The prayer was a very surreal thing to listen to.
“Goddess Palacene, Purveyor of Justice, Defender of the innocent.”
I fired a couple of spells from different angles into the orb surrounding him to no effect. Tilon hovered next to me and affirmed the conclusion I was coming to.
“You can’t break it. Well, you can, but it’s not very cost-effective in terms of mana spent. We’re just going to have to wait until he’s done. We’ll have a better chance of beating him if we hold on to more mana to use to fight him after the fact instead.”
I nodded, “What should I expect from this then? Is he just gonna get stronger? Or is he going to like, transform or something?”
“Yes to both, and a lot more. He’s going to get stronger, faster, and more durable, he’s going to grow wings that grant him flight. Any damage that does get through will heal in an instant, basically, the only way to beat him is to make him burn through his mana. Just taking and holding this form drains him pretty heavily, and the more he uses his abilities the faster it drains.”
So we had a chance basically. Ran sounded pretty confident going into this though, so either Tilon was underestimating how little of a chance we stood against it, or Ran was overestimating his strength in this form.
“Grant me the strength to do Your will on this plane. To see Your plan through to fruition. To guide those who need to be guided and set right the path that has turned to the wicked.”
I could feel the raw power flowing off of him at this point, his body slowly starting to glow with divine power. I could feel the absolute weight of specific words in his prayer, they seemed to weigh more heavily on us than on him when he spoke them.
“Grant me Your wisdom so that I might take the path of Righteousness and not stumble, losing my way. All these things-”
The glow and aura of power slowly reached a crescendo and Ran stood up his eyes still closed. On his back I could see a ghostly outline of wings slowly starting to take form, the orb of defense surrounding him started cracking as it struggled to contain the aura he was emanating and it slowly seeped through the cracks causing them to widen.
As he opened his eyes, whatever color they had been before they were replaced with a pure golden glow of radiance. I couldn’t help but be entranced by the sight, like I was looking at something that had gone beyond human, despite the fact that I knew that Ran was just a normal human at heart.
Well, maybe not a normal human. I was starting to lose sight of what normal even meant in this world at this point.
“I Pray.”
With those final words of his prayer, his aura exploded out. The orb shattered and disintegrated into motes of light around us. Ran’s aura of power pulsed outwards rhythmically from where he stood. The wings on his back took a material form looking familiar to ones I had seen so long ago at this point.
Ran hovered slightly over the ground, the wings on his back not flapping despite that fact.
He looked over each one of us slowly all the while still smiling genially.
“Looks like she decided to answer me today, so I plan to make the most of this situation. Let’s see how well you can fare against someone divinely empowered.”
When he spoke it was like there was a chorus of voices speaking with him in otherworldly languages. Not just one, but thousands all spoken at the same time. The sound was both deafening and barely perceptible to my senses. I didn’t even try to [Mana Sense] him. I wasn’t sure what I’d see.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it.
I just did what I could and started to prepare myself for combat. While we had been waiting I had been letting one of my minds [Rest] to recover my mana as much as it could.
Looking over to the side I noticed that Balthin was down for the count. I guess that was what Lytri and Tilon were doing while I was holding off Ran. That was actually good, I hadn’t realized that they weren’t helping me at the time. I guess that just went to show that I still didn’t have a good grasp of how to use [Parallel Minds] yet if I was still missing things happening right next to me.
I took an offensive stance and activated [Wings of Lightning] letting the mantle of electricity fall around me like a familiar cloak. My feet slowly raised off the ground as I matched him in floating a few feet off the ground.
Ran raised an eyebrow, “Impressive, it’s not easy to get flying skills outside of transformation magic or wind classes or wind adjacent ones.”
I didn’t respond, I put every effort I had into observing him. If I wasn’t careful-
I moved instantly just barely managing to dodge the shield bash that came my way to incapacitate me. I retaliated as he slid by smoothly, swinging a blade at him but he met it with speed that he hadn’t had before.
-I couldn’t see him move.
Damn, he was fast.
He tried to go after Tilon next but I quickly engaged him up close keeping his attention focused on me. I swung at him with both blades in rapid and complicated weaving patterns, he flew around me with practiced ease, matching every attack I made with one of his own and retaliating anywhere he could, causing me to halt in my patterns to keep myself from getting carved up.
I did not doubt that getting hit with one of his attacks would hurt like hell, even if it wouldn’t kill me.
I started throwing out spells from various directions, using tendrils of wood that I conjured out of the various tree surfaces around. Golden panes reminiscent of my [Nature’s Ramparts] sprung up around him, blocking the various attacks.
Occasionally when he wouldn’t or didn’t block I would jump through and try to get him from a different angle, but Ran rotated with speed that told me he still wasn’t going all out, more that he was just entertaining the fact that I had stuck myself out to protect Tilon.
That pissed me off more than anything.
“You’re right, it is a bit of a condescending act. Although, confidence is the right of the strong.”
“Considering you had to call upon an actual god to get strength comparable to mine I wouldn’t be quick to call yourself strong,” I retorted, acid coating my words.
Ran just laughed good-naturedly but didn’t reply instead he just took a stance. He gripped his sword in both hands despite the fact that his left was occupied by a kite shield. It looked slightly uncomfortable, but he bared with it.
His sword then started glowing and my eyes widened as I got an eerie premonition of a popular reimagining of what Excalibur would be capable of if it had been real. The way this was starting to manifest looked like that, and I was not even remotely interested in letting him pull that off.
I activated every skill I had that could potentially hurt him or incapacitate him.
The sky grew dark with clouds as lightning rained down from the heavens, I blasted forward with a snap of speed, [Webs of Lightning], [Storm Explosions], [Binds], and more all spawned around us causing a massive explosion of magic in the middle of the clearing.
Ran easily maneuvered himself out of the way of all my attacks, golden panes spawning above him to protect him from the incessant rain of lightning strikes coming from above. I constantly warped around him trying to catch him by surprise, but it seemed like he had a localized omniscience the same way I did around nature.
None of my attacks reached him, all of them seemed to just barely miss, but I could tell that they weren’t even remotely close. He had already finished dodging them before I had even swung.
Some sort of precognition as well. If that wasn’t fucking bullshit…
I kept trying, but explosions of lightning stripped the trees around us of their bark and roots sprang up from the ground to try and grab him and pull him to the ground. [Webs of Lightning] sprouted everywhere trying to catch him in their net and the torrential downpour of lightning left small craters in the soft ground and the grass around them scorched and burned from the intense heat of the lightning.
None of it mattered. None of it reached him.
Then his sword reached its apex. He raised it, his smile grew almost imperceptibly wider.
And then he swung.
I had to cover my eyes to avoid being blinded.
The overwhelming beam of magic passed right by my head and up into the air, through [OWN] I could see it hit the cloudscape in the sky and pierce through it causing the clouds amassed over us to disperse and ending my [Storm Call] skill.
Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, the roar of the passing attack died down and I could see through my own eyes again.
The glow surrounding the paladin, ‘cause that’s clearly what he was at this point unless they had some other name for it that I wasn’t aware of, had dimmed a bit. It looked like there was an upper limit on how many times he could cast that.
But he could still do it more than once.
For a while, we just stared at each other. More like he smiled while I glowered at him. Eventually, I let out a sigh and dismissed my weapons, and lowered myself to the ground.
As obnoxious as it was, he had very clearly won that engagement. He hadn’t missed hitting me, he had avoided doing so because it would’ve killed me. I could be annoyed, but I wasn’t going to whine about it. At the end of the day, it was the same thing as a full-contact sport.
You didn’t get to complain about the fact that someone was born bigger and taller than you. You worked around it. He had a stronger skill to use, I should’ve worked around it if I wanted to win. I hadn’t been able to.
Tilon lowered himself to the ground behind me. If he had been helping I hadn’t noticed, but it was possibly because Ran had been blocking all of his attacks the same way he had most of mine with those golden panes.
We all touched the ground near each other, Ran let his weapons fall down by his sides as he stepped forward.
“I’m assuming that this is your forfeit?”
Tilon looked at me before looking back at Ran and giving him a shrug, “Yeah, I think so. Kinda hard to say you could win when the only reason we weren’t turned to ashes was because you deliberately missed. Although, Ran?” Ran looked over to him, cocking his head slightly, indicating for him to go on.
“This was a spar if you remember. Bringing out city-crushing abilities at our level when most of us can’t kind of goes against the spirit of the sport.”
Ran thought about it for a moment, before letting out a sigh.
“Yes, I did get a bit carried away. But honestly? I thought the elf was still holding back a bit, it’s my fault for not reading the situation correctly there.”
I tried not to scoff. I didn’t have anything nice to say right now so I was just trying not to say anything at all. The last thing I needed to do was be an ass and ostracize any people that I could possibly be friends with.
I turned around and started making my way over to Balthin to start with. I kneeled down next to him and started pumping some healing out into him which caused him to wake up rather quickly.
He jumped up with a loud yell, “Ahhh! I’m not done yet!” He hefted his greatsword and looked around at the four of us just kind of standing around.
“Or am I? Disappointing.”
I shook my head, just as someone landed next to us having dropped out of the tree near the edge of the clearing.
It was the one missing ranger.
“Aw man, I was looking for a moment to try and get a good shot in when everyone was sufficiently distracted, but every time I tried it felt like someone was watching me so I didn’t take the shot. By the time I worked up the courage the fight was over.”
Liz was her name if I was remembering correctly. I shook my head again.
“I might as well say it now that we’re done. I have an ability that lets me see and hear through nature in a range of roughly 2/3rds of a mile around me. I also have [Parallel Minds] so there was never truly a moment where I was sufficiently distracted. I thought I might’ve noticed you a few times, but I was never sure.”
Her mouth hung open in shock, “But… That’s… That’s such bullshit!” She sputtered.
“Bullshit like pulling out a laser that can atomize a building and everything behind it?” I retorted.
“I- uhh… Maybe?” She hedged awkwardly.
This time I did scoff, “You’ve got two buddies out in the forest around thataways,” I gestured in their direction, “the ranger should be fine if a little bit scorched, the rogue has several broken bones. Wrist, forearm, maybe some ribs from when I used them to tenderize the dirt.”
Liz gave me a slight frown, “A bit excessive, don’t you think?”
“Not at all, they quite literally asked for it. Besides, their words when I said that using acid on your weapons in a spar was excessive was that ‘in a real fight you’re gonna get hurt’ or something like that. So I broke his arm and slammed him into the ground. If anything I went easy on him, next time I won’t be so nice about it.”
Liz was still frowning at my words, but she didn’t press it when Ran just gave her a shake of his head.
After a moment there was a flash of light and Ran’s transformation died out.
“Ah, there we go, it finally finished. Anyways where are Fatri and Wellin? I don’t think I’ve seen them this entire time.”
Tilon sighed, “I haven’t either since the start of the match. Knowing them, they probably got lost somewhere in the forest. I’ll give them a few minutes before trying to find them, let them wander a little longer.”
Ran just laughed good-naturedly. It was kind of funny all things considering if they had actually been around to help us, though, this fight might have turned out a little differently.
“Liz, why don’t you go fetch our two guys out in the forest and bring them back here? Once they’re here, I can patch them back up the rest of the way and we can go get something to eat as a group at our regular place.”
Ran then turned to the rest of us, “The rest of you are welcome to join us if you want.”
Tilon shook his head, “Maybe next time, got some stuff I need to take care of with my team as well.”
He turned to me next.
“I’ll pass as well, maybe next time.” I echoed.
I wasn’t all that interested in going out and about with them, maybe if Tilon’s group had gone with them I would’ve joined. But I didn’t really want to be the sixth wheel.
Which is what I definitely would’ve ended up being.
“I’m going to head back to my room,” I said, my tone coming across a bit sharper than I meant. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little peeved right now though.
“Alright, thanks for joining us!” Ran said as I turned away.
“Yeah you’re a great fill, definitely carried half my team while the other two morons didn’t do anything at all.”
Lytri just grunted.
I raised my hand and gave a casual wave before activating my flying skill again and taking off.
The prayer was a very surreal thing to listen to.
“Goddess Palacene, Purveyor of Justice, Defender of the innocent.”
I fired a couple of spells from different angles into the orb surrounding him to no effect. Tilon hovered next to me and affirmed the conclusion I was coming to.
“You can’t break it. Well, you can, but it’s not very cost-effective in terms of mana spent. We’re just going to have to wait until he’s done. We’ll have a better chance of beating him if we hold on to more mana to use to fight him after the fact instead.”
I nodded, “What should I expect from this then? Is he just gonna get stronger? Or is he going to like, transform or something?”
“Yes to both, and a lot more. He’s going to get stronger, faster, and more durable, he’s going to grow wings that grant him flight. Any damage that does get through will heal in an instant, basically, the only way to beat him is to make him burn through his mana. Just taking and holding this form drains him pretty heavily, and the more he uses his abilities the faster it drains.”
So we had a chance basically. Ran sounded pretty confident going into this though, so either Tilon was underestimating how little of a chance we stood against it, or Ran was overestimating his strength in this form.
“Grant me the strength to do Your will on this plane. To see Your plan through to fruition. To guide those who need to be guided and set right the path that has turned to the wicked.”
I could feel the raw power flowing off of him at this point, his body slowly starting to glow with divine power. I could feel the absolute weight of specific words in his prayer, they seemed to weigh more heavily on us than on him when he spoke them.
“Grant me Your wisdom so that I might take the path of Righteousness and not stumble, losing my way. All these things-”
The glow and aura of power slowly reached a crescendo and Ran stood up his eyes still closed. On his back I could see a ghostly outline of wings slowly starting to take form, the orb of defense surrounding him started cracking as it struggled to contain the aura he was emanating and it slowly seeped through the cracks causing them to widen.
As he opened his eyes, whatever color they had been before they were replaced with a pure golden glow of radiance. I couldn’t help but be entranced by the sight, like I was looking at something that had gone beyond human, despite the fact that I knew that Ran was just a normal human at heart.
Well, maybe not a normal human. I was starting to lose sight of what normal even meant in this world at this point.
“I Pray.”
With those final words of his prayer, his aura exploded out. The orb shattered and disintegrated into motes of light around us. Ran’s aura of power pulsed outwards rhythmically from where he stood. The wings on his back took a material form looking familiar to ones I had seen so long ago at this point.
Ran hovered slightly over the ground, the wings on his back not flapping despite that fact.
He looked over each one of us slowly all the while still smiling genially.
“Looks like she decided to answer me today, so I plan to make the most of this situation. Let’s see how well you can fare against someone divinely empowered.”
When he spoke it was like there was a chorus of voices speaking with him in otherworldly languages. Not just one, but thousands all spoken at the same time. The sound was both deafening and barely perceptible to my senses. I didn’t even try to [Mana Sense] him. I wasn’t sure what I’d see.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to see it.
I just did what I could and started to prepare myself for combat. While we had been waiting I had been letting one of my minds [Rest] to recover my mana as much as it could.
Looking over to the side I noticed that Balthin was down for the count. I guess that was what Lytri and Tilon were doing while I was holding off Ran. That was actually good, I hadn’t realized that they weren’t helping me at the time. I guess that just went to show that I still didn’t have a good grasp of how to use [Parallel Minds] yet if I was still missing things happening right next to me.
I took an offensive stance and activated [Wings of Lightning] letting the mantle of electricity fall around me like a familiar cloak. My feet slowly raised off the ground as I matched him in floating a few feet off the ground.
Ran raised an eyebrow, “Impressive, it’s not easy to get flying skills outside of transformation magic or wind classes or wind adjacent ones.”
I didn’t respond, I put every effort I had into observing him. If I wasn’t careful-
I moved instantly just barely managing to dodge the shield bash that came my way to incapacitate me. I retaliated as he slid by smoothly, swinging a blade at him but he met it with speed that he hadn’t had before.
-I couldn’t see him move.
Damn, he was fast.
He tried to go after Tilon next but I quickly engaged him up close keeping his attention focused on me. I swung at him with both blades in rapid and complicated weaving patterns, he flew around me with practiced ease, matching every attack I made with one of his own and retaliating anywhere he could, causing me to halt in my patterns to keep myself from getting carved up.
I did not doubt that getting hit with one of his attacks would hurt like hell, even if it wouldn’t kill me.
I started throwing out spells from various directions, using tendrils of wood that I conjured out of the various tree surfaces around. Golden panes reminiscent of my [Nature’s Ramparts] sprung up around him, blocking the various attacks.
Occasionally when he wouldn’t or didn’t block I would jump through and try to get him from a different angle, but Ran rotated with speed that told me he still wasn’t going all out, more that he was just entertaining the fact that I had stuck myself out to protect Tilon.
That pissed me off more than anything.
“You’re right, it is a bit of a condescending act. Although, confidence is the right of the strong.”
“Considering you had to call upon an actual god to get strength comparable to mine I wouldn’t be quick to call yourself strong,” I retorted, acid coating my words.
Ran just laughed good-naturedly but didn’t reply instead he just took a stance. He gripped his sword in both hands despite the fact that his left was occupied by a kite shield. It looked slightly uncomfortable, but he bared with it.
His sword then started glowing and my eyes widened as I got an eerie premonition of a popular reimagining of what Excalibur would be capable of if it had been real. The way this was starting to manifest looked like that, and I was not even remotely interested in letting him pull that off.
I activated every skill I had that could potentially hurt him or incapacitate him.
The sky grew dark with clouds as lightning rained down from the heavens, I blasted forward with a snap of speed, [Webs of Lightning], [Storm Explosions], [Binds], and more all spawned around us causing a massive explosion of magic in the middle of the clearing.
Ran easily maneuvered himself out of the way of all my attacks, golden panes spawning above him to protect him from the incessant rain of lightning strikes coming from above. I constantly warped around him trying to catch him by surprise, but it seemed like he had a localized omniscience the same way I did around nature.
None of my attacks reached him, all of them seemed to just barely miss, but I could tell that they weren’t even remotely close. He had already finished dodging them before I had even swung.
Some sort of precognition as well. If that wasn’t fucking bullshit…
I kept trying, but explosions of lightning stripped the trees around us of their bark and roots sprang up from the ground to try and grab him and pull him to the ground. [Webs of Lightning] sprouted everywhere trying to catch him in their net and the torrential downpour of lightning left small craters in the soft ground and the grass around them scorched and burned from the intense heat of the lightning.
None of it mattered. None of it reached him.
Then his sword reached its apex. He raised it, his smile grew almost imperceptibly wider.
And then he swung.
I had to cover my eyes to avoid being blinded.
The overwhelming beam of magic passed right by my head and up into the air, through [OWN] I could see it hit the cloudscape in the sky and pierce through it causing the clouds amassed over us to disperse and ending my [Storm Call] skill.
Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, the roar of the passing attack died down and I could see through my own eyes again.
The glow surrounding the paladin, ‘cause that’s clearly what he was at this point unless they had some other name for it that I wasn’t aware of, had dimmed a bit. It looked like there was an upper limit on how many times he could cast that.
But he could still do it more than once.
For a while, we just stared at each other. More like he smiled while I glowered at him. Eventually, I let out a sigh and dismissed my weapons, and lowered myself to the ground.
As obnoxious as it was, he had very clearly won that engagement. He hadn’t missed hitting me, he had avoided doing so because it would’ve killed me. I could be annoyed, but I wasn’t going to whine about it. At the end of the day, it was the same thing as a full-contact sport.
You didn’t get to complain about the fact that someone was born bigger and taller than you. You worked around it. He had a stronger skill to use, I should’ve worked around it if I wanted to win. I hadn’t been able to.
Tilon lowered himself to the ground behind me. If he had been helping I hadn’t noticed, but it was possibly because Ran had been blocking all of his attacks the same way he had most of mine with those golden panes.
We all touched the ground near each other, Ran let his weapons fall down by his sides as he stepped forward.
“I’m assuming that this is your forfeit?”
Tilon looked at me before looking back at Ran and giving him a shrug, “Yeah, I think so. Kinda hard to say you could win when the only reason we weren’t turned to ashes was because you deliberately missed. Although, Ran?” Ran looked over to him, cocking his head slightly, indicating for him to go on.
“This was a spar if you remember. Bringing out city-crushing abilities at our level when most of us can’t kind of goes against the spirit of the sport.”
Ran thought about it for a moment, before letting out a sigh.
“Yes, I did get a bit carried away. But honestly? I thought the elf was still holding back a bit, it’s my fault for not reading the situation correctly there.”
I tried not to scoff. I didn’t have anything nice to say right now so I was just trying not to say anything at all. The last thing I needed to do was be an ass and ostracize any people that I could possibly be friends with.
I turned around and started making my way over to Balthin to start with. I kneeled down next to him and started pumping some healing out into him which caused him to wake up rather quickly.
He jumped up with a loud yell, “Ahhh! I’m not done yet!” He hefted his greatsword and looked around at the four of us just kind of standing around.
“Or am I? Disappointing.”
I shook my head, just as someone landed next to us having dropped out of the tree near the edge of the clearing.
It was the one missing ranger.
“Aw man, I was looking for a moment to try and get a good shot in when everyone was sufficiently distracted, but every time I tried it felt like someone was watching me so I didn’t take the shot. By the time I worked up the courage the fight was over.”
Liz was her name if I was remembering correctly. I shook my head again.
“I might as well say it now that we’re done. I have an ability that lets me see and hear through nature in a range of roughly 2/3rds of a mile around me. I also have [Parallel Minds] so there was never truly a moment where I was sufficiently distracted. I thought I might’ve noticed you a few times, but I was never sure.”
Her mouth hung open in shock, “But… That’s… That’s such bullshit!” She sputtered.
“Bullshit like pulling out a laser that can atomize a building and everything behind it?” I retorted.
“I- uhh… Maybe?” She hedged awkwardly.
This time I did scoff, “You’ve got two buddies out in the forest around thataways,” I gestured in their direction, “the ranger should be fine if a little bit scorched, the rogue has several broken bones. Wrist, forearm, maybe some ribs from when I used them to tenderize the dirt.”
Liz gave me a slight frown, “A bit excessive, don’t you think?”
“Not at all, they quite literally asked for it. Besides, their words when I said that using acid on your weapons in a spar was excessive was that ‘in a real fight you’re gonna get hurt’ or something like that. So I broke his arm and slammed him into the ground. If anything I went easy on him, next time I won’t be so nice about it.”
Liz was still frowning at my words, but she didn’t press it when Ran just gave her a shake of his head.
After a moment there was a flash of light and Ran’s transformation died out.
“Ah, there we go, it finally finished. Anyways where are Fatri and Wellin? I don’t think I’ve seen them this entire time.”
Tilon sighed, “I haven’t either since the start of the match. Knowing them, they probably got lost somewhere in the forest. I’ll give them a few minutes before trying to find them, let them wander a little longer.”
Ran just laughed good-naturedly. It was kind of funny all things considering if they had actually been around to help us, though, this fight might have turned out a little differently.
“Liz, why don’t you go fetch our two guys out in the forest and bring them back here? Once they’re here, I can patch them back up the rest of the way and we can go get something to eat as a group at our regular place.”
Ran then turned to the rest of us, “The rest of you are welcome to join us if you want.”
Tilon shook his head, “Maybe next time, got some stuff I need to take care of with my team as well.”
He turned to me next.
“I’ll pass as well, maybe next time.” I echoed.
I wasn’t all that interested in going out and about with them, maybe if Tilon’s group had gone with them I would’ve joined. But I didn’t really want to be the sixth wheel.
Which is what I definitely would’ve ended up being.
“I’m going to head back to my room,” I said, my tone coming across a bit sharper than I meant. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little peeved right now though.
“Alright, thanks for joining us!” Ran said as I turned away.
“Yeah you’re a great fill, definitely carried half my team while the other two morons didn’t do anything at all.”
Lytri just grunted.
I raised my hand and gave a casual wave before activating my flying skill again and taking off.
