21 – Level-Up

The cage-like, copper elevator continued to descend, and when it clanked and rattled against the ground, the cage door cranked upward almost immediately, leaving nothing but five yards between Ward and the hulking lizard-man. Ward aimed the pistol, hesitating for just a moment as he locked eyes with those vertically-slit pupils in their bright orange irises. Could he just blast the guy for looking like a lizard? The thought fled his mind as the thing spread its maw, hissed, and dove at him. Ward’s pistol barked twice, and the loud concussion of the bangs echoed and clanged off the copper elevator.

The lizard’s leap lost some momentum, and, not being alive, the poor thing had a hard time directing itself at Ward after he sidestepped. It slapped onto the ground with a wet thud, sliding for several feet, leaving a red smear in its wake. Ward looked at Haley and saw her dancing around a similar opponent, but her lizard-man was yellow and orange, not green. Ward stepped toward the copper line separating their areas and took aim. He waited for a clean shot that wouldn’t endanger her, but Haley proved his concern misplaced. She slipped a lunge from the big lizard brute and punched it in the kidney.

Apparently, her fists grew more potent the longer she did her strange dance to charge them up. In this case, her punch rippled through the lizard’s flesh with the sound of a sledgehammer pounding a pot roast, and Ward watched as the creature’s thick hide blackened in a circle around the impact, instantly turned to char by the heat. It squawked in shocked pain and stumbled forward, windmilling its big muscular arms. Ward watched as it fell, tumbling over the copper line separating Haley’s section from Nevkin’s, but it didn’t burst into flames or get scorched. It scrambled to its knees, still writhing and croaking in agony, unable to stand.

Ward turned his attention to Nevkin, circling back and forth with his reptilian opponent—a yellow and blue variant. He’d already given it several perforations, and red blood leaked from them in long rivulets that left smears on the stone floor. Nevkin seemed fine if a little strained, sweat beading on his pinched, focused face, narrowly dodging the creature’s brutal swipes. Ward hurried closer to his boundary to Nevkin’s space and lifted his gun, but Nevkin, through clenched jaws, snarled, “Leave it! I can win.”

Ward frowned but held off squeezing the trigger, watching the kid work his nimble swordplay. Ward was no expert on sword fighting or fencing, but it looked like Nevkin knew what he was doing. He seemed to anticipate when the big lizard-man was about to swipe his clawed hands at him and would dance back or sidestep. Every time, he gave his opponent a cut or a stab as payment for his troubles, and soon, the dozens of gashes and punctures seemed to take a toll. The stone floor was painted red in Nevkin’s area, with most of the blood concentrated in a wide circle where Nevkin led the constantly attacking brute.

The monster grew sluggish, and the ferocity of its lunges faded, giving Nevkin more room to lunge and stab, leaving deeper and deeper wounds. It reminded Ward of bullfights he’d seen on TV, and though he wanted Nevkin to win, he couldn’t help noticing the glint in his eye and the cruel twist of his lips as he grinned, watching his opponent slowly bleed out. Ward wasn’t some kind of pacifist; he’d proven that plenty of times in his life. Nonetheless, he didn’t like seeing things suffer, and the poor brute seemed too stupid to stop walking into Nevkin’s stabs. He was half-tempted to shoot the thing and put an end to it but held back, figuring he might need that bullet to save himself or one of the others before they got out of the catacombs.

Eventually, the lizard-man couldn’t stand any longer, and when it fell to its knees, the fury seemed to fade from its big yellow eyes, and it collapsed, sprawling out on its stomach as a large pool of blood fanned out around it. “Hah!” Nevkin crowed, whipping his rapier back and forth with a flourish. He stepped back, observing the slow death of his opponent, and then Haley cried out in alarm.

“Nevkin! Look out!”

Ward saw what she was yelling about, but it was too late for him to do anything about it. The lizard-man she’d wounded had found a second wind, or a final burst of strength, and lunged up from where it lay, raking its long, sharp claws down the back of Nevkin’s left leg, from his glutes to his calf. He cried out and stumbled forward, falling to his hands and knees beside the creature he’d brought down. Luckily for him, both of the reptilian fighters were out of gas. The one who’d clawed him was lying on its stomach, panting in rapid, short breaths, and the other was utterly still. “You okay, kid?” Ward called.

“Not really!” he wheezed, clearly in pain. He turned to his side, and Ward could see the bloody shreds of his pants. He crawled over to where he’d set his backpack. “I need to bandage . . .” his words trailed off as he groaned in misery, digging through his bag. Ward contemplated throwing him his healing potion when the copper bird cage startled him with a loud, rattling series of clanks. He jerked his head toward it to see the gates had slammed shut, and it was slowly rising toward the ceiling.

“Shit!”

“I think you were supposed to get inside the cage after killing your opponents,” Grace observed.

“We should have gotten in!” Haley cried.

“Yeah. Are we screwed, or do you think it’ll come back down?” Ward stared at Nevkin and then at Haley, but neither gave him an answer. She sat on the floor, eyes up, watching the copper elevator cage rise. He turned back to Nevkin and watched as he pulled his pants down, exposing the bloody gashes on the back of his leg. They looked deep. Ward could see the tell-tale signs of agony and looming shock—his jaw was clenched, sweat was rolling off his shaven head, and his breaths were coming in quick, short pants as he worked to smear big gobs of his wound salve into the cuts. Ward couldn’t see how that would work; he was bleeding so profusely the salve would surely go to waste, washed out of the cuts by the blood.

To his surprise, the flowing blood began to slow immediately; the creamy medicine must have had something to help with coagulation. After he’d smeared the cuts, Nevkin dropped the tin of salve with a clatter and began winding long strips of bandaging around his leg. Ward looked at Grace as she stepped up beside him. “Looks like he won’t die from blood loss.”

“Yeah. That’s good shit in that jar.”

“I think the elevator will come back down, but I also think you’ll have more enemies to fight.”

Ward looked at Grace and followed her gaze toward the copper elevator as it thunked into place in the ceiling, and the pillar stopped moving. “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem logical to leave you all in here if you win. If the elevator leaves, it’s to teach a lesson, no? What good is a lesson if it doesn’t give you another chance? I think it will keep challenging you until you enter the elevator and escape.”

Before he could respond, Haley called out, “Nevkin? Are you going to be all right? Do you need more salve?”

“No. I have enough. I’m not going to be able to move very well, however. I fear another round of creatures like these will spell my doom.”

“Ward?” Haley turned to him. “Do you think you can shoot his monster if more come down?”

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“Probably.” Ward sighed and flipped open the cylinder on his gun, popping out the two spent cartridges and replacing them from the dwindling supply in his pocket. With six in the revolver, he only had four more in his pocket. Something flickering caught his eye, and he looked at the dead lizard-man, where he saw a sizeable cloud of mana dust starting to rise out of the corpse. “Hmm.”

“What?” Grace followed his gaze. “Mana?”

“Yeah.”

“Well? See if you can gather more since your refinement!”

Ward grunted his agreement and moved over to the corpse, glad the blood pool hadn’t grown very large and also that the body hadn’t started to stink yet. He squatted beside it and held out his left hand, still gripping his pistol with the right. Just as before, when he put his hand into the swarm of flickering blue motes, nothing seemed to happen at first. Then, he closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to find that calm, grounded state of mind he’d been in the last two times he’d collected mana. Just as when he’d been with Lisa, it came quickly, and suddenly, his entire palm began to tingle and vibrate.

The sensation was much more intense than before; rather than a few motes entering his flesh at a time, totaling nothing more than a dozen or so, it felt like hundreds were pouring into him. As the tingling in his palm faded and the motes began to flow into his wrist and then his arm, the sensation was so intense that Ward fell back on his butt and would have sprawled into the copper line separating his part of the room from Nevkin’s if Grace hadn’t inserted herself between him and the barrier. She caught him with her knees and pushed him up, all while Ward was utterly oblivious to his danger. He was too busy experiencing a kind of ecstatic rush unlike anything he’d ever felt.

The buzzing, tingling wave of pleasure passed from his arm into his chest and then slowly pulsed outward into the rest of him. Every part of Ward was tingling with energy, and he felt a kind of constant shiver of pleasure washing over him as the mana propagated through his body. When it finally subsided, he realized Grace and Haley were both speaking.

“. . . all right, you big doofus? You almost fried yourself! Open your eyes! I want to see what changed!”

“Ward, what are you doing? Are you ill? Nevkin, can you see what’s going on with him?”

Ward cleared his throat and coughed, slapping a hand to his tingling, buzzing face. As the sensation faded, he began to feel almost like he was half-drunk, which made him want to laugh. “I’m . . .” he paused and, again, had to suppress a laugh at the way his voice sounded in his ears. He tried again, “I’m good. I’m fine.” A sharp, quick slap startled him, and he snapped his eyes open, scowling up at Grace.

“Shit, old man! Your eyes are positively glowing now! Bright! I think you skipped whatever rank that Lisa chick was at—your eyes are brighter!” As she spoke, Ward studied her, amazed by how different things looked. ‘Different’ was the wrong word; it was more like he was seeing more at once now. He could see the individual strands of Grace’s eyebrows if he stared at them, and when he focused on her eye, the yellow, orange, and red flames flickering behind her irises were brighter and more vivid.

Everything was sharper, he realized, as he turned his head left and right, staring at Nevkin and noting all the little spots of dried blood on his arms, hands, and face. The stench of copper hung heavy in the air, along with the faint odor of shit. Ward wrinkled his nose and looked over at Haley, locking his gaze with hers. Her soft, brown eyes seemed more detailed; Ward could see the pale and dark flecks that made up the intricate, beautiful patterns in her irises. Before he could stare too long, they widened with surprise, and she leaped to her feet. “Your eyes!”

“Oh, brother! I guess there’s no hiding it.” Grace, who’d been squatting before him, staring into his face, stood up and regarded the corpse. “I think you took a lot in because you just went through that refinement. That probably won’t happen very often.”

Ward hopped to his feet as the rush of pleasure and well-being continued to fade. He didn’t know how much mana he’d just absorbed, but plenty was still clouding around the lizard's corpse. He stepped close to it again, holding out a hand. “Are you gathering mana?” Nevkin asked from behind him. Ward didn’t answer right away. He held his hand in the cloud of motes and sought that calm state of mind. It was harder to get there after what he’d just experienced, but when he did, tuning out the rest of the world, nothing happened. He figured his body had taken all it could handle for the time being.

Straightening up, he turned to Nevkin. “Yeah.”

The kid, grunting in pain from the effort, holding his injured leg out straight the whole time, turned to regard him. He frowned and rubbed his chin. “I see you changed your clothes. Did you find a refinement potion?”

“Don’t tell him!” Grace said.

“Refinement?” Ward asked, moving over to his pack in the vain hope that there was something in there he hadn’t eaten or drunk yet.

“Yeah. You’re not familiar? A potion that improves your body—removes weaknesses and unlocks potential.”

Ward frowned, trying to decide if he agreed with Grace. Should he lie to the kid? What was the point? He rifled through the pack, much easier without the big wool blanket he’d cut into his current ridiculous outfit. He lifted out the hemograph and, grinning softly to himself, sat down and pulled out his knife. A few seconds later, he was reading the updated data table:

Bloodline:

Awakened Human (ah)

Accumulated Mana:

228

Mana Well:

Copper

Mana Sensitivity:

Iron

Mana Pathways:

Copper

Vessel Capacity:

Copper

Vessel Durability:

ah + 13.11

Vessel Strength:

ah + .08

Vessel Speed:

ah + 9.31

Longevity remaining:

~62.33%

Anima:

NIL

Ward’s eyes widened when he saw how much accumulated mana he had. “Holy shit.”

Grace was quick to state the obvious, “That’s much higher than your old maximum!”

“Ward! Is everything all right?” Haley called.

“Ward?” Nevkin prompted, still waiting for an answer.

“Leave him be, Nevkin. If he wants to tell us more, he will.” Haley’s admonishment to Nevkin made Ward like her all the more.

He turned to Grace and slowly nodded. Softly, barely more than a whisper, he said, “I guess that’s what you call a level-up.”