Hands raised up, space warped in a twisting motion above her, air dilating and parting before the intense blazing plasma jet that morphed itself into existence, Vic stared above with an alien sort of gleefulness. She was incredibly able to see the lightning strike come down as her perception of time was abnormally slowed down by the game system.
She felt anxious droplets of sweat crowning her forehead as light bursting miasma was pulled out of nowhere. The beam of bright blue plasma burst in a precise, beautiful direct arc that would have pulverised everything on its path.
She didn’t know what would happen when lightning and plasma met.
She had no idea if the lightning strikes wouldn’t redirect the attack down on herself and make it an even more devastating blow. She had no idea what she was doing. All that she truly knew was shooting a beam of brimming, burning light against a storm of lightning strikes. That was not sane.
But she couldn’t help the absurd amount of exhilarated apprehension flooding her brain. She even felt like she should be trying to count, if she even could, she should try to count the number of molecules of adrenalin sparking up in her brain to know what new record she’d just set. Ha-hahA. Knowing that she was so close to death yet so far away… Hundreds of questions keeping her away from truly feeling the terror of it, and yet being before forces of nature that would have torn her to cinders if she’d lacked her current power…
And now she was one of those forces of nature.
She didn’t know why, but time felt slower than it ever had been before.
Vic could only stare numbly, an empty, hungry smile on her face as the lightning bolts finally met her plasma beam. She was on a high she could never get off of.
But they didn’t actually meet. Before meeting, a reaction took place, a reaction that she couldn’t see, and without touching each other, sparks and brilliant fluid jets of incandescent blue miasma parted ways as lightning was deviated along its course. Because of the resistance coming from her enemy’s attack, everything was imploding, bursting away, yet still remaining, like the works within the sun, constantly collapsing against its own gravity, and when the sound reached her, a ringing sizzling noise numbed everything as she thought she’d just lost her hearing before the blasts’ soundwave.
As in resonance, it produced incredibly insane winds that dispersed in an instant all the smog she’d used as a blanket of visual protection. But that didn’t matter anymore.
Staring up, she felt nearly blinded by the intense light coming from above. She could hear it more than see it. She could see nothing but brightness and she felt deaf. She had no idea if she was winning. She didn’t know a thing, she just felt everything.
She breathed, taking it in, trying to sense something through her mana sense. It felt oversaturated. There was too much to even try figuring out what was happening. Madness. The miasmic light above her was shining and spluttering everywhere like the fountain of fluid it was, divided constantly by the mana imbued lightning. She could only know of where her mana beam was ending because of the lightning strikes. Her own mana was only working at the source of the plasma beam, she could never control it on itself. Blindingly bright white energy shone with a detonating, deafening roar and bursts of the fluid leaked out on the sides, making trails like the drawn edges of a nascent star.
It was beautiful. It would disintegrate her before even dropping to the ground if she faltered.
No. No.
She had dozens upon dozens of layers of shadow armour on her body as protection… and yet she could still feel the vibrations coming from the devastating beacon of destruction right above her head. All was happening in slow-motion to her senses.
All in her screamed to run away in case it fell back down on her.
But instead, Vic felt a small giggle come out of her mouth. She was surprised by it, and wide-eyed, she understood. And she began laughing and laughing, and cackling, both hands raised high, blasting her sun spit. She couldn’t stop cackling madly for no one to hear. Because no one could hear her beneath the rumble of this monstrous point of incandescent fusion. No one could hear her, no one could see her, no one could backstab her, no one could. There was only this, as long as she was still alive. It was so simple.
There was no way out.
She only could win.
___
Vimir, for all his renown and prowess in potion making, personal alchemist to His Eminence Himself, could not feel more useless as he stared, standing still, on the terrace of Rosaria’s market, looking down on the southern district in both awe and horror.
An awful volcanic, sulphuric smell was coming from there.
Most were like him. Still statues, their faces illuminated by the current fight, their eyes fixed on the south. Through one of the farthest streets, only a young priestess was running towards this… cataclysm, for that was what it was. A cataclysm.
Elegant, luminescent arcs of shining matter were beginning to spread higher, wider in the sky, in a swift, slow motion, akin to a blooming flower. Lightning poured down on it and made the expanding tendrils of incandescent liquid spiral and propel themselves outwards and upwards, droplets blowing to the sky above. And yet, despite the constant downpour of lightning, the ethereal burning blue, hot white threads kept raising higher and higher.
Those tendrils spread… and through the terror, he nearly could see the edge of a many winged creature of light, spreading, farther, and wider, all-compassing… No… Could it be?
Was this the prophesied enemy- the Sun Deceiver, the false light, the bringer of true Darkness, at last, attacking the hallowed city of His Eminence?
Was this the work of the devil itself? Had he come knocking to finally shake up their faith in Him? To destroy all that existed to replace it with its own fake light?
As if to answer his question, he heard the call.
There was a tug within him, and he looked down at his wrist, touching the runic mark. It was burning soothingly, as it so did during holy rituals.
He stared at his assistant, who just as aghast, stared back to him. The boy had been holding the ingredients that Vimir had handpicked himself from the market earlier, and had not let go of them despite the current shock they were all in. That was commendable, at least.
The boy stared down at his own arm. The runic design on his own arm was also reddening.
He put a hand on his shoulder, and tried to convey the meaning without words. Words would not have been enough in this situation. The boy understood. He delicately put down his basket, filled with a great variety of unmistakeably good ingredients, put a hand on his own arm, and closed his eyes tightly.
Vimir put a hand on his runic mark, and opened the gates. All his ambitions seemed so meagre, so insignificant, when he finally understood the weight of Fate itself on his shoulders. He offered his reserves of magic to his God, hoping it would be enough to defeat the unfathomable enemy that his Eminence was facing. Alone, they’d all fall victim to the Enemy. Together, they could do… so much more. They could try.
Vimir prayed, mana lifting off of him like a pure shroud.
That was all they could all do.
__
There was an abrupt change in the exchange. Vic immediately felt it.
She couldn’t see anymore what was going on above her. She barely could keep her eyes squinted hard enough to avoid being even more blinded than she already was. She was only shooting up, with no idea what’s so ever if she was winning ground or not.
Her mana sense simply made her feel one truth: there was now a growing, even more absurd, monstrous amount of mana filling the space above her, and it wasn’t mana bearing Vic’s own signature.
This was… bad. This made no sense. How could this boss have suddenly so much mana at his disposal and have done nothing with it earlier? Had he really been hiding his actual power all along? But this wasn’t hiding a trump card… this was pretending that his own power level had been so much lower than it actually had been.
A last stand…
…sounded very stupid now. She couldn’t back out. She’d already steeled her resolve.
She heard an even worse rumble, and lightning poured down in such quantities that she saw them strike the ground all around her position.
If those were the ones that failed to reach their aim, she couldn’t imagine how many of them were currently hitting her plasma beam.
Vic gritted her teeth together.
Her eyes widened when she felt the absurd amount of mana from up there… act. It vibrated and burst and fell towards her like a tangible mass of pressure.
Lightning poured down, the downpour of electrical potential slamming down towards her. She saw plasma spluttering to the sides, melting down rock, fire spreading through the roofs, and she realised it.
There were barely a few metres between her and her end.
Vic felt light-headed.
What could she do? What other trick did she have up her sleeve?
She had nothing.
She… actually had nothing.
Vic blinked, and didn’t get enough time to open back her eyes. Because before that, there was a terrible implosion. A terrible, diagonally skyrocketing, implosion.
___
Nomora’s jaw was hanging open, wide enough to catch flies.
She’d left the surface for a few minutes and came back for her liege’s call to… this. Whatever “this” was. What in tarnation…? How? Why? Most importantly: what?
She closed back her mouth. She gulped, slowly.
She couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Nomora. To my inner sanctum. Now”, she heard. She brought a claw to her ear, pressing onto the artefact.
“Of course. But my liege? What is happening?” she asked, licking her lips in anxiety. She should have stayed in the sewer.
“You have eyes”, her liege shortly said. And oh, how unhelpful he was being. Were matters… going this awry? Could he not know more than she did?
“Yes, my liege?”, she said, and through her tone, asked the question she couldn’t say with words.
“I do not know how’s she done it”, her liege explained, in a tone that she would never dare qualify outloud or speak of even in her own mind. “She suddenly deviated the strikes when she… shouldn’t have been able to. It makes no sense. I do not… understand what she has done.”
There were several upward jets of stridently brilliant blue plasma scouring through the sky. It was soon raising across the sky, over the city. This was absurdly strange… a comet coming from the earth only to raise away from it. It came from the battle between her liege and the intruder. She didn’t need to look at it to know how intensely mana currents were coursing through there. It would have been blinding to her other sense.
“My liege, I will be shadow-travelling. Any last orders?” she asked, stretching her hands.
“Haste. Protect the inner city from the falling remnants”, her liege said. There was much urgency in his voice. “Before irreparable damage is made.”
Oh.
Oh. Those shiny bits of molten fluid were falling down on the city.
Unholy heaven bound hells.
Nomora cursed with every swear word she knew, only to realise she hadn’t cut off the mana link of communication yet. Her liege didn’t comment on it.
She sighed.
That was an agreement on the current state of affairs, then.
___
Vic was crying or laughing. She didn’t know. She didn’t know a thing.
There was snot down her face but it’d be a bit stupid to try removing it with her hands.
She was at the point where she couldn’t control the plasma beam anymore. It was going haywire, splattering in every direction at random. It nearly once went at an 180 degrees angle to blast her for a millisecond. She didn’t know how she was still alive.
“AHAHA! HA… HAHAHAHA!” Vic cried, letting her laughter become maddened cackles.
She had her eyes tightly closed. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to see correctly for days afterwards. Too much light. Too much. Too much. She was going to get sunburnt or something.
She could sense her enemy’s mana doing weird shit. It was yeeting away in absolutely arbitrary directions that made no sense what’s so ever, flung far away like a flicked booger. What was he trying to do? Was it him? Maybe her own plasma beams were merging with them as they splattered everywhere? Could the lightning be amplifying the effect of her own attack? She had no clue. Was she winning? What was happening?
There was a weird upheaval where she felt a “popping” motion, and suddenly she was able to feel that the point where her mana focused before letting plasma implode out had moved a few metres upwards. How had that happened? No idea. It had happened. That’s all she knew.
She squinted her eyes. She couldn’t feel the mana’s lightning’s presence as close as before.
Was she winning? Was she?
Her plasma beam… no, her plasma… beams really were doing weird motions, vibrating from every side to another in a single second, not even in a motion that could resemble a light’s wavelength. They were strings of blue light that someone was using as a very strange skipping rope and that most likely wasn’t enjoying themselves.
And through their skibbety booping, far, far away, she difficultly saw a perfectly still figure standing on white wide branches, holding a magic staff softly glowing red.
[Alberon, Cursedblood Emperor] appeared in front of her eyes.
Damn bastard.
That goatfucker wasn’t even above her. She was fighting a battle that meant nothing. She was the only one who could lose something in it. Fuck. Cunning insufferable asshole.
But her heart only skipped a beat when his hp bars reappeared to her eyes.
They were full. They weren’t even dented. They were full.
“CABRóN” she yelled. What a coward! What a bastard! He was standing safely away- and-
And he had healed up somehow! How? Through high grade healing potions? Through priests? FUCK! He had priests and priestesses! No fair, no fair at all!
“YOU!” she screamed at him, and he might not be able to hear her from there, “You’re-not sup-posed-to-do-that! NO-FAIR! NO-FU-CKING-FAIR!”
He couldn’t hear her. He was still staring at her. She could feel his eyes on her through the flimsy ecstatic tendrils of blue plasma. That bastard. She wanted to nuke him. Could she nuke him from here? Both her hands were busy…
Wait a minute…
The way he was standing… His staff held up… The way red, oozing magic was accumulating…
She used her mana sense. In one direction. In one goal.
And everything made sense.
There was a vertiginous amount of mana being collected from everywhere around his environment. This wasn’t his own mana. He was using… alternatives. He was… cheating to win.
“FUCKING CHEATER!” she screamed, but most likely wasn’t heard.
Oh. Well what a surprise for a cult leader to be a cheating conman.
…She really needed to get the fuck out. The only way to defeat such an enemy would be by separating him from his cheating healing stations and his cheating extra sources of mana. He needed to be isolated in order to be truly eliminated. She actually couldn’t win at all before someone that didn’t play by the rules. Not that she was better by any amounts, but this was just being outclassed in that category.
Vic screeched her teeth together when the roof she was standing on suddenly caved in. Cracks had first appeared around her planted sword, until all broke loose. Within the rumble of falling tiles and crumbling stone, Vic fell down through the building in slow motion, hands still aimed straight up.
She managed to see wooden beams catch fire through the dusty fall, plasma light illuminating too brightly her surroundings.
She’d reached the bottom floor in seconds. Seconds that nearly were a half-a-minute to her. Her shadow armour protected her from all debris and from fall damage. Vic pointedly ignored with a grimace a spilt pot of stew that was still steaming hot, vapour very slowly coming out of it. It got blown away to nothing when a lonesome jet of plasma abruptly diverted itself towards it for a single second.
…The southern districts had been evacuated previously because of that “dark sorcerer of dark designs”, hadn’t they ?
Vic grimaced again. She could feel that the mana falling above her had… decreased. It was lowering alarmingly fast…
She frowned openly. Was it being drained away for another type of attack? She could sense a dramatic decrease of lightning strikes. Her surroundings had stopped shaking with each single strike. There were… no more strikes. Eh. Eh? Ehh? What? The fuck? Her plasma beam was meeting no resistance. It had to be spewing upwards uninterruptedly. Her attacker had just stopped.
“What the hell?” Vic said to no one.
On a very strong, extremely strong gut feeling, she abruptly cut off her giant upward plasma beam. It sputtered out and closed down a tad bit difficultly. She leapt and latched tightly onto her big magic sword.
With its source cut off, she saw the last of her uninterrupted bright blobs fling themselves to the sky. Fully upwards.
Lovely.
The lightning attacks had indeed stopped, because Vic didn’t get electrocuted immediately after having stopped her attack. Vic blinked, seeing now the jets of plasma beam freely fling through the air. Huh. The strings of the remains of her plasma beams were really… flying unnaturally high in the sky, splattering into pieces. They seemed to be… falling now? It was a bit difficult to perceive as her perception of time was still slowed by the game interface. But… Holy shit. If that was falling… that might actually do some… damage to the city.
Could it… be? Was the cult leader worried about his little city that he’d used to scam people being reduced to nothing but a fake, scamming marketing ploy? Was he stopping now because of that?
She squinted at the lastly shot end of her plasma beam. It wasn’t going as high as the old one… She’d have to sprint a bit actually in case it fell back straight down to her.
She slowly felt mana shift below her.
The music was still going on. Its slow notes kept being played. The boss hadn’t left like a coward. But he should have. But he hadn’t. He now truly knew what she could do. Why hadn’t he left? Was it because of pride?
Vic felt her perception of time accelerate. Before her time ran out, she located an exit, a window, and crashed straight through it, leaping out of its broken frame right on time to see behind her an exclamation point fade on the ground of the ruined house, and a huge, pale, bone-like root replacing it and expanding through all of the available space.
[Advanced reaction time: deactivated], the game interface signalled to her. Fuck you, game interface, for being unhelpful when still needed.
And the world once more spun so much faster than before. Glass, pebbles and more crashing down along with her. She couldn’t keep up with all that was happening. Chaos.
She was getting out of there. She wasn’t letting herself get dragged down by despair. Not again.
? I CAN KEEP GOING ALL DAY, OLD MAN ! ? Vic screamed while falling, because even if it wasn’t true, that city boss clearly didn’t know any of Vic’s limits. Ha, psychological warfare it was, HAHA !
She flexibly landed on crouched legs, and leapt back up immediately on her feet.
Vic ran. And laughed.
“What are you?” the disembodied voice asked from everywhere at once.
“Wouldn’t you like to know”, Vic whispered through a heavy inspiration. Vic didn’t answer anything else. She wouldn’t waste her breath on him when she could be giving it her all to run faster.
She raced through the street, hearing far away the terrible sound of plasma crashing down and melting things, and leapt and rolled just as a pale root dived down on her, and kept going, leaving the reach of the roots as one abruptly couldn’t slither any farther. She was out of range. Haha ! Yes ! The guy hadn’t had the time to prepare more of those root spells. They required a long preparation time, just as she’d thought ! There was, there was, there was a way out!
“Oh, no! Won’t you look at me! I’ve run out of mana!” Vic exclaimed in a frail, childish voice, complaining about what undoubtedly was the unfairness of the world. “Oh nooo! What shall I possibly ever doooooooooo? I guess I can only run away, now!”
She smirked like a devil and ran even faster. Bait and switch, and switch and bait! The way to go from now on, surely! Make them doubt even their own existence, haha!
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
She was making it out of here.
There was a great clamour ahead of her. It couldn’t be good. Could it be soldiers? Ah, who cared, who cared! She’d just leap above them- if the streets were too narrow for anything else.
Also damn. Her many, many layers hadn’t superimposed themselves yet, how had she done that-? Was it the focus she was so deeply in?
Vic stared a second too long at them while ignoring the barrage of soldiers ahead of her while running to try to observe what the layers were doing in order not to mess themselves up only to see them begin vibrating and shattering once they hit each other too many times- Wait no, nO! They shouldn’t be doing that- Was it because she’d stared to watch?
She stared away, evenly breathing, with the accompanying sound of scattering layers of shadow armour, losing some height because of it. She screamed with all her lungs, finally acknowledging the crowd of soldiers before her:
“COWARD-COWARD, stop using flesh puppets as shields!”
There was no reply from said coward.
She saw magic spells be incanted. Useless. They’d all be useless.
She reformed layers of shadow armour.
“DEADLY LASER OF DEATH!” she screamed out, spewing out the plasma beam that broke the wall on her right through which she leapt through, leaving melting stone behind.
“That’s YOU if you keep coming after me!”, she threatened with bitter despair, not even looking back.
It was useless. They still ran after her. Couldn’t they guess that she just wanted to reach the great wall surrounding their city to get out of it? It looked so close now. Barely a few hundred metres away. It’s like they wanted her to bloody her hands on the way out.
The next street was blocked too with a human barricade. She couldn’t keep doing this. They’d clearly used their precious time to make themselves a nuisance just before the city’s edge.
She ran to them.
“DEADLY LASER OF DEATH!” she screamed out, hands raised at them to make them retreat, but no magic spell was incanted. She saw some sane ones duck out of reach to avoid the threat of dying, while some simply stuck frozen in place, pale faces barely registering that nothing had come out of her hands. A stupid one had even braced themselves for the impact, as if that would have even worked. She kept rushing forwards, leaping above, crashing through the first three shielded formations. A lucky blast of air and a javelin to the face threw her back.
Fuck. Shit fuck shit. That had been just unlucky.
She pulled out her tongue.
“Gotchu there, haha!” she forcefully laughed, gesticulating wildly with her hands “But will I fake it again?”
She threw again her hands forwards, pretending to plasma blast. Less people moved out of their place. There was terror there. But there was something far more deranged too on their faces.
She smiled bitingly. She laughed, sensing the soldiers she’d just lost behind her finally reach her back. However, they wouldn’t remain a problem. She could just run again.
She heard an enchanted one metre long arrow abruptly wheeze through the air. She rolled in time. It phased right through her. Fucking arrows. That was the exact same type of magic arrow that had impaled her before. Fucking sniper. Why were all the actual annoying enemies staying right out of her sight while the meatshields got the brunts of the attack? That was just the unfairness of the world.
She ran away, back to the next intersection. Surely they couldn’t make human barricades across the whole streets before the wall.
“Whoop-whoop-whoop!” she whisper-screamed, humorously, along each of her leaps. In thirty seconds, she’d left them behind. Really, they shouldn’t have skipped leg day. Team leg day forever, Vic.
She was obviously faster than them. But there were more ahead. They just didn’t retreat.
She couldn’t constantly make detours for the sake of insane deranged cultists.
The great wall was just on her left. She glanced at her mana bar. She glanced at how close the wall was. She couldn’t quite afford to make detours to her exit… anymore. She didn’t want to.
She stared at the next human barricade.
“I’m into my second boss phase, fellow goons!” she yelled for any who cared to hear. “Careful now, I’ll bite!”
No one moved. Not even a metre before impact was made. It’s like they knew she wouldn’t actually harm them.
She smirked, putting on her best plastic smile while crashing head on against raised shields. She was wasting time. All of the guard braced itself. Not even one tried to dodge. It was like they’d all placed bets that she would try her best not to mortally wound them like she’d done time and time again over this endless fight.
But at last, her big magic sword went down.
Someone’s eyes widened as their arm was cut straight off. Blood splattered. The bone was cut cleanly. Vic slashed down more and more, crashing and smashing down on metal, screeching, howling sounds meeting her shadow armour and all effortlessly failed to damage it as she regenerated protective layers while she smashed through layers of bodies. A flesh cutting machine took her place.
“You are MAKING me DO THIS”, Vic yelled “This is YOUR fault! Why are you hitting yourselves? WHY ARE YOU HITTING YOURSELVES?”
Other limbs sometimes flew. People crashed down. She did not slow down. She was too close to her exit to even want to do that. She had no choice. This was their fault for standing in her way. She’d warned them enough and they’d taken her previous kindness for a weakness to exploit.
Threats had been wind to them. Now they faced the consequences of their choices.
This was their fault.
She didn’t have the heart to scream that this was “legitimate defence, haha!”. It could have been very funny. But it wasn’t. No… There was a single individual that had turned people into mindless monsters trying to kill her: their “leader”, their CursedBlood Emperor, who’d turned everyone into fanatics who were a plague, trying to infect other healthy minds with their own illness no matter what, so very certain of their own self-righteousness. And that bastard was hiding, plotting for his own time to strike safely out of harm’s way while people bled for him. He truly was acting like the coward, bastard cult leader that he was. She saw him for what he was.
She’d make him bitterly pay for that, one day. Or perhaps… Why not today? No, Vic, no getting sidetracked. Not now. Or… perhaps?
She finished going through the mass of fanatics, leaving thirty metres of crashed bodies, bloodied metal, and broken shields and shattered swords. The human barricade had been broken.
She didn’t stop. Victorya didn’t need to stop. And she had a plan. There was a possibility of a well made plan. After all, there was now hell to pay. She’d bloodied her hands, in the end. She wasn’t strong enough yet.
“SHOW YOURSELF!”, she screeched, “I know you’re watching this! YOU pathetic COWARD, hiding behind your followers like the watchful GOD you ARE! What’s your excuse?”
“You vermin, don’t you have any idea what you attempted to destroy?”, a disembodied voice of course replied. The street was now empty. She sensed soldiers hiding in abandoned houses. No movement from them. “Brainless brat that you are, you cannot envision that your very attempts were pointless at their core.”
He was so full of shit. Why did he scream then when he got roasted from close up? Huh? What was the point of pretending to be in pain?
She told him as much while racing forwards.
“Why did you scream when you got all roasted up, you goose?” she yelled out, “faking being pain, were we now, huhh?? HUHH???”
A lightning strike went down, but she sent out a plasma beam straight back, and the lightning strike was deviated only to crash against a nearby building while plasma fluidly landed down and incinerated instantaneously a wooden cart full of goods. The wall was so close. She’d need to leap up soon.
“HA!” she yelled back. “YOU FOOL! You don’t want to admit that you had to stop the spell because I was damaging everything and you got scared! I bet you shat your pants, SHITPANTS! Changed your clothes yet? You have? How cowardly-”
“I decided to spare you-” he started, but Vic interrupted him with the magic of “speaking louder” while climbing up a house the fastest she’d ever done.
“Oh, so you just changed your mind about it when you realised you were gonna lose ? LmaoOO ?, Vic yelled even louder to truly make a point. That worked wonders as the voice that replied seemed to be magically amplified a tad too much.
“You are an insufferable speck of dust that does not realise what powers you tried to trifle with”, he monologued. “You frankly, unilaterally misunderstand how deeply I am retaining my composure. I could destroy you limb by limb in minutes. I could detach your very skin from your muscles with a single divine act, but I am not. I am sparing you. I am allowing you a single minute to surrender before I cut off one of your limbs. It will be an arm, I think. A leg would be pointless, as in time, you will understand that you cannot use them to run from the sheer core of my divinity.”
Vic grimaced.
Because wow damn this guy liked the sound of his own voice. What an egocentric maniac. He’d truly spoken like a lying liar. She wasn’t going to let him stay in those delusions.
She laughed back. She laughed very hard. She laughed exaggeratedly until it hurt. He needed to know how much she thought he was full of shit. While he’d been monologuing, she’d reached the highest meeting point between a roof’s house and the Wall. She’d reached the wall. Holy shit she’d reached the wall. He’d act one last time soon. She just knew it. He was a dramatic ass. That’s how he’d work. The only thing she could influence was how we was going to attack.
“You monologue far too much, broooooo-”
“We are not related, heretic”, he said. And his voice sounded so offended it was funny. She started climbing. She immediately started by zigzagging in her climbing in case there were those pale roots hiding within the wall. She wouldn’t make aiming at her be easy.
“That was an expression, you uncultured swine!”, Vic immediately bit back. She sensed nothing weird within the wall. But maybe… could he have no roots at all across his precious wall?
“You’re the barbaric heretic speaking, how amusing !” he claimed. “It knows how to talk!”
He was so annoying. How could any of his worshippers even want to hear him talk during his sermons? She’d be the first to throw a rotten tomato.
Okay, okay, back to plan A. Breaking his concentration. She’d gotten carried away. Wait, what had plan A been? It was to roast him enough he’d do a stupid, risky move. Well, she’d been right on track. She was quite the accidental genius if she often do so said herself.
“How had you put it, already? I might pay “dearly” for this, but at least I don’t effortlessly stink like roasted wood that magically shat itself in an attempt to try to slow ME down!”, she said uninterruptedly. There was a brief moment of silence in the rumbling mana below, not like a pause, but more like a stuttering halt. Holy shit that had been going on all along but she hadn’t noticed because it’d felt so… natural and organic. Only an abrupt pause had made her aware of the movements. HOLY SHIT. Oh. Ohhh, yeah, trashtalking him was the plan!
He was pretending to be a god, of course he’d have a huge ego! “And contrary to you, I don’t need a huge team to carry me like a coward. Maybe you need people ‘cause you’re too weak compared to real gods, huh? Oh oh I know, you might just be the weakest of all the gods! What’s this, needing mortals? Also you’ve got quite the human form for a god! How pathetic are you really? Are you the god of patheticness? Now that’s something I’ve never seen so far in my entire life! I’d even call it impressive! You’re so impressive! SO SO IMPRESSIVE! YES SO IMPRESSIVE!”
She reached the top of the wall. She lunged herself outwards, a victorious hand brought up in the air. It proudly held her big fucking magic sword.
She didn’t get the time to see the slashing, warping motion aiming straight at her victoriously extended arm, from left to right.
The blade cut through her protective layers like butter. It was barely slowed down by them. She barely managed to perceive the looming figure holding the weapon- no- the arm, the arm was part of the blade-
Vic followed the motion. She leapt right, accompanying the slash’s motion. Layers upon layers were cut like they were nothing. She felt her skin be grazed. Her arm had no more protection. She felt her muscle get cut. Her nerves screamed at her as they were sectioned. It pulsed and burnt. The slash was halfway through her wrist. It was going to get cut off.
And Vic’s rolling motion began, and the blade phased harmlessly right through the rest of her arm.
Vic finished the roll, screaming “fuck! FUCK YOU!”. Bone had been cut. FUCK SHIT FUCK. She couldn’t contract her fingers or turn her wrist. Something wasn’t responding. But her shadow armour around her fist still firmly held her sword.
“Bleeding out”, the game system unhelpfully added as a status. Her health points began dropping too fast in her own taste. The way the blood spilled through her slit layers of magic armour was so… weird.
Well fuck.
At least her trap had worked.
He was a hand away.
Both her hands had already been up when he’d attacked her. One hand could do the job fine. She barely had to turn her head to him to get a good visual on him.
“HEY, DOWNGRADE PALPATINE!”
The bursting plasma beam spewed out of her uninjured hand and striked true.
The boss started screaming before the plasma beam reached him. Holy shit.
He didn’t goop away, he stayed where he’d been, a red, oozing hand aimed towards the blast, trying stupidly to grasp it.
He screamed even more when that arm and shoulder were incinerated away before he could dodge. She’d missed his head. Must have been the pain. But it’d been his good arm holding his fancy staff at least. Said staff started dropping to the ground.
Had he gotten PTSD from having been hit the first time? Holy dang sweet shit. Is that why he had been fighting from the shadows for so long? He’d gotten traumatised by the roast the first time around?
He began warping away through his spell.
She made her spell fizzle out.
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed bashfully, “I’ve actually run out of mana!”
The way his mask stilled made her smile. His teleporting action seemed to be on hold- all while she was able to see weird green and ashen white goop form around his stump, stopping any bleeding there.
She squinted. Used her mana sense. Fuck, priests and priestess were at work from afar. That had to be a horrible waste of resources. Healing from afar was really not cost efficient.
She threw her uninjured hand at him like she was gonna throw a plasma beam. A shiver was going down his spine as he cringed back even when nothing came out. Her grin was exaggeratedly plastered on her face. It was a plastic thing. He stepped back, but didn’t teleport. She couldn’t help but giggle a little madly.
She dramatically dropped her magic sword like she’d just surrendered, then reached for her coat’s pocket.
There was an insane shifting of mana down below.
“Come on, I surrender! I surrender, no need for that”, she said, pointing her eyes downwards towards all that magic noise. “Won’t you accept my little surrender? I’ve given up. You beat me. I don’t want to bleed out. I don’t want to die”, she convincingly said. “I surrender. And bring up your healers. I need some healing! You got me good!”
“You wretched little thing”, he said. He slowly brought a hand up, its palm shown to the ground. It was oozing red.
Well, to be honest, she didn’t even sound convincing to her own ears.
It was a good thing he was falling for his urge to monologue. She was pretty sure it was coming, yeah. It was a bit weird too- he was acting like he’d already won. That’s a level of confidence that could kill. Heheh. She’d make sure of that, now. Heh… heh.
She glanced down the wall, in the city, and spotted where some priests were hiding. They were pretty dang close, less than fifty metres away. Perhaps some were hiding even closer within the corridors of the wall. One of them was coming running, damn. They probably had been ordered to come there for the last ambush that their cult leader had been counting on, since this bastard wanted to make sure he would be somewhat safer with them. Fucking coward.
“What are you planning?” he asked. “What could you possibly hope for, you insane midget?”
She opened her inventory beneath her coat, and tapped for her last middle grade potion. The move probably looked weird, but that only added to the fun of it all. He wouldn’t know where she’d taken this big potion from. This would only work in her favour, too. His need to understand what the fuck was going on would be his undoing.
She couldn’t get close to him or he’d teleport away to safety. She needed to give him a false sense of safety for what she was planning. He needed to get close by himself. And he would. Because he was full of himself and thought he knew better.
She brought out of her coat the bulbous vial, wooshing it’s liquid in it with a smooth motion.
Like a true magician, she’d made a potion appear out of nowhere. Teehee.
She could feel the way the tall dude was squinting.
“Well, since you’ve accepted my surrender, I’m gonna heaaaal myseeeeeelf-” she singsonged while popping off the plug of the potion.
That seemed to be as much snotty, arrogant bullshit as the egocentric cult leader could take, because his uninjured arm turned into a scythe-like weapon while diving towards her before she could heal up.
But that was the point of it all.
She rolled to the side, pretending to dodge, only for the guy’s blade to violently go straight through her while she was phased out and wow damn it was a good thing she’d dodged and yep that was definitely on purpose-
…And got back up immediately to start spamming shadow armours so hard that the boss’s blade got stuck in them as his move had reached the end of his momentum. Vic kept spamming, and spamming, even after he realised what she was doing.
He was halfway stuck now. Between layers of her shadow armour. Holy dang.
Half his body was stuck in when he tried gooping away, only for her to spam again the shadow armour where he ended up being wrapped up in them partly- and weirdly enough, his gooping dodgy form seemed to fail to manifest once three fourths of his body got moulded into the form of her shadow armour. Something fucked up and magical was going on as dark sparkles started popping on and off along his form. It was really funny looking. The guy was basically a wart on her own magical three metres tall form.
“What is this witchcraft? What have you done- what- how-” he said. “What are you doing-”
Well he and her both, heh. Nobody knew what was going on. Why care? Oh, right, he was the one stuck and having his life threatened by an insane overpowered maniac. Wait, no that was her. She was the one stuck in a life threatening situation by an insane overpowered maniac!
She heard him panicking some more as he made a shocked noise once his divinity imbued blade did not find enough room to start cutting her shadow armour like before. Wait… could he really not teleport away anymore?
Vic’s widening eyes paused when she realised that he was just… stuck. Like that. Like a slug.
She took a moment to breathe deeply in and out.
She stared at the horizon. She’d reached the wall. She was ten metres and a jump away from freedom. She hadn’t gotten the time to pour down the health potion on her badly slit arm. The pressure from her own shadow armour was doing a fine… enough job at slowing down her bleeding. The notification of
Heh…
And this guy was stuck.
That was fucking hilarious.
If she were able to walk away with so many layers on, without any chance of breaking them, it’d be even sillier to just… walk away while having kidnapped the god of this city. And there’d be nothing they could do about it before she finally got rid of him in the wilderness. It’d be very silly indeed, heheh. It could even make a good scary story to tell children.
Sadly, she couldn’t do that. She was stuck as much as he was stuck.
This was not a mistake. It might have been a mistake, but she wouldn’t let this remain one. Since his magic was nerfed as he was stuck in her magic layers, maybe… maybe he couldn’t properly interact with the outside world there, and use unfairly charged up spells against her. Like the one below her.
She stared back at him until he stared at her back. That mask with so many pointy branches poking outwards like the sun was as unfeeling as ever. And yet she could smell the slow sense of horror coming off from him.
He got goofed up. Yep. Feel that, old dude. You’ve been bamboozled. And know you look stupid.
She smiled at him with all of her pointy teeth.
“Wanna see something cool?” she said, taking her time. She could sense no activity from down below. Was the cult leader truly cut off from the outside world here? That sure was an interesting thing to know about her shadow armour… Huh… Ha…
She felt a little bit light-headed.
She chuckled.
“I’m not gonna blow you to plasmic bits, don’t worry, bud”, she light-heartedly said as he was tensing too much. “I think you would somehow survive that. You cockroach. I prefer… something more… definite.”
That wasn’t the reason at all. It was better if he didn’t know why she actually didn’t have about a minute left of constant plasma beam spamming to fully delete him from the world.
She hated to think it, but… she was actually now running out of mana… How detestable.
“Whatever it is you want- child-” he rapidly began saying, “I’ll give it to you- what is it? Money? Power? I am- I am so much more- than you could imagine- No matter what you’ve been promised- they are liars, and will undoubtedly betray you- There is so much more to consider-”
She sighed heavily. He wasn’t getting it at all. She didn’t negotiate with terrorists. And this wasn’t about money, this was about making a point.
“Is this the moment where I do my final speech ? Alright. I’ll give it a go. I won’t be long. Ahem”, she said, ignoring him, deeply breathing in while zoning out whatever the cultist leader was saying, because he’d immediately started voicing his unimportant opinion when she said that. He couldn’t stop talking. Wow. Fucking amazing.
She looked at him with pity. That made him stop talking.
Now she could finally talk.
“Mercy is a virtue that can only be afforded with power”, she slowly said. “And both happily and sadly for you, I’m running straight out of it”, she lightheartedly added with a soft, compassionate smile.
And like a doubly lying liar, she immediately started oozing powerful waves of magic as her most powerful spell in storage started pushing itself into existence with a simple selection over her menu with a tiny, little flicked finger.
Heheh.
She was running out of mana. She was in the red. But there was one neat little trick to her spells. Once she started one, even if she didn’t have enough mana to cast it, it would be cast. Her own health bar would drip down, as magic consumed what it had to in order to become the truth of reality. And her own health was technically worth so much mana…
“I have my top one spell in my little list in my little head”, she said, while feeling delight at the sight of the cult leader trying to push himself out the layers of shadow armour once more like a worm. “There’s one chance in two that I fail it, because I haven’t quite mastered it, but why don’t we make a bet? It’ll be fun. Are you feeling lucky today, pal, lil’ guy, new friend?”
A stream of posh insults came out of his mouth but they were not worth commenting on, really.
The bloodcursed emperor was trying over and over again to turn into his goop form and pull himself violently against the two layers of shadow armour. It didn’t even break. He really was fucked. Damn. Sucked to be him. She began casting.
Anticlimactically, a window of a Geometry Dash level opened. A funky, joyful little music started spreading out in total contradiction with the city’s boss own theme that was still playing everywhere at the same sound level. Her little square jumped each time she focused or tapped her finger. The game guided her spellwork.
There was a weird feeling of joy spreading in her chest as she tapped away. She’d seen no good end to this fight in sight, and yet, she only felt even more relief. Because it was going to end. She wanted to laugh even more, to cackle until she had no lungs left to laugh with, until her lips crackled and there was no air left on this earth to breathe and no more laughs to ever be left out.
“I call it ? the Nuke ?”, she said without thinking too much about it, still droning out whatever pleas, orders or demands the guy was making, because he himself didn’t ever stop wanting to hear himself. “Do you know what a nuke is? Of course you don’t, you’re an uncultured swine.”
The cursedblood emperor made louder panicking words and strange sounds the more the spell was forming. Was he seeing mana differently than she was ? That was a little bit too much panicking for a medieval cult leader who shouldn’t have any idea of the definition of fission.
Maybe it was his inability to continue his huge, enormous spell he’d been doing beneath the earth that was making him panic. He was helpless. And he didn’t seem to enjoy that. Hah.
Anyway, it didn’t matter. She tapped away. She hadn’t gotten hit yet in the mini-game. How swell!
“Generally, it would really really suck to be at ground zero of said nuke”, she monologued unfocusedly. “But do tell me, what do I have that you don’t?” she said, once the level of her mini-game finally changed shape. She’d gotten no hits till her cube transformed into a little ship! Amazing! Considering how hard it’d usually been to make this spell…
…She didn’t know if her own shadow armour would be enough protection. The spell wasn’t supposed to be used this way at all.
Well that wasn’t quite the point, was it ? The point was nuking the “Bloodcursed Emperor”. All else didn’t matter. Heheh… Heh.
A shame for the damaged sword. If she didn’t survive the blow, it sure wouldn’t too. She could side-eye it on the ground, a few metres away.
Well, she hadn’t deserved it in the first place.
She finished the first half of the spell, reaching a high point, when suddenly, it was put on hold, and a window opened over it.
[Yes/No]
Damn.
The system itself was leaving her a warning. That had never happened before.
Vic clicked on [Yes].
That was when she heard a scream. It hadn’t come from the cult leader.
Someone ran to Vic’s form and tried hitting it.
Vic blinked. That was a young priestess. That was… Karah. Karah was sobbing while hitting with her naked fists the first outer layer of her shadow armour. She didn’t even damage it.
Vic stared at her, and her square failed to dodge two obstacles in a row in the mini-game.
Holy shit.
Weird words spewed out of Karah’s mouth; her sentences didn’t make a sense. She was sobbing too much for Vic to decipher some of them. It was something about guilt and blame and having “dragged the devil inside a holy home” and deserving death or something.
Hitting Vic with nothing but fists was kind of really useless.
A chortle escaped Vic. That was convenient.
“You should leave, really. Run really fast or you’ll get caught up in the blast. It’s a small nuke”, Vic thought she could have told her.
But it wouldn’t have made a difference, now would it have? The girl would just have insisted on staying. The brainwashing was too strong. She’d want to die with her god, or whatever, no matter what she’d say. There was no point in saying anything. There was no point in trying.
Vic was tired.
She briefly closed her eyes, and proceeded on the spell. She focused hard, only getting one more hit’s damage in her funky geometry dash game as she fucked up a dodge. This was harder than any level she ever tried back home. The way it felt- the mana was jumping, having to make precise motions simultaneously all while keeping their intensity in check, faster and faster, a motion spinning more and more… She couldn’t figure out the patterns or what exactly the game system was making her mana do yet.
Heheh. There was one chance in two of successfully accomplishing the spell. And she was going through it! She was actually managing it! She was amazing. She was doing so well.
She heard curses now. Magical arrows had pierced the first layers of her shadow armour, but there were two metres away from reaching her in depth. Ha… Fucking noobs. There was nothing that they could do.
Vic smiled. The cult leader had pointlessly resorted to bashing.
Vic answered.
“Oh, I’m a devil alright”, she lightly said back, “I’m the worst of them all. After all, I’m the one holding a nuke over your head.”
Vic smiled. And decided to ignore the outside world from now on. She needed to really focus now. Distractions would be bad, she’d nearly gotten her little squareship damaged when she’d answered.
She was managing the spell, despite its now insane intricacies and its rhythm that made her head ache. If it was less difficult, she would have monologued more. It did feel wrong not to gloat before killing such an annoying opponent.
While focusing, she ignored Karah that kept hitting her side with her fists.
It didn’t feel bad, no, just a little bit. The blame wasn’t on Vic. Vic was just the natural reaction, the consequence of their shitty cult.
Mana itself finally began twisting around, digital sparkles forming a spiralling invisible pattern over the ground. Everyone but Vic looked panicked. It was happening. She was nuking… the city. Its wall. Time to break this shell of a city open, huh?
That young priestess was too brainwashed for Vic to care. Casualties happened all the time in this hellish world. She knew better than anyone. Karah would just be… yet another victim of circumstance. She didn’t even know that teenager. They’d spent like what… a day together? An afternoon, tops? A few hours? All they were was strangers.
The bloodcursed emperor kept spewing out words, insults or pleas. He talked far too much for someone who was already dead.
Funny, really, when Karma finally hit you back in the balls.
Blood dropped down Vic’s nose. As the spell began syphoning everything from within, she had no mana left. Her health points started dropping down too. But she knew inside that the spell was nearly finished. It would be enough. She just needed to keep herself focused. Rise above the pain, above the struggles, all that sigma male nonsense.
She shouldn’t care.
She had already bloodied her hands before.
She’d already pressed [yes] when the game system had asked her if she was certain she wanted to kill all cultists in her vicinity at the price of maybe her own life. But she couldn’t die. She wouldn’t, she just knew it inside. She was incapable of it. But others would die, because they weren’t ? Vic ‘Victorya’ Cortez, the wayward player ?. Others would die. Because she’d pressed a button, and the nuke was engaged.
Vic bit her lips. It’s not like she could politely ask the game interface to stop the spell and all would go back to normal. She forced a smile on her face. This wasn’t bitter, this wasn’t bitter at all. Her hand had been forced, really. The blame wasn’t only her own. They’d fucked around and found out. That’s what the cultists had done. And cultists never learned. They were inhumanely obstinate. They deserved to die.
It wasn’t her fault. She was a natural force, a reaction to a cult’s absurd, insufferable stubbornness.
The music, the path, it all lead to this single moment.
She didn’t want to stop it.
Magic itself began tensing. Like a recrudescing wave of water before a tsunami. It felt breathtaking, like witnessing the silence before the storm, the crash of meteors through the atmosphere as they hurled to the earth, to an earth she was standing on- staring above- seeing them come, being just beneath them, right where they would crash.
A doomed beholder observing their own doom.
That’s what it was about.
The boss’s music raised to a final crescendo.
It knew.
She was on the last part of the mini-game. She’d finished all the difficult parts. Fucking aced them even, more than ever before.
Vic bit down on her tongue. She suddenly stared at a strange point before her chest, outside all the layers of shadow armour. That point… this inane point in time and space… this was where it was going to come from. She’d felt it even before all mana began concentrating in that single point.
Vic breathed in.
It all felt so much clearer to her. Her ability to sense mana had always been so strange to her.
Vic closed her eyes. She tapped along, not even having to look at the geometry dash level to know when to tap. She understood the last step of this spell. The activation process of her spells was a step she’d since long grown used to doing. She stopped tapping. She was working with mana alone now. The geometry dash’s cube moved according to what she did.
She ignored the world around her. There was no reason for her to even remotely care about this stingy piece of glittery shithole. She’d wasted two mid grade potions for this. She’d probably be wasting three at this point. What a waste.
What a pointless waste of three good potions.
What a fucking waste.
They were all so stupid. She hated them all so much. How dare he… How dare they.
How dare they have all dragged her through this much just for nothing.
“Screw you all, die in a ditch, get rammed by a truck”, Vic said, and messed up the mana sequence, willingly missing a crucial step so hard right before it finished, breaking the spell, gurgling out once and twice some bloodied words, failing to breathe as mana hit her back from within, before magic sputtered out, and all her broken spells fell to pieces along with her limp, falling, unconscious body.
Would you have nuked the city?