Glowing white smoke seeped into Terra, and she jerked into a slow-motion fall as she righted herself. Her feet touched down lightly on the ground. “Goddamn it, that hurt! I really need a decent weapon,” she snarled, flicking a gesture at the cyclone. “Shadow Bolt!”
Three dark, narrow shapes ejected themselves from her palm, rapid fire style, and flew like arrows. They pierced the evil tornado and came out the other side, throwing out splashes and puffs of dust that almost looked like blood spray. The cyclone screamed again and slowed even more, but it was still churning at wreck-your-shit speed.
“Are you guys blind or something? That ice attack worked awesome,” George said as he leaped into the air. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Cone of Frost!”
A torrent of ice and sleet exploded from his body, completely covering the tornado in a frozen sheet. The shell of ice started to crack from the bottom up, and Nova stepped forward to point her staff. “Star Scream!” she shouted.
The attack flooded out in a gush of multicolored light shards, hammering the frozen cyclone until it burst into a zillion ice crystals that showered the stadium like snow.
Terra turned toward Nova slowly and raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I might be impressed,” she said with a smile. “When did you actually start using offensive attacks?”
“When you weren’t there to do it for me,” she said, and then gasped a little as she looked at me and Crash. “I mean, you guys are offensive too. Ugh! That’s not what I mean…”
“It’s okay. We get it,” I said, grinning. “And you did kick ass just then. Now, we need to figure out how to—”
“Watch it!” Crash yelled as he hit the deck, seconds before the circling dragon flapped its immense wings again and blasted the rest of us to the ground.
“How do we kill that thing?” I said through clenched teeth as another five percent drained from my health. I scrambled back up as the wings flapped four more times, spawning two evil tornadoes for the price of one.
Everyone was back on their feet as the cyclones touched down, and Nova was already casting Warrior’s Blessing on Terra.
“George, blast one of those things!” I said, and as he jumped to target one of the cyclones, I thrust a hand at the other and shouted, “Star Scream!” The attack blasted the tornado right in its floating jack-o-lantern face and slowed its frenetic pace, just a little.
Crash stepped up suddenly next to me and gestured at the monster I’d just hit. “Chains of Frost!” Huh, he must have swapped it back in when he shuffled things around to fit that tank build of his.
Ice-blue frozen chains burst from the ground, wrapping around the whistling cyclone and forming shackles around the semi-transparent wrists of its arms, chaining it to the ground. It writhed and screamed, struggling to break free.
I drew my sword and held it upright. “Fire Forge!” I called loudly. The blade of the sword pulsed with bright red light, and as I slammed it into the ground, the attack swallowed the chained tornado in a towering bonfire.
“Shadow Strike!” I heard Terra shout and looked over to see the black tendrils of her powerful attack wrapping around the tornado monster that George had frozen in place. The ropes of black energy squeezed inward and tore apart to shatter the frozen cyclone.
Just then, the second monster burst free of the flames and ice chains with a wounded roar, cycling sluggishly as it floated forward. Crash blasted it with Spectral Blades, and the bright blue attack sliced the cyclone into unraveling puffs of dust that settled slowly to the ground.
“We need to get up there and attack the boss directly,” I said, my breathing a little heavy. “We can’t hang around down here blowing up evil tornadoes all day. Listen, Crash and I will head up top—”
“Hey, hold on. Why me?” Crash said as he tilted his head back to look up. Way, way up. “I’m not fond of heights or falling to my death.”
“You’ll be fine. I believe in you,” I said with a grin. “Anyway, we’ll head up on these stepping stone things while you guys take out the cyclones. George, stay down here and freeze these windy bastards so they can kill them, okay?”
“Fine, but I’m going up with you too,” Terra said with a quick glance at Nova. “If your pet’s staying to help, then Nova can handle the cyclones.”
Nova gasped as a surprised smile spread on her face. “Really? You think I can do it?”
“Yeah, I do,” Terra said as she clapped her sister’s shoulder. “You’ve got this.”
“Hey, that dragon is gonna do the flappy thing!” George shouted as he dove for me. “Cover me, boss!”
I dropped to my hands and knees, shielding George from the heavy blast of wind that flattened down across the arena seconds later. This time I only lost about two percent of my health. I got up and noticed that everyone else had managed to dodge the worst of the blow as well.
“All right, let’s move while the boss is busy,” I said as I looked around for the lowest stepping stone, which appeared to be one about twenty feet away.
“Wait!” Nova said as she quickly cast Feather Fall on me and Crash. “That buff should be good for fifteen minutes, so Terra, yours should still be active. But I’ll keep an eye on you guys in case someone falls, okay?”
“Yeah, let’s not think about that. Thank you,” I said as I took off running.
Crash and Terra took off after me. As we sprinted for the platform, the dragon’s mighty wings flapped twice, generating a swirling cone of dust that touched down and spawned into a cyclone. Hopefully that was the entire pattern, and it would keep spawning one or two monsters at a time until we brought the boss down.
The jumps between the floating platforms were all around five or six feet. Though it didn’t seem like much, I still had to concentrate on making them, because after the first one they were all standing starts. When I’d gotten about halfway up the height of the columns, I looked down and saw that Terra was two platforms behind me, while Crash had just jumped to the third one up. He wobbled a bit when he landed, but before long he straightened with a determined look and jumped again, landing a little smoother. It looked like he was getting the hang of it.
Meanwhile, at ground level, George had already frozen the single evil tornado and Nova was blasting away at it with her staff.
I kept going, leaping from stepping stone to stepping stone until I finally reached one of the highest platforms, about a five-foot jump to the top of one of the columns. The dragon had just floated past the one I landed on, still moving in slow, lazy circles. I got a sense of how big the monster really was from this close — it had to be thirty feet long at least, with a twenty-foot wingspan and a head the size of a small car.
Terra had changed directions slightly on the random scattering of platforms and ended up on a high floating stone near the column to my left. Only a little further down, Crash had managed to close most of the distance and was heading toward the platform closest to the column on my right. At least we’d have decent positions to attack the dragon when it came around.
But before it completed another circle that would bring it past us, the dragon stopped on the far side of the arena and flapped its wings. I looked down to see Nova shielding George from the blast. As she straightened and tilted her face up, the wings started flapping — not two or four, but six times, spawning three fresh cyclone monsters.
“No!” Terra shouted as she scrambled toward the edge of her stone. “Goddamn it, why did it spawn three this time? I have to get back down there!”
“It’s probably a multiplier pattern!” Crash shouted from the top platform he’d just climbed on. “One and two, then one and three. After this, it’ll spawn one again, and then four.”
Okay, four would be a lot. Maybe we should go back down there and help out.
“We’ve got this!” Nova’s voice drifted up to us, tinny and distant even though she’d probably shouted at the top of her lungs. George was already blasting one of the monsters with a massive burst of ice. “Just kill the boss!”
>
As Nova whirled and fired Star Scream at the frozen cyclone, it shattered and a blue glow surrounded her. She’d just leveled up and hit 22.
“Yeah, they have it under control,” I said as I grinned widely. “Let’s smoke this dragon!”
“Right. And let’s do it fast, because I really am not liking the view,” Crash said, looking kind of pale as the dragon started circling again. It would reach Crash’s position first, and he struck a ready position as the creature approached him. “Spectral Blades!” he called out just before the boss reached the stepping stone.
The glowing blue weapons materialized from nothing and sliced down in wicked arcs along the dragon’s body. The creature’s mouth opened, and an earsplitting roar rumbled from its throat. The sound was loud enough to vibrate the stepping stones, and I nearly lost my footing.
“Jesus, why does everything cause damage with this thing, and why does it all have to be indirect damage Sacred Spiral doesn’t reflect?” Crash shouted as he dropped to a knee and grimaced.
“Don’t worry, this boss is going down,” I yelled back as it headed toward me. I’d already decided what to do when it got close, and while I probably wouldn’t kill it with one hit, I’d be able to keep hitting it instead of waiting for it to fly around again and spawn more monsters.
“Elizabeth, retire skill Fire Forge,” I said, since I couldn’t use it up here anyway. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work at first. Even though I wasn’t in direct combat, we were still in the boss battle as a whole. Luck was with me though, as the process began, and I had a few minutes until the dragon got here to wait for the skill to clear and leave an empty slot. While I waited, I went ahead and visualized Two’ Manchu doing his signature move, the one I planned to copy right now.
I drew my sword as the dragon neared and crouched into a starting position, checking my HUD to make sure Fire Forge had been retired. And yep, there was an empty slot available. “Heroic Leap!” I shouted as I sprung into the biggest jump I could imagine.
“You have learned the skill Heroic Leap. It is now available for use,” Elizabeth said as my feet left the platform and my sword started to glow brightly.
I was headed straight for the dragon’s back. As I hit the arc of the jump, I used the slowed momentum of Feather Fall to steer and landed right at the sweet spot between its wings and its head, to plunge the glowing sword into the dragon right at the base of its skull.
The blade drove into the creature all the way to the hilt, fire bursting from the triggered proc, and green-black blood spurted from the wound to spray my arms and face. I held onto the sword’s grip with both hands as the dragon roared and shuddered beneath me. “Take that, you scaly son of a bitch!” I shouted.
“Are you insane?” Terra cried as the dragon kept moving, headed for her position. “Come on, jump over here when it comes by. You can’t stay on that thing.”
“Watch me! Just attack it,” I yelled back, struggling to free my sword. “I’m not letting it spawn any more cyclones.”
“Whatever you say, idiot. Shadow Strike!” Terra pushed her cupped hands out as the dragon came into range, wrapping it with writhing black tentacles. As she fisted her hands and pulled them apart, the dark tendrils of shadow tightened and tore through the creature, gashing its thick skin.
One of its wings ripped off as she completed the attack, and the dragon started to plummet rapidly toward the ground.
Terra yelled something after me, but I couldn’t hear what she said over the whistling rush of air caused by the dragon’s fall. I cursed a blue streak and yanked at my sword, trying to loosen the weapon enough to pull it free and jump off before it landed.
Just then, I heard a shout rising above the roar of the wind. “Feather Fall!”
Glowing white smoke surrounded the thrashing dragon, and the rate of descent slowed instantly.
I would’ve thanked Nova or flashed her a thumbs-up or something, but I was busy wrenching my sword out. It finally came free with a squelching pop and another spray of dark blood, and I walked back several steps along the dragon’s back and drew it around for a strike.
“Revering Vendetta!” I screamed as I took a few running steps and vaulted into the air. The green glow of my sword sent out a flashing pulse of light as I brought it around in a fast arc and sliced down across the dragon. The blade tore through scales, skin, and muscle, releasing blood and gore as the blow came close to severing the beast’s head.
This time, there was no pained roar. The dragon simply stopped moving and drifted down the rest of the way, landing on the ground with a thud.
System message: Your party has completed the Wind level. You have earned 25 percent EXP. Your Amulet of Oblivion has grown in power.
As the text of the message flashed across my screen, my EXP bar filled and Elizabeth chimed in. “Level Up! You have reached level 20. You have gained 20 health and 18 mana. You have gained an additional ten skill slots. You have earned the subclass Night Stalker.”
I blinked in confusion as I staggered down from the dead dragon. “I’ve earned the what and the who, now?” I said, a little dazed from riding a dragon while trying to kill it at the same time.
Before I could figure all that out, Nova rushed over to me and threw her arms around me, startling the rest of the breath from me. “Oh my God, are you okay?” she said. “I really thought you were going to die!”
“Um. Not yet, I guess,” I said as I relaxed and hugged her back. Damn, this felt nice. “But you’re kind of getting dragon blood all over you,” I added.
“I don’t care. Blood washes off.” She squeezed me briefly, stepped back and smiled. “I’m just glad you’re still alive.”
“Yeah, me too. Thanks for that Feather Fall, by the way,” I told her, a little sad the hug was over.
She gave a shaky nod. “I didn’t know if that would actually work.”
“Well, I’m glad it did,” I said as I looked around for the others. “Now, where’s—”
“Boss!” A furry shape streaked at me like a bullet and smashed into my chest. I grabbed it instinctively, catching George before he could tumble to the ground. “You’re not dead. Holy shit, that was awesome. You rode a fucking dragon!”
I managed a grin and gave him a quick scratch. “Yeah, it was tons of fun. You should try it sometime.”
“Not this little black and white rabbit,” George said with a flash of bunny teeth. “Okay, okay. You’re alive, the love fest is over. You can put me down now.”
I laughed and bent my knees, opening my hands so George could hop to the ground. As I straightened and went back for my sword, Crash and Terra came running across the arena toward the downed dragon. They both slowed their pace when they saw me standing there.
“Yes, I’m alive,” I said as I gripped the sword and yanked it free of the steaming body. “Yes, I rode a dragon, and yes I am awesome. Also, I could really use a bath.”
“Dude,” Crash said as he reached me and clapped my shoulder. “What you said.”
Terra snorted and rolled her eyes. “I guess I’m supposed to be impressed?” she said, just before a crooked smile twitched across her lips. “Okay, fine, I am. Nice move. But I could’ve killed you when I dropped that thing, you know.”
“Good thing you didn’t. We all have to work together, right?” I said as I shook my sword a few times, trying to get most of the blood off the blade. I was almost tempted to run the water level again, just so I could get cleaned up. But it was too big of a risk — especially when we only had one more level to go.
We were going to beat this dungeon. I just knew it.
“At least it gave us an exit this time,” Crash said as he pointed to a glowing portal in the middle of the arena. “Let’s get out of here, huh?”
Terra straightened from the ground, holding a long, cloth-wrapped bundle that must’ve been the drop from the boss. “Yeah, I’m good to go.”
Turned out everyone was, so we headed through the portal. I couldn’t wait to tak
e a breather and check out the bombshell Elizabeth had dropped on me — ten extra skill slots and a subclass. Level 20 was gonna be sweet.
28
Once we hit the main chamber, everyone headed straight for the bonfire and pretty much collapsed. I took a minute to pop up my stat window and check my totals since hitting level 20:
* * *
CHARACTER: Kahn
Alignment: Neutral
Level: 20
Health: 421
Mana: 355
Synchronization: 90%
Strength: 20
Dexterity: 20
Constitution: 20
Wisdom: 20
Intelligence: 20
* * *
WHOA, that was a lot of health and mana. I was starting to feel a little OP, especially when I checked through everyone else’s stats and saw that I had the highest health and mana totals. But that was mostly because of my all-20 stats. I also noticed that everyone had gained a level during the boss fight, so now Crash was 19, George was 15, Terra was 21, and Nova was the highest at 22.
Then I switched over to my skills tab and grinned like a crazy person when I saw that I had twenty active skill slots. “Holy shit!” I said out loud. “I can’t believe I actually got ten more skill slots. This is awesome.”
Terra and Nova glanced at each other, and Crash’s eyes bugged out at me. “What? Ten more, as in now you have twenty?” he blurted. “How the hell did you do that?”
“I don’t know. Apparently, it just happens when you hit level 20,” I said as I started moving a few of my inactive skills into the active slots, like Fire Forge, Blade Rush, and Concussive Arrow. While I hadn’t needed it much yet, I had the active slots open and who knew if the next fight would need a slow? As it was the only one I had at the moment, best to slot it then not be able to call it up in the middle of a battle.
Soulstone: Oblivion (World of Ruul Book 3) Page 18
