Chapter 33: Conqueror's Touch (Patreon)

Zed staggered back in fear at the sight of the beast. It wasn’t its size that dissuaded him. Its size did not deter him, neither did the fact that he knew it would take more than a few swings to crack through its skin. No. He staggered back from the sheer weight of its aura.

He’d felt Rukh level aura before. Jason’s, Chris’ and Oliver’s had been what he’d learned with. In town he felt other rukh auras in passing but nothing so focused. But this? This wasn’t anything like them. It wasn’t even like what he’d felt when they’d entered the building that had shaken him.

This was worse, primal, violent. And it worsened when the monster saw him. It was like a thousand heavy spiders were crawling all over him. He staggered under the weight of it and tried to flee, then its attention moved to his hair.

Its aura soared in size like a wave, heavy and thick, and suddenly the air was gone. Zed gasped for air and fell to his knee.

The creature stood in front of him now. It raised a massive hand and Zed did his best to brace himself for the pain that would come.

The hand came down.

The ground shook like a small earthquake and a cloud of dust and smoke burst out in a ring. Zed felt nothing and cracked an eye open. He peered into the cloud in front of him but what stood out to him was the fact that the aura was gone. He couldn’t feel a shadow of it.

He got up hurriedly, a phantom of the helplessness he’d felt a moment ago still on his skin, and took a few cautionary steps back as the cloud settled.

• Defeat [Scraggle] 4/6.

In front of him the monster laid helpless on the ground surrounded by shattered crystals of ice slowly evaporating into the air in whispers of smoke. Chris stood on top of the dead creature, her bat in hand, bent and battered, and a scowl on her face. Between the fingers of her free hand, lightning crackled in purple streaks. Her gaze was turned upwards, looking irritably at the hole in the ceiling. There was the sound of fighting erupting with gentle bursts of bright yellow and deep purple light.

He guessed the purple belonged to Oliver since Jason worked with yellow light and found himself curious of what Oliver’s specialization was.

“You good?” Chris asked.

“Yea,” Zed muttered, gathering his wits about him. “Just a bit startled.”

“Good,” she said, then nodded at Ash, her voice going a decible higher. “You good?”

Chris stepped down from the monster, walking past Zed and completely ignoring the fact that there was still a living scraggle under her dead scraggle.

She went up to Ash and squatted in front of her.

“Are you good?” she repeated.

“Yea,” Ash said. “Just strained my mana channels a bit.”

Chris looked around at the shards of ice that littered the place, now evaporating. “Dual casting?”

“Triple,” Ash said with a pained smirk.

“Hmm,” Chris nodded, impressed. “Pushing yourself, I see,”

Another explosion erupted upstairs, followed by a massive roar.

“Water and ice,” Chris went on. “I don’t see anything else. What was the third.”

“A delayed binding spellform,” Ash groaned. Apparently, she was still a long way from recovery.

Zed stared at them aghast as the fighting upstairs showed no signs of dwindling while Chris and Ash talked about spellforms as if on a stroll during the day.

Chris took a moment to think about it before snapping her finger in realization. “You cast a water spell then cast a binding spell to link it to a freezing spell, but delayed the binding.”

Ash gave a slow nod and Chris got up.

“Nice,” Chris said, walking away from them and into the trees. “You delayed the binding spell so that the water froze over. Wait. Is that how you cast Glacial wave?”

Ash winced, as if struck by the question and Chris chuckled.

“Don’t worry,” Chris said. “I know Oliver hates it when you cast that, takes too much toll on you, so I won’t tell him.”

“Thanks.”

Obviously done with the conversation, Chris picked up her pace and headed into the trees.

“You guys need any help up there?” Zed called after her before she was gone from sight and she stopped to look at him.

“What are going to do, Bloodbath?” she asked, sarcastic. “Talk it to death?”

He opened his mouth to give an answer but she was already gone. So he settled for a frown. He’d been shrugging most of the things they did off, cracking jokes and offering smiles. Unfortunately, pretending it didn’t exist was getting out of hand. But the world as it was now had rules, and he had enough memories to know this, no matter how few.

“Are you going to get it now?”

Zed turned to Ash, startled from his growing discomfort. “Get what?”

She nodded towards the dead scraggle. “Are you going to deal with the scraggle or are you waiting to see how long it will take for it to crawl out?”

Zed pulled himself to the present and turned towards the monster struggling under the Rukh scraggle, unable to escape. He went to it with his weapon in hand and cut into its head with overhead axe chops. It took more than ten swings to put it down.

• You have defeated Beta rank monster [Scraggle].
• Defeat [Scraggle] 5/6.
• You have gained +72 [Exp].
• Exp to category 2: 0656/2500.

Zed sighed, looking over the Exp. There was no surprise that defeating stronger monsters gave more Exp. But at this rate it would take him forever to get to the next category. Also, the numbers he’d been getting seemed on the low side. They just didn’t seem fair.

“For god’s sake that was a category three,” he grumbled. “You’d think I’d get way more.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Ash said and he turned to her.

“What?”

“I get you’re pissed over what Chris said, but don’t beat yourself up. She wasn’t wrong. There’s nothing we can do to help with the fight upstairs. And judging from that thing’s aura, it was most likely at the peak of Rukh rank.”

As if to support Ash’s opinion, the ceiling shook and another piece of it fell through. It was off in a distance and their only proof of it was the loud crashing sound it made when it hit the ground.

“Yea, I know,” Zed said, downcast. “But she really didn’t have to put it that way. I know I talk much but it’s not that bad. Not bad enough for how she treats me.”

Ash paused. “I was going to say it isn’t,” she said, using a tree to pull herself back up. “But I think that’s a little biased. Oliver has always talked a lot so my idea of talking too much doesn’t register with that of others. In summary, you actually do talk a lot. But I’m kinda used to it so I don’t mind.”

Zed disagreed. In his opinion, Oliver didn’t talk much.

“You sure you’re good enough to be standing?” Zed asked, giving Ash a worried look.

She waved his worry aside. “Yea. I’m good. If I’m not a hundred percent by the time they’re done, I’ll just get a potion from Oliver’s bag.”

“Wait. When you say potions, you mean, like, in the video games?”

“Yes.”

“You take one and suddenly your mana goes up?” Zed asked, his expression delving into the realms of shocked excitement. “Or you take a stamina potion and you can suddenly run very fast again? Why the fuck haven’t I heard of this before now?”

“Yes, Red,” Ash sighed. “Potions. The kind that works magic on mages. We have them. And you haven’t heard of it till now because there’d been no reason for you to hear of it.”

“When you met me I was literally covered in blood,” Zed said. “Most of it was mine. That wasn’t a good enough time to learn of potions?”

“If I remember correctly,” Ash replied, “I had a gun to your face. Why would I want to offer a stranger any potion?”

Zed paused at her question as a smile from a broken memory slipped into his mind. It rested lovingly on the pink lips of a woman with slight wrinkles on her eyes from one too many smiles and carried with it the gentle touch of care and fondness. It came with words Zed found himself saying without intention.

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Yea, right,” Ash snorted. “In this world, helping strangers is definitely not the right thing to do. Most people just want what’s not theirs. I could’ve offered it and you’d find out I have potions and slit my throat for the rest of them.”

“Kind of a grim thought, don’t you think?” Zed said.

“Not grim. True.” Ash took a deep breath that wasn’t deep enough and stumbled towards him.

“Careful,” Zed said, reaching out to steady her but she stepped past him.

“All we can do now,” she said, walking towards the scraggles with a slow gait, “is do our best to get stronger so that we can stand beside the others and fight with them. I definitely don’t like the fact that my younger brother is up there fighting alone. Now gimme your tomahawk.”

“Why?” Zed asked, holding it out to her.

She took it from him and climbed the scraggle that Chris had killed.

“The sooner we start extracting their cores,” she said, raising the weapon over her head, “the sooner we can be out of here and back home once they’re done upstairs.”

A bright light of purple and swamp green shone from the hole in the ceiling and Zed looked up at it.

“I have a question,” he said to Ash as she brought down his tomahawk on the scraggle’s chest.

The blow left no impact and she frowned as if it was expected.

“What?” she asked.

“Your specialization is water, correct?”

“Correct.”

“And Jason’s is light.”

“Correct.”

“What’s Oliver’s specialization?”

Ash shrugged. “Gravity and sound.”

“Sound?” Zed said, surprised. “His got two?”

“Not everyone has a single specialization,” she told him. “Some people have more. I knew a guy that had five.”

“Knew a guy,” Zed caught on the words. “What happened to him?”

“I shot him in the head.”

“Do I want to know why?”

Ash swung the tomahawk down again and a loud clang rang through the air. She checked the point of impact with her hand and swung into it again. Another clang, followed by annoyed cussing.

“Well,” Ash said, grunting over another swing, “he tried to rape me and Oliver barely made it in time to stop him. I put a few rounds in his head when he turned on Oliver.”

Zed winced. “I guess a gunshot to the head will kill a mage. Where’s your shotgun, by the way?”

“Left it at the armory,” she answered. She swung the tomahawk again. “It needed to get a little repair done. And don’t tell Oliver I told you some guy tried to rape me and he wasn’t there to protect me from the beginning. I’m just now realizing I shouldn’t have told you and he hates how it makes him feel when he remembers it. He’s all about being a man and protecting his sister.”

Zed pantomimed zipping his mouth shut and throwing away a key. “Your story’s safe with me.”

“Yea,” she said, stretching the word, doubtful.

She pulled out a fat brown rock covered in blood that she held with two hands and tossed it to the ground callously. Zed winced at the action before giving her a surprised look.

“How’d you make a hole in a Rukh monster’s body with a tomahawk?” he asked.

“There was already a hole in it,” Ash answered. “I just made it wide enough to reach inside.”

“And you weren’t scared the core was going to break from tossing it like that?” he asked.

Ash shook her head. “Nope. The truth is I’ve never seen a monster core break, and to get to the mana stone inside you’ve got to break it. Very few people know how to do that, that’s why we sell it and buy mana stones, instead. Now,” she hopped down from the scraggle, even if staggering a bit, “are you going to let me do all the work or are you going to help out?”

She held the tomahawk out to Zed and picked up the monster core when he took it from her.

“This is going to fetch us enough Beta rank mana stones or a lot of rune-dollars,” she said with a smile.

Zed left her to her smile and walked past the massive scraggle. He was heading for one of the free bodies when he remembered something and stopped.

He turned back to the category three Beta monster, dropped his tomahawk aside and squatted near its head.

“What are you doing?” Ash asked.

“Just trying something I learnt recently,” he answered.

He placed a hand on the creature’s broken head and thought of his skill. A notification popped up.

• Would you like to use [Conqueror’s touch] on [Scraggle      (Beta, category 3)]?

“That was easy,” he muttered, then acquiesced with a mental tug.

A cascade of thoughts filled his head at his agreement. Words danced around in his mind, swirling and turning like a thousand arraignments of runes. It was difficult to keep track of, yet he understood them, as if they were random pages of a grimoire he’d written himself in a language he alone was meant to understand. He knew what it was almost immediately.

He kept his hand on the creature’s broken head and chanted his spellform.

“I came seeking violence, and violence I met. A hard fought battle and I stand the victor. Now the vanquished must succumb to the conqueror’s touch.”

• Spellform: [Conqueror’s touch] (Mana, reality).
• Effect: Claim [Exp] from those you defeat with a touch.

Zed felt the mana around him tremble slightly at his words yet he did not connect with it. The scraggle burst into a ring of smoke stained red, green and blue. The colors were mixed like countless grains of colorful sand.

With his hand now rested on nothing, Zed teetered forward but caught himself before he fell. His mind was still reeling from what had just happened when his body felt as if it was taking a deep breath. As the ring of smoke dissipated into nothingness, he felt something fill him as if sinking deep into the pores of his skin.

• You have used [Conqueror’s touch] on [Scraggle (Beta,      category 3)].
• You have gained [Mana stone (Category 3, Beta)].
• You have gained +185 Exp.
• Due to the unique trait [Mana blessed] you have gained      extra rewards.
• You have received [Scraggle bone club].
• You have received [Sturdy pendant].
• Exp to category 2: 0841/2500

Zed felt some of the mana in the air gather into a point on his palm and watched it coalesce into a spherical stone of deep red with a hairline fracture at its center.

Item [Mana stone (Beta, category 3)

A stone possessing high levels of concentrated mana, extracted from the core of a category 3 beta monster (crafting material).

• Effect: Commonly used as a power source for simple      magic items. Can also be used for crafting simple magic items.

“Remind me again, Ash,” Zed said. “What’s the difference between a mana stone and a monster core?”

Ash stared at him with a mix of surprise and confusion. And while he wasn’t looking at her, he could hear it in her voice as she answered.

“A mana core is at the heart of a monster,” she said. “And a mana stone is at the heart of a mana core.”

“Oh,” Zed noted absently. That made zero sense. Perhaps he’d ask Festus during their next lesson. He was more amiable and most likely knew more.

He reached down to the pendant lying on the ground in front of him and picked it up. It was a simple polished stone of faded blue, stained in verdigris green and attached to a rope with a color that reminded him of the scraggle’s torso.

Item [Sturdy Pendant (Beta)]

A pendant crafted from the heart of a scraggle. As such, it contains the vitality of the scraggle it was taken from, imbuing its wearer with one or more characteristics of a scraggle.

• Effect:
  • +3 Strength.
  • +1 Agility.

“What the hell did you do?” Ash asked.

Zed looked up and found her staring down at the pendant from behind him. His answer was more precise than his state of mind.

“I used a spell.”