The valley was just as barren as the rest of the demonic realm. The negative emotions present in everything continued to needle at his Runic Knowledge - Concepts skill. It was a constant onslaught and very slowly draining him of mana. Despair, Shame, Grief, Cruelty, Greed…the list went on, a constant assault on his senses and for the first time he wished he could turn the skill off. He tried to starve it of mana, but there was always a small amount trickling through his Class Core, being turned into processed mana, and that stream was enough for the passive skill to continue functioning. The only bright side was that it was pushing the Skills growth, constantly exposing it to Concepts. A small silver lining.
The barren stone of the valley sloped down before him, far more gently than he had hoped. A steeper incline might have made it harder for the demons to fight uphill, but the ease of the slope would barely inconvenience them. Assuming they even needed to close on him to kill him.
On the upside, he’d come up with a solution to his mana problem just before they had landed. Frick was already hard at work copying what he had done. He had a total of nine mana-gems on him. It had cost him a small amount of the mana contained within the gems, but he’d managed to condense all their stored mana into just three of the gems, leaving him with six empty mana gems. Now, Frick was using Runic Creation to modify the mana gems, copying what Nate had already done to one gem, and was now applying it to his single mana gathering array.
Processed mana. It was the only solution he could come up with that didn’t involve trying to control or use the demonic energy. He’d considered the demonic energy as an option, but the darker emotions espoused by the energy made him feel ill and he had no idea how to control the energy. No sigils to corral the red energy, nor any Sigils for the darker emotions that his Runic Knowledge skill informed him were contained within the energy.
So, processed mana was his solution. If he killed these demons, surely their Class Cores should give up the processed mana. Frick required mana to progress, spiritual energy not enough on its own. A useful energy, but not for advancing the Class Cores placed in them by The System. If demons were the same, then every one that died would release processed mana. Normally, that would go to his Class Core, advancing him. But there was no point in advancing himself if he ran out of mana to fight and died. That wouldn’t even be a pyrrhic victory. That was just a stupid death.
So he was going to capture the processed mana, and use it directly to power his runes. He’d never done such before and was honestly concerned about how his runes would react. It may be processed, but it was still mana, so it should work, or so he was hoping.
As he worked, burning through his own mana reserve as he altered the shape of the runes and the sigils involved with Runic Creation, Sag’thoz and his retinue arrived. Arikanvil was there a moment later and Nate realised that he hadn’t sensed any ripples in space caused by The Wanderer’s sudden presence, even though the God had appeared within his sphere of awareness.
“You will be given a few more moments to prepare, then the first trial will begin,” announced Sag’thoz.
As he did so, the peaks of the other side of the valley rippled as demons gathered along the edge, waiting. Nate lost count after fifty, his heart already sinking. It truly seemed like they had no intention of playing even remotely fair. Instead of letting himself sink down into such morose feelings, he worked feverishly, altering his mana gathering array until he was confident it would work for processed mana. Frick was already finished with the six mana gems, having converted them into processed mana gems. Though, between the two of them they had exhausted two of the three remaining regular mana gems. With only one left he activated his robe, changing out his Gathering rune for Shaping. Empowered Runic Artistry came next as he linked the Shaping Rune and Earth Rune, beginning to build his second iteration of a Rune Fort.
The first time he’d done this, he’d lacked quite a few sigils to really bring out the full power of such a thing. This time, he had runes like Target to work with. Coupled with Imbue Intent, every demon became targets for the runes he carved into the fort. Earthen walls grew out of the ground of the valley, forming into a small fort and giving him a height advantage, or so he hoped. In front of himself he set up a control station, slots evenly distributed as a place to put the mana gems, so he could direct their mana at the various runes he was creating. Unclasping his Legendary bracer he set it up in its own slot. It would function as the barrier rune for the entire fort. As though he was setting up gun emplacements, he created three turrets, each containing two runes.
A barrier rune linked directly to an offensive targeting runic array that was in turn, linked to an item. The first item was his Legendary Acidic Wand. The second was his Shadowscale Array. For the last, it was his old Earthen Spear rune. For each turret, he used the same principle as the mana gems, where if one rune was activated the other was deactivated. It meant his turrets would drop their barriers to fire, but it was the best he could do. He suspected most of his work would be rebuilding the turrets as the demons destroyed them. Before he knew it, he had his three turrets before him. His head was already hurting as he worked as fast as he could mixing Runic Creation, Empowered Runic Artistry and Imbue Intent.
He heard Sag’thoz bellow for the trial to begin, but he couldn’t spare the attention to see where the Demon Lord or Arikanvil had gone. The fort still wasn’t ready. Setting up the processed mana gathering array box in front of him he quickly carved a processed mana exclusion rune below him, turning it into a runic array by adding a barrier rune to the mix. He shaped it so that it was a cylinder around him. He’d have to reach out with his hands to guide the processed mana to where it was needed but he needed to limit the draw his Class Core would place on the processed mana. Maybe he’d even have some leftover in the gems he could absorb later, assuming he survived.
The demons were stampeding down the other side of the valley, some launching themselves into the air to glide on underdeveloped wings. They charged on recklessly, shoving each other in their eagerness to be the first one to get to him. He had vastly underestimated the number of demons being thrown at him, as the sixty or so he had counted were just the front line. Behind them came a small sea of demons. The horde would arrive in less than a minute and he performed some last second checks to make sure he’d covered off everything. Defence, offence and finally the mana to power it all.
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Frick placed the last of the processed mana gems into the processed mana gathering array and Nate spared a nod for his Familiar. He could sense the Spirit was as afraid as he was. With the mana gems completely exhausted, first contact would be relying on his internal mana. His Legendary bracer had only been partially recharged and he activated it, enveloping the fort in a shimmering barrier. At the same time he started feeding his own mana to two of the rune turrets. Frick handled the last one. Smaller and weaker barriers bloomed around the turrets as he felt his mana almost bottom out. He’d done all he could now. He just had to hope his rune turrets worked as intended.
He would have made more of the turrets, and fully intended to if the fight dragged on, but the material was a limiting factor for how much mana the runes could use and the fact was, he didn’t have enough mana spare to go nuts with Improve Material. That was why he had to rely on components he’d already developed for the offensive runes. Even the Earthen Spear rune was carved into Rare tier wood, which was vastly superior to the common stone that the fort was made out of.
Staring forward the first demon, ahead of the pack, charged into the range of his turrets. Immediately his acid spitting turret dropped its barrier, spitting out a bolt of acid that caught the demon in the face. It went down screaming and tearing at its own face, dying a second later as the acid melted through its skull. There were more demons a few metres behind it and they began to attack en masse. They were finally in range of Awareness of the Runic Artist and he could tell they all ranged from level thirty to forty. He spotted a couple of Epic Classes but no Legendaries in the mix.
That was the first part, the second was his processed mana gathering array was working. With four demons dead already, two melted by Acid Bolts and two torn to shreds by small Shadow Prisons, the processed mana was flowing into his gathering array, filling his gems. Grabbing three of them he tossed one to Frick who stood next to his Legendary Bracer. The Spirit immediately started guiding the processed mana into the Bracer, reinforcing it as the barrier around them went from being slightly translucent to glowing with a vibrant white. The other two gems he took for himself. Splitting his attention he grabbed a rock and carved a Water Exclusion rune into it with Runic Creation before beginning to use Improve Material on it.
The demons were hammering away at his barrier, even as his turrets fired almost constantly. Frick had his hands full reinforcing the barrier, so while his Familiar handled the barrier, he used the second gem to refill the mana in his turrets. The moment the gem was dry he tossed it back into the gathering array and grabbed out another one.
One of the demons had realised the threat of the turrets and was targeting the barrier around his acidic wand turret, launching balls of fire from its flaming fists. His sphere of awareness told him it couldn’t hold for much longer and he was forced to pause his use of Improve Material to activate True Teleportation, moving the turret to the other side of the Rune Fort. It continued to fire the moment it was repositioned and he quickly expended another mana gem refilling it. The only upside was that the turrets were killing demons fast enough to refill the gems. He wasn’t certain, but he thought the power the turrets were exhibiting was far beyond the norm, a product of using processed mana was his guess.
It was chaos all around him. He could see the barrier constantly fading then becoming bright again as Frick fought to keep the barrier supplied with mana while it withstood an onslaught of skills and spells. Fire, acid, lightning, darkness and body parts were constantly thrown against it. Each attack eating into the Legendary barrier, as every demon seemed desperate to be the one to kill him. But the rune empowering the barrier was Master tier, channelled through a Legendary material with a barrier affinity and being powered by processed mana. He wished he could see the look on Sag’thoz and Xalvoloth’s faces as their demonic horde threw themselves into the meat grinder that was his Rune Fort.
Taking direct control of his Shadow Prison turret he expanded the volume of processed mana it would have access to as he expended all the mana in one of the gems. The volume would have more than tripled his mana reserve and the outcome reflected that. A Shadow Prison bloomed, covering over forty metres as it formed in front of the fort. He sensed at least ten demons within the confines of the shadowed zone and his sphere covered less than a quarter of the prison. Trapped inside, the shadows began shredding the demons to pieces. He couldn’t hear the screams, but he could sense them through his sphere of awareness as the nearest demons were carved apart by living shadow. Without the Concept of Devouring to fight against them, the shadow tendrils were even more effective than they had been against Xalvoloth. When the shadow prison vanished, there was nothing but a sea of black ichor and body parts in front of his Rune Fort.
The gap let him focus behind him as he sensed his Earthen Projectile turret get destroyed. Before they could get to the rune, he drew enough processed mana to activate True Teleportation again, making the wooden rune appear in his hand as he quickly constructed a new turret before teleporting it back outside of the Rune Fort so that it could continue firing. While he had the mana to use True Teleportation, he swapped the acid wand turret and his shadow prison turret to opposite sides of the Rune Fort so he could repeat his tactic with the Shadow Prison.
He was winning. Against the numbers and likely the odds, he was winning. He expended another full processed mana gem to activate the shadow prison turret again. With the decreased pressure on the barrier, Frick had taken over refuelling his acid wand turret which was picking off demons on the other side of the fort.
For the first time since being kidnapped, he felt hope kindle in his heart. He had resigned himself to going down fighting. But he wasn’t just fighting. He was winning. Demon body parts and ichor decorated the side of the valley all around his Rune Fort, but his defences hadn’t been breached and the enemy had lost the advantage they had. His processed mana gems were refilling faster than he could use them, and the enemy lacked the tiers or levels to threaten him. None of the Demons so far had had anything like the Devouring Concept or Nullification, like Null’s Skills. It was obvious that these demons were the trash of Demon Lord Sag’thoz’s kingdom. Thrown at him to wear him down perhaps, but instead, all they had done was empower him.
That hope was dashed as he heard Lord Sag’thoz’s deep voice echo through the valley.
“Let the second trial begin.”
On the peaks of the other side of the valley, more demons appeared. Fewer in number, he counted only eight. That was enough of an indication of what he was about to face. These were the skilled demons. Eight of them. Ready to rip his head from his body.
He activated the Shadow Prison turret one last time as Frick controlled the acid projectile turret to finish off the stragglers. They didn’t need the distraction of the small fry if they were about to fight the elite. He hoped the difference in strength was small between the demons he’d just slaughtered and the ones approaching far more carefully now, as the creatures picked their way slowly down the slope of the valley towards him. But he knew the hope was in vain. The fight was just getting started. He’d have prayed to The Wanderer then and there, but with the God watching on passively, he knew that the higher being didn’t care. All he had was himself and Frick to rely on. Grabbing another mana gem he began preparing for the demons of the second trial.