By placing all of my unspent stat points into my Magic (Power) attribute, I increase it from an already-powerful 58 to 94, easily my highest stat.
This place has the limit of Category 2, I know. That means that I am against people with classes that have the potential to be up to level 299, which theoretically vastly outclasses me as I am right now.
But if they had one of those, they would only need to send one person.
I may only be Category 0, but at level 52, I’m told I have the stats of someone over triple my level.
And I have items.
Appraise works fast enough to tell me the levels of the people around me. Some of them—Lady Kane, Rin, Simon, and one person I don’t recognize—still have cloaks applied to them. It surprises me that Rin and Simon are both hiding secondary classes; I thought they were expressing their full power earlier. Something to keep in mind.
The other five, however, are not so successfully hiding themselves.
Nyssa Elridge. Half-elf. Level 166 Ranger.
Alvin Carnell. Human. Level 105 Champion.
Silver, no last name. Skyfolk. Level 99 Celestial Knight.
Gold, no last name. Skyfolk. Level 99 Celestial Mage.
Lyril Slyson. Human. Level 122 Echo Bard.
Just as I suspected, not a single one of them is actually Category 2. One of the four that are cloaked might be, but I doubt it.
There is strength in numbers, and each one of my attackers is individually more powerful than almost every foe I’ve faced up until this point. For anyone else, this would surely be the end of the line.
Fortunately, I am not anyone else.
Relentless energy infuses my body as I finally allow my skills to explode out of my body. With the boost, my Abyssal Echo looms across the battlefield as if it’s a physical shadow, each of my enemies facing full-force demonic wrath as the entire room darkens ominously.
Abyssal Echo advanced to level 2!
No time like the present to advance. The system really does seem to like it when I’m in life-or-death situations.
Every single person in the room, even my allies, stumbles back under the sheer pressure of my magic, and why shouldn’t they? The amount of raw power I can bring to bear now is almost half again what I had just moments before, and it’s almost five times as much as I did when I last fought Simon and Rin. That doesn’t even begin to touch on the skills.
Silver and Gold, the skyfolk, don’t seem as affected by it as the others, and it’s not until I see the golden aura spreading around their bodies that I realize why.
Their classes both include the term “Celestial.” They have divine-aligned classes.
They surround themselves with Divine Protection, which I know is uniquely effective against magic with demonic affinities, thanks to my own paradoxical Heretic trait.
The protection they provide is beginning to spread to the others. Unacceptable.
Both of the faceless four-winged skyfolk are visibly struggling to hold their shared skill together, which I crack a smile at. Level 99, nearly double my level, and they can barely handle blocking a single attack from me.
I close the distance in a matter of moments, my vastly enhanced Body (Speed) stat enhancing my Bloodpath. The world only turns red for an instant before I close the fifty feet between us, leaving a trail of blood dripping behind me.
They react slowly. Oh, they’re so slow—their Mind (Speed) stat is dwarfed by mine, and even as Silver draws her sword and Gold sends a Divine Strike bursting forward from her hand, I put my Soulblades into action.
Up this close, I can make out the finer details of the skyfolk pair’s figures. As with most, they lack a face, and their metallic skin is entirely flawless, as if each one of them was carved out of a precious metal. Their bodies are uncannily perfect and smooth, lacking most of the defining details that a human or elf has.
Which makes killing them all the more jarring.
My Soulblade bypasses defenses. Voidtouched allows for the same. Though Silver manages to deflect one of my weapons with her sword, she can’t stop the other seven.
Skyfolk don’t bleed. They break.
Before she can complete her swing, the light around the silver-skinned skyfolk dims. The light within her follows a moment later, and as she begins to collapse, my kill counter ticks from 258 to 259.
Less than a second has passed since I started acting.
I turn my attention onto Silver’s… partner? Sister? I’m not sure what they are to each other.
That’s about when the arrow catches me in the back, knocking me flat on my face.
Time seems to speed up I hit the ground. The shaft is long, penetrating nearly half a foot out through the center of my chest.
Gold’s attack goes wide, and though she has no eyes to widen, I see the change in her body language as she realizes what I’ve just done.
Using this much speed is tiring, I realize. I’m not going to be able to just blitz through every single one of them, especially when one of them—Nyssa, the Ranger, I think—is capable of keeping up.
The arrow pulses with magic, which is the only warning I need to Siphon away its power. I do not want to know what effect it would’ve had on me.
With the extra power, I attempt to Hemorrhage Gold before remembering that skyfolk have no blood inside of them.
Instead, I rip the arrow out of my chest, wincing as the barbs on the shaft slice through flesh and muscle, and I use the blood and gore it’s torn out of me to guide my throw, Hemokinesis accelerating the arrow.
It smashes straight into the still-stunned Gold, her barrier weakened thanks to the death of her partner, and I activate Smite.
She has all of a quarter second to react before her own magic affinity devours her from the inside out.
259 increases to 260.
I wheel around, Devouring Gold and dragging Silver’s broken soul into the Soulshard Rifle. Consuming her advances me to level 53 and almost 54, which advances all my attributes once more alongside beginning the regeneration process, closing up the nasty wound the arrow caused me. I slam my three free points into Magic (Power), bringing it up to a hefty 98. Body (Durability) hits 50, which must be a milestone of some kind because I actually feel the shift in my body, the way my skin is malleable but now holds the durability of a steel wall.
Seven remaining.
Sierra has a bright blue shield surrounding her and Adrian, which makes sense. I don’t think she can freely use her second class yet, and neither can the Warrior. Right now, they’re pretty much tissue paper.
Zil, on the other hand, is living up to his name. Formerly seven and a half feet tall, he towers at what must be half again his height. He glows with condensed power, and I realize the reason I haven’t been taking as much fire as I could’ve been is because Zil has been drawing their attention.
Half a dozen arrows stick out of his now-bare chest, though none of them seem to have taken much effect on him. As I watch, one of them explodes, and it barely even takes a chunk out of his flesh despite the fact that, as far as I can tell, it detonated inside of him.
Name: Azaril Halcyon
Age: 72
Race: Human
Class: Berserker/Guardian of Self
Level: 87/251
Last Used Skill: Self-Embodiment (Tourmaline) - lvl 94
Azaril Halcyon. Known as “Zil” by some and “spare me” by many. Once, he was one of the Halcyon family’s Guardians. Though he has relinquished the title, the power remains his.
I’m not the only monster here.
“Now we’ve got a real fight going,” I mutter, a grin splitting my face despite myself.
Sierra’s staff is the only equalizer for her right now, since she only has access to her Blue Mage class thanks to her uniquely painful backlash. Adrian has even fewer tools.
That means it’s me and Zil against the remaining seven, each of which are massive threats in their own right.
The three whose capabilities I’m wholly unfamiliar with—Nyssa, Alvin, and Lyril—finally act. Nyssa disappears from sight while Alvin imbues his sword with a skill that Appraise tells me is called Victor’s Fury.
Lyril strums a lute and speaks.
“Special skill: Rebounding Echoes.”
Ashley, Rin, and Simon join their voices together as he casts his skill, one after the other.
“Special skill: Starfall Barrage.”
“Special skill: Reality Break.”
“Special skill: Omniscient Domain.”
A number of things happen all at once.
Lyril’s skill duplicates each of his allies, giving them ghostly copies that cast lower-power versions of the same special skills.
Ashley’s Starfall Barrage is five arrows fired from five separate bows. Each projectile fractures into a dazzling array of starlit bolts as they fly, and it looks as if an entire galaxy is being thrown at me.
Rin’s Reality Break tears the world apart as it travels, ever so slightly slower than Ashley’s arrows. Cracks of infinite darkness shatter the air, spiderwebbing across the distance between her and me, and I recognize what she’s created. The void between worlds is laid bare as she rips a hole in the fabric of space, intending to shatter me along with reality. With Rebounding Echoes, half the room is thrown into darkness immediately. Tendrils of unreality reach towards me from all sides.
Last and unfortunately not least, Simon’s Omniscient Domain washes over us instantly, expanding far faster than even I can react despite my ludicrously high Mind (Speed). The portion of the room not already affected by Reality Break tints sepia, and an uncomfortable sensation crawls over my skin as I get the sensation that I am being watched. A million invisible eyes manifest themself in the air, and they are all focused on me. Not a single part of the combined attack even targets my allies, not even the man nearly five times my level.
For the first time this fight, I realize that I might be outmatched. If I had Carnelian Domain or Soulpyre, this would be a different story, but those don’t come off cooldown for a week.
What will you do now, subjugator of gods?
My passenger speaks for the first time this fight, and I grit my teeth.
I’ll survive this. I have to.
Relentless energy floods my veins like it never has before, slowing time down to a crawl.
The Reality Break is going to reach me first, but it’s not that skill that worries me most. After all, I’m Voidtouched. I have survived the absence of reality before, and I can do it again.
No, the honor of most threatening skill goes to the Starfall Barrage. Hundreds of miniature meteors ignite the sepia-tinted darkness, surrounding me on all sides. Even without Appraise, I can sense the power. A single one of those could destroy this entire room if not directed, and there’s at least three hundred bolts aimed at me.
I activate every skill I can think of. I attempt to Hemorrhage all of my foes, trying to draw on my advanced power to break through their defenses, but rather than easy access to their interiors, I find myself totally walled off.
Not in every case, though, which is plainly obvious when Alvin, the Champion, begins to stumble, his brains exiting through his ears.
Time still moves so slowly for me that I don’t even get the notification that my kill counter has gone up before I change tactics.
Hemokinesis is obviously not going to be enough—I know from experience that Rin is fast enough to dodge almost anything I throw at her. Knifefighting is similarly useless.
I attempt an Ethereal Tempest, but compared to the attacks soaring at me, it’s slow. Too slow.
My skills tick up in level as I try using them, but none of my attempts so far have been fruitful.
Bloodpath has advanced so far that I’m able to dodge backward, but the sense of danger hasn’t diminished a single bit. I create a Blood Clone, sending her towards the falling star-bolts, but even that doesn’t change enough.
With a start, I realize why. Simon’s special skill: the Omniscient Domain. He’s guiding them. No matter how much I move, the skills follow. I can try to outspeed them, but they’re accelerating even as I run from them, attempting to reposition.
I begin to Siphon the domain and the barrage alike, but it’s too slow. Those are special skills, not regular ones, and the difference in power is staggering.
All twenty-one of the charges from my Soulshard Rifle go into a single shot, a red obliterating ray that hurts to look at. The shot from the Category 1 weapon collides with a cluster of star-bolts—and the Reality Break intersects it, nullifying the attack.
Fuck.
As my focus turns from winning the fight to escaping with my life, I see Azaril move.
Even with my subjective time sped up as much as it is, he’s fast. Fast enough to use a skill. Fast enough to speak, albeit still in subjective slow-motion.
“You bastards,” he growls, growing even larger with every passing fraction of a second. “You made me do this.
“Domain: Perfect Self.”
Just as before, the domain washes over the entire space in an instant, so fast that even I blink and miss the transitory period.
The sepia tone vanishes from the land around us, replaced by a soft golden light reminiscent of the skills that the skyfolk were using when I killed them.
Alvin finally finishes dying, and I watch as the kill counter ticks from 260 to 261. Six left.
I wonder what this domain—
Zil’s domain washes over me, and I suddenly feel refreshed. My wounds begin to close—not all the way, but they close. The sensation is akin to having a luxurious meal followed by a long, decadent bath and a nap in a soft feather bed.
Even my soul feels better, which is a rarity.
Reality continues to shatter as skills fly towards me, but suddenly, Zil is here, standing over me with his arms outstretched as if he’s challenging the attacks.
As time begins to speed back up, my Mind (Speed) stat incapable of holding incredibly enhanced perception for too long, Zil shouts out another skill.
“Tremble in fear, cowards, for I will always Hold the Line!” he declares, his skin glistening gold as energy explodes around him.
It’s not going to be enough. I can feel it instinctively. Hold the Line is powerful, but the amplified echoes of the others’ special skills will overpower him.
But I don’t need to protect him anymore. Now that the special skills aren’t guided by the Omniscient Domain, I can Bloodpath around them, dodging and weaving through arrows that shine with the light of the sun.
One of them explodes when I get too close, and I barely turn into my blood form quickly enough to avoid being entirely blasted away. As it is, it still manages to take my left arm—again—and half of the leg.
The excess power from this domain will serve.
What?
The relaxed sensation fades from me, my new wounds making themselves known as spots of discomfort in my body, and power drifts into my core. It reminds me of my Devour skill, except there’s nothing to—oh.
My passenger is absorbing the energy Zil’s domain grants us, and it’s putting it back into my skills.
It is an inefficient conversion. This will only work once.
It doesn’t need to tell me what “this” means. It knows that I know.
Power surges through me even as the first true pain I’ve felt since the first time my soul burned courses through my veins, and I allow it to explode outwards.
Zil’s domain fades away, and the battlefield is plunged into darkness and blood, lit only by Ashley’s stars.
It’s an imperfect casting because it should be impossible. It won’t hold for long. It’s nowhere near the full power it could have, and the backlash from this system-defying act is likely to destroy my soul.
Reality Breaks, and I redirect the tears.
The Starfall Barrage rains down upon its owner, the divine energy changing control.
Redoubled Echoes shatter like glass under a torrent of demonic energy.
Of six, three die within instants. I cannot properly sense the remainder, so taxing is this bastardization of a skill.
My passenger laughs, and I laugh with it.
Only one I gain full control over this tenuous piece of work do I vocalize it.
“Special skill: Carnelian Domain.”
The words taste like blood and ash and victory.
By placing all of my unspent stat points into my Magic (Power) attribute, I increase it from an already-powerful 58 to 94, easily my highest stat.
This place has the limit of Category 2, I know. That means that I am against people with classes that have the potential to be up to level 299, which theoretically vastly outclasses me as I am right now.
But if they had one of those, they would only need to send one person.
I may only be Category 0, but at level 52, I’m told I have the stats of someone over triple my level.
And I have items.
Appraise works fast enough to tell me the levels of the people around me. Some of them—Lady Kane, Rin, Simon, and one person I don’t recognize—still have cloaks applied to them. It surprises me that Rin and Simon are both hiding secondary classes; I thought they were expressing their full power earlier. Something to keep in mind.
The other five, however, are not so successfully hiding themselves.
Nyssa Elridge. Half-elf. Level 166 Ranger.
Alvin Carnell. Human. Level 105 Champion.
Silver, no last name. Skyfolk. Level 99 Celestial Knight.
Gold, no last name. Skyfolk. Level 99 Celestial Mage.
Lyril Slyson. Human. Level 122 Echo Bard.
Just as I suspected, not a single one of them is actually Category 2. One of the four that are cloaked might be, but I doubt it.
There is strength in numbers, and each one of my attackers is individually more powerful than almost every foe I’ve faced up until this point. For anyone else, this would surely be the end of the line.
Fortunately, I am not anyone else.
Relentless energy infuses my body as I finally allow my skills to explode out of my body. With the boost, my Abyssal Echo looms across the battlefield as if it’s a physical shadow, each of my enemies facing full-force demonic wrath as the entire room darkens ominously.
Abyssal Echo advanced to level 2!
No time like the present to advance. The system really does seem to like it when I’m in life-or-death situations.
Every single person in the room, even my allies, stumbles back under the sheer pressure of my magic, and why shouldn’t they? The amount of raw power I can bring to bear now is almost half again what I had just moments before, and it’s almost five times as much as I did when I last fought Simon and Rin. That doesn’t even begin to touch on the skills.
Silver and Gold, the skyfolk, don’t seem as affected by it as the others, and it’s not until I see the golden aura spreading around their bodies that I realize why.
Their classes both include the term “Celestial.” They have divine-aligned classes.
They surround themselves with Divine Protection, which I know is uniquely effective against magic with demonic affinities, thanks to my own paradoxical Heretic trait.
The protection they provide is beginning to spread to the others. Unacceptable.
Both of the faceless four-winged skyfolk are visibly struggling to hold their shared skill together, which I crack a smile at. Level 99, nearly double my level, and they can barely handle blocking a single attack from me.
I close the distance in a matter of moments, my vastly enhanced Body (Speed) stat enhancing my Bloodpath. The world only turns red for an instant before I close the fifty feet between us, leaving a trail of blood dripping behind me.
They react slowly. Oh, they’re so slow—their Mind (Speed) stat is dwarfed by mine, and even as Silver draws her sword and Gold sends a Divine Strike bursting forward from her hand, I put my Soulblades into action.
Up this close, I can make out the finer details of the skyfolk pair’s figures. As with most, they lack a face, and their metallic skin is entirely flawless, as if each one of them was carved out of a precious metal. Their bodies are uncannily perfect and smooth, lacking most of the defining details that a human or elf has.
Which makes killing them all the more jarring.
My Soulblade bypasses defenses. Voidtouched allows for the same. Though Silver manages to deflect one of my weapons with her sword, she can’t stop the other seven.
Skyfolk don’t bleed. They break.
Before she can complete her swing, the light around the silver-skinned skyfolk dims. The light within her follows a moment later, and as she begins to collapse, my kill counter ticks from 258 to 259.
Less than a second has passed since I started acting.
I turn my attention onto Silver’s… partner? Sister? I’m not sure what they are to each other.
That’s about when the arrow catches me in the back, knocking me flat on my face.
Time seems to speed up I hit the ground. The shaft is long, penetrating nearly half a foot out through the center of my chest.
Gold’s attack goes wide, and though she has no eyes to widen, I see the change in her body language as she realizes what I’ve just done.
Using this much speed is tiring, I realize. I’m not going to be able to just blitz through every single one of them, especially when one of them—Nyssa, the Ranger, I think—is capable of keeping up.
The arrow pulses with magic, which is the only warning I need to Siphon away its power. I do not want to know what effect it would’ve had on me.
With the extra power, I attempt to Hemorrhage Gold before remembering that skyfolk have no blood inside of them.
Instead, I rip the arrow out of my chest, wincing as the barbs on the shaft slice through flesh and muscle, and I use the blood and gore it’s torn out of me to guide my throw, Hemokinesis accelerating the arrow.
It smashes straight into the still-stunned Gold, her barrier weakened thanks to the death of her partner, and I activate Smite.
She has all of a quarter second to react before her own magic affinity devours her from the inside out.
259 increases to 260.
I wheel around, Devouring Gold and dragging Silver’s broken soul into the Soulshard Rifle. Consuming her advances me to level 53 and almost 54, which advances all my attributes once more alongside beginning the regeneration process, closing up the nasty wound the arrow caused me. I slam my three free points into Magic (Power), bringing it up to a hefty 98. Body (Durability) hits 50, which must be a milestone of some kind because I actually feel the shift in my body, the way my skin is malleable but now holds the durability of a steel wall.
Seven remaining.
Sierra has a bright blue shield surrounding her and Adrian, which makes sense. I don’t think she can freely use her second class yet, and neither can the Warrior. Right now, they’re pretty much tissue paper.
Zil, on the other hand, is living up to his name. Formerly seven and a half feet tall, he towers at what must be half again his height. He glows with condensed power, and I realize the reason I haven’t been taking as much fire as I could’ve been is because Zil has been drawing their attention.
Half a dozen arrows stick out of his now-bare chest, though none of them seem to have taken much effect on him. As I watch, one of them explodes, and it barely even takes a chunk out of his flesh despite the fact that, as far as I can tell, it detonated inside of him.
Name: Azaril Halcyon
Age: 72
Race: Human
Class: Berserker/Guardian of Self
Level: 87/251
Last Used Skill: Self-Embodiment (Tourmaline) - lvl 94
Azaril Halcyon. Known as “Zil” by some and “spare me” by many. Once, he was one of the Halcyon family’s Guardians. Though he has relinquished the title, the power remains his.
I’m not the only monster here.
“Now we’ve got a real fight going,” I mutter, a grin splitting my face despite myself.
Sierra’s staff is the only equalizer for her right now, since she only has access to her Blue Mage class thanks to her uniquely painful backlash. Adrian has even fewer tools.
That means it’s me and Zil against the remaining seven, each of which are massive threats in their own right.
The three whose capabilities I’m wholly unfamiliar with—Nyssa, Alvin, and Lyril—finally act. Nyssa disappears from sight while Alvin imbues his sword with a skill that Appraise tells me is called Victor’s Fury.
Lyril strums a lute and speaks.
“Special skill: Rebounding Echoes.”
Ashley, Rin, and Simon join their voices together as he casts his skill, one after the other.
“Special skill: Starfall Barrage.”
“Special skill: Reality Break.”
“Special skill: Omniscient Domain.”
A number of things happen all at once.
Lyril’s skill duplicates each of his allies, giving them ghostly copies that cast lower-power versions of the same special skills.
Ashley’s Starfall Barrage is five arrows fired from five separate bows. Each projectile fractures into a dazzling array of starlit bolts as they fly, and it looks as if an entire galaxy is being thrown at me.
Rin’s Reality Break tears the world apart as it travels, ever so slightly slower than Ashley’s arrows. Cracks of infinite darkness shatter the air, spiderwebbing across the distance between her and me, and I recognize what she’s created. The void between worlds is laid bare as she rips a hole in the fabric of space, intending to shatter me along with reality. With Rebounding Echoes, half the room is thrown into darkness immediately. Tendrils of unreality reach towards me from all sides.
Last and unfortunately not least, Simon’s Omniscient Domain washes over us instantly, expanding far faster than even I can react despite my ludicrously high Mind (Speed). The portion of the room not already affected by Reality Break tints sepia, and an uncomfortable sensation crawls over my skin as I get the sensation that I am being watched. A million invisible eyes manifest themself in the air, and they are all focused on me. Not a single part of the combined attack even targets my allies, not even the man nearly five times my level.
For the first time this fight, I realize that I might be outmatched. If I had Carnelian Domain or Soulpyre, this would be a different story, but those don’t come off cooldown for a week.
What will you do now, subjugator of gods?
My passenger speaks for the first time this fight, and I grit my teeth.
I’ll survive this. I have to.
Relentless energy floods my veins like it never has before, slowing time down to a crawl.
The Reality Break is going to reach me first, but it’s not that skill that worries me most. After all, I’m Voidtouched. I have survived the absence of reality before, and I can do it again.
No, the honor of most threatening skill goes to the Starfall Barrage. Hundreds of miniature meteors ignite the sepia-tinted darkness, surrounding me on all sides. Even without Appraise, I can sense the power. A single one of those could destroy this entire room if not directed, and there’s at least three hundred bolts aimed at me.
I activate every skill I can think of. I attempt to Hemorrhage all of my foes, trying to draw on my advanced power to break through their defenses, but rather than easy access to their interiors, I find myself totally walled off.
Not in every case, though, which is plainly obvious when Alvin, the Champion, begins to stumble, his brains exiting through his ears.
Time still moves so slowly for me that I don’t even get the notification that my kill counter has gone up before I change tactics.
Hemokinesis is obviously not going to be enough—I know from experience that Rin is fast enough to dodge almost anything I throw at her. Knifefighting is similarly useless.
I attempt an Ethereal Tempest, but compared to the attacks soaring at me, it’s slow. Too slow.
My skills tick up in level as I try using them, but none of my attempts so far have been fruitful.
Bloodpath has advanced so far that I’m able to dodge backward, but the sense of danger hasn’t diminished a single bit. I create a Blood Clone, sending her towards the falling star-bolts, but even that doesn’t change enough.
With a start, I realize why. Simon’s special skill: the Omniscient Domain. He’s guiding them. No matter how much I move, the skills follow. I can try to outspeed them, but they’re accelerating even as I run from them, attempting to reposition.
I begin to Siphon the domain and the barrage alike, but it’s too slow. Those are special skills, not regular ones, and the difference in power is staggering.
All twenty-one of the charges from my Soulshard Rifle go into a single shot, a red obliterating ray that hurts to look at. The shot from the Category 1 weapon collides with a cluster of star-bolts—and the Reality Break intersects it, nullifying the attack.
Fuck.
As my focus turns from winning the fight to escaping with my life, I see Azaril move.
Even with my subjective time sped up as much as it is, he’s fast. Fast enough to use a skill. Fast enough to speak, albeit still in subjective slow-motion.
“You bastards,” he growls, growing even larger with every passing fraction of a second. “You made me do this.
“Domain: Perfect Self.”
Just as before, the domain washes over the entire space in an instant, so fast that even I blink and miss the transitory period.
The sepia tone vanishes from the land around us, replaced by a soft golden light reminiscent of the skills that the skyfolk were using when I killed them.
Alvin finally finishes dying, and I watch as the kill counter ticks from 260 to 261. Six left.
I wonder what this domain—
Zil’s domain washes over me, and I suddenly feel refreshed. My wounds begin to close—not all the way, but they close. The sensation is akin to having a luxurious meal followed by a long, decadent bath and a nap in a soft feather bed.
Even my soul feels better, which is a rarity.
Reality continues to shatter as skills fly towards me, but suddenly, Zil is here, standing over me with his arms outstretched as if he’s challenging the attacks.
As time begins to speed back up, my Mind (Speed) stat incapable of holding incredibly enhanced perception for too long, Zil shouts out another skill.
“Tremble in fear, cowards, for I will always Hold the Line!” he declares, his skin glistening gold as energy explodes around him.
It’s not going to be enough. I can feel it instinctively. Hold the Line is powerful, but the amplified echoes of the others’ special skills will overpower him.
But I don’t need to protect him anymore. Now that the special skills aren’t guided by the Omniscient Domain, I can Bloodpath around them, dodging and weaving through arrows that shine with the light of the sun.
One of them explodes when I get too close, and I barely turn into my blood form quickly enough to avoid being entirely blasted away. As it is, it still manages to take my left arm—again—and half of the leg.
The excess power from this domain will serve.
What?
The relaxed sensation fades from me, my new wounds making themselves known as spots of discomfort in my body, and power drifts into my core. It reminds me of my Devour skill, except there’s nothing to—oh.
My passenger is absorbing the energy Zil’s domain grants us, and it’s putting it back into my skills.
It is an inefficient conversion. This will only work once.
It doesn’t need to tell me what “this” means. It knows that I know.
Power surges through me even as the first true pain I’ve felt since the first time my soul burned courses through my veins, and I allow it to explode outwards.
Zil’s domain fades away, and the battlefield is plunged into darkness and blood, lit only by Ashley’s stars.
It’s an imperfect casting because it should be impossible. It won’t hold for long. It’s nowhere near the full power it could have, and the backlash from this system-defying act is likely to destroy my soul.
Reality Breaks, and I redirect the tears.
The Starfall Barrage rains down upon its owner, the divine energy changing control.
Redoubled Echoes shatter like glass under a torrent of demonic energy.
Of six, three die within instants. I cannot properly sense the remainder, so taxing is this bastardization of a skill.
My passenger laughs, and I laugh with it.
Only one I gain full control over this tenuous piece of work do I vocalize it.
“Special skill: Carnelian Domain.”
The words taste like blood and ash and victory.
