Chapter 136 – Jack Versus the Black Centipede

Jack immediately jumped. Then he jumped once more as giant flaming arrows whizzed through the air and exploded behind him. Hannah dropped a bow towards Jack, and he reached out to grab it. She immediately activated her [Bow Link] allowing Jack to hang in the air momentarily while the explosions died down.

“Any kills?” Jack hollered.

“Two,” she grimaced. Jack took a second longer to inspect her. The flaming wings and flying thing was new, and pretty scary if he was being completely honest with himself.

Jack glanced back down at the roaring flames and burning city below. He spotted a few assassins throwing what looked like small circular bombs into the fires. They exploded and released a black substance that instantly quenched the fires and mixed with the smoke, turning the well-lit battlefield into a smokescreen. Jack couldn’t help but grin. That actually worked out in his favor. He let go of the bow and dropped down below into the smoke.

Two assassins immediately jumped out at him, but Jack was faster to react by a hair. He slid in past the scimitars of the first one and buried his dagger deep into the surprised assassin’s stomach. Blood exploded everywhere as the assassin lurched back hard and ripped himself free of the dagger.

“Corruption! He’s got corrupted blades!” The assassin screamed as he coughed up black blood and stumbled to the ground. Jack pushed to finish him off, but three more assassins jumped out of the smoke, coming to their comrade’s aid. Jack pushed backwards into the smoke, letting Wiggleworm shroud him in her dark cloak as he tried to navigate his surroundings.

Jack let his [Blood Scent] guide him. He had injured that first assassin badly enough that he activated his passives. Jack couldn’t help but grin as he was rewarded with two assassins trying to help heal their wounded friend. He lashed out at them all with a furious assault, his daggers weaving through their strikes and finding shallow purchase up and down their bodies. They were playing far more defensively, desperate to avoid Jack’s blades and the corrupting effects. Jack took that as an opportunity to finish off the already injured assassin. It was little respite though as he found himself assailed on all fronts. He jumped back into the air, but they already had counters for that little trick. Three of them shot out black threads of mana that latched onto Jack, pulling him back to the ground. He frantically cut through the shadow string, but Cumberlin showed back up with his giant centipede pet. It crawled towards him with the speed and force of a bullet train, slamming him into the remains of a nearby house.

Jack barely caught the pincers with his daggers and slid back as the creature’s strength overwhelmed him. Cumberlin had a dispassionate look on his face as he rode atop the centipede, weaving a spell of his own that was likely meant to kill him. The assassins revealed themselves in full as they all lunged toward Jack with their blades.

Finally, Jack grinned as he got a full view of his attackers. He let the tension bleed out of his body, letting the centipedes’ pincers inch ever closer to cutting him in half.

Then he disappeared in a burst of explosive speed.

The pincers snapped loudly behind him as they cut through nothing but air. Jack had his daggers buried into the chest of two assassins before anyone realized what was going on. Again, he exploded in another burst of speed, his next target already chosen. To Jack’s surprise the assassin was able to deflect his daggers, although barely. Jack didn’t even wait half a second before he moved on to a different target instead, who wasn’t as lucky. He tried a third time but landed in a sticky black cobweb that tangled him up hard as he flailed around wildly to get out of whatever he just jumped into.

The assassins had recovered from the initial shock of his true speed quicker than he had hoped. Jack had only gotten three before they figured out a counter. He was rapidly starting to reevaluate how easy he thought it was going to be to conquer the second floor. The fights were getting nothing but harder and his mana handicap was becoming more and more hindering, and this was only the beginning. Cumberlin by all accounts appeared to be phoning it in thus far. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen when the gnome started taking things seriously.

Hannah was still flying up above like a bird of prey shooting down several arrows forged from her orange napalm mana. She launched one arrow directly at Jack, and he bit back an agonized scream as her mana scorched his skin. It did, however, burn up all the webbing allowing Jack to escape. He downed a health potion and refocused himself, searching for another target. Cumberlin had also decided on a new target. He watched the giant black centipede launch up into the sky towards Hannah, swimming through the air like gravity didn’t exist. She launched arrow after arrow at her attacker, but Cumberlin batted them aside with black whip-like tentacles of his own. She flew further up into the skies, but the centipede followed with ease, quickly swirling around her and cutting off all routes of escape. Hannah’s flaming wings wrapped around her, encasing her.

Then she exploded in a burst of flames.

Long burning feather shaped arrows shot out by the hundreds in every direction and completely eviscerated the centipede, burning it away in the process. Hannah went limp, her body smoldering as she fell from the skies.

Jack glanced back at four more assassins making their way towards him, then back to Hannah who was still helplessly falling to the ground. He let the tension bleed out of his body once more and took in a slow, deep breath as he fell deep into the heart of [Storm Stance]. He had managed to turn his strikes into little bolts of lightning, but he needed more. He needed to move like lightning. He needed to be the lightning. Something that would prove to be exceptionally difficult seeing as he didn’t have any mana.

Still though, as he pieced through the information he had on [Storm Stance], it tended to have answers for him. When he needed to be evasive it had him moving like a cloud through the battlefield. When he needed to hit hard it taught him how to strike like lightning. This time it had him coiling his body like a spring, building unbearable tension in his muscles as he gathered up every ounce of strength available to him. Jack hunched over slightly, gravity overtaking him as he fell forward. This was only the first phase of the movement technique. The second required him to flood his muscles with lightning mana to further increase the speed and power. There was also an errant warning that advised doing this with proper mana reinforcement was crucial, as the technique would severely overexert the physical limitations of the body. Jack chose to ignore that last bit.

He fell forward until his face almost touched the ground, then he released the tension built up in his body, moving with a speed that made the world blur around him. It was jagged and erratic as he blasted through each of the assassins in his way, shooting past them so fast he wasn’t even sure if he hit them with his daggers. He came to a stop behind them with a pained grimace. He was out of breath. His heart was beating like a jackhammer, threatening to burst out of his chest. His blood burned hot and his vision waned. His muscles were tight and halfway cramping. Even his breath came out like steam. The cost of moving like lightning required complete and total exertion of his physical capabilities. He gave quick thanks that he had received a race upgrade all that time ago, because he was positive he would be dying of a heart attack right now if he tried that with his common body.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Mastery upgrade: Dexterity

Adept-High 🡪 Journeyman-Low

Jack grinned. He had finally broken into a new realm of mastery. Two kill notifications followed the upgrade, and Jack looked behind him prepared to fend off the two remaining assassins. He spotted them about a hundred yards away.

Shit, Jack thought. Moving like that he had not only blown past them but traveled a considerable distance. He looked up. Hannah was still falling and didn’t look like she had recovered at all, but Jack was in catching distance now. He urged his protesting body to move as he ran towards her in more of an awkward gravity assisted stumble forward. He jumped into the air, then jumped once more as he grabbed onto Hannah, arresting her momentum and sending them both sideways into the wall of a building. Jack groaned in pain as his entire body screamed at him. He looked down at the unconscious Hannah and slapped her on the face a few times trying to wake her up. A furious eye shot open.

“Ready for round two?” Jack grinned.

Hannah grimaced and pulled out a blue mana potion, chugging the contents as she picked herself up off the ground. Her skin was charred black, and she was walking with a limp.

“I think you dislocated my shoulder,” she complained through clenched teeth. She nursed her left shoulder, and then shoved it back into place. She gave it a few tentative test roles before taking in her surroundings.

They were in a mostly destroyed section of the city, large in part due to their fighting. A few zombies lingered around but the sound of a large skirmish could be heard taking place somewhere to their right, likely drawing the brunt of the zombies attention.

“You look like shit. Life without mana that hard?” Hannah finally smirked at him, inspecting him carefully.

“Worse. You have any ammo by the way?”

Hannah threw him one of her void rings. Jack fished out her flintlock pistol and gave it a quick inspection before tucking it into his belt.

Accurate Flintlock Pistol

Type: Weapon

Enchantment Slots: 3/3

[+1 Accuracy]

Increases pistol range.

*****

A simple weapon designed for medium range combat.

It wasn’t anything special, but it was better than nothing. He pulled out some ammo and reloaded his gun as well.

“Epic? Did the Tower upgrade it?” Hannah asked, looking at Jack’s gun.

“Nope. Apparently, it’s always been at least epic. Likely wasn’t made on the first floor but somewhere much higher from what I’ve been told.”

Hannah nodded in appreciation.

“Over there,” Jack pointed at several figures walking through the smoke and debris.

Hannah pulled out four bows and threw them out to nearby buildings. Flames sprung to life around them, taking shape into a legless avatars of fire that wielded the bows.

“New wings. New fiery friends. You got all sorts of neat tricks. This from your epic class I take it?”

“Cindershot Seraph,” Hannah said with a note of pride. “Haven’t used these guys yet. Infernal sentinel,” she said with a nod towards the avatars. “Watch this.”

Hannah disappeared, the flaming sentinel taking her place. Jack looked upwards to see Hannah standing where the sentinel had just been.

“They can’t move once placed but I can freely swap places with them,” she said. Jack just nodded, taking a tentative step back from the blazing sentinel.

“How much mana?” Jack asked.

“Expensive as fuck. I’m almost tapped again from these four. We’re upgrading my core first, got it?”

“We gotta survive first.” Jack looked over at the approaching enemy. Then he scrunched his brows together in confusion. It wasn’t Cumberlin and the assassins.

Pale skin. Long flowing hair. Sharpened nails. Regal regency outfits. Jack had seen these people only once before. When he had hopped over the wall and broke into the city. Fucking arbiters.

“Wellwellwell,” a woman with fading brown hair pulled into a tight, elaborate bun stepped forward. She wore a baby blue dress and a pair of silk gloves that ran up her arms. “I heard all the commotion happening and I thought to myself I bet it’s that criminal that broke into the city causing all this chaos. And I was right,” she gave a delighted clap and flashed Jack and fanged smile.

“Friends of yours?” Hannah asked.

“Don’t let them bite you.”

Jack whipped out his gun and fired directly at the arbiter. He loaded a tornado spellshot and a boulder spellshot into the gun, curious what would happen if he mixed things up. His gun did its typical magic bullshit and cranked everything up to eleven. It was like a tornado had sex with a landslide and this was its natural disaster hellspawn. The tornado landslide blasted out of his gun horizontally and ripped through the pack of arbiters with ease. Several more vampires materialized next to Jack like mist and lashed out at him with clawed hands. He was exhausted, and barely able to deflect anything, earning several gashes across his body. His only saving grace was the infernal sentinel.

The infernal sentinels shot flaming arrows out like a machine gun. The battlefield was lit on fire as hundreds of flaming arrows shot through the skies in every single direction. Hannah had pulled out her large crystalline bow and was using what little mana she had left to pick the enemy off one by one. The sentinels weren’t exactly causing a lot of damage, but they were fantastic cover fire. The only concern was they would shrink a little with every shot fired. With the rapid torrent of arrows they were spewing out they were shrinking rapidly. To make matters worse, arbiters kept appearing one after the other. Jack barely killed his first arbiter outside the city. He was in no condition to fight off a dozen of them.

The first vampire he had shot reappeared, her delicate features replaced with a grotesque creature of rage, hunger, and anguish. Her jaw unhinged as she snapped at Jack’s neck desperate to rip out his jugular. She would disappear into a blood like mist and reappear behind him, her hands turned into vicious claws that swiped at him from every angle. For every attack he managed to fend off, two more vampires would show up thrusting at him with rapiers. Hannah wasn’t faring much better. Two of her avatars had already been destroyed as the vampires caught wind of her hot swapping ability.

The vampire slammed Jack into the side of a building, and four of them stalked toward him with a ravenous look in their eyes. Jack panted heavily as his mind raced for a solution that never came. He was spent and didn’t have any tricks left up his sleeve.

A giant black centipede slammed into the vampires before they could devour Jack. Cumberlin trailed behind them, tentacles carrying him forward. He looked over at Jack, an annoyed look on his face.

“The only one permitted to kill you is me,” he scoffed.

“Interloper! Mortimaxx will not allow for this interference,” one of the vampires hissed.

"Allow?" Cumberlin's tentacles snaked out, latching on to the vampires limbs. "Tell your silly little mayor that the Black Centipede answers to no one." He ripped through the vampire like a piece of paper, completely destroying her.

A dozen vampires bore down on Cumberlin, and the gnome met them head on. From the shadows black spiders crept forward, jumping out the vampires and latching onto them. Small portals opened up all around the gnome and long spear-like fish shot out, swimming through the air and snapping their jaws at the assaulting vampires. Cumberlin let loose a villainous laugh as his menagerie of creatures flooded the area, joined by the remaining assassins he had brought with him.

“Wanna make a break for it?"

Jack looked over at Hannah, who was limping towards him.

"Me? Run away from a fight? I would never!" Jack had already turned away from the fight and was hobbling away as fast as his body would allow. Hannah rolled her eyes and chased after him.

The two made their way through the destroyed city sector to a completely different fight taking place. Jack needed to get his turtle friends and get the hell out of here.