that shook the ceiling and Zed had a new worry filling his mind. If the ceiling came down on them during the others’ fight, would Ash survive? With his regenerative attribute he had a feeling he would survive, make it through somehow. Pain would be the only thing he would have to worry about.
Another thud resounded through the ceiling and Zed turned to a now panting Ash as they slowly backed away from the livid scraggles. Since the fight had begun, there had been an aura lurking about, moving from tree to tree. Even now, it remained absent, hidden behind one of the trees. Ash had done her best to knock it into visibility but everything she’d tried had failed. Also, Zed had noticed it spent most of its time on trees closer to him. He wondered if that was some sign of intelligence.
“I think it’s kind of strange how we’re suddenly back on the back foot,” he told Ash.
“We were never on the front foot,” she said.
“No,” Zed disagreed. “I’ve killed like five of these things now, and somehow, with all your icicleness, I don’t think your figures are any higher.”
“You’re keeping count?” Ash asked, surprised.
“What can I say, I count well sometimes.”
“You can keep count of the monsters you kill, know we’re going to fight scraggles despite not knowing we were going to fight at all, and remember movies no one watches, but can’t remember your past well enough to know you should be in a hurry to get back to your daughter?”
“I take it that’s how memory loss works,” Zed said, his mood darkening from being reminded of the daughter that was not his. “And honestly, I don’t see how that’s much of your business.”
Ash paused, surprised, but schooled herself almost immediately.
“I didn’t think it annoyed you that much,” she said, quietly.
“Well it does,” Zed said. “So drop it.”
There was a particular scraggle amongst the group that hobbled forward with less menace than the others. Zed wondered about that but kept most of his attention on his invisible stalker. Something told him that when it came out of hiding it would be going for his head. I bet it thinks I’m a red head, too.
“Why exactly are you so tired?” he asked Ash as he shooed back one of the scraggles with a threatening swing.
“What kind of question is that?” she asked. “Haven’t you been seeing me dual cast? You think that’s a walk in the park?”
Zed didn’t know much about dual casting. But if it rendered a mage stronger than him tired before he even was, he was of the opinion that it was far too inefficient to be useful.
“Didn’t know casting two spellforms takes that much toll on the body,” he said.
“Well, it does.”
“Then why do it?”
“Because my specialty is water, and water doesn’t do squat.”
“So they’re a bad match up?”
“Yes.”
“Wait. In avatar couldn’t the water benders also make ice?”
“I don’t know, Zed,” Ash grumbled, raising a water shield to defend against a diving scraggle. “I didn’t watch the show. And if you call me a water bender one more time I’ll blood bend you until you’re bent over backwards in front of these things.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Zed snorted. “Only the unique few could blood bend. And how do you know of blood benders if you didn’t watch the—”
“Zed!”
The panic in Ash’s voice was enough to silence him and Zed found her looking ahead of them, far beyond the scraggles in front of them.
Zed followed her gaze, already suspecting what he would see. The scraggle that had stayed away from the fight was no longer in hiding. He felt the aura before he saw the creature. When his gaze met it, his eyes widened and it was all he could do not to let his mouth hang open.
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If the scraggles were angry babies. This one looked like an overgrown teenager new to their teen years. It was closer to Ash’s shoulders in height and was built stocky. The only description Zed had for it as he watched it glare at him as if he’d kicked its scraggle grandma was that it looked like an overfed fourteen-year-old addicted to the gym while using steroids.
It slammed its stone hands into the floor like an overactive monkey, its action somehow blotting out the violence of the fight happening above them, and Ash pulled on Zed’s sleeves.
“You’ve been training with Festus for over a week now,” she said hurriedly. “Please tell me you have something for that,”
Zed shook his head frantically. “It’s more likely it has something for me. Can’t you, like, use your icicles or something?”
“That won’t do anything, but I have something that might work,” she said as they backed around a tree, drawing closer to the exit. “But it’s a spell I’ll need time to cast.”
“What about your icicles? They’ve been doing a sufficiently acceptable job so far.”
“Do you see any flesh on the damned thing, Red?” Ash snarled.
Zed took a moment to really pay attention to it and found Ash was right. while its torso was still the color of flesh, much like the others, it bore cracks running through it in the same way rocky grooves ran through its arms. More alarming was the fact that the creature’s eyes never left Zed’s face even as its constant pounding slowly evolved into stomping.
“I take it that’s the category three Oliver was talking about,” he muttered.
“It is,” Ash said. “Now do you have something or are we going to keep making our way for the exit.”
Zed ran through his arsenal of runes learnt from Festus and frowned. It wasn’t a very vast arsenal, and while the others had claimed rune magic would be more difficult for him to learn than spellform, something told him there was a lie in there somewhere that they weren’t aware of. Runes were difficult but not impossibly so. At least not to him. In his time training with Festus for over seven hours a day, his arsenal of runes was low. It comprised of what Festus described as the great number of two.
And he couldn’t cast one of them under all this pressure.
“I might have something,” he said, pulling up the image of a rune in his head. “But I can’t promise you it will work.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Ash said. “As long as it buys me time. Once I start casting, I’m willing to bet Oliver’s dinner that they’ll attack, so keep them off me.”
“Wait, I didn’t say…”
Zed’s words trailed off as Ash’s lips started moving, her hands held forward and her eyelids narrowed in what looked like drowsiness, flickering like someone fighting a losing battle to sleep.
The scraggles had stopped their advance since the appearance of the category three, but now they worked themselves into a frenzy, each one taking slowly increasing steps towards them.
Alright, Zed, you can do it, Zed thought in a less than effective pep talk. Just like you practiced, hold the rune and cast the rune. The foundation of magic is your oyster and you’re the chef cracking it in two or three. Do they crack oysters to cook them? He wondered. Wait, do they even cook oysters?
Another boom erupted above them.
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* Defeat [Scraggle] 4/10.
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At least the guys upstairs were playing their part.
Zed lifted his empty hand and pointed forward. He captured his rune of choice in his mind and began crafting it. Runes were very much unlike spellforms, according to Festus. Spellforms dictated that a mage find a connection to mana and allow it flow through them, creating spells from the understanding the mana gave them. Rune casting was much different from that in the sense that a mage needed to imprint his will solely on his action. It was like ripping off the steering wheel of a vehicle and shoving their hand into the hole to drive the car. It was vastly more dangerous but the controls more responsive. The steering wheel made it easier to drive but ripping it off gave complete—if not chaotic—control to the mage. All they had to do was get a strong enough grip on it and learn finesse, lest they drive themselves into a wall.
Zed tapped into his core and felt his already active mana respond to him. It flowed, filling him up, and he channeled it to his finger. His finger moved, trailing blue-white lines of mana in the air and it was the war horn that sent the scraggles into a frenzied charge.
Zed drew a line in the air and crossed it. He crossed it again at an impossible angle and twirled a curved line about it. He expended mana for each line he drew and willed into being.
The scraggle charge was halfway done when a line he drew wasn’t bent enough and the rune crumbled. Zed scowled at it, his grip of the tomahawk in his other hand tightening, and started again.
The rune obeyed this time and the line that had broken it once curved accurately. The category three scraggle was almost on him when he completed the rune.
Then he activated it.
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* You have cast basic rune [Force].
* You have gained +1 [Wil].
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Zed had used the rune before, but this was the first time he was using it under any kind of pressure. He wondered if that played a part in his sudden rise in Wil.
The rune erupted as the category three scraggle attacked with a downward swing of both arms like an axe blow. As the rune implied, it was an emulation of a basic force attack, and a wave of force blasted forward.
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* Basic rune [Force] has applied effect [Knockback] on multiple enemies.
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The scraggle struck the eruption of force and was sent flying back. The wave blasted the smaller scraggles backwards, ripping one of the dwarf trees from its roots as everything in front of Zed was blasted away from him. Everything—scraggles and tree alike—flew backwards, soaring through the distance to hit one tree or the other.
The category three, however, only crossed half the distance of the others before falling on its front.
It scrambled back to its feet, and Zed felt its anger even if its stone expression had undergone no change. It watched him with more determination now, but Zed couldn’t bring himself to worry. Beside him, Ash was done with whatever spellform she’d been conjuring up and he watched a massive ball of water large enough to fill a swimming pool gather above her.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” he laughed in excitement. “That’s magic! Drown these fuckers!”
When Ash opened her eyes, they glowed a soft blue and she affixed them on the large scraggle.
“Glacial wave,” she muttered, closing her spellform, and dropped her hands.
The ball of water fell forward like an actual wave. The other scraggles already scrambling forward turned to beat a hasty retreat but the large one challenged Ash’s attack, beating the ground violently.
The wave met all of them, and for all its bravado, the category three got swept away. The wave continued to grow until all the monsters were within its hold, then it froze, sealing all of them in ice. Only the category three scraggle had a piece of it held over the ice and its head stared expressionlessly at them.
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* Defeat [Scraggle] 4/9.
* Defeat [Scraggle] 4/8.
* Defeat [Scraggle] 4/7.
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“That’s a lot of dying scraggles,” Zed mused as he watched the numbers drop. Eventually they came to an end.
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* Defeat [Scraggle] 4/7.
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Either the category three wasn’t the only scraggle trapped in ice that was still alive or Oliver and the others still had two of theirs to go.
Beside Zed, Ash staggered and he caught her from stumbling forward.
“You good?” he asked, slightly worried. “That was a stupid question. You don’t look so good. There’s no way you’re good. Sorry.”
“Three part spellform,” Ash said, her voice tired. “Takes more out of me than it should.”
“Dual casting, now triple casting,” Zed smirked. “You’re on a roll today, aren’t you?”
“Yea. But there’s still more to do,” she wheezed, lowering herself to the ground. “Can I trust you to finish off anyone that’s still alive?”
Zed spared the ice a glance. “Is that ice going to thaw anytime soon?”
Ash shook her head. “And they shouldn’t be able to break out of it unless one of them is a Rukh.”
“Good.”
Zed rested her against a tree to catch her breath and walked up to the scraggles, tomahawk in hand.
He climbed the rising ice and was almost at the category three when the ceiling shook more violently than it ever had.
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* Defeat [Scraggle] 4/7.
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The ceiling shook once more as he dismissed the notification. Debris of concrete shook loose and a particularly large slab as long as Zed was tall hit the ground somewhere in front of him, a distance behind the category three, and a thin crack spread out from it to damage the ice.
“I thought you said it was going to hold!” Zed said.
He ran towards the category three now struggling against the ice. He had to get to it before it got free, and he needed to get to it now.
The scraggle pulled one of its arms free as he got to it and the ceiling above them caved in.
A massive monster fell through it, expelled from the floor above and landed between Zed and his quarry.
It was the size of two grown men placed atop each other from head to toe and as wide as a truck.
It stared at Zed balefully.
The creature had cracks riddling it and loose pebbles falling from its body. Its face was a perfect replica of the same stone expression the other scraggles had, yet somehow Zed knew it was looking at his hair.
It was hard to believe it was a scraggle.
The monster took a staggering step towards Zed, abandoning the fight above, and Zed gulped.
Maybe it was time to stop hanging out with Ash and the others. All this punching above his weight was going to get him killed.