Blackfyre sent a gout of flame my way. I dodged it, hit him with a TK blast, which he easily absorbed. However, that had just been a distraction, a feint to preoccupy him as I closed the gap between us.
He cut down with his ebony sword. I blocked the blow with the Soulguard.
BLOCKING SKILL INCREASED +1
The lich lord was panicking. He launched another fireball at me, but I absorbed it with the Soulguard and kept pressing the attack. Blackfyre’s ebony blade was a good one, and he was no beginner in the long blade skill, but his skills weren’t even half of mine.
Now, my enchanted blade was chipping away at the ebony blade. I caught him in the hip, cracked the armor, and whirled my blade around and caught him in the shoulder, demolishing the ebony barrier.
LONG BLADE SKILL INCREASED +2
MAGIC RESISTANCE INCREASED +1
Worse for him, I wouldn’t give him the chance to put any space between us. Without being able to keep me at bay with a ranged attack, Lord Blackfyre knew he was finished.
The lich lord kept back pedaling as I rained blows down on him. Soon, he caught his boot on a dead skeleton and went down on one knee.
I raised my Dayfire blade overhead. “Later, Blackfyre,” I said.
“Wait, Earthman, we can make a –”
Before he could finish the sentence, I brought the blade down hard and caught him in the neck.
I told the motherfucker I would get his head eventually.
As the lich lord’s corpse hit the ground, Aurelias Skybound descended with the wyvern’s neck in its talons. He tossed the dead wyvern aside and laughed. “It’s been years since I slayed one of these!”
But there was a problem.
The horde was still reanimated. Worse, now Pandora and Sir Lucien no longer had the advantage of surprise, and the ghoul horde would have no doubt overwhelmed us in another few seconds.
That was when I realized why the horde was still alive. Because no, they weren’t under Lord Blackfyre’s control any longer.
They were under someone else’s control, and I had a good idea who that was.
“Pandora!” I shouted over the horde’s moaning. “Get everyone back to the battlements!”
She’d just killed a minor lich with a dagger to the neck. “And what about you? What are you going to do about this horde?”
“I know who’s controlling them!” I shouted back.
All the color drained from Pandora’s face when she realized what I meant. “Earthman, you can’t! The Necromancer is too strong!”
“Just go!” I shouted, then hopped back onto Aurelias’ back. I pointed to the dead lich lord’s citadel, still standing in the distance. “Aurelias, take me to that citadel as fast as you can.”
The hawk nodded. Just as we took flight, I looked back and saw Pandora, Sir Lucien, and those soldiers teleport to safety.
The ghouls down on the ground snarled and gnashed their teeth at us, but quickly turned their attention back to the wall.
I stared grimly at the citadel as Aurelias flew toward it. I opened my pack, held the Storm Gem container in one hand, then Winterhollow’s fang in the other.
It was too late now to wonder if my plan would work. If I didn’t stop the Necromancer here, right now, he’d be joining his horde in Homehold very soon.
But he’d have to get through me, first.
“What waits for you in that citadel, Champion?” Aurelias asked.
“The Dark King,” I said. I took a deep breath. “And I’m sure that he’s expecting me.”
The great hawk looked back at me with muted shock. “Well, far be it for me to question a Champion, but do you think you’re strong enough to take him, lad?”
“I will be in a moment,” I said, then pushed the tip of Winterhollow’s fang into my palm, drawing blood.
I threw my head back and screamed.
My tongue glanced the fangs that had suddenly pushed through my gums, and I promptly tasted my own blood.
My muscles hardened, like they were made of titanium. My bones grew denser.
When I looked skyward, the sun was an angry, wrathful ball of fire.
In the span of a single heartbeat, I realized what it felt like to become god-tier, and it was more intense than I ever could have imagined.
STRENGTH INCREASED +500
SPEED INCREASED +500
ATHLETICS SKILL INCREASED +500
SPELL ABSORPTION SKILL INCREASED +500
MAGIC RESISTANCE SKILL INCREASED +500
MYSTICISM SKILL INCREASED +500
ILLUSION SKILL INCREASED +500
WEAKNESS TO SUNLIGHT
WEAKNESS TO SILVER
FATIGUE = ∞/∞
MANA = ∞/∞
SKILL UNLOCKED: BLOOD MAGIC
VAMPIRE’S WRATH
EFFECT: RANGED SPELL, DRAIN HEALTH ON TARGET 30 SECONDS
BAT SHROUD
EFFECT: TELEPORT VIA BAT CAULDRON
-INVINCIBLE DURING DURATION OF SPELL
RALLY UNDEAD
EFFECT: MID-LEVEL UNDEAD ENEMIES BECOME ALLIES 60 SECONDS
“Earthman!” I heard Aurelias shout, though his voice seemed to have been a thousand miles away. “Earthman, do you live!?”
I opened my blood-red eyes as the sudden power surge adjusted to my body. Oh, I was alive alright.
Yeah, I was alive even though the rays of sunlight beating down on me felt like a million tiny daggers trying to pierce my skin.
Of course, I had just the remedy for that.
I flipped open the magical container and the Storm Gem glowed like a ball of lightning. Using the Soulguard, I reached out to the gem and it levitated from the box, right into my enchanted gauntlet.
The power of the Gaia Gem rippled through my body. Unlike last time, I didn’t find the sudden rush of energy half so overwhelming. My stats were off the charts. I was god-tier, alright. God-tier on a whole new level.
However, with my vampire strengths came vampire weaknesses, and the sun was ravaging my body. I held up the Soulguard and closed my hand into a fist, then tapped into the Storm Gem’s powers.
At once, heavy cloud cover rolled in, like a billowing gray wave of storm clouds that easily snuffed out the sun.
Aurelias Skybound looked back at me in awe. “Is that a…Gaia Gem, Champion?”
“It is,” I answered as the mystical currents surged through me. “Aurelias, drop me off on the top level of the citadel. Then head back to Homehold and assist our forces there. You’ve done me a great favor, friend.”
“You sure you’ll be okay on your own?” the great hawk asked.
As the Gaia magic surged through me, my eyes flared bright with mystical energy, and I smiled.
The hawk laughed. “Yeah, I think you’ll be okay…”
I made a save point as Aurelias Skybound swooped down to the landing ledge jutting out from the side of the citadel’s top floor. I nodded a goodbye to the great hawk, turned toward the iron double-doors leading into the top level, and smashed them open with a casual flick of my fingers, using an exponentially more powerful TK blast.
Esmerelda lay sleeping in the far corner of the room. She’d been dressed as if she were dead, with her body draped with a funeral shroud. If not for the faint movement of her chest as she breathed, I would have feared she was gone.
Then came the massive footfalls up the hallway. As he entered the chamber, the Necromancer didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see me.
“Ah, the newest Failed Champion has found a way to boost his powers,” the Dark King said.
I grinned. “You’re toast, asshole,” I said.
“Silly child,” the Necromancer countered. “You think wearing a bauble and pricking yourself with a dead vampire’s broken tooth makes you a god? I’ve had god-tier powers for a millennia. You’re but a child playing with a toy.”
“A pretty fucking powerful toy if you ask me!” I shouted, then, tapping into the Storm Gem’s powers, I hurled a roiling mass of lightning at the Necro
mancer.
The Dark King laughed. Instead of striking him, the lightning spell shot right through him, then blew a hole in the wall behind him. Then he vanished.
“Shit,” I said, realizing that he’d been using an astral projection.
I spun around, bringing my Dayfire blade to bear, at the exact moment when the Necromancer appeared behind me. He laughed as he swung his massive demonic claymore at me.
I raised the Dayfire blade to parry it, and the impact nearly knocked me off my feet. I saw a crack appear in the Dayfire blade as the demonic blade bashed against it.
This motherfucker was no pushover.
He moved confidently, patiently, hacking down at me with his claymore. I blocked six successive blows with the Soulguard, which took the brunt of the impact far better than the Dayfire blade.
This was new to me. Of all the enemies I’d faced, only Aegis Winterhollow had been able to overwhelm me in melee. I needed to put some space between us so I could unleash the true power of the Storm Gem.
The Necromancer feigned slashing left, then pivoted to the right, and brought his blade cross-wise down on my shoulder.
“Fuck!” I growled.
Though with my combined god-tier stats, the blow didn’t hurt me all that much, it did shatter my glass armor breastplate, leaving my torso exposed.
I leaped backward, putting a precious few feet of distance between us, then used my newly fortified illusion powers to cast a powerful invisibility spell.
“Oh, so you fancy yourself a wizard now?” the Necromancer asked.
I cast the spell, vanished, and I was just about to try to get a critical strike on him when he snapped his armored fingers and cast a wide-range dispel spell.
That quickly, my invisibility was gone, and the Necromancer was coming at me again.
I hurled a TK force bomb at him. I surprised him with that attack and he grunted as the magical force struck him in the chest, but it only slowed him down for a moment.
Holy shit, the Dark King had an answer for everything I threw at him, and he was smart enough to realize I couldn’t simply tap into the Storm Gem on a whim.
He didn’t let up.
The Dark King swatted the Dayfire blade from my grip. He almost casually drilled his knee into my exposed abdomen.
I felt something crack then tasted copper in my mouth. I spit blood onto the floor a half-second later.
As I dropped to my knees, the Necromancer kept laughing as he gripped the back of my head with his huge fist. He slammed my face against the floor, hard enough to crack the tiles.
As if he were tiring of using mere brute force to batter me into submission, the Necromancer flexed his destruction muscles, and sent me hurling across the room with a powerful blast of ice and lightning.
I struck the opposite wall then tumbled to the floor like a ragdoll. He launched a lightning blast my way, but this time I was able to block it with the Soulguard.
Of course, he must have known that I’d be able to absorb the spell. He only hurled it at me to keep me occupied so I couldn’t tap into the Storm Gem.
This motherfucker knew exactly what he was doing, and no matter how hard I fought, I was always one step behind him.
He teleported toward me, closing the distance between us. This time, I managed to get a shot in.
The moment he reappeared in front of me, I closed the Soulguard into a fist and struck the Necromancer square in the jaw.
“Ugh!” the Dark King grunted, as the overpowered gauntlet crunched into his demonic helm, cracking it nearly in half.
He staggered backward, and though I knew I couldn’t hope to match him in melee, I had to press the attack while I still had the advantage.
I drilled my armored fist into his chest, denting his demonic breastplate. As he continued to stagger backward, I caught him in the face again, cracking his helm further.
I thought I had him. I began to focus the Storm Gem’s energies into the Soulguard but, the second I did, the Necromancer healed himself completely with a god-level healing spell, then snatched me by the throat and tossed me against the wall.
“You’re no god, boy,” the Necromancer said.
I would have replied, but then he squeezed his massive fingers around my throat, and the world began to grow hazy.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Even as he slammed me against the wall, damn near breaking my neck, the notifications spilled across my Second Sight.
HAND-TO-HAND SKILL INCREASED +3
LIGHT ARMOR SKILL INCREASED +3
LEVEL 26 REACHED!
Yeah, leveling up restored my health and fatigue, but with the Necromancer’s grip on my throat, that only seemed to delay my inevitable death by a few seconds.
I beat the Soulguard against him, but I didn’t have the strength to tap into the Storm Gem’s power properly.
“I thought you’d put up a better fight, Earthman,” the Necromancer said. “Instead, you made the mistake every mortal makes when they gain god-tier abilities. You assumed your power trumped your strategy. Had you taken my level of experience into consideration, Earthman, you just might have defeated me.”
God damn it, he was right.
I’d been so jacked up with power that I never considered that the Necromancer could finesse me into exploiting my weaknesses.
Instead, I walked right into his trap. He must have seen this coming.
Well, it was a lesson that I learned too late, because now the world was going dark, and as the hazy black shroud overtook me, I could hear the Necromancer’s mocking laughter.
However, his laughter didn’t last all that long, and neither did the darkness overtaking my vision.
I heard the sound of sizzling magic.
The Necromancer let out a confused grunt.
“There’s the Earthman, aid him!” Pandora shouted.
The Mananymphs moved like a well-oiled machine.
Pandora, though temporarily weakened from teleporting the three of them across such a long distance, managed to hit the Necromancer with a particularly powerful TK force bomb.
The Necromancer, who’d been caught off guard, went flying across the room from the force of the blast.
As he went tumbling to the floor, Sephara, who’d fortified her speed quite a bit, backflipped over the Dark King, thrusting her silver spear down, cracking his demonic helm completely.
His face was like a combination of an undead elf, a dragon, and a rotting ghoul. His necrotic features wrinkled into a scowl right at the moment when Bella created a dozen seraphs with her illusion magic.
She screamed as she sent the illusion angels at him, hacking away with their righteous swords.
Sephara grabbed me, pulled me close, and hit me with an overpowered healing spell that instantly restored me to full health.
Though taken off guard by the dozen seraphs, the Necromancer nevertheless made quick work of them.
But that was just fine, because the Mananymphs had bought me all the time I needed.
I stepped toward the Necromancer as I channeled the Storm Gem’s massive energies through my body.
“Girls, take Esmerelda and get out of here,” I said, with my voice booming with crackling magical fire.
As the Dark King slayed the final seraph, Sephara grabbed Esmerelda and ran back to Pandora.
“Earthman,” Pandora said. “Don’t leave me alone in this world!”
I smiled at her. “I’ll be seeing you soon,” I said, then Pandora teleported them out of the citadel.
Now, it was just the two of us.
The Necromancer scowled at me as he pulled off bits of his broken armor.
I grinned at him. “Thanks for teaching me so much, your highness,” I said.
This time, I wasn’t going to rush him, hoping to get by on brute strength alone. I knew his strategies now. I knew his strengths. He might not have had any weaknesses, but this time, I knew what he was going to throw at me, and I planned accordingly.
The Dark King roare
d as he sent a mixed elemental blast at me. I casually raised the Soulguard and absorbed it.
SPELL ABSORPTION SKILL INCREASED +1
He snarled, then used his illusion magic to create ten copies of himself. When the copies charged me, I waved the Soulguard in the air and promptly incinerated them with a god-level lighting blast.
Growing frustrated, the Dark King charged me with his claymore. Using my enhanced speed, I easily snatched the Dayfire blade from the floor. As I raised the damaged blade to parry his own, I fortified the glass blade with magic.
When our blades met, the Dayfire longsword cleaved his demonic claymore in half.
LONG BLADE SKILL INCREASED +1
The Necromancer growled, channeled hellfire into his fist, and swung at my face. I caught his fist in the palm of the Soulguard and easily absorbed his energy before blasting it right back at him.
His armor was either cracked or completely broken. As the Necromancer struggled to get to his feet, the ancient magic he’d been using to animate himself was struggling to keep his rotting body together.
The Dark King’s pale skin sloughed off his face, and his restoration magic struggled to restore him. The moment he restored his face, the skin slopped off his chest.
The Necromancer laughed bitterly as he struggled to his feet. “Well played, Earthman,” he said. “But you must understand that you’ll never defeat us.”
“It looks like I’m about to do just that,” I said.
He laughed again. “I’m not speaking of my forces, boy,” the Dark King said as he spit a dark, thick viscous blood onto the floor. “I’m talking about my ally, my master.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “And who might that be?”
“Take a guess,” the Necromancer said.
And then it all made sense.
“That’s why the Emperor never sent any aid to Homehold,” I said. “He was using you to crush the United Rebel Front.”
“I’m surprised it took you so long to figure it out, child,” the Necromancer said. “Ours was an alliance of convenience. True, it wouldn’t have lasted for long, not after I crushed the rebellion, but I guess that doesn’t matter anymore.”
I closed the Soulguard into a fist. The lightning burning off it was blinding. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”
Monstergirl Quest Book Two Page 19
