Wizard Tournament: Chapter 91 (Patreon)

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          As soon as the bell chimed, Dwyra obscured herself in a cloud of mist from her censer, while Ka began to grow a sheath of pink crystal along his arm. Draevin was tempted to try casting True Sight so he could keep track of what Dwyra was doing inside that mist of hers, but he knew from experience that it would be a waste of time.

          Next to him Peter fiddled with his glasses until the light coming through was a shade of green. He pointed at the field. “There! That lumpy one sunk into the ground.”

          “What are you talking about?” Draevin asked, “I don’t see anything.”

          Peter made a quick grunt of frustration, then touched his glasses and gestured outward with one hand. A screen of green-tinted light suspended in the air in front of his face. Through it Draevin could see bright green spots from little mushrooms that were already growing all over the field within Dwyra’s mist. “A lumpy one dug into the ground and disappeared,” he said, pointing at bright green mushroom shapes that could be seen through the green filter.

          “Lumpy like a truffle?” Sylnya asked.

          “Could have been,” Peter confirmed. “Isn’t that some kind of underground mushroom?”

          Sylnya nodded. Peter scribbled some notes in his little notepad. Draevin belatedly realized that Peter would be fighting the winner of this match in the next round. It made sense why he was so focused on the details.

          Both contestants were of the slower and more methodical strategy and as such neither had made a move yet. Dwyra’s mist had spread to cover nearly half the arena, and meanwhile Ka had covered himself in a pink crystal casing and seemed content to wait for Dwyra to come to him.

          Peter fiddled with his glasses and the projection of green light switched to a shade of blue. The mushrooms disappeared and Dwyra’s mist glowed brightly instead. He switched back to green again. Dwyra’s mushrooms were now the same size as her, except for one, which she fed more mana into so it could continue to grow. “So that’s what she’s been doing behind all that mist,” Draevin said. “Growing her mushrooms.”

          “Of course,” Peter agreed. “What else would she be doing? I’m more concerned with what Ka is doing allowing her to grow a whole army of mushrooms like that. It’s bad strategy.” When he mentioned Ka Draevin looked over at where he sat in his crystal cocoon. Through the green filter that Peter was projecting, Ka’s crystal was a black void.

          “He’s always been a passive fighter,” Sylnya told Peter. “He plays defensively and rarely makes the first move.”

          “Why doesn’t he grow hydromancy crystals though?” Peter asked. “He could easily suck up all of Dwyra’s mist if he grew some, but he’s just sticking to fungomancy.”

          “I doubt he’s afraid of her healing mist,” Draevin pointed out.

          “But it’s free crystals!” Peter insisted.

          Dwyra’s biggest mushroom was now more than twice her size, but still obscured by the mist to the rest of the crowd who didn’t have access to Peter’s special filter. She fed the majority of her remaining mana into this mushroom, then made some kind of signal to her other clones. They began an advance on Ka’s location.

          The crowd was subdued, but made a whoop of excitement when the first of Dwyra’s mushrooms emerged from the mist. This was apparently what Ka was waiting for too, as he launched a crystal shard at the first mushroom as soon as it appeared. It was impaled and collapsed against the crystal spear without resistance. Two more mushrooms emerged from the mist to replace it. Then four more. Then too many to count. All at once they broke into a sprint and gave a wordless cry. Draevin noticed that Dwyra wasn’t among them.

          There were dozens of the creatures. They charged Ka with no regard for their own safety, climbing over the bodies of their fellows as Ka struck them with crystals. Half a dozen of them made it through the hail of Ka’s attacks all the way to his cocoon and proceeded to beat at it with their fists. He responded by sprouting crystal spikes from the front surface of his shell. The drones started to throw their weight against him in an attempt to push him out-of-bounds, destroying their own bodies in the process. Ka didn’t have to do a thing more; they killed themselves attacking him. When the last of the attackers slumped dead his crystal shell had barely even moved from its starting position.

          “Pathetic!” Ka’s voice boomed out. “You sent your children to die for nothing!”

          Dwyra called out a response of her own from within her cloud of mist, though not as loudly since she wasn’t using whatever trick Ka employed to enhance his voice. “So predictable. You never could resist making a speech,” she said. “You made this too easy for me.”

          Ka’s voice could be heard making a magnified cough that echoed over the whole arena. “Ack! Kah, kah!”

          “Spores,” Peter said. He pointed through his green filter. Draevin could just barely make out a green haze. The impaled corpses of Dwyra’s dead drones each released a cloud of spores as Ka’s attacks broke open their bodies. Dwyra had sent them to die on purpose. Ka’s shell might protect him from physical attacks, but it seemed he was still forced to breathe air like everyone else, and now that air was riddled with Dwyra’s spores.

          “Fuck yeah!” Sylnya shouted down at the field below. “Teach Ka how a real wizard fights!”

          “Seemed pretty underhanded to me,” Draevin muttered under his breath. He made sure not to say it loud enough for Sylnya to hear though.

          Ka collapsed into a coughing fit inside his crystal cocoon. Dwyra’s attack wasn’t done though. The big mushroom she had been growing was finally full size. It rose out of the mist from a crouched position, reaching a height equal to the highest stands. As its head peeked above the cloud of mist it let out a chest-shaking bellow of a roar. As popular as Ka was among the audience they couldn’t resist cheering for this giant challenger. Dwyra stepped out of the mist and pointed forward dramatically. She might have ordered the charge, but if so her words were drowned out by the roar of the crowd. The giant mushroom creature ran forward. Within his cocoon Ka was still keeled over coughing.

          The arena shook with each step the creature took. It closed the distance in only a handful of steps and struck Ka’s crystal shell in a deafening explosion of force. A shockwave shot out in a perfect sphere from the point of impact as the mushroom’s fist impacted the crystal cocoon. Draevin expected Ka to go flying out of bounds, but instead he stuck fast in the ground. Crystal spikes erupted from his shell in all directions, both rooting him to the ground and piercing into the fist of the massive creature.

          The giant roared at him defiantly and pulled its fist free, then struck him again with its other arm. The results were predictable. The second strike wasn’t nearly as powerful as the first and the creature’s hand got horribly mangled in the spikes. If Dwyra didn’t pull it back it might end up destroying itself like her earlier drones.

          “Push!” Dwyra shouted. “Carry him if you have to!”

          “Mmmmaa,” the giant intoned in a deep voice. It dropped the fist it had been about to strike with and instead leaned into Ka’s crystals and pushed for all it was worth. The spikes pierced its shoulder as it tried to find leverage. The giant let out a deep groan of pain as the spikes entered it, but it didn’t complain otherwise. It dug its feet into the earth and its legs began to shake with effort. Ka’s crystal fortress moved. It slid incrementally towards the out-of-bounds line, leaving a jagged trench of dirt behind as it did so. The crowd was split—some cheered and others booed as Ka was slowly pushed out.

          “Wooo!” Sylnya hollered, adding her voice to the roar of the crowd. Grrbraa added his howl as well. It wasn’t clear which side the werebeast was rooting for, or even if he had a side, but he had the right energy.

          Ka continued to slide for a bit, but before he could be pushed over the line the giant stopped. It wasn’t that the crystal cocoon suddenly put up more resistance; it was that the giant had stopped pushing. The mushroom giant had suddenly completely stopped moving. Dwyra tried to urge it on to no avail. Peter pointed at the green filter he was projecting. The giant mushroom was no longer glowing with the green light of fungomancy. It had gone dark.

          “I’m guessing that means it killed itself,” Draevin said.

          As if in defiance of Draevin’s comment the creature began to stir once more. It grabbed Ka’s crystal firmly and lifted it up over its head. The crowd went wild. Draevin expected it to finally heave Ka out, but instead it placed his cocoon on its head like a crown. Compared to before its movements were jerky and unnatural.

          “What the…”

          Pink crystals burst from beneath the skin of the creature. White fleshy mushroom husk fell to the arena floor in sheets to reveal a massive crystal golem that had grown inside the giant. Ka sat at the helm of his new crystal creation. He turned it towards Dwyra and began to stalk in her direction.

          The crowd was wildly excited about this turn of events. It had been decades since Ka had used Crystal Golem, and the Crystal Golem on the field now was one of the largest ones he’d ever made. As the golem stomped towards Dwyra the smaller mushroom drones that had littered the field from her earlier attack erupted into smaller pink crystals as well. The larger golem paused and let the smaller creations merge with it. They wrapped the legs in a hug and dissolved into a mess of jagged shards that quickly filled in the limbs of the golem. It grew from tall and lanky to a towering monstrosity with limbs thick as tree trunks.

          “I’m impressed you made me use Crystal Golem, but you can’t possibly think you had a chance,” Ka taunted. It was hard to make out the details due to the transparent nature of the crystals, but Draevin could see that the golem resembled a massive dwarf with a long beard. It brought down a massive crystal fist to crush Dwyra. She back-flipped out of the way and into the cloud of mist. The shockwave from the blow was powerful enough to shake the stands and blow away some of Dwyra’s mist.

          The crowd started a chant of, “Kᴀ! Kᴀ! Kᴀ!”

          Ka struck blindly at the mist two more times until Draevin was able to spot Dwyra darting between clouds of mist. Her mana was so depleted by this point that she no longer even had enough to make more mist with her censer. He didn’t see what hope she even had of winning at this point. Even if she managed more poisonous spores Ka wouldn’t be foolish enough to give her another opening.

          “There it is,” Peter called out. He pointed through the green filter at the ground around Dwyra’s feet. Through his filter the spot of earth was glowing. Soon the glow increased in intensity until it was visible to the rest of the crowd. Fading mist lit up with green light and Dwyra cast a menacing shadow over the arena. Peter dismissed his filter before it could get bright enough to be blinding. A moment later the ground began to rise up into a hill. Ka’s crystal golem fell to one knee as the ground beneath him buckled and collapsed. From under the ground emerged the largest living thing Draevin had ever seen in his life.

          It was a lumpy black creature that resembled a truffle, just like Sylnya had guessed. It was as much bigger than Ka’s golem as the golem was to Dwyra. It didn’t even properly fit within the bounds of the arena and it looked like some of the stands on the other side had partially collapsed just from the way it had emerged from the ground. There was barely enough room left within the circle for Ka to even fit. High above in the stratosphere a little flash of red could be seen where Dwyra commanded the creature.

          The truffle’s legs weren’t even visible. It pushed its upper torso out of the ground with its unfathomably large forearms. It looked down at Ka in his crystal golem and swatted at him with one hand. It wasn’t much in the way of a proper attack, but it didn’t need to be. The hand alone was nearly half the height of the crystal golem it was attacking.

          “I ᴛʜɪɴᴋ ɪᴛ ᴛᴀᴘᴘᴇᴅ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴇʏʟɪɴᴇ ᴅɪʀᴇᴄᴛʟʏ,” Peter yelled over the roar of the crowd and the rushing wind that accompanied the creature’s movements. Half the crowd was cheering, the other half was screaming for their lives. No ward existed that could stop something that large.

          The truffle’s hand slapped down on Ka’s golem and the dwarf raised his golem’s arms to block the attack. The shockwave from their impact this time was strong enough to knock Draevin out of his seat and onto the floor. Grrbraa set him back on his feet and Draevin returned his sight to the epic struggle happening before him. Ka was trapped under the truffle’s massive hand, struggling to keep himself from being crushed. His crystal golem began to crack.

          “I think Ka might actually lose,” Draevin said to himself. He could hardly believe it.

          The crystal golem’s arms suddenly snapped. The rest of the golem shattered a moment later. Ka was crushed under a thousand tons of lumpy black mushroom.

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