This was Zed’s first fight since becoming a category two. He felt the power of his advancement bubble in the activation of his core, and when he cast his rune, he felt it in the speed of its activation.
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* You have cast basic rune [Force].
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The familiar sight of the force rune glowed a soft purple, grafted a finger moving too fast as he activated it. The air around him shifted and Zed felt mana draw from his core before the rune exploded in purple rings of force mana growing as they crossed the distance.
Ronda turned from the monster she’d shot, stepping away from their cluster as she fired off more shots, each trigger squeezed a herald to a boom that seemed to shake the air.
Her quarries scuttled out of the way, seeking avoidance of her shots as they sought out the opportunity to draw blood from any member of the party.
Zed’s anger burned within him as his rune-spell missed and it was all he could do not to step away from Shanine’s now terrified form in a bid to hunt down the wolves as they darted from one point to another.
The others moved in a blur of activities. Abed summoned boulders from the earth and tossed them as if he himself was a troll fighting with nothing but his strength. The dwarf, Eitri, pulled a gun out of nowhere, the idea wasn’t metaphorical, it was literal. He had been a man unarmed as they walked but now he wielded a long rifle capable of only individual shots. The weapon was longer than the mage was tall which truly begged the question of where he’d gotten it.
Lady Long Legs was a canon of molten lava, chucking spears of magma as if she had all the mana in the world to spare as Madam Shaggy built a furnace of heat with every ball of fire she sent flying across the distance.
Everyone brought the weight of their spellforms to bear, each of them casting across the distance in a bid to keep the monsters at bay as the party moved at a crawl.
Zed felt the monsters now, their auras unleashed now that violence stood on the horizon. He could feel the Rukh auras, their discomfort threatening to rub his skin bare like the roughened tongues of animals in the wild. They were like sandpaper against the skin. However, they did not weigh down on him as much as he remembered. They did not cripple him to paralysis or pull him down to his knees.
Discomfort was all they brought while Shanine fell to the ground, shivering like a child trapped in an ice cap.
Instinct took Zed as he fired off another rune, careful to watch his mana reserves lest he run out in the beginning of his fight. One of his hands grabbed a portion of Shanine’s weathered gown, testing how strong it was. He tugged on it softly, heard it rip somewhere, and let it go immediately.
Dragging her was out of the question. Something told him she wouldn’t truly appreciate the concept of being saved naked. Then again, she had been a prostitute for a considerable while.
What’s another group of people seeing her body?
He killed the thought as effectively as it came. He understood the purpose of the thought, efficiency over sentiment. However, he was the reason she was here. In his confidence he’d dragged her to the forest with promise of food and weak animals and she’d trusted him.
Keeping her safe was no longer his only duty. As ludicrous as it was to believe, keeping her comfortable as best as he could was also a priority.
Zed bent to her as he fired off another force spell.
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* You have cast basic rune [Force].
* Basic rune [Force] has applied effect [Knockback] on [Woven viper].
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What the hell is a woven viper? Zed wondered, even as the notification dispelled itself and he wrapped an arm around Shanine.
He lifted her bodily and threw her over his shoulder, bracing himself against the weight of her. He paused in shock, turning to look at the trembling girl now on his shoulder and frowned.
She weighs nothing, he noted, worrying she had truly had too little to eat.
In that moment, a monster slipped past Kid, serpentine in its elusion of his attacks. Three bursts of mana shots bit into the dirt, following its path as it slithered past him in deadly speed.
“Viper incoming!” Kid bellowed, already turning his attention from it to face a new enemy.
The viper slithered forward like a shot rope and Zed pulled a new rune to his mind, holding it in place even as he cast another force rune that missed its target.
Holding two runes in mind for so long was testing. It strained at his mental strength and pulled his mind in two. Each second was spent holding them in place, forcing them to obey as his mind grafted them from nothing but his mental will.
Zed blasted it with another force rune only to hit the earth, upturning the dirt. The Viper’s attention focused on him and he realized it had only been heading in his general direction once before.
Zed hefted Shanine easily, preparing his new rune. His finger twitched as he held it in place, commanded it. He braced himself, waiting for the perfect moment, instincts from lives unlived running through him, forcing him to wait when all he wanted to do was cast.
The viper shot off the ground, streaking through the air at him. Zed raised a hand, and drew a rune in the air, one it had taken him only two days to learn, and Francis zipped through the air.
Francis crashed into the snake with wisps of visible mana around him, orange and red so strong Zed knew them for the fire mana they were.
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He struck the beast with a wild fury, grabbing it by the head with both hands. Steam rose from where his hands touched the snake and it struggled against his hold, writhing on the ground. It was large enough that the action bucked Francis about, throwing him into the ground with every twist and turn.
Francis held on, not for dear life but a need to satiate a violence that bled in his face. It seemed the loss of Lovina and Kev had left him a hollow shell with nothing but anger within him.
Off to one side, fighting a winning battle against a Rukh rank spider as large as a bus and moving with six legs on each side, Tulip spared no attention for Francis’ rage. He moved with lightning at his beck and call, striking electricity where he saw a chance and surviving the monsters many legs with weaves and ducks.
The monster was already smoking, charred in places were lightning had struck it, its speed slowing with each strike, yet it refused to just die.
A blast of mana struck the viper in Francis’ grip, ripping its tail to shreds and the creature let out a wild his.
“Shut your fucking mouth!” Francis growled at it, unaware of how close the mana shot had been to him.
Zed left them to their struggle as he carried a crying Shanine forward, moving with the party’s progression.
If anyone cared that Big Man Desolate remained nowhere to be found since being taken by a monster, they showed nothing of it. They simply fought on for their lives.
Zed let the new rune he’d learnt dissipate from his mind as he focused on the one he was familiar with. It was designed to keep monsters at a distance and while he’d assured Chris that he’d needed no axe, he was very aware of how wrong he had been.
His force rune had the potential to deal significant damage, but if he was being honest, it was nothing more than a tool, a skill designed to stun an enemy so he could deal a killing blow. Without a weapon, there was no killing blow to be dealt.
He could use his fire rune but he didn’t possess enough accuracy with it, and even if he did, Rukh rank monsters were proving too fast to hit even with his force rune. In truth, apart from simply keeping Shanine on his shoulders, he was beginning to feel quite useless.
Abed brought a boulder down on a woven viper’s head, massive enough to crush anything and it flattened under the weight of it. Behind him one of the wolves broke the unplanned perimeter they had built in their escape and he dug his hand into the ground beneath him. When he pulled it free, it was not empty. He unsheathed a massive, wide sword of earth wrapped in glowing plants from the ground and swung it into the beast.
The flat of the massive cleaver slammed into the wolf visibly dislodging its jaw. The monster hit the ground like a crashed aircraft, spittle and blood drooling from its mouth and Abed turned away from it to charge another monster.
Zed’s fingers moved in a blur and he cast a rune at the beast as it struggled to get back to its feet.
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* You have cast basic rune [Force].
* Basic rune [Force] has applied effect [Knockback] on [Dread wolf].
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Rings of purple force drove the beast into the ground and Zed blasted it again, aiming for its head.
He approached it as he cast rune-spell after rune-spell, driving it deeper into the earth with each blast of force rune. Each notification was a motivation but his mana core was a reminder that casting runes was not infinite for him.
Still on his shoulder, Shanine let out a scream. It was all the warning Zed needed and he darted to the side, her lack of weight on his shoulder doing nothing to slow him.
Zed skidded to a stop as a woven viper landed where he had been and he cast another rune. This rune came slower than his force rune. Learned but not mastered, he drew it in the air as fast as he could, hoping it would not fail him now.
His finger curved lines in the air, trailing a soft translucent blue of mana in its wake until he drew the final line in the air. The woven viper turned to him, its attention focused, and darted forward.
Every mage still alive fought for their lives and Zed knew no one was coming to save him.
And you don’t need anyone to, he told himself. You need to be at least that strong if you want to find Anthony and the others.
He activated the rune and its once translucent lines of blue flickered a bright fiery yellow as if ignited by a spark.
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* You have cast basic rune [Fire].
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Rather than strike at him, the viper flung itself to the side with a terrifying speed. Its jaw widened as it scaled the air and Zed was too slow to warn its victim even as a new notification lit up in front of him.
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* Basic rune [Fire] has applied effect [Flame] on [Dread wolf].
* Effect [Flame] has afflicted [Dread wolf] with [Burn].
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The wolf squealed, turning and tossing along the grass as the flames from Zed’s rune-spell spread all over its fur. But Zed wasn’t watching it anymore. Instead, he watched in horror as the large viper he’d intended on attacking wrapped itself around Tulip while his warning died on his lips.
Tulip was a Rukh rank mage. And by the feel of the man’s aura, he was simply a category one. A touch of fear filled Zed as he worried at what to do. Everyone was occupied with simply staying alive and none of them had their attention on each other.
Except Festus.
The old man strolled up to Tulip, emerging as if out of nowhere. His hand shot out and grabbed the viper by the neck and he squeezed with a careless attention.
The viper’s muscles constricted in pain and Tulip let out a pained gasp. Festus didn’t seem to care for the mage’s discomfort as he flicked a hand in another direction. Zed didn’t see Festus’ fingers move but he saw a rune come alive. Vines shot out of it, wrapping around one of the spider monsters, constricting it despite how much it struggled until it laid helpless on the ground wrapped in green vines that did not belong to the dying light of the forest.
Unconcerned, Festus’ grip on the viper tightened one last time and Zed could’ve sworn he heard the sound of bones breaking before Festus released the creature.
Tulip pushed himself from the confines of the snake’s hold, unwrapping in a hurry as he shrugged out of the thing.
“We need to move,” Ven bellowed over the chaos of explosive spells and destructive combat. “NOW!”
Zed turned to find the Olympians already charging forward, mana shots from their weapons picking out the few remaining monsters around them as they hurried on.
“You heard the man,” Festus said to Tulip, unbothered. “Hurry up before they leave you.”
Festus’ attention turned to Zed and he gestured a shooing motion with his hand as he gestured absently towards the bound spider. The air wobbled around it and constricted. The distortion closed in on the spider until it began crushing it.
Festus walked in the direction of the Olympians, reminding Zed that he was supposed to be running as the spider let out pained shrieks as bones broke and its body suffered under the brutality of force mana.
As Zed turned to run, a new notification informed him of another victory.
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* You have defeated [Dread wolf].
* You have gained +69 [Exp].
* Exp to category 3: 2581/3400.
* Defeat Beta rank [Mana beast] 1/9.
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Zed spared a pained glance at the charred remains of the Dread wolf as he ran, knowing how much he would’ve loved to go back for it, if he wasn’t so certain it would’ve killed him.
He ran forward, motivated by a need to stay alive. Ahead of him the others chased after the charging Olympians as they took a turn on the path. It curved sharply and they followed needing the freedom it would give them from their chasers.
Zed fled from his Exp.