Chapter 5: Levels and Status Effects
Non-self afflicted damage recognized… Attempting integration… integration successful…
Class: [War Witch]
Level: 24
Health: 315 / 680
Mana: 1720 / 3700
- You have been inflicted by [Cursed Halberd of the 2nd Empire] 14 Curse Damage / 5s
- Akna’s blessings have been bestowed upon you. 22 Healing / 5s
- Your [redacted] is crying out in pain due to ritual [redacted] and is shining like a lighthouse
- You are inhabiting the body of a [Tempest Knight]. A path has been chosen.
- [Touch of the Beyond] has mutated your blood. [Vampire Lords] and [Vampire Gods] will recognize you. [Vampires] will be afflicted with [Status: Terror].
- Holder of [Cursed] item [Wand of Sacrifice]. Synchronization in progress.
Ding: [error] - deploying memetic [redacted] [negotiation] [success] [status recognized]
The pain faded as soon as the updates started dancing in front of my inner eye. I was baffled, the levels and classes I could handle but this seemed a bit too... well, systematic. There was no way that this was a natural phenomenon. Francis had noticed my momentary shock and blasted the offending skeleton apart with a ball of silver lightning.
“It's like a cosmic joke," I mumbled as I scanned the battlefield for my next foe.
Now that I was aware of it I saw my health bar fluctuating constantly, the curse dealing damage that was immediately taken care of by the healing spell. Everything still hurt like a bitch but whatever realm-wide spell was going on had a numbing effect on the worst of it. I stared in fascination as the wound on my thigh slowly started to mend itself.'Trust your instincts' is what Akna told me.
Maybe she had meant it in more than one way, could I trust an unknown spell from an unknown source with my life? Did I know enough to just tap into this new source? The answer was obviously yes. This didn't even rank in the top 10 of dumbest things I had done in my life. With my left hand I went through a complex sequence of hand signs and wave patterns before invoking the magic.
Sa Belet Ersetim Ki'Am Parsusa
It was time to show these piles of bones why my family had to lock me away at times. Sure, swinging a sword around like some ancient master was nice, but that was not my calling. I began to feel the change in the arcana as the spell took hold. Once more I changed the flow of reality. A swirling mass of energy was building above our heads, coalescing into a gray vortex of power, flashes of purple briefly trying to escape as I waited to reach critical mass.
I closed my eyes and breathed in. Why was I anxious about some zombies and skeletons? Every second-grade warlock at home had access to such things, hells, with my knowledge in soul magic I could easily replicate most basic necromancy. I released the spell. The vortex roared to life, a mesmerizing sound. Wild and without restraint it smashed onto the battlefield in front of me, unleashing a purple hell of pure, condensed death magic.
I grinned maniacally as flashes of void magic rivaling those of a big thunderstorm straight up vaporized dozens upon dozens of our enemies in a single moment. Gray tentacles blinked in and out of existence, every single one only wanting to devour. A necrotic gas-like mass swept like a wave over the horde, melting bones and flesh with ease.
The previously rather lush-looking jungle had turned into something straight out of a nightmare. Plants and skeletons alike were being dragged away, disintegrated by the now less intense void flashes or simply melting like hot wax under the touch of gas.
Health: 367 / 680
Mana: 640 / 3700
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
WARNING:
Integration of unknown spellwork attempted.
Attempting [negotiation]... [negotiation] failure
ERROR:
System-wide integration rejected due to [redacted] [outcome] [acknowledged]
NOTIFICATION:
New spellwork created by [Lewana Wintersong] [War Witch]
DETAILS:
[Rites of the Mistress of the Netherworld] [integration locked]
Mana Cost: [redacted]
Damage: [redacted]
Effect: [redacted] due to [corruption]
This new information suddenly assaulted me as I was enjoying the carnage. I wondered if this explained how this realm-wide system was powered. Evolving and growing as new spells were created and attempted. Categorizing them. Allowing some to easily be learned by everyone. Locking away dangerous ones? Was this all just one big library?
I turned around, looking in the direction of my two allies. Akna was staring at me with an odd look in her eyes. Guess it was obvious that a goddess of life and fertility wasn't gonna be the biggest fan of Sumerian netherworld magic. Maybe I should have picked something more... plant-friendly. My spell however had exposed something else. Thin lines were keeping the skeletons chained together, the slight glow within their skull, and once again it seemed... wrong, artificial even.
As with every reanimation spell, something was making them move. At first, I had thought it was something internal but now I wasn't so sure anymore. Necromancy was a field of magic relying heavily on internal work. Implant a corpse with purpose and will, take an old or dying soul shard, and use the latent mana it still produced to animate the vessel for eternity.
But the lines changed things. There was no necromancy at play here. Instead, they were powered by an external source, which meant something or someone was controlling them directly. Not a single bit of soul magic to be found.
I saw more of them coming through through the gas that slowly dissipated into nothingness. If this had been an army of living and breathing beings I would have slaughtered thousands. In theory, the spell was able to keep feeding itself on souls, but if there were no souls to consume it was just gonna fizzle out. Disappointing.
I spun out of the way of an axe that was aimed at my head and shattered the skull of the offending skeleton with my sword. But this time I watched what happened with the arcana. The line did not disappear. I realized what was happening.
“Francis!” I yelled through the symphony of spells, metal, and bones.
“What?! What is it?!!” He bellowed out, currently controlling a sickly bubbling cloud of black smoke that was burning the ones who dared to step too close to Akna’s barrier. I recognized it as a favorite of my great-grand-uncle Acerbus.
“It’s a direct arcana transfer! Look at how it behaves! Look for the fucking lines!!” I screamed back.
A look of understanding crossed his face. We had dealt with puppetry before, it was one of those obscure fields I had always been interested in but neglected it in favor of more flashy and violent schools of magic. Absently I dodged a frost spear flying directly at my face. Neat, I didn't even have to think about it
There were different materials one could use but the basics stayed the same. A nearly invisible type of string that was usually rather flexible and hard to cut, it enabled the puppeteer or the mechanisms responsible to fine-control the amount of power getting distributed to individual puppets. There were other ways, of course, runes that stored ambient arcana like a battery, most commonly used for guardians, gargoyles, or the classic ghost in a knight's armor type of home defense.
But that went more into obscure crafting territory or in the case of ghosts, once more into necromancy. I really couldn't believe I was fighting fucking skeleton puppets of all things.
“What's the plan?!” I asked as I did my best to move a bit closer to Akna and Francis.
“Try cutting the lines for now, that will already disprove a lot of possibilities. I will cycle through the usual counters.” Francis answered.
“Understood!” I nodded and dashed away to the side to get out of the way of his upcoming spell combination, instead, I rushed off to some of the isolated groups coming from around the statues on the left. This time instead of crushing them directly I weaved around them, this body once again proving to have been a perfect choice.
With a yell I tried to cut one of the lines that connected to an exceptionally fleshy skeleton, chunks of rotten meat were hanging off of him but my squeamishness about flesh had ended a long time ago in the laboratories of the great flesh-shaper Maradon.
My weapon ended up gliding harmlessly across the thin line, instead of the harsh bounciness that I expected if it was metal. Spider silk? But spider silk would have burned in the heat of Francis’s flames.
No, this wasn’t spider silk. Even if it was magically altered to be more durable, this body wielding a decent sword should be able to just cut it. At the very least it shouldn't slide off like butter in a pan.
I looked behind me while lazily dodging skeletons. Francis had once more arrived at the fire part of his routine and a literal inferno was raging through the hall. And yet they kept on coming. It wasn’t flames, I knew that already. It wasn’t cold, so maybe that would be the next logical angle of attack but as I watched him flood the first row and then deep freeze them without the lines breaking, I abandoned that idea quickly.
A few skeletons sprinted at me, apparently noticing what I was doing but I easily just dispatched of them, it helped that I was getting more and more used to the potential of my new. Just as I passed by one of the statues I noticed something odd.
There were small mechanical elements, part of a rather intricate-looking clockwork design. The only reason I spotted it in the first place was the spell fire occasionally brightening the hall.
I rammed my fist through the rib cage of the closest enemy, a saber-wielding one dressed in the shredded and decomposed remains of a fine-looking vest and cloak combo. I made sure to take note of how the light behaved right after.
As the power provided by the line briefly intensified before fizzling out, I finally saw it... A fractal-like reflection? Could it be some kind of nylon material? Wrapped around a core of something else maybe?
I was no master of delicate electricity-based spells. But maybe delicate wasn't what was needed here. There was only one issue. Nylon and a lot of other similar materials weren't really known for their conductivity. But, and here I looked back at the partly shock frosted army of skeletons...
Non-pure water certainly was.