What Vic immediately did was very simple and very fast. An arm of hers jerked itself towards the Cursedblood Emperor. And Vic shot a plasma beam at the Cursedblood Emperor.
“THE SUN IS A DEADLY FIRE!” she said, two seconds later, because she wasn’t yet stupid enough to announce a surprise attack before it happened.
The uninterrupted plasma beam had erupted with overwhelming power. The straight arc was like a bright one metre thick shot laser that disintegrated all the risen branches that attempted to get in the way of the attack to protect the one behind them.
The city’s boss began sidestepping. However, he would be too late. He couldn’t dodge.
But Vic’s eyes widened when instead, he gooped away when he got hit, surrounded by a reddening glow of magic. He was gone.
Vic stopped the spell, looking out everywhere around her for an incoming attack.
She stared at the overtly long two bars of hp that the boss had. There was an eighteenth of the first bar grizzled out and now missing. Huh, she’d gotten a hit. Maybe? Probably. Definitely. A little dent in such a long hp bar was just the first step of a long path ahead of her. T’was a good start, if anything.
There was something like an exasperated grunt of anger far above, behind her. She ducked and rolled for the principle of it because screw dang it that sounded like the start of an attack.
She turned back, sensing no incoming attack. Instead, the cult leader was leaning on his fancy staff, on another pedestal of tall pale branches that had sprouted from one of the large trunks encircling the arena. Was he… taking a break? Maybe he was hiding the pain? There was nothing breaking his composure, nothing showing that he’d been hurt. He was pointedly hiding any sign of possible pain to the outside world. Funny, that was all very pointless. He didn’t know that she could see that he’d taken damage.
But looking at him, there was no trace of injury. His clothes were intact.
Huh, that was weird though, he was still in one chunk despite taking some bits of the plasma beam. That laser was the stuff of nightmares. Or the stuff of dreams, to only her.
“Your hardened fanaticism is thus revealed to all, treacherous sorceress”, he said coldly and with dramatics, moving forward an open hand and turning it into a tightly closed fist. “Your disregard for my boundless mercy will grant you the taste of a bitter, pointless end. You will suffer for the misguided loyalty you have for your cowardly master, whoever they are.”
Vic squinted like she’d just heard a whacko, nice, senile old man try to convince her that communist Martians had replaced the president of the united states by a genocidal robot that would inevitably try to put back the pyramids back in Texas to connect Mars and Earth and thus begin the invasion that would bring the end to the dominion of the USA. She was half-tempted to nod along out of pity, and also because she was forced to admit that she was half-impressed by the creativity of the story on its own.
Instead, she pointed at the man while cackling, because that was all that he deserved.
“Your mercy’s worth stinky dung! I’d be stooopid to even trust you and your stupid pyramid scheme! You do BLOOD contracts, of all things! And now you lie about me, for real?! Nobody sent me, you quack!”, she yelled. He was also probably doing that pyramid scheme. She didn’t know what a pyramid scheme was, except that it was what scammers did, so that scammer of a god was probably doing it too. “I don’t care what your words are, they’re full of deceit! As all gods and their cultists’ words are! And you, you…”, she said, spitting out the word, “you self proclaimed god that you are, what does that make of you, huh? Huhh? You’re no different! Or you’re just plain worse, at best! You brainwasher! You skunk! You liar, liar, lying liar!”, she laughed angrily.
Large colourless trunks started shifting around the circular tree-made blockade.
“Your spiteful, meaningless words will not bring any salvation to you… Not anymore”, he said. “I see that you’ve made your choice, heretic. You are past that point.”
Every single tree began cracking out of nowhere.
“And you will pay dearly for it”, he finished. A red glow came from his staff.
Bahhh. He just wanted to have the last word in a so cool way. That just couldn’t do.
“No you”, she replied. She should have said it louder, she wasn’t sure he had heard her and that mattered a lot to her.
Abruptly, monstrous huge claws burst out of the groaning white trunks, elastically extending themselves forwards through a shower of splinters and splattering icky dark green sap that oozed of wrongness. They moved as one.
Meanwhile, she felt tremendous amounts of mana beginning to spread beneath the ground once again.
Fuck this. The claws were a distraction. He was going to try to make that hellish roots spell again. She absolutely needed to break his concentration.
And she needed to be very close to her target in order to get a hit that he wouldn’t be able to dodge like he did last time with that weird goopy technique.
She smiled. She could hit two birds with one stone.
She crouched, preparing to jump high. A sliver of mana coursed across her shadow armour.
She launched herself towards the Bloodcursed Emperor. The platform he was on abruptly raised itself several metres upwards in reaction. Instead of reaching him, her shadowy claws dug in the white trunk that kept raising up. Her armoured fingers dug easily in the malleable flesh of the white trunk. Those were so weak compared to the ones of his special attack. Her grip was great, and that was awesome.
…Because she had to climb very fast to avoid the massive monstrous claws from crushing her.
The claws’s movements weren’t as “smart” as the ones from the roots back then, but their spellcaster was multitasking this time. It might not be the spell in and of itself that was acting more stupid. Only the spellcaster was. The spellcaster was stupid. Very stupid.
She kept climbing while abruptly changing course from left to right to make her erratic moves, while leaping up from time to time to make her more slippery than a slipper. She could easily imagine her enemy getting more and more frustrated by his inability to aim.
A metre below the final platform, she felt a great rush of anticipation. So close-
She leapt straight forwards to reach him, preparing her plasma spell.
She leapt too straight forwards. Anticipating that mad rush, a claw crashed on her and the trunk and grasped her full body, pressing down on her sides so harshly she heard her shadow armour groan of all things.
A second claw clasped on the first one, tightening the grip.
She focused on the layers of the shadow armour to make them resist, expanding outwards. She felt that the claws were definitely weaker than the sharp roots from before. She could do this. But when a third and fourth claw joined the first ones because she was a trapped target, she realised that that wasn’t going to be the problem. This wasn’t a move to injure her. This was a move meant to immobilise her.
She strained the shadow armour like she would with a muscle, making each layer tense in synchronicity. The monstrous claw on her struggled to keep itself close, until several more came to put even more force into the grip, one even coming around her head. She couldn’t see any incoming attacks anymore. Mierda mierda mierda.
If she was being immobilised to make sure the lethal attack striked true, she was fucking screwed.
No no no… Think harder! There was a way out of this! Plasma beam? Plasma beam.
Wait a minute…
Their actions had spoken louder than words. The boss had spoken how she was all past mercy, but really, they hadn’t yet used moves meant to kill her. Except for the sharpy roots monster of a spell.
…But that was only the boss’s moves. Meanwhile, all of his underlings hadn’t made attempts on her life, but only thrown spells to slow her down or incapacitate her in some way. Perhaps they weren’t incompetent, but had been ordered to avoid killing her… But something was wrong… the cult leader had spoken how she was all “going to be killed” and “beyond mercy”, yada yada, meanwhile his followers weren’t following his words at all.
Wait… were they… communicating through some sort of telepathy? OH! Oh… Yeah, the head priestess had had some weird mana around her ears back in the town’s hall before attacking her! They were communicating! Somehow! But what was the point of making her think that she was going to get killed?
Uhh, she couldn’t make a sense of that.
Perhaps the cult leader trusted only his own control over his spells when it came to “lethal” moves, and didn’t trust the ones of his minions.
What was this all for?
She could still feel the activity beneath the ground. The amount of mana was overwhelming, until, slowly, Vic only found in one way to describe it.
Silence.
There was no more mana directly beneath her. Had the boss… just… retreated whatever deadly roots he had left beneath the ground? That made no sense. She had to plasma beam her way out of there.
And abruptly, she saw the claws of wooden flesh crumple and weaken. Her feet found ground to stand on. She pushed against them, to jump, to leap, to escape, rushing to take advantage of the unlikely situation, only to feel a wave of zapping sensations come across her. It did not even relent when it met her shadow armour. It made her retch. She had to swallow bile to avoid spitting it out on her own face.
Vic grimaced when she saw her game window show her that she had abruptly lost another eighth of her mana, and that yet again, a third of her total mana was once again slowly trickling down.
That fucking Lilyn Headpriestess.
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Spamming that attack was bullshit! What sort of bullshit mechanic did she even take advantage of to have that sort of countermeasure against mages?!
Clenching her teeth together, she started dislodging the shrivelled up claws that couldn’t give any meaningful resistance anymore. They felt weirdly like dead puppets that had had their strings cut. She needed to get back her sight on the battleground.
She was about to simply leap up above that mass and disintegrate the shitty claws below her with a plasma beam, but then the cogs of her mind started spinning, and she couldn’t stop them.
Oh. Oh ho. They had to think right now that she’d “run out of mana”. A part of her cringed when thinking just about that sentence. If they said it outloud, she might as well give a go to her most powerful spell to make them shut up.
But no, no…
For now, she didn’t move. A devilish smile spread on her lips. Yes… Yesssss. She could see this happening.
She wisely stopped moving, leaning down, perfectly still. She tucked out her shadow armour. She felt weird without it… A little bit defenceless perhaps.
She kept an ear up for any reaction. With a little luck, they’d take any movement they’d seen down there for her last act of resistance before fainting or something. After all, back when she could still easily ‘run out of mana’, she thought with a cringe, she always used to have awful headaches and tummy aches that were just a pain to deal with. She didn’t want to think what would happen if she actually ran out of mana nowadays. Hopefully, the amount of pain she’d go through wouldn’t be proportional to the amount of magic she possessed. But it’s not like that was going to happen.
There started to be voices far away from where she was. They were muffled by the still ongoing epic sad music that hadn’t stopped.
If the boss knew better, he would know that this meant that the fight wasn’t over. However, the boss didn’t know better. He was a silly, arrogant bamboozler that was about to get bamboozled, badly so. Extremely so. Huhuhuhuhuhu.
There was a rumble, like enormous amounts of trunks and roots were returning deeper into the ground. Vic felt stuff shifting around her.
A pale spiky root came out to dislodge the unmoving shrivelled up claws from her to wrap itself around her waist. Vic kept then her eyes firmly closed, schooling her expression. When she’d first arrived in this world, she’d learnt best how to pretend to be asleep during her apprenticeship days in order to get up to some mischief in the kitchen in the middle of the night back then. Ha! Of course she’d been right, this was turning out to be an extremely useful skill.
Her body came limply upwards. Her full dead weight was brought to some platform of branches that kept on moving. The pale spiky root released her, and she did her best impression of being a corpse.
She took just a moment to notice the missing weight at her back.
Wait a minute, where was her bag? No no no, had she forgotten it somewhere? Had it fallen down during the fight? Had it gotten destroyed? Ah crap no she loved that bag! Wait, had she forgotten it in the town’s hall?
She bit on her lip while her head was down.
She felt like she’d forgotten something else beyond the bag, but she couldn’t put her finger on what exactly. Ah crap, not the time. The voices were becoming clearer by now through the rumbling of shifting trees.
She calmed herself. Now was not the time. She had to less than five metres away from them because of how well she could hear them speak.
“Impossible …It is nigh impossible. Never had I thought that I would ever need to use it two times in a row on a sorceress”, the headpriestess said, clearly now deeply in her thoughts and very much troubled. Her words were slightly slurred, like she was fighting not to turn comatose. “Those are not mana reserves that would be possessed by an elft. And she looks human because of her round ears. Even if she descended from one, the only explanation would be a patron or matron god powerful enough… The union of two divinely blessed family lines is not quite unlikely, but it would explain the variety of her spells. Although at this point… how could two lost family lines unknowingly create such a strong individual? All while having human traits too…”
Vic swallowed down her snort with all her might. That poor Lilyn had no idea that Vic still had some magic juice left. Her heart might give out if she knew.
She managed to keep her smooth chuckling inside thanks to the disagreeable impression that her trickling lowering mana did. It felt like nails on a schoolboard, except at the same time she had to put on some wet socks on and start walking on her bedroom’s lego-littered floor until the timer was finally up. It felt way worse than the first time.
She’d have a little less than a third left of her total mana after all of the yellow mana went swoosh swoosh.
“The ineffectiveness of the divinity breaking spell is more worrying than her deep reserves of mana, Lilyn”, the Cursedblood Emperor said. That was funny, he’d gotten his high priestess’s name wrong. Huhuh. Wait… or did he? Had she gotten it wrong? Uhh… “That can only mean few things.”
“Yes, my lord… The bond she must share with her patron or matron has to be quite entrenched, or… worse…”, the headpriestess lowly said, biting her lips. Her name had to be Lilith, right? Had she misheard? “Her worshipped divinity could be… too powerful for me to break its bond no matter how new that link may be. As terrifying as that perspective is… it is still a possibility.”
Wait, why hadn’t they even considered that she had no patron or matron god? She didn’t have one! What would she even use one for?
“It is soothing for the soul to know that our troublemaker had a limit, in the end”, the Cursedblood Emperor softly said. “Further experimentation and a little persuasion will both provide greatly needed information and perhaps a new addition to my most devoted followers. Despite the initial fright, a trump card might have very well arrived in my hands. A most auspicious omen in the dark times to come.”
“The decision of converting a new disciple of that sort should be made after some careful consideration, my lord”, she said, a little bit too invested all of a sudden despite her previous weariness. Her argument sounded full of prejudice, did it not? “That… brat should under no pretext be left within your church. She will rot it from the inside.”
The headpriestess had replied far too quickly. There was an alarmed edge to that voice. And exhaustion, too. Wait… had she used all her mana? The devious smile that crept on Vic’s face was thankfully hidden by her body’s position. Thankfully, there were no eyes on the branches, so no one saw and no one knew.
“A metamorphosis is only possible if the creature is different from its reborn self, Lilyn. This… human will be appropriately broken and remoulded in a more fervent follower. It is no worry of yours”, the jaded chiding reply came. Wait what the fuuuuck? She felt an ugly anger make her fists lightly shake. She quietly seethed while pretending to be passed out. It was getting hard to keep it up. “You are beyond exhaustion and the crisis has passed. You have earned your rest.”
Oh.
In other words, he was dismissing her. How funny. And insufferable. But funny. This guy didn’t even seem to like his subordinates.
It was bit disappointing that the headpriestess didn’t even protest. That elf sighed instead.
“Thank you, my lord. Of course, my lord”, she said. Then paused. “I will forever be thankful for your godly granted blessings.”
That was when Vic felt branches come together to bring her up by the waist. She kept up the charade of being passed out with all her will.
Vic quickly opened and closed an eye and saw that she was indeed far above the ground, on a platform made by the branches of one lonely tree. All the others had retracted. Holy shit. The place was a wreck of holes. And the God Emperor was a metre away. Nearly at arm’s reach.
“Endure unflinchingly the incoming days, Lilyn. Rituals were crucially missed. You weren’t prepared to receive the weight of this most holy charge. I would have waited longer, but fate had other plans. And you will suffer for it.”
Wait wait wait, so after all of this, they’d cheated by getting some last minute power up to debuff her mana? Vic called bullshit.
“I will always thank you my lord”, the high priestess replied. “Through the cruellest twists of fate or Your Holiest Blessings, I will always thank you.”
That was so fucking awkward to hear.
There was an ancient hum from the Bloodcursed Emperor. Vic thought that the guy found this too embarassing to reply to. Or his ego was just the size of mountains. Huh, now she didn’t know anymore. She knew only one truth. That cult leader was soon going to discover a new meaning to the word “pain”.
“Rest, I must attend to the spiritual needs of my flock”, he said, advancing forwards. Vic felt the branches around her waist sway her forwards.
Oh. Oh that was going to be so good. She just knew it. He was going to ramble on how he’d defeated the bad guy and blablabla in front of everyone. And that moment. That would just be the perfect time. Just perfect. Like the guacamole on the spiced up chips. Yeeeeeeeeeeah.
“My children!” she heard being spoken next to her, and the god’s voice seemed to be amplified through a magic spell. “I am proud of you. Through your diligence, through your unyielding faith, you have helped me bring you to victory. This zealous, evil sorceress has been apprehended…”
He marked a pause, and Vic heard fanatics cheering. Praises began to be said, and Vic could just cringe back. Bruhhh, all that was being said was just sad to hear. Did they really think all that they were saying? That was pathetic.
She heard a whoosh, and figured that the god had raised a hand, because his followers soon stopped cheering afterwards.
“…and will not be executed for its blasphemy, but be held into questioning as I have identified signs of mind manipulation! A foreign force sends a youth to push us to bloodshed. But I refuse to have human blood on my hands! In my mercy, this intruder will find the freedom she was robbed from, be gifted the help she desperately needs, and live in the enlightenment I bring to you all. That, I promise!”
What. The fuck. That fucker. That filthy fucker. He was going to pay for whatever this was.
More applause came. What were they all on? And what was that Bloodcursed Emperor on?! She needed to know! No… no, this was beyond drugs now. How could he lie that way? That was so… so…
Oh!
‘Enlighten this!’ she could have said, blasting him then with a plasma beam. Ugh. She’d missed the mark, now it was too late.
She quickly calmed herself. As calm as a corpse. As still as stagnant water.
Because if she didn’t…
…She’d ruin her moment.
Even if it would be funny for the crowd of mediocre soldiers to realise first that she was still alive before their god did, and while she was curious about how they’d react to that and how they’d have to try to find a way to warn their god without having a sound amplifying spell themselves, she still wanted to choose when that moment happened.
She wanted to savour it after all.
And she did. Like the finest of chocolate cookies dipped in cold milk, she savoured the moment before it came, because the perfect moment would come. God, she missed sugar. And chocolate.
“My brave shepherds, you have all saved our city from great danger, as you have unyieldingly each time, and as you will selflessly do in the future, brothers united with a unique goal. To have… you enlightened in the peace I so dearly protect brings me great pride. You are… worthy.”
There was a thud and the rustling of fabrics, like he was hitting his closed fist against his chest.
“Under my guidance, I will always seek the path to help you achieve and overcome and become more. All sacrifices will have meaning. All your efforts will bring fruit under my light. You will defend, as you will be defended. We will not let forces of chaos and evil bring our downfall. That, I truly believe. Good can prevail over evil.”
Vic spaced out the applause. One of her eyebrows was raised in doubt. He sounded… so honest there. So stupid. But he sounded like he meant it in such an eery honest way… She felt very weirded out. “…For real? You think that?” she asked, having turned her head towards him.
Vic blinked. She saw the god still to an unnatural level. His head flinched in a tilt towards her. She had no idea if he was blinking back in shock. The mask’s black eyes were facing her.
Oh, fuck.
Her palm was already open. She simply did a little motion to turn it towards him.
He was still in shock. And speechless.
Vic a little bit too.
A single second passed.
The plasma beam burst forwards, overcharged with power.
The blast went through the Bloodcursed Emperor’s side. The shot striked true.
There was a mangled screech of awful pain that got broadcasted by his previous amplification sound spell. The sound of his scream was fully amplified for all to hear thanks to him.
There was a literal fifty centimetres wide hole in his chest. Fabric disintegrated and copper ornaments were melted the next instant.
Vic didn’t care how dead the god looked, she kept the plasma beam going, trying to splatter the guy in the burning fluid to maximise damage. She had to dislodge herself from the branch to jump back a little bit because of the heat. Her shadow armour had reformed around her arms and hands on its own, and she brought the whole armour back on the rest of her body in an instant.
A whole two thirds of his first health bar had gone down at first impact. Now a part of it had become yellow and was going down. Fast. HOLY SHIT THAT WAS THE MOVE TO DO!
Die die motherfucker! Ding ding ding, your life warranty has expired!
An ice glacier struck her from the side. She barely had the time to turn her blasting hand towards it to avoid being entrapped in it. But it was weak, so much weaker than before.
Gravity still caught her. The platform was too tiny. She nearly grabbed the edge of the wooden platform that was quickly catching fire, but the tip of her sharp claws cut through the branches instead of getting a grip on them. Vic fell, still hearing the amplified tortured screeching of the cult leader. The last thing she saw was the high priestess puking something dark and putrid.
She crashed on the ground with the grace of a potato, surrounded by cultists.
“Baha! Look at me!” Vic said, “I’m so evil! I roasted your god so much he caught fire!”
Her joke caught blank terrified stares and deafening silence.
Tough… audience. Okay she’d done better.
“Okay, okay”, she said, not trying very hard to sound threatening to make them leave considering what she’d just done in front of their eyes. She got in position to leap. “Try running. Because I’m going to kill you all if you don’t flee.”
“Shoo, shoooo”, she said, motioning with her hand for them to start moving.
And against all expectations, they started running.
…Towards her. With the desperation and fear of fanatics ready to die against all reason.
