It galled him to admit it, but Reisha was struggling. Zelamir’s experiment had yielded powerful results, though the gods had certainly played a part in raising the human up to power with their system and whatever gifts they’d bestowed on him as reparations for Tesir’s screw up in the Garden. Eslaka had also grown immensely in a very short amount of time, though she was even more erratic than usual.
He wasn’t worried for his own survival. His enemies were strong, yes, but they weren’t that strong. What troubled him the most was how much they’d grown in such a limited amount of time, and how easily they could eclipse him if given even a year or two. It was unthinkable, four millennia of progress overshadowed by thieves stealing the essence from anything and everything they touched.
The experiment would end, one way or another, and Reisha would remove these two nuisances. Then he’d gather up the remaining divine beasts and they’d forge a new way forward. Maybe with the Compact shattered, the balance destroyed, and the futile attempt at civilization terminated, it would finally be time to raise new divine beasts.
Pain wasn’t a sensation Reisha was accustomed to feeling. For the last few thousand years, he’d been all but invincible, but today’s challenges proved he’d been complacent. Stinging pinpricks dotted his face, especially around his eyes where Eslaka had focused her efforts—as if he needed something as trivial as eyeballs to see.
Zelamir couldn’t stand up to his experiment in a straight slugging match, but he was clever enough to know that and was employing various tricks to keep the man distracted. He was playing his part in the battle, and now Reisha just needed to fulfill his own role.
Then the experiment got a lucky shot off. It would have been a minor injury to Reisha, but Zelamir lacked his durability. And just like that, a man he’d known for close to three thousand years was dead, snuffed out like a candle and tossed aside.
Worse, instead of his essence dissipating into the world, the experiment ate it. Oh, not all of it, of course. Not even half. But he took a huge bite out of Zelamir’s very being. Or rather, the gods’ system did—more proof that they’d violated the Compact and unleashed their evil work outside the boundary. Worse, the essence that the experiment didn’t take didn’t vanish like it should have.
Eslaka scooped it up, all of it. It was… messy, and obviously damaging to her mind, but efficient. Her power grew again, leaping forward to almost rival Reisha’s. If she was given time to acclimate to it, she was suddenly a real threat. It was no wonder she’d grown so quickly.
He needed to end this now, before the experiment figured out how best to utilize his ill-gotten essence. Whatever the system had done, it was far more stable than Eslaka’s theft. He’d reach the full heights of his new power in minutes, maybe less. Reisha couldn’t fight defensively and wait for them to make mistakes.
* * *
In the past, Velik would have been hesitant to spend his new essence caches so quickly. The system wasn’t forgiving of mistakes, and it paid to take some time and be deliberate in his choices instead of grabbing whatever seemed useful in the moment. With the limited personal system, however, Velik could recycle a significant portion of the essence he spent on building a new skill once it was no longer useful.
It was far too late to worry about that now, so he set his LPS to forging a new skill, something that would give him firepower. [Dread Lance] was his heavy hitter, but his spears had superior penetration, so he leaned heavily into that. Or better, both at once. That might strain his mana in a normal fight, but Reisha appeared to be an unending font of resources for Velik to steal.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
[Commencing Essence Configuration.]
Reisha didn’t stand there and wait for him to be ready, of course. If anything, the opposite happened. The dragon went on an aggressive push, mana pouring out of him in a wave of absolute cold. A foot-thick layer of ice coated everything within a thousand feet of the beast, including Eslaka. She glowed like a falling star trapped in the ice, but Reisha kept thickening it faster than she could melt free, and within moments she crashed to the ground.
Velik wasn’t spared the freeze, but he was far enough away to survive it. Ice scoured his skin, found no purchase, and broke away. If he’d been closer, he probably would have had to be more proactive about defending himself, but he wasn’t eager to test Reisha’s abilities. The magic cost an incredible amount of mana, far more than anything else the dragon had done, and that hopefully meant it was a one-time thing.
He quickly realized he’d been foolishly optimistic. Even more mana surged out of Reisha, filling the air and ripping through the ceiling of the floor above him. Thousands of tons of metal, dirt, stone, and trees came pouring down as the whole floor collapsed, blinding everybody involved and subjecting them to an intense battering.
Velik dodged the worst of it—a quarter-mile long slab of solid stone that was a few hundred feet thick—and weathered being tossed around by the smaller man-sized boulders or huge tree trunks. By the time the collapse settled, he was buried in thirty feet of debris, but he dug himself free in seconds.
Reisha was waiting for him on the surface, his mouth open to reveal glistening fangs and a brewing inferno. Spiraling torrents of fire cascaded through the air, targeting Velik and imbued with enough magic to chase him when he tried to dodge.
[Completed modifications to configuration: Dread Lance.]
[Saving new configuration: Void Lance.]
[Integrating new configuration.]
[Congratulations! Your new configuration is ready for use.]
Velik had spent every scrap of essence he’d taken from Zelamir on the skill modification. Now that it was ready, he immediately unleashed it. Spear after spear materialized, first two, then five, then ten, then fifty. They filled the air around the dueling combatant, so many that Reisha couldn’t have dodged them even if he’d tried.
Each one was a bar of absolute black, alive and thrumming with mana. They were so dark, the world grew dimmer just from their presence. Light vanished into them, and Velik was struck by the sudden suspicion that stepping sideways into the shadow world around one of those spears would be a very, very bad idea.
Reisha ignored them. He just threw himself forward, claws scraping against the loose stone and wings spread to bolster his momentum with each downstroke. Maybe it was arrogance, but if so, the dragon had good reason for it. Nothing anyone had done to him so far in this fight had done lasting damage, not even having his eyes gouged out.
The spears scattered at Velik’s command, swerving out through the inky murk that hung in the air now to surround the dragon from all sides. Still, Reisha closed the distance, moving so fast that his huge body started to blur. He paid so little attention to the void spears that Velik almost wondered if some intrinsic property in the skill made it hard to notice them.
Then he was in position, fully surrounded by [Void Lance].
Perfect.
The spears descended in a blink, drawn toward a central point somewhere inside Reisha’s chest. They moved so fast they practically teleported, and there was no way for Reisha to avoid them, not at his size. It just remained to be seen if his scales could hold against the attack.
Except that between one moment and the next, Reisha disappeared. Velik was so surprised that he just stood there for a second, his mind trying to process it. The void spears collapsed on themselves and formed a writhing, spiky ball before breaking into motes of blackness that vanished. Light returned to the area, and still Reisha was nowhere to be found.
Then a long serpent tail slapped into him, looping around Velik’s neck and dragging him off his feet. He caught a glimpse of a monster that was half-snake, half-man. It had four arms, each one holding a curving sword the same iridescent colors of Reisha’s scales.
Without any sort of hesitation or ceremony, the tail whipped him around and the blades struck his flesh. Velik lifted a hand and summoned a shadow spear—a regular one, not the void monstrosity he wasn’t sure he dared to even touch—to deflect the first strike, and twisted in place, finding his footing on the air and dodging a second one.
The third sword sank deep into Velik’s leg, striking bone and catching. Pain flared from the fresh injury, but he knew he could recover from that. He had the mana for it. He just needed some distance and half a minute or so to rebuild the muscle.
The demon-snake-divine-beast-thing that was Reisha didn’t give him distance or time. His fourth and final blade struck a split-second after the third one hit. This one came directly down in an overhead chop, cut into Velik’s collar bone, and kept going at a diagonal to slash through ribs and spine, then exited Velik’s body just above the opposite hip.
Two thirds of Velik fell free to the ground, leaving only his head, arms, and half a lung left.