~~~Lee~~~
Martin lowered his practice blade. "We will have to continue the lesson at a later time."
Lee, for his part, flinched at the notification, his heart rate spiking. He couldn't help but think back to the message about greater challenges... thinking about what Stanley had faced... about what they'd both barely survived. He was already pumping mana into his mind to speed it up while simultaneously dumping more into Three.
Alejandro burst from his apartment. Maria followed him out, her hands moving in a blur as she helped him strap into his armor. Meanwhile, Alejandro was talking into a small plate with a glowing rune on it. "I want to know the instant anyone spots..."
"Alejandro!" Lee shouted up at him, and the man paused. "I'm going to send up a beacon. I want to lure everything here."
Neither of the parents protested as much as he'd expected. Either they trusted him or they trusted Three. The first option was dubious, but he couldn't blame them for the latter. It was the same thing he was counting on.
Luring monsters to the building all the children lived in seemed reckless, but Three had promised them protection beyond even Lee's assurances. A reward for risking their lives on his behalf.
He trusted Three to protect them... but still added his own instructions. I want you to prioritize them over me, Three. I can take a hit or ten. You keep the kids safe. That is your only priority tonight!
It was probably unnecessary, but better safe than sorry... and Martin was looking at him with a strange sensation in his soul.
"I am an anomaly," Lee said while summoning plate after plate. "The last invasion was too strong. Stronger than it should have been. That was my fault. My presence draws increased danger to everyone around me, and I will not hide from that."
"So you should not. What of the children?"
Lee smiled, showing his teeth. "Three will protect them. It has to. Plus..." He looked up at the wide, open sky above the courtyard. "There's something about me that monsters find irresistible."
Then he used Mana Mind to spread the plates out into an even spread and dropped a rune onto each one. They shot into the sky, going all the way past the roof and then higher still. As they ascended, each plate bloomed into blazing lights to rival the sun.
Amy and Jackson both reached his side at that moment, with the first grinning widely in the sudden daylight-level brightness and the latter looking decidedly ill as they formed up around him.
Despite the heavy mana expenditure, it still didn't make a dent in his total. He pushed his remaining mana into Three, channeling it far faster than he could by creating plates and runes, then faster and faster as he tested the limits of his new mana channeling abilities. It reminded him of something he really should have considered before, and he pulled up his trait from the E-grade evolution. The one that had been mostly question marks when he got it. Before he got to see actual numbers on his soul attribute.
[Soulforged Mana]
You ruptured your Liquid Mana Channels by channeling more mana than they could withstand. Then you channeled more.
You have adapted to survive by converting your flesh and soul into a conduit for your mana.
You are now almost immune to Mana Burn. Your limits are only defined by the strength of your Twin-Soul.
Effects:
-94% Mana Burn
-90% Effectiveness of All Physical Attributes
+9400% Liquid Mana Capacity
+9400% Liquid Mana Channel Capacity
Excellent. If a bit on the extreme end... Though it explained why his mana wasn't running out faster and why he could make up for it by dumping a shit ton of mana into the building at speeds akin to unleashing his very first Mana Blast...
On that note, and as his mana finally neared empty, Lee pointed at the night sky. The lights hovering above the building were a good start, but he could add one more thing. Let there be... more light.
He unleashed a Mana Beam.
A blue-white beam as thick as his wrist shot into the sky, traveling so fast that it seemed to appear already in place. High above, he watched a cloud boil away from the pillar of light impaling it. An instant later, somewhere far above even that, the light struck something and diffused outward, illuminating a slightly domed ceiling.
[Dungeon Perimeter] No Dungeon Entities may cross until all invaders or defenders are defeated.
Warning! Attempts to breach the [Dungeon Perimeter] may incur heavy penalties.
Chill system, I'm not going anywhere, Lee thought, smiling grimly as the light vanished. He blinked away the spots in his vision while flexing his arm and fingers. A slight tingle, but nothing concerning. He'd just fired off more mana than ever before. If any monster out there was looking for a juicy target, well, Here I am. Come and get me!
Then he waited... while nothing happened.
He pumped more of the inflowing mana back to his brain, using it to push the range of Mana Mind further out while again speeding up his thoughts. The range didn't increase by much, but any gain might matter now. Especially if they were dealing with something sneaky like last time...
It was something sneaky. Too sneaky.
Three saw it before he registered what was abruptly inside his Mana Mind. There was a pulse of power, and not just from rebar erupting out of the floor. Lee felt the source inside Three move... and something died screaming. Inside an apartment currently housing a dozen children.
Let them see me! Lee thought frantically as more and more spikes of power flashed everywhere inside the apartment building. He was worried that Three might be hiding not only the source but also preventing the monsters from finding and hunting him the way they usually did.
He didn't know if his command worked or if the monsters only just then found him, but a monster appeared directly behind him on the heels of that thought.
It emerged from nowhere. One moment there was nothing, and the next a monster stood up out of... nothing. It stood up over twelve feet tall and was already in mid-swing with claws over two feet long aimed at his head.
In his faster state of mind, Lee finally realized that he'd not only forgotten to grab a real sword instead of the wooden practice blade, but he didn't even have armor on. Not that it mattered. He pulled more mana into his brain in a torrent and set his Mana Mind against the strange mana inside the monster. Stop!
That might have been a mistake, because his entire perception wobbled... and the monster only slowed down long enough for him to plant his feet while lifting an arm to shield his head.
The claws went through his flesh like it wasn't there... and slammed to a stop against the bones of his arm. Hah! Of course, the impact still sent him sliding sideways across the tiled floor of the courtyard.
His bodyguards finally got the chance to do their jobs, and they proved up to the challenge. Amy's rune sword cleaved through both of the monster's legs even as it hit Lee, while Jackson's slightly slower swing bisected it through the torso.
Both attacks accomplished nothing. The rune weapons slid unimpeded through the monster as its very flesh seemed to part around the blades before coming back together behind them.
More monsters followed on the heels of the first, all of them standing up from the ground as if they'd been inside it, all of them standing up nearly on top of him. Oddly, no two of them were alike.
The first had been bipedal and vaguely humanoid, but now they appeared in all shapes and sizes. Beast-like quadrupeds, bipedal creatures but with arms longer than their legs, insect-like octopods, and more.
None of them were small. The variations in size started at large and went up from there. That just made it easier.
He had successfully dumped enough mana, so Lee thrust both hands up at an angle... and spun in place while unleashing twin Mana Beams.
Unearthly howls sounded from all directions, except right overhead. Those monsters fell in burning halves. Literally, burning with white flames licking at their black flesh where the beams had carved them apart.
So they weren't invincible.
Lee saw the next wave coming as mana flooded back into him, and it explained why they kept appearing nearly on top of him.
The almost non-existent shadows below Amy's feet darkened and widened... and the monster emerged from within that darkness, practically wrapping around the woman as it clawed its way upwards.
It came up inside her reach, inside her guard, and it was fast. Amy cursed once as she tried to angle her sword onto an intercept, and then its jaws reached her neck.
Almost.
Lee was just close enough to stick his hand in the way, and his unbreakable bones deflected the strike. He wasn't close enough to reach Jackson in time...
He tried again with Mana Mind. This time, with all the mana he could force into his brain. Enough that his head started tingling.
The monster slowed as he dragged against its mana, and Jackson stabbed a rune blade through it, leaving a far too small gash that bled what looked like liquid shadows... right as its claws ripped his throat out.
"No!" Not again... not another one. He couldn’t have another person die for him!
Blood fountained out and down, brilliant red in the bright light, and Jackson followed it on the way to the ground, even as he took a swing at the next monster. Only... he didn't stay down.
Jackson hit the ground, but Lee never saw the burst of mana that always accompanied and preceded the formation of a core from a dead creature. There was still a burst of mana... but far stronger, and it emerged from Jackson's core, spreading in a pulse that filled his entire body so densely that he went opaque to Lee's Mana Mind.
It dwindled back to normal an instant later, and Jackson was uninjured as he scrambled back to his feet.
Blood soaked him and the floor below, but he was completely unharmed.
How... Lee put aside his questions. Later. The fight was still on and only getting worse as the monsters absolutely swarmed them from every direction. Well, not quite from every direction.
Lee understood now. After seeing how the first wave appeared, he saw their weakness. They only appeared out of shadows, however large or small. Which meant they kept appearing beneath everyone's feet, but also in the shadowed areas where the overhead lights didn't shine.
All but the one Jackson wounded seemed impervious to damage—or at least to weapon damage. Maybe they had to become solid to attack?
His Mana Beam had hurt them, but he didn't think it was the actual beam that did the damage.
It was the light.
Lee tucked his chin and took the incoming claws across the face rather than get his throat ripped out, and noted with some annoyance that Martin was just standing still right where he'd been when this all started. Though he was the only one not getting attacked...
That wasn't important now, because Lee also remembered how Jackson's sword had cut one monster, even if barely. It had been when he was dragging on its mana... He had touched them with Mana Mind.
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So he did it again, with one small difference.
Lee's new skill let him put runes somewhere with no physical contact, and now he used that ability to put runes on the monsters themselves. He didn't try getting fancy with it; he didn't try killing them with some supercharged rune. He just turned on the lights.
The normally weakest of his runes didn't go on easily this time. It fought violently against the dark mana of the monsters, mana that felt anathema to everything bright. Lee simply poured more mana into the runes—enough mana that his entire body was glowing with it.
Skill Level Up: Artistic Rune Creation
Mana raged through him, and light bloomed. First one monster lit up screaming, then two. Four. Ten. Each one aborted their attacks to howl and claw at the blazing symbol shining from their no longer shadowy flesh.
Amy and Jackson were both bloody now, but they hadn't stopped fighting, and their weapons carved apart the screaming monsters without mercy. Black blood sprayed across the ground and then boiled away into dark smoke beneath the overhead lights. Even the corpses and pieces of corpses did the same, though more slowly.
Their victory brought a reprieve, but it didn't end the fight. More monsters sprouted from the ground, with plenty climbing from the shadows beneath their dying fellows' corpses. Lee forced light runes onto them as fast as they appeared, while ignoring the growing tingling in his head. It wasn't just the monsters in front of him, either.
Mana Mind reached well past Three's walls, and Lee saw the monsters springing up in massive numbers out there. Most swarmed the building, but too many headed away, toward the defenders on the walls...
That was a problem. The armor still blocked those claws, but people would die if they couldn't cut the intangible things. They were relying on his runes. They trusted his rune weapons to carry them through this fight. A fight that was likely harder than it should have been thanks to his presence here...
He especially didn't like how they clambered up the side of Three to get back inside. Crawling over and past windows, which were the only barrier between them and the numerous children hiding in the apartments.
Lee lit them all up.
Monsters screamed and thrashed as they burned, with some even trying to bash their way through windows and walls to get inside faster.
Three handled them. Easily.
Without the shadows to protect them, none of the monsters could stand up to even a simple piece of rebar or glass through their heads. Which meant Three took them apart in droves.
Lee wanted to thank the building for once again living up to and beyond his expectations, but his mind felt like it was boiling with all the mana raging through him. So he put aside all other thoughts and kept forcing light runes onto every monster that entered his Mana Mind.
He could only hope it would be enough.
How many of them were attacking here? How many were running rampant through the rest of the fort? How many people would die to the monsters because Lee was hiding in this fort? He didn't know and couldn't spare the time to even consider it.
Lee could feel his soul straining under the load as more and more runes came into existence. He could feel the much smaller influx as the dead monsters eventually burned away and sent the pieces of his soul back from each broken rune. But the return wasn't keeping up with the output...
For the first time, Lee felt something new when creating runes. A limit.
Every time he created a rune, it split off a little piece of his soul and set it apart. Sort of. It wasn't really splitting or apart, but rather reserving. The more of his soul that he reserved into a rune, the less was available for the next, and he was running out...
Then, without fanfare or warning, the onslaught ended.
The light-branded monsters died smoking and screaming, and silence fell.
"Is it over?" Jackson said, gasping.
Lee was already shaking his head when Amy replied with what he was thinking, "Where's the notification?"
There was a muttered "shit" from Jackson. Then only the sound of heavy breathing disturbed the silence. Until...
"How very interesting."
The gravelly voice came along with the materialization of a new form inside the courtyard, and Lee was already forcing another light rune onto it before the first word finished.
It was only after the whip of burning darkness lashed out, carving a hole through his Mana Mind and destroying the attempt, that he realized it was the origin of the voice.
Lee grunted at the pain in his mind, and this time Three reacted to the attack. To no avail.
It looked like nothing more than a hooded cloak full of shadows hanging in the air, but it flickered through multiple locations following Three's attack. As if it wasn't in any one location. Three escalated in almost the same moment, the source rising through it and lashing out inside the spearing rebar.
Three's attacks were faster with the source, but still too slow. The shadowy figure flickered around those, too. All while speaking in a quiet voice that still carried above the explosions of Three's assault.
"You must be the reason I ended up in an E-grade dungeon."
Three, wait! Lee mentally commanded the building. Save your strength.
This was bad. Nothing should be able to dodge Three like that... unless it was a monster more powerful than anything he'd faced. At least on this side of the continent. A monster that talked... just like the one who'd attacked Stanley. Not just a monster. A real invader.
He couldn't even get a good read on its mana... the thing wasn't actually physically here. Not yet. Plus, the way it spoke about being in an E-grade dungeon... was it also a higher grade? This is so bad!
"Human..." the voice echoed again, almost thoughtfully. "A new race... mmm, a valuable one, and thanks to you, here I am. Excellent." It flickered back into view a few feet away and then solidified when the building didn't attack. It was still nothing more than a hooded cloak full of darkness.
Amy didn't show any such restraint, and Jackson was a heartbeat behind her as she attacked. It was over before Lee could tell them to stop.
A line of pure darkness flicked out from within the cloak like a striking snake... and it cut them to pieces in an instant.
Sparks flew, and Lee tore his gaze away from Jackson's wide eyes—eyes that met his own from Jackson's tumbling, decapitated head. Oh, god...
That was the same moment he realized Martin had finally moved. Now the man stood before the cloaked invader with his sword drawn and holding back the dark blade.
Amy fell at his feet, herself down two legs and one arm, but still with her head, unlike Jackson.
Then there was a burst of mana, and Jackson hit the ground. His whole body hit the ground, head and limbs all once again intact. Lee didn't need to look back to feel the shock and horror coming from the man's soul. He wasn't feeling much better himself, but he couldn’t deny the relief of seeing Jackson still alive, no matter how unbelievable it was.
"A sword master," the invader murmured, its hood angled to point at Martin. "I would make you a general in my army should you join."
"My place is here," Martin said, as he took a single step away, his stance ready and sword poised, following Amy as she dragged herself away with her remaining arm. Martin's soul felt calm and poised—a coiled spring waiting to be unleashed.
Unlike Amy. The mostly dismembered woman wasn't screaming or crying... but Lee knew she wanted to.
"Pity." The midnight blade vanished back inside the cloak, and the hood turned once again on Lee. "You, I will have."
Lee wasn't sure what to do. The way it had dodged Three left him doubtful about nailing it with a Mana Beam, and he'd already failed to stick a light rune on it. Maybe if he surrounded it with enough lights...
"I watched you," the shadow said. "I saw how you protected your offspring with such vigor."
A chill climbed up Lee's spine at those words, and he only distantly noticed the humans making their way back toward the building from further out.
"I will offer you a deal," it continued. "Surrender to me. Become one of my shadows. Do this, and I will leave the rest of your people here in peace. Do not, and I will begin the harvest with your offspring until you surrender."
Blood roared in Lee's ears, and he grappled for something he could do—some solution—anything!
The shadow flickered back into multiple non-substantial copies. "Perhaps a demonstration would help..."
"No," Martin said, taking a step forward amidst an explosion of mana flying from his body. Martin’s mana shifted into the same shadowy stuff as it collided with the invader and stuck fast.
The monster didn't vanish or twitch away under Martin's magic; instead, it only solidified in place as the mana threads snapped into taut lines between the two. Martin spoke as it did so. "I will be your opponent."
Whatever skill he used, it seemed to force the monster back into a singular entity as it turned to face the combat instructor, its midnight blade reappearing. "You are skilled. It would be a waste to destroy such talent."
Martin took a small step forward, his eyes lidded and his expression vacant. Almost peaceful. His whispering voice sounded out faintly amid the clamor of approaching armored footsteps. "Darkness and light. Flesh and shadow. All may be severed."
His blade flickered at the same time the black sword lashed out, and Martin was suddenly standing behind it, sliding his sword back into its sheath with his left arm. His one remaining arm...
He’d struck impossibly fast... Lee only knew he hadn’t teleported because of Mana Mind.
Then Martin's blade clicked home, and the monster became abruptly, horrifically, visible. He'd done it. Martin had severed it from the protective shadows... but at a cost. The swordsman stumbled and fell to one knee as a nightmare lashed out at his exposed back.
No longer was it a cloak that might hide a human-like form within. Now a creature of nightmares and shattered minds stood in its place. It lashed out not with a midnight sword but with something like a claw. Only one that would carve hope into horror.
Alejandro appeared between Martin's back and the weapon, which defied description. His shield twisted, light clashed with darkness, and he turned madness aside.
Another tentacle struck on the heels of the first, slamming into the shield straight on. Then another, and another. The attacks rained against the shield, and the already dimming runes on the metal winked out. The yellow glow on the shield followed, and Alejandro flew across the courtyard.
The guardian angel that was Alejandro had not yet struck the far wall when a storm of bloody vines descended on the monster. It fought back, and hundreds of those life-filled tendrils withered and fell dead. Hundreds more reached past the monster's defense and stabbed into the nightmare made flesh.
Combined with the stabbing, restraining, and source-tinged pieces of Three impaling through the monster, they held it in place. They held it down for a heartbeat.
Lee was burning with the amount of mana flowing through him, and he only demanded more. Because he could see what Martin had done. Lee could see the army of nightmares that hovered around them, cut off for the moment. More than they could stop. An army that was coming back...
He could see the army, or the shadow of it, but couldn't touch them yet. Not until they arrived. When it would be too late. They had to kill the monster before that happened. Or block the darkness with light...
Light... Lee looked into the abyss. He looked into that terrible darkness... and he spun out a new rune in opposition to everything he saw down there. A rune that didn't create light. A rune that was Light.
Then he forced it into the nightmare's flesh. One mote of mana at a time.
It felt what he was doing and abandoned the pursuit of Martin, turning and pouncing with the speed of a lightning bolt. It left pieces of itself behind, pieces tangled in vines, and Three.
A screaming Bradley leaped from the roof and met the charge like a meteor from the heavens, his glowing staff descending with enough power to shatter mountains and create canyons.
The monster met his attack with a storm of whipping limbs, stopping him cold in a shockwave of deafening proportions. The runes on Bradley's staff dimmed and went dark. Without the runes, it crumbled under the attack, which continued on, promising to carve the stone-covered man in half...
Bradley's armor exploded away from his flesh. A scattershot cannon blast that not only reversed his forward momentum but sent stone shrapnel into the monster while pushing Bradley just out of its reach.
The entire exchange bought Lee an extra second. Which was all he needed... He had finished lifting his hand to meet the charge and unleashed a Mana Beam point blank into the nightmare made flesh.
His beam slammed into the monster like a wrecking ball and drove it backward while burning a steadily deeper hole through its flesh.
Lee was full of mana. He had far too much mana to be doing what he was doing. But he had no choice. He knew it was burning him, and likely worse than it was the monster, but he could take it. He had to.
That beam of pure liquid mana lit up the night in a display far brighter than his flying plates overhead could ever hope to match as it drove the monster back across the courtyard. It slammed into the wall, pinned there by the crackling beam of unleashed power that was slowly burning a hole through its body.
Only one other light in the courtyard matched that beam's intensity—a glowing symbol growing ever brighter on the monster’s flesh.
Three responded as well. The building didn't hesitate to impale and grapple the monster where it hung pinned by a beam of light, but Three also didn't feed anymore mana to Lee. Not only did it cut him off unprompted, but Three also started actively taking his mana away.
It wasn't taking the mana fast enough.
Lee saw the flesh of his entire arm boiling away, starting at the fingertip, and leaving only his runed bones behind. His skeletal limb glowed like the sun with the amount of mana raging through it, but his bones held up under the assault. The runes holding them together were absolute, and he simply ignored the damage while using Mana Mind to hold his crumbling arm on target.
Then Lee finished the rune.
The monster screamed even louder somehow, and its entire body glowed with pure light, enough light that no shadows could exist within or without. Enough that its army could never manifest again. Enough that the light shone even into the darkness, where its army hid, and burned them forever out of its reach.
It still didn't die. Even with a hole burned through its chest and its body glowing to rival the sun. Even when Lee's mana finally drained to nothing...
Lee followed the last dregs of mana down as they drained out his feet, landing on his knees and catching himself with his left arm while his right hand fell limply against the floor with the click of bones on tile.
Mana Mind shrank to nothing. His vision darkened... and then fresh mana trickled back into him. Lee swayed in place and watched his found family finish the fight that he could not.
Maria appeared and lopped off pieces of the monster with streaks of red light. Alejandro reached her side at the same time as more bloody vines burrowed into their common enemy.
Amy dragged herself out of the way while a trembling Jackson moved between Lee and the fighting, blocking his view.
It didn't matter. Mana Mind expanded with the searing mana flowing back into his body, and it allowed Lee to see the nightmare finally end. In pieces and screaming.
Invaders Defeated. Raid Dungeon: [Dark Harvest] Successfully Defended. Contributions Earned. Dungeon Area Protected from Targeted Invasion.
Rebuild. Rearm. Prepare to Defend the Dungeon.
Area Buff Earned: [Victory](6:23:59)
Lee took a deep, shaky breath and thrust his one good hand into the air. "Fuck yeah!"