He ripped through clusters of the small, freshly spawned of Them with bursts of weaker Bolts. Maintaining a constant spell with the maximum empowerment he could manage, he was able to run it continuously in small bursts without ever letting it completely collapse. It meant he had it at its best at all times. It did mean he wasn’t getting practice with repetition of empowering the spell, so he made sure to let it lapse every few minutes and spend almost another minute gliding away from the spawning and gathering groups, pulling them into a long line, while he painstakingly and carefully built the absolute most potent version of Mana Bolt he could build.

Then he tore through them like buckshot through tissue paper. Whatever… whatever buckshot was. Or tissue paper for that matter. Little things kept bubbling up into his internal thoughts and yet no memories had returned in any concrete way. The more Shadow he absorbed, it seemed, the more formed he was. Perhaps his memories would return as he grew? Compressing his core seemed to also stabilize him more. Small amounts, but noticeable nonetheless. So he kited and then massacred. All the while continuing to move mostly in one direction.

The reason for that was painfully obvious against the backdrop of an empty sky. There, in the distance and yet not near the horizon or over it like he’d prefer it to be, was the reason. Well, truthfully thinking, the distance was relative. It wasn’t a fixed location. No.

Because it was walking towards him.

One of the Big Blobs, probably that one which had started to form legs and such back at the blast site, had clearly been feasting on its companions. Note to self, it wasn’t just that shard of an Artifact that made Insectoid eat the rest of Them. When they hit a certain collective mass, they changed. Started popping out tentacles. Walking rather than blobbing along. Eating absolutely every one of Them they could reach. The others all ran from the larger ones. They’d done it from the Insectoid and now they did it before Really Big Blob. RBB was… well… it was the size of a single story house, vertically. It had hundreds of tentacle-like legs moving it along. It was also faster than any of the rest of Them.

It was a little faster than he was.

Thankfully before it had both grown legs and learned to run with them, he’d glided miles away. He could just see it in the distance, running, spearing and eating, growing. Each time he wiped out a batch of Them he pushed himself closer to the next level, the next core compression, the next spell or skill that might make a difference. Hell, at this point he’d take the mobility skill. He’d been pushing his existing ability as hard as he could. It had made a small difference, but it was small indeed. Every minute, the walking house that unerringly steered towards him was eating and growing larger and faster. Slowly too, but faster than he was growing.

He really, really didn’t think even the best application of an empowered Mana Bolt would ever manage to do meaningful damage to that thing. He desperately needed a new spell. Some kind of heavy artillery. Maybe call lightning down from a distance. Lasers? Lasers would be cool. He couldn’t remember exactly what lasers were, but he knew that lasers were cool. Ultimately though to get that spell, his most sure bet was to fill his core and compress it.

So he slaughtered the mindless hordes, even though each pass required him to slow down and allow his true opponent to gain on him.

--

It just wasn’t going to be enough. He was close, very close, but at the rate he was going, the RBB was eating ten of Them for every one or two he killed. His constant flight was just making a big column of snacks for it. He’d started moving in a large spiral, which had resulted in most of Them being out of reach when the RBB continued in a straight line to him, but it also meant he had almost nothing to shoot in a way that maximized his gains.

Shit. Nothing to it but to do it!

Mentally screaming, still lacking any voice to truly vocalize with, he drove himself almost straight towards the RBB, tracking in the slight loop he’d been going and plowing like a madman through the long trail with thousands of the smallest of Them.

Just… just a little more Mana…

--

Did he think he’d made small gains in his gliding speed? What a laugh! It turned out that when a Really Big Blob half again as big as you thought it was game gunning for you, you could move a lot faster than you thought! Pump those, uh, legs!

He was just barely keeping pace with the RBB. Long tentacled legs slammed into the ground not a dozen paces behind him. Others whipped out and grabbed the few small ones he missed. He was basically just sniping the little ones ahead and to the sides of him as they emerged. The last whisps of Chaos were filling his core to the brim. Just a little more. A little more… a little…

He was full! Now! Now to compress it and get a spell!

Compress it. Right. He’d done it three times now. How had he done that before? It had just sort of happened on its own. UGH. Of all the times for him to realize he had totally baseless confidence in his ability to initiate the process at will! Squish it? No, doesn’t work. Bop it? Twist it? Tickle it? Make it spin?

Woah, the spinning made him feel weird. Not gonna do that right now, no no! He just didn’t have time to think and that meant unless something just happened, he wasn’t going to make this work. He would just have to make do with what he had. What did he have? A pully empowered Mana Bolt, ready to go, running cool with efficient usages of very small shots. Now he was going to push it. See if he could do anything at all to the RBB.

Panic rose even further within him as he ran the dial to the maximum focus and maximum power per shot before he pushed as much Mana into the spell as it would allow. The shot formed in a sort of egg shape, pointed end forward. Like a weird shell, he thought, the image of a similar form, more cylindrical, coming to mind from somewhere. He fired a second, then a third, before the spell structure started to get too hot and he had to let it go so it could cool quicker.

That’s something he’d learned. It would cool even while he maintained it, but it cooled almost ten times faster when it was released. He pushed himself harder and harder on this godforsaken wasted planet as he eyed the three Bolts fly at his target. It was huge, yet it was also fairly far. The limbs it worked with were so long that he was nowhere near the actual body. One of those limbs swung and knocked a Bolt sideways. The Bolt detonated at the impact and the limb broke at the point of contact, Chaos and Shadow from the detached part exploding outwards and flooding into him.

Oops. Damn, that was going to be another problem. Another shot like that and… of course, it just sacrificed two more limbs to stop the other two. Alright, here comes the Chaos.

It crashed into him, struggling and failing to find its way into a core that was overfilled already. His gliding speed slowed to a crawl as he struggled against the feeling of being overwhelmed by the pressure of the Chaos. Frantic, he pushed with everything he had, but he just couldn’t do it. The legs slamming into the broken surface grew closer blindingly fast. One lashed out towards him and there was a bright light.

When the light cleared though, the RBB was stumbling, Chaos erupting from a gaping hole in both sides, as if something had gone right through it. The feet thick layer of Shadow that covered it bucked and swirled, struggling and succeeding to maintain integrity, starting to close the gaps where Chaos poured outwards.

None of it was coming to him though. It was all flowing well off into the distance, to the right of him.

A second flash lit the lightless world, then a third. Two more things pierced clean through the core of the RBB and it could no longer hold itself together. Shadow and Chaos burst outward, blanketing the area so thickly he couldn’t see anything, until it all flowed far, far away. It pulled into a tiny speck in the distance. A little bit of darkness on an otherwise gray slate. He stared, daring to hope that this unexpected ally would prove themselves friendly. Believing instead that another flash would light the sky and his essence, too, would be consumed.

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Maybe he had time though. Surely, they were overwhelmed by the volume of energy they were absorbing? He could… he could run! He definitely couldn’t right them. He didn’t think they would be friendly. Right. Only, he was still stifled, overwhelmed. Really, he should just give that a capital letter for himself. He was Overwhelmed. Too much Chaos and nowhere for it to go. He needed to compress his core.

Or he needed to waste some Mana?

Mana Bolt was still too hot to use. Shit.

Compress! Compress damnit!

The blinding white light contrasted against the sky and he felt the heat of a nonexistent star on the withered flesh of his hands as he instinctively shielded his eyes.

--

He was alive. It had been a warning shot? Perhaps it was proof that the other could have killed him at any time, but chose not to? Maybe to say, don’t even try anything. You’re at my mercy.

Well shit, it worked. He wasn’t going to try anything. No way, no how. He didn’t even have a way or how to do so even if he wanted to! Maybe they would be friendly? Maybe they’d come over and… oh wait, no look, they can fly, and they just flew off.

Well. Fantastic. At least they didn’t kill him. At least he didn’t die to the RBB. If it was anything like the last time, there might be a short reprieve before the smaller ones started emerging again.

No, look, there they go, there’s one just twenty feet away crawling out. With painful effort, he constructed a shaky Mana Bolt spell. The main conduits were still hot, but they’d cooled enough to fire weaker shots. Frustratingly he wouldn’t be able to channel enough Mana to clear out the Overwhelmed condition, not without risking permanent damage to the spell. Additionally, while he had the spell built and ready, it dissipated the heat much more slowly. Top all of that off with that being Overwhelmed, it was a constant struggle to build or even maintain the spell in the first place, or to channel Mana into it.

He fumbled with mental fingers that now felt fat and unresponsive, trying to turn the dials to produce small, focused shots. Eventually he did manage it, though the nearest of Them was getting close enough to be of concern. As the shots popped Them, his arm and hand rapidly seeking new targets, he cleared more space around himself. Breathing room. For his hypothetical breathing. A fair few shots missed, being Overwhelmed making aiming difficult. Still, he’d shot thousands or tens of thousands of Them. Even with a handicap, hitting targets that were fairly close was something he lived up to his confidence in.

Still, he lamented every missed shot. Each one represented a waste of Mana that... what was he thinking? Right now he needed to waste Mana! He should just be shooting them off into the sky! Hand raised, he very nearly did exactly that, before considering something that made his metaphorical blood run cold. The other one, who he assumed was a person-specter-wraith-thingy like him, had been up in the sky. They’d literally flown off into the sky. What if he fired off shots and brought attention to himself? If there was one other, there were likely more. This planet was large, given the distance of the horizon where the curvature separated it from his line of sight.

Clearly, he was missing the most important discovery here. He wanted to survive, so that he could live, and to feel that he could live he needed to believe he could eventually find other beings, companions, intelligent existences. Now though, he had to face another consideration. The existence of others is a threat to his own.

The realization rippled through him as if it had a physical presence, pressing down upon his core with a force magnitudes greater than the impotent efforts he had made with his mental effort. As the energies reached a point of collapse, moving from resistance into an implosion which pulled into a miniscule speck of light in his center, he marveled at how, yet again, when it happened it sort of happened on its own. Only this time he was a bit more aware that it was some sort of inspiration or fundamental understanding that seemed to be the key. Why something that seemed so basic was in turn so potent, he did not know. What would constitute an appropriate leap in understanding, he could not fathom.

What he did know was that three more volumes of knowledge were awaiting his selection within his mental library. One was instantly familiar. It called to him so strongly he almost took it immediately and without even considering the other two. An upgraded version of Mana Bolt. He’d been offered this at the first choice he’d faced and rejected it in favor for the now broken Arcane Spark. With his very successful experimentation of the controls within the Mana Bolt spell he had, he wondered what other dials might be added. Or, would it be more powerful from the start? More efficient? Denser and more able to penetrate Shadow? Self-guiding? Perhaps he could fire multiple simultaneous shots? What if he could just fire it in a non-stop beam of destruction!

If he had a mouth and saliva he would be drooling. His mental hand was just a hairsbreadth from grabbing that choice, the knowledge practically tingling at the edges of his mind, full of promise. Still. Still, a part inside of him resisted the instant choice. If this was so good an option, what of the other two? Firstly, he willed himself to pull back from the spell upgrade. Then he noted the nature of the other two were skills rather than spells. His thoughts reached once more for Mana Bolt before pulling back once more. Mentally sighing, he truly considered them.

The first skill was related to reducing his presence. Could he simply... hide? Hide from Them? Perhaps hide... from others like himself? Hmm. Given how obviously more powerful the only other one he’d encountered was than himself, being able to hide from attention might very well be more potent than any spell or ability. He no longer regretted not just taking the Mana Bolt spell upgrade. He sensed the skill went beyond that. It allowed him to reduce the noticeable and eventually even visible presence of both his Shadow and his Mana. His spells could become stealthier, more difficult to gauge the true level of. Memory of the blinding flashes of whatever the other had shot through the RBB burned brightly in his thoughts. What if such blatantly ‘loud’ spells attracted even more powerful enemies? Brought attention to yourself you wouldn’t want?

What also of how the bigger conglomerations could notice and proactively defend against his attacks? If the attacks were less obvious, would they be able to sneak in hits without the defense being layered against them? It was, truthfully, far, far more tempting than he would have thought. Before encountering the other person, he might not have thought of the value in such a way. All of Them seemed only to spawn within the vicinity of himself. That meant he just needed to keep ahead of them in terms of damage output. True, he’d made mistakes and damaged Spark and that led to the RBB which he couldn’t possibly have defeated, yet if he was careful, he’d be able to manage the worst of Them before they ever formed. The bigger ones were collections of Shadow and Mana, they didn’t increase the returns. If anything, they decreased it. So keeping Them small and weak was a choice and a goal that he could likely achieve, with even just the Mana Bolt he had now. Improve it? Far more so, he assumed.

The second skill was less interesting, yet in the same vein as empowering his spells. Rather though, it spoke to shaping and forming the spell structure to make minor improvements to flow, identify and tighten up areas where too much flowed, expand areas where flow was restricted, so on and so forth. Not change the overall structure, just optimize the existing spell so that the active spell effect was produced with less losses in the spell itself. It didn’t seem to him that it was really a significant loss, though. He ran mental fingers over the slowly cooling spell structure of Mana Bolt and...

Slowly cooling. Was that where the ‘heating’ came from? If he could cast it more efficiently, would he be able to cast continuously for longer? Even if it didn’t actually make a big difference to the Mana consumed by the spell, it might improve the overall output capacity of the spell! The implication of this was almost a punch to the gut. He’d nearly just taken an upgraded spell form when he could improve the existing spell that was already meeting his needs! That’s not to say that the upgraded spell wouldn’t be more efficient. It might or would likely be even more of an upgrade than he could manage with both the empowerment skill and this efficiency skill combined and be cast in a short time span. Even if it was only as much of an improvement, or even less, the fast casting speed would be a huge boon.

Yet, these skills improved any spell. Even the upgraded one, in theory. They applied more broadly than an upgrade to the spell. For a moment he wished that he’d received a different spell for consideration rather than an upgrade and two skills. For a moment. It didn’t serve him to dwell on what he didn’t have as a choice. Control what he could and let the rest of it go, or it would eat him alive just as much as any of Them.

So he had his choice. Surprisingly, a difficult one. He no longer itched to just grab any of them in particular. Each had their own, unique cases. Each had short and long term benefits, some more obvious than others. Did he want to go towards the path of more potent, more advanced version of his spell? Maybe he’d work up to sniping RBBs from a distance like some kind of mobile artillery, with enough upgrades to Mana Bolt. Did he want to go the path of stealth and obfuscation? Hiding his true strength, avoiding unwinnable fights, sneaking in deadly attacks and bypassing defenses? That screamed the path of safer, though potentially slower, growth. Growth was only growth if you were still alive. Did he want to go the path of refining his spells? Maximizing what he had? Squeezing out the maximum potential from each one rather than increasing their complexity or expanding his repertoire? A boon that would provide an improved foundation for all spells?

It was time to choose.