Chapter 162 – The Most Confident Man in the Tower
[1 Year Later]
[Tower – 2nd Floor]
[Danger Level Six]
[Jack Atlas]
Jack stood atop the high rising outer walls of Broken Moon City, scanning the horizon. He glanced up towards the “broken moon” that was supposed to be the city's namesake. He was currently advocating for a name change due to the fact it was little more than a pebble in the sky after his… Misadventures on the moon. His suggestions were Shitty-town-of-anti-fun or Sucksville, but he was being heavily opposed by people who didn’t know any better. When he was mayor though there were going to be some serious changes.
He let his eyes drop to the city below and the madness currently ensuing. Ghouls plagued the rooftop shrieking at each other while zombies sprinted through the streets in packs ranging from five to fifty. Something had them worked up into a frenzy, but Jack wasn’t overly concerned. Devin was in charge of sector six and he would be the one to deal with anything going down inside. No, Jack’s concern lied with the things lurking outside of the city in the desert expanse.
He walked across the top of the wall to the side that looked out across the surrounding desert. The very first time the city had been thrust into danger level six Jack hadn’t been able to do much sight-seeing, so he hadn’t been privy to the changes outside the city. The second time around though was quite the educational experience.
Long gone were the giant moonlight beasts that lurked beneath the sands. The Tower had swapped them out for something far more disgusting.
He watched as a small battalion of humans all in matching armor fall into formation, fighting against several scorpions the size of Cadillacs. The soldiers held a tight formation around the entry gate and were trying to defend a group of new arrivals to the city. That was probably what had the zombies and ghouls worked into a frenzy, and Devin was likely fending off a horde inside the gate as he got everyone relocated to his sector's sanctuary zone.
Jack almost jumped down to help when a human sized trapdoor spider sprung out of the ground and landed on one of the soldiers but was surprised to see the monster beaten back with a level efficiency from the other soldiers who brought down empowered strikes on the spider's husk. In fact, as far as he could tell they were yet to suffer any casualties. Jack was honestly impressed. He put Devin in charge of sector six, the first of six sectors in the city, because he knew things were going to be an absolute clusterfuck at the city's outskirts. The man met the challenge with ease, even forming groups to brave the outside desert that surrounded the city and escort people coming to the second floor for the first time to safety, which was no small task seeing they pushed the danger level back to six. Despite Devins aversion to leadership after the first floor, he had developed a serious knack for it, with more than one overzealous follower in his band of mercenaries. Jack turned his gaze back towards the horizon.
“Any minute now…” he mumbled to himself, his eyes narrowing on a particularly dark cloud.
It had been over six months since they agreed to set the floor to danger level six. Jack's new found group had both the talent, and the numbers to pull it off successfully this time. But the real kicker was something no one had ever thought to do. Befriending Mortimaxx, Lich Eternal, and Mayor of Broken Moon City.
Jack could understand why no one had thought to do that. Overthrowing him was a requirement for the secret quest after all. It stood to reason that he wouldn’t be helpful in those sorts of endeavors, but if you stuff a guy in a city for several millennia, he’ll resort to doing crazy things.
With Mortimaxx on their side they had a contingent of seemingly endless arbiters at their service within the city. Better yet, they all got upgraded to death knights when the city was in danger level six. Alongside Mortimaxx and his arbiters they had managed to subjugate the city and place a member of the Bad Assassin as a city councilor for each sector. Surprisingly enough, the Tower seemed to let it all slide. Jack spared a glance upward and squinted. He never did like when the Tower was overly helpful. The Tower and random bullshit went hand and hand, so he was half expecting their gambit to blow up in his face. But Mortimaxx showed no signs or made no mention of the Tower ever forcing him to do one thing or another.
A loud rumbling drew his attention, and his eyes fell once more to the horizon, to the entire reason he was here in the first place. Alongside giant desert scorpions and trap door spiders, danger level six brought with it one more surprise from outside the city walls.
It started out as a tiny little blot on the horizon but grew rapidly into a dark looming cloud. Loud and thunderous it shook the sands and threatened to bring down the walls. Jack stood defiant as the dark clouds took over the horizon. He spared a glance inward at his core.
Nineteen drops of mana crawled through his core like a centipede. He had them lined up neatly in a row from largest to smallest, and was guiding them in a lazy figure eight pattern, careful to avoid any overlap or running into itself. The largest mana drop made up the head. A fifty-fold mana drop. It was an electric blue and radiated the condensed power of his core compressed into a mana drop fifty times over. It was essentially a tactical nuke.
Jack had used a fifty-fold drop only once since getting his new core. He needed an idea of just how powerful he was now. He hadn’t taken into account the fact that he had only an uncommon core before making the jump to an epic core. His uncommon core was roughly the size of a basketball, at least while it was inside of him. His Omni-Core was much bigger, like a large hula-hoop. Or maybe a kiddie pool. Either way, that meant the mana that got stuffed into the drops was a lot more. In addition to that, the mana was stronger on the second floor. His first time using a fifty-bomb he lost use of his arms for almost a week while he completely rebuilt his mana channels. At the very least, the fifty-fold drop was to be saved for only the most dire of “oh-shit” situations.
Jack traced the rest of the mana drops in the centipede-like formation. After the fifty-fold drop at the head came a pair of thirty-fold drops. One blue, one white. That pattern continued with two twenty-fold drops, then two ten-fold drops, then three pairs of five-fold drops, and the rest were paired three-fold drops of blue lightning mana and white frost mana. Jack latched onto the thirty-fold drop of lightning mana and carefully extracted it from the line-up of mana drops. It took no small amount of effort to keep the formation from crumbling completely and the mana drops going berserk in his core, but he managed, positioning the thirty-fold drop at the center of his core.
Jack turned his attention back to the large angry cloud that had been approaching and was now almost on top of him. A hundred thousand buzzing wings hummed angrily. An army of locust the size of golden retrievers blotted out the horizon, hungry for everything inside the safety of the walls.
He watched and waited. Waited until they were close enough. Waited until he could see their snapping mandibles and beady little blood red eyes. With a grin, Jack leveled his hand at the swarm and cast [Bolt of Judgment], swiping his hand down hard and feeding the thirty-bomb mana drop into the ability. He felt the drop of mana rip through his channels and out of his palm. It shot upwards into the sky, and then came crashing down a titanic bolt of lightning. It disintegrated the closest locust, and Jack watched in awe as the chain reaction began. One bolt of lightning after another shot down in such rapid succession the night sky lit up and blinded the world around it.
Bolt of Judgement had a unique effect that provided you killed your target, it would call down another bolt of judgment, and so on and so forth, until everything he deemed a target was dead. It was an absurd ability as far things went. The lightning bolts summoned after the initial attack was only a fraction of the first bolts strength, but thanks to Jack’s weird core and his ability to condense mana, it turned a strong ability into a monstrous ability. The only drawback was that if he didn’t manage to kill his opponent with the ability, he would suffer a bolt of judgment of his own. So, it was important he used it in conjunction with big drops of mana, ensuring he got the kill.
Jack reveled in the wake of the ability, grinning ear to ear. He soaked in the atmosphere. He could feel the heat of the lightning licking at his skin. The destruction. The chaos. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet. He almost lost control of the delicate pattern winding around inside his core he was so excited. Jack had to let out a slow steady breath in order to calm himself. It had been a while now since he felt this good. This confident. He felt truly unbeatable and was ready to prove it to the world.
“All right Wiggle, show time.”
Jack felt Wiggleworm spring to life on his arm, stretching herself, wrapping around his torso, up his chest, creeping slowly up his neck until every inch of his upper body was covered in the centipede tattoo. Black armor coalesced around him. It was segmented for ease of movement and fit his body like a glove. Serrated blades ran up the back of his arms and clawed gauntlets formed around his hands. A long scarf fell into place around his neck and sprung to life behind him, moving more like a bolt of lightning than a centipede. The black armor was tinged a light blue at the edges and little sparks of lightning radiating from the smooth carapace.
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Jack had to do this little ritual about once a week, coming to the wall to clear out a locust swarm. That regrettably made his routines somewhat predictable, and there was always a fight that ensued after he cleared out the storm.
As Wiggle formed into armor, Jack looked into his core and selected two drops of mana, each a ten-fold drop, one lightning, and one frost.
He pulled them neatly out of formation and brought them to the center of his core, feeding them into [Storm Step], careful to feed the lightning mana into the ability first. He quickly followed with the frost mana, also stuffing it into the ability a fraction of a second behind the first.
Trying to feed frost mana into a lightning-based ability was like trying to force a square peg through a round hole, it didn’t really work. Or at least it wasn’t supposed to.
Jack watched as his core sputtered to life. He couldn’t actually see the mechanics of what was taking place, but it felt as if a machine was moving in his core. As though gears were spinning and pistons were pumping. Using a different type of mana always added on a much longer cast time to his abilities, his core doing something to either alter the system, or make the magic work, he honestly wasn’t sure which.
What it did though was add what he called “flare” to all his abilities. After a few seconds of his core recalibrating the ability, Jack shot up into the air, and then slammed back into ground a bolt of deadly white lightning. As he came crashing down, the world was doused in ice. Everything around him was frozen. Branches of lightning shot out in every direction, frozen solid, jagged blades of sharpened destruction. The ability didn’t end there. As quickly as the world around him had been frozen, a thunderous boom shattered it all, sending hundreds of razor-sharp shards of ice in every direction. As the storm of ice eviscerated the world around him, several lurking assassins stumbled out of their camouflage. Six in total.
Jack leveled his arm at the one to his left, shooting the left over thirty-fold drop of frozen mana.
The drop itself was more or less useless outside of a few edge cases. His abilities wouldn’t activate unless he fed a drop of an attuned mana type first, in his case, lightning. Mana drops also needed to be the exact same size if he wanted to pair them together in an ability, he couldn’t pair the thirty-fold drop of frost mana alongside a much smaller drop of lightning mana. His only choice was to either vent the mana drop completely or charge up another thirty-fold drop, which required a recalibrating of his [Mana-Condenser] and several days wait time.
The thirty-bomb ripped through the channels in his left arm and vented out of his palm. It was as if someone opened up a damn. An avalanche of frozen ice shot out of his hand in epic proportions. The torrent lasted all of three seconds, leaving him with a popsicle in the shape of an assassin. Jack launched forward and tore through him with a devastating roundhouse, shattering the assassin into several large pieces of ice.
You have slain Climber Nero Kavaladis
+0 AP
Jack frowned at the notification, annoyed. The assassins always rewarded zero AP. He didn’t have much time to complain though as a curved sword came slashing down at his back. He spun around, two long black daggers appearing in his hand to meet the blade. He riposted the attack, knocking the assassin backwards. Before he could lunge forward he was forced to dodge out of the way as several long black needles pierced the ground where he was just standing.
Jack went to activate [Storm Step] once more but slowed himself. With his mana back also returned the problem of him destroying his insides every time he used an ability. Luckily though, his mana channels were finally operating at full power. He glanced at the ability he had gotten so long ago. Now that it had reached its full power, the description had changed.
Mana Channels of the Transcendent Berserker
[Passive][Epic]
The transcendent berserker is one who has taken pain and rage to its full conclusions, and then weaponized them. This ability channels raw mana to rebuild broken pathways, empowering the user to unleash destructive techniques that would otherwise shatter their own mana flow
This was the primary reason he kept a fifty-fold drop of mana in his core. With some small amount of effort, he could direct his channels to pull from only that drop and use it to repair any damage the drops may have caused. He felt the channels in his leg hungrily devour the mana as they quickly pieced themselves back together.
Jack instead used his best asset to charge at the ranged attacker. His speed. He hunched forward, coiling like a spring and launching himself at the assassin firing long black spikes at him. He weaved through some and let others ricochet off his armor. He was on top of the assassin in a split second slamming his foot down on their scarf as they turned to run. He buried his daggers in their back, earning himself another kill notification.
Jack felt the other four assassins closing in on him. He closed his eyes and fell deep into [Storm Stance]. He spun hard on his foot, ripping his daggers free and sending blood flying everywhere as he twisted like a tornado, his daggers ripping through the wind and slamming away the assaulting flurry of swords.
One of the assassins launched themselves backwards and upwards into the sky with a pair of jet black ravens wing. They weaved a black bow from the darkness and shot a hail of arrows that forced him off his pursuit of the other assassins who had rehidden themselves. As the arrows hit the ground they morphed into centipedes, turning on Jack in an instant, fangs radiating a deadly green bile that melted the stone wall they were fighting atop of.
Jack shot out his wrist-harpoon at the flying assassin. He frowned as they managed to easily dodge, flying to the side and sending another blast of arrows in his direction. Jack selected a pair of three-fold drops, one lighting the other frost and fed them into Storm Step. Instead of flying upwards and striking down like lightning, he felt himself launch forward as he redirected the direction of the ability. Now that he could use the ability with some regularity, his mastery over it had improved, allowing for more directional input.
The assaulting centipedes were frozen in his wake as he blasted over them a bolt of frozen lightning. His target was the assassin with the curved blade. She had fallen into a deep stance, sword sheathed at her side with darkness coalescing all around it as she built up a powerful technique. Her eyes went wide as Jack appeared in front of her, lightning radiating in the air around them both. He slammed his fist into the butt of the blade as she tried to pull it free and release her technique, shoving it back into the sheath. Whatever she was charging up backfired, and exploded at her hip knocking her way off balance. Jack used that moment to swing hard with his dagger, slicing off her head. He grabbed her body and used it as a shield as the flying asshole sent another volley of arrows into the corpse of his comrade. The arrows dug through the corpse-shield, again turning into furious little centipedes that bit into Jack’s armored arm. He paid them no mine and Wiggle let loose a jolt of her own lightning shock that radiated through the armor and stunned the centipedes off his body.
Jack used the brief moment of cover to launch another harpoon at the flying assassin. It ripped through their calf, latched on to them. With a flick of his wrist the reeling mechanism kicked in and pulled him towards the assassin. They shot several more arrows at him, but none were enough to pierce through Wiggleworm’s protective carapace. The assassin quickly abandoned his attack, opting to cut his own leg off and free himself from Jack’s snare. It was too late though.
With his Zephyr Stride Bangles, he leapt easily off the air, launching forward at a much greater speed than before. He abandoned his daggers for his clawed gauntlets as he latched onto the aerial assassin. He gripped tightly onto one wing and wrenched it off in a violent twist, earning him a cry of pain from the assassin. As the two tumbled toward the ground Jack buried a clenched fist into the struggling assassin's face the entire way down, earning him several satisfying crunches with every punch. Another kill notification was his reward as they both hit the ground.
Jack slowly rose up, his daggers reappearing in his hands as he let his senses bleed out into the world. There were two left, hiding somewhere. A faint black mist appeared next to him and a rapier shot out, glancing off his armor and narrowly missing his heart as he turned hard to deflect the attack. He sliced through the mist, but it moved around him like a cloud, reforming behind him and launching another piercing attack.
Jack couldn’t get a good read on the assassin or his technique, launching forward to escape the cloud, but it chased after him. The cloud grew and his vision obscured more as the black mist enveloped him again. He spent the better part of a minute just fending off attacks from every singular direction as he fought his elusive opponent. The assassin had a powerful ability, and as far as Jack could tell he was teleporting around inside his cloud of mist, while the mist simultaneously obscured his mana signatures. Jack only had a fraction of a second to defend himself from any given direction. Still, he had managed to land several shallow attacks on the attacker’s arm. Five to be specific.
Jack jumped once more out of the mist, giving the cloud a re-evaluating gaze now that he had managed to activate [Lightning Brand]. In Jack’s eyes, the assassin was lit up like a Christmas tree and he could see him rapidly teleporting inside his cloud of mist. Jack selected two three-fold mana drops and fed them into [Chain Lightning]. He didn’t even bother to aim the attack, the effects of [Lightning Brand] ensuring he wouldn’t miss. The bolt of lightning shot forward, cutting through the mist and striking true. Jack frowned as the technique fizzled out after the first strike. He was hoping it would jump to the nearby assassin still in hiding.
Jack waltzed forward into the cloud mist, slamming his dagger through the heart of the mostly frozen, mostly dead assassin, earning him his fifth kill. The cloud of mist fell around him as the assassin hit the ground. Jack stared off into the distance at a shadow that pulled itself off the ground and stalked towards him. His heart beat excitedly as the shadow formed into a panther the size of a Siberian tiger. Its tail was a centipede that looked almost as deadly as the giant beast itself, and a ball of black energy formed in the panther’s mouth as it opened its maw. Jack felt himself hunching forward, ready to charge the attack head on.
“Enough. We have lost," came a calm, observing voice.
Jack froze in place, as did the shadow panther stalking towards him. He glanced over his shoulder to see a tiny little gnome riding a large centipede.
“Long time no see, Cumby…”