A concept-empowered discharge of electric current lit up the cavern with a flashing and unsettling red. It arced out of Henry’s arms onto the crustaceans like a bolt of thunder, making their legs and arms twitch violently while Henry pulled deeper from Fury of the Trickster.
The aspected mana was like liquid rage in his veins. It urged him to use it. To crush these invaders like the insects that they were. Henry felt the call to grow his body until he dwarfed his opponents, then to grab and constrict them until they were mush.
Calm. Stay in control.
Henry didn’t know if it was possible for the aspected mana to dull his senses, but he was keeping a tight lid on it. His Octominds helped, sending him information from outside and keeping him anchored in the moment.
The opening salvo had been a success, and Henry might have had severely hurt the squatters, but it had cost him half of his Fury mana. He needed to finish this quickly. Fury and Arcana were his main offensive Aspects, and thanks to some of his tests over the last week, he knew his remaining Aspects wouldn’t be as effective when it came to dealing damage.
Henry readied another pulse of Fury-empowered electricity, but before he could discharge it, a ghostly claw smashed into his side. For an instant, Henry’s mind was smothered by a wave of pain. Even though he was channeling a protective concept into Trickster’s Fortitude, the attack still set his nerves on fire.
The pain was mind-addling, and for a second, Henry thought it might have not only hit his flesh. Were soul attacks a thing?
Before the Phantomclaw could smash into his side again with another ghostly claw, a second blood-red arc of electricity flashed into being and scoured the shrimps. At the same time, a quick shapeshift allowed him to slot two leviathan fangs at the ends of two of his arms.
When the pulse of electricity stopped a second later, two sharp fangs stabbed down at the still twitching shrimps.
A flare of light from the Phantomclaw suddenly pushed out of the monster and stopped the fangs, but it was only effective for a fraction of a second before the destructive aspect of the fangs tore through the barrier. The Deepflare beat its tail and pulled Henry forcefully along with it, while the Phantomclaw was still reeling from the electric shock. Being the lower level, it struggled to keep up compared to its partner.
Henry resisted the Deepflare’s pull and drove the leviathan fang down at the Phantomclaw with a heavy and unimpeded Evershifting Strike. The ghostly green shell cracked like a glass panel as the fang drove into its spine, eating through its carapace and flesh. When Henry got the message, he turned his attention back to the more powerful specimen, yanking it back into the cave.
1x [Phantomclaw Mantis Shrimp (C) - Level 31] Core was collected.
The Deepflare burst out into a flurry of movements. Its antenna quivered, and then there was a flash of painful light. Both of Henry’s eyes went blind a second before one of them popped. With his arm still around the mantis shrimp, he pushed another pulse of electricity, this time empowered by Arcana, but Henry couldn’t tell what color these arcs had.
He was still blinded from the flare of light the mantis shrimp had produced.
The shrimp’s limbs locked up as Lightning Discharge raked into its flesh. Henry pulled more mana out of his dwindling reserves and pushed into Arcane Regeneration. To his chagrin, the shrimps’ shells were resistant to his mana-draining. He thought he’d have a second to recover, but the shrimp—even though it was still twitching—shot something at him that burned straight through his flesh.
Henry lashed out with both leviathan fangs, but he still couldn’t see. Barriers kept popping up, eating into the momentum of his arms, and Henry began to worry about his mana.
Powering up the fangs with mana was expensive, and so was the constant flow of healing and protection. And to make things worse, Henry’s clones far above noted the approach of some squids.
Well. One really. But it was a damn B-rank.
Shit.
Henry sacrificed another pulse of mana to help restore sight to his light-blinded eye, but not the one that had been burst by the mantis shrimp’s claw. Restoring the flesh would be much more expensive, unfortunately.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Using everything he had left in Arcana, Henry scoured the shrimp with electricity. Arcana-empowered lightning was a painfully vibrant blue, and it arced through him and into the shrimp, making the water around them acquire an ionized aftertaste. The crustacean was slowing, its light dimming, but it still managed to send another pulse of searing light through his stomach.
Now that he could see the attack coming, he realized it was being produced by the claw-punch of the mantis. It would angle its claw up and punch, sending out a pulse of searing light, and Henry was grateful he hadn’t eaten one of those attacks point blank. Thankfully, he wouldn’t have to be wary for long. Everything was about to be over.
As the electricity began to fade, Henry stabbed down into the back of the shrimp’s head with the leviathan fang. The light under the shrimp’s claw stuttered for a few seconds, then it faded away to reveal a thick, translucent shell just as another message arrived in his interface.
1x [Deepflare Mantis Shrimp (C) - Level 67] Core was collected.
With no time to rest, Henry immediately threw both carcasses into his Maw and pulled on Shiftiness and Misdirection as he made himself into a small boulder, right as a B-rank squid’s giant yellow eye peered into the little cave.
Henry called one of his two remaining blood clones and made it swim toward them like a rocket.
The large eye kept staring in the cave, blinking. It floated higher, and for a moment Henry began to relax. A shorter tentacle that was still nearly twice his size reached into the cave and begin prodding the walls and ground, making Henry’s hearts jump into his throat.
Stab it in the eye and run? Try to kill it?
That would have been more viable if he’d gotten a chance at integrating the new cores he just gained. Plus, he was out of offensive aspected mana.
This would be a bad fight. I can’t beat it fast enough.
The arm got within inches of boulder-Henry. His hearts hammered through his body as he hoped Misdirection would be effective enough to allow him to slip detection. Finally, after a couple of seconds that felt like hours, the squid retracted its tentacle. From his oncoming clone, Henry saw the monster lift up and swim away.
Henry exhaled a long breath as he allowed his Arcane Regeneration to continue its healing. His camouflage hadn’t faded yet, so he let it continue to hide him while he repositioned his blood clone.
The B-rank squid slowly swam back to its shoal, and Henry was finally free to turn his attention back to himself.
Jeez. That was too damn close.
Henry’s arms trembled as he slowly unfurled them. It would have been a disaster if the squid had found him. His mana was low, and even though he still had reserves in his other Aspects, he didn’t like his odds. Not with one eye gone, a second barely healed, and multiple holes in his body. Even his clones were down to two.
He took a few seconds to collect his thoughts and calm down. He considered bringing out Maurice and Stormsong, but he was worried the squid—or something else—might show up. Weakened as he was, he felt he needed to recover a bit first. While he waited to calm down and heal, Henry pulled up his leveling notifications and found the notification from the squid.
I almost forgot about that.
1x [Orthoceras Squid (C) - Level 46] Core fragment was collected.
Hunger of the Trickster (D): Level 8 -> Level 9
Misdirection of the Trickster (D): Level 8 -> - Level 10
Arms of the Trickster (D): Level 7 -> - Level 10
Arcana of the Trickster (D): Level 2 -> - Level 5
Vitality of the Trickster (D): Level 4 -> - Level 8
Swiftness of the Trickster (E): Level 2 -> - Level 9
Fury of the Trickster (E): Level 3 -> - Level 10
This means I need 3 B-rank tokens to upgrade Shiftiness, Misdirection, and Arms to C-rank. The rest is a bit more affordable… But what do I use for levels and what do I use for upgrading?
Henry had some tough decisions to make. He could convert everything he had to tokens and it might afford him one of the C-rank Aspect upgrades. Which wasn’t an option he liked much. Just one C-rank Aspect would not increase his combat potential that much. On the other hand, levels would. Plus, he could use the squid fragment and whatever tokens he had left to upgrade a couple more things.
Levels would close the gap, and the sooner I can down a B-rank, the faster I’ll be able to upgrade everything else.