He frowned at the thought of what was waiting for him in Akila. Kaiser Wrecker and his gang of thugs were only looking for ways for make themselves prosper, no matter who suffered for it.
Hawke didn’t know if he was strong enough to stop them, but he intended to try.
Two
“I believe you,” Hawke said in a low voice. “I’d believe you even more if you hadn’t said the exact same thing a mile and a half ago.”
“We’re not flying over anything until we fix the saddle.”
“Yeah, with your mouth. Probably end up biting off one of my arms or legs, and then I’d hit the ground at terminal velocity, except I’d be pre-mutilated.”
Blaze laughed, sounding like a cartoon child. Apparently, the idea of him biting Hawke’s arm off while he fell to his death was hilarious. Hawke shrugged and continued to follow the long pale form of his adopted child through the dark forest. He’d waited until the caravan had made camp to go look for the ley line. The area was probably safe, but they were in Evergreen Circle territory, and even if the ancient sentient trees didn’t have a problem with travelers, there were dozens of Woodling tribes out there, some of which liked to take a swipe at strangers. He’d wanted to keep an eye on the wagon train until they were in a defensible position.
And if someone wants to take a swipe at me and my fox-dragon, they are welcome to try.
He had formed a two-person party with his furry buddy, which meant Blaze was operating at seventeenth level and Hawke was at twentieth, the maximum he could reach in the Common Realm. He was bumping into the level cap already, which made him theoretically as powerful as any being in the world. Theoretically. A level thirty Adventurer would have access to many more spells and abilities, not to mention better gear, which meant that they would be powerful enough to kick Hawke’s butt. But he didn’t think high-level travelers were thick on the ground in the Shadowy Foothills, and he wasn’t worried about a random encounter.
The woods around them were still recovering from the Revenant’s blight. They’d spotted several dead trees as they searched for the ley line. From what they’d seen so far, almost a fifth of all the plant life in the Shadowy Foothills had been killed by the Undead energies infecting them. As the summer continued, all that lifeless wood was going to become bone-dry and turn much of the forest into a giant tinderbox. If he worked out a deal with the Circle before then, maybe he could do something about it. A massive forest fire would devastate the Foothills and spread into his Domain. It was in everybody’s best interest to keep that from happening.
“Only took us half an hour to find it.”
Yeah, sorry, Auntie Nyx.
the sword said primly.
Point, Hawke replied with a grin as he examined the ley line Blaze had found.
Ley lines were conduits of magical energy. They linked places of power together, and could be used in a number of ways, like, for example, serving as the site for a new Mana Node. To the naked eye, there was nothing unusual about the patch of forest they had reached, but Hawke could feel its energy, humming like a power line. He turned on his Advanced Mana Sight and the line came into view like a fiery torrent of energy that was moving in a perfectly straight line. This particular power pathway ran roughly toward the northwest. It wasn’t linked to any points in his Domain, at least not yet. The energy coursing through it was pure Mana, unattuned to any Elements or Forces. That would make things easier.
“Okay. Now we just have to find a good spot to place the seed,” Hawke said.
“Okay, let’s check it out.”
Ley lines were unnaturally straight, but the path to the hill it bisected wasn’t. Too many trees in the way. He and the thirteen-foot Drakofox had to skirt through a section of underbrush too thick to cross, a section where several dead trees had fallen against each other, making a mess of crisscrossing trunks. It took a few minutes before they reached the foot of the hill. As they got closer, Blaze froze.
Hawke drew the sword and cast the first of his buffs on himself as he saw something rise behind the hill. And rise. And rise some more, until whatever that was stood taller than the hill.
His Dark Vision let him see, but only in shades of neon-blue. The giant looming over them had tree trunks for arms and legs, and a thick spherical mass of thorny vines for a torso. It had no neck, or a head, either: a pair of glowing eyes looked out of the upper part of the rounded torso. Two arms long enough to serve as the wings of an airliner ended in four claws the size of medium trees.
Terror Tree (Undead Fae Elemental)
Level 16 Elite Aberration
Health 6,400 Mana 1,600 Endurance n/a
Well, eff my life, Hawke thought as a fist the size of a tiny house came crashing down on him.
He leaped away with inches to spare, feeling sharp branches cut the air right behind him as the wooden limb smashed into the ground like a wrecking ball. The massive impact pounded a crater into the ground and made the whole area shake, toppling down a few more dead trees and maybe a couple of live ones.
The Terror Tree recoiled from the painful attack, giving Hawke enough time to finish buffing himself and go on the offensive. He and Blaze cut loose with several anti-Undead spells. Some four thousand damage ‘units’ exploded upon the reanimated Elemental, plus another two thousand from the Drakofox’s breath attack. Celestial- and Order-enhanced energies burned through the woody mass of the monster. Its Health dropped by almost half – and sprang back to full a moment later.
WTF? Hawke had time to think before the monster said a word in a language he didn’t understand – and the earth came alive in the entire area.
Grasping hands of earth and stone spikes exploded under Hawke, grabbing and stabbing him; the attacks inflicted hundreds of Death-infused damage per hit. His armor was punctured in multiple places. Dozens of elemental fingers wrapped themselves around his ankles and squeezed them with crushing force. A few others held on to his shield, trying to drag him down where more gripping limbs waited to immobilize him. His Mana Shield shifted the damage to his energy pool, which spared his Health and kept his limbs hale, at the price of losing magical energy. His Mana pool was already down to half.
Hawke swung Saturnyx into the ground, activating Elemental Burst. A mini-explosion of Light energy seared a twenty-foot radius around him, destroying all the Elemental limbs. He used the freedom to fire off more combat spells while Blaze kept tearing into the giant with Mind-Fire and magic. Once again, the monster healed itself with impossible speed. One of its massive limbs moved with shocking speed and struck the Drakofox. Blaze went flying into the forest, smashing through several trees before disappearing from sight. Hawke heard a cry of pain in his head. Blaze was alive, but he’d been badly hurt.
Damn you. Hawke charged the monster, ignoring the stone spikes that kept springing under his feet and destroying the earth hands with spells or swings of his bla
de. He was running low on power, so he had to leap on a boulder, away from the spikes and earth limbs, trade Saturnyx for a Major Mana Potion and down it in a couple of quick gulps.
Be careful, Hawke told him as he stood on the boulder and fired off his spell rotation at the wood giant, only to watch it regain all its lost Health a moment later. The only time he had seen something like that was during his fight with a demon-Undead hybrid who had drawn power directly from a Dungeon Core implanted in its body. He could think of only one source of energy that could be doing the same thing here.
Sure enough, he saw that the Tree Terror was standing right on top of it. He reactivated Advanced Mana Sight and saw exactly what he had been afraid he would: the ley line was being drained of its power by the giant monster. Hawke and Blaze had a few thousand Mana between the two of them, but they couldn’t compete with a ley line, which was pouring several thousand Mana per second into the Undead Elemental. That was a neat trick: Hawke couldn’t do that; even if he had learned a Node Mastery ability that let him tap into ley lines, his limit would have been a few hundred Mana per day. How was this bastard doing it?
Only way to find out was to watch the monster in action. Hawke and Blaze hit the Undead tree with another round of spells while avoiding its flailing fists. Hawke also had to contend with the Earth spell that kept turning the ground into another enemy. It was hard to keep track of Advanced Mana Sight at the same time, but as the monster healed itself a third time, he managed to see what was going on.
The Terror Tree had created a Mana conduit to feed on the ley line. The process was very much like a vampire’s parasitic draining, just on a much larger scale. Watching how the monster took the power it needed, Hawke came to understand Undeath. Unlike regular Elements, it didn’t create anything, it only stole. It was Chaos’ bastard’s child, taking energy from the system to ensure its destruction. It was as if entropy were aware and malicious.
The realization took a couple of seconds, and they cost him another chunk of energy when a new set of spikes and grasping hands pummeled him. He had to leap onto a nearby tree and climb some distance up to avoid them. The tree began to sway back and forth as the summoned Earth limbs tore into its roots. He’d better do something soon.
We’re on our way, Tava said through the sword. Luna and I. Korgam is keeping watch on the camp.
Stay airborne and keep your distance, Hawke replied. And for God’s sake make sure you’re strapped in tight!
He hadn’t bothered to take Blaze’s saddle along for the walk, because it was clear that trying to fight from it was too risky. And now Tava was flying to his rescue; at least she could shoot at the monster from a distance, but she could easily fall off the harness. A fall wasn’t automatically fatal even at terminal velocity, not for Adventurers whose bodies had been reinforced far beyond human limits, but it wasn’t something you could shrug off. Even high-level Warriors could die from a long drop if they hit the ground at the wrong angle.
I don’t remember telling Tava we needed help, he thought as he braced himself and leapt for another tree. A moment later, the one he’d used as a perch toppled over.
Hawke didn’t say anything to that; he had other things on his mind, like the Terror Tree stomping toward him, ignoring Blaze’s spells and Mind flames. As long as the giant creature stayed within a hundred feet of the ley line, it could continue to steal its energy and use it for healing. And also for casting spells: it spoke another word of power and Hawke was enveloped in an aura of Undeath that began to drain his energy.
This was just supposed to be a quiet stroll in the evening! Hawke protested as he watched his Mana pool drop toward zero.
Three
Hawke leaped from the tree and used his shield as an improvised sled to toboggan down the slope of the hill. He had to get out of the spell’s range or he was done. In fifteen seconds or so, he’d be OOM – out of Mana, an old gaming term that meant you were screwed, since not being able to cast spells usually ended with your Health being zeroed out next.
The mad slide would have been fun at any other time, but the bumps and leaps on the way down only added to the sense of urgency. The Terror Tree’s spell was still with him, eating away at his Mana and promising to do the same to his Health as soon as it got through to it. He managed to retrieve a Major Mana Potion and downed most of it just before he smashed into a tree. The impact made him choke on the rest of the syrupy liquid. He coughed and spat while he heard the sounds of battle above his position. From the whoosh of flames, Luna had arrived and used her own brand of dragon breath on the monster.
Hawke had ended up at the bottom of a ravine, about fifty feet below the hillside where the Terror Tree stood, beset by the pair of Drakofoxes. His Mana jumped up, although he’d spilled too much of the potion to get its full effect. The only good news was that his slide into the ravine had taken him beyond the spell’s range, removing the Mana drain. Time to get back into action.
The ley line ran across the ravine. His Advanced Mana Sight spotted it and he stepped toward it. This section was ‘downstream’ from the monster, and only a trickle of power was running down it. He focused on the spot, about sixty feet from his position, where the Terror Tree had stabbed the line with an energy shunt. Chugging another Major Mana Potion got him close to full; he studied the way the monster was draining power – and tried to copy it.
Chaos Funnel learning attempt failed!
Prerequisite not met: Unlocking Chaos magic.
Hawke cursed under his breath as he ran up the hill, heading toward the battle. Blaze and Luna – with Tava perched precariously on the red Drakofox – continued to circle the Terror Tree from a distance, raining death and destruction on it. The giant monster had used the same Mana drain spell on them, but they had used Healing to remove it before it could wipe out their energy reserves. Only problem was, neither Blaze nor Luna could use potions to restore their power, and one look at the stat boxes floating over their heads told Hawke that they were running low.
The Terror Monster ignored Hawke and began to cast another spell, one that took more than a single word. After seeing what the quickie spells were like, Hawke feared that it was going to be deadly – the fact that his Advanced Mana Sight showed him that hundreds of Mana units were going into it confirmed that feeling. The ground spell had finally expired, so he was free to rush forward toward the giant creature, whose Health was still at full. From the way the giant was looking at its flying attackers, they were going to be on the receiving end of the spell.
He reached the energy conduit and reached a Mana tendril toward it as he studied the Chaos-attuned power behind the draining magic. He had recently unlocked Order magic, and felt that side of him rebel against what he was about to do. Every time you tried to bring two opposing Elements or Forces into the same space – his body in this case – the conflict between them risked tearing it apart. Hawke had managed to do it twice before – Light and Darkness, Life and Death – and in doing so had learned about the complex network that governed the magical energies coursing through him.
He had never dealt with two opposing Forces before, though. They were more primal and inherently powerful than Elements, and also had what he would call a personality, a desire for something more than simple existence. Chaos and Order wanted opposite things, and when Hawke tried to bring them together, they pulled in opposite directions, burning and freezing him from the inside out. His Health bar dropped by half in one second; the damage ignored the Mana Shield protecting him. He was going to die, and his friends with him.
No choice. Hawke activated Timeless Mind and the world around him seemed to freeze, although it was him who had stepped out of the normal flow of events. His body was paralyzed, but so were the two opposite Forces beginning to split him in two. Unfortunately, doing so came with a price:
Timeles
s Mind has triggered a Side Effect: Slowed Time (1%).
Slowed Time: You are out of synch with the normal flow of time. You move, act, and perceive the world 1% more slowly than normal. This will affect your reaction time and initiative in combat. Additionally, every time you trigger a new Side Effect, there is a 25% chance that it will be an aggravated version of Slowed Time, increasing the effect by an additional 1%.
This is a permanent effect.
Sumbitch. Nothing he could do about that, so Hawke tried to make the best use of what he had bought at the price of being slowed down for the rest of his life.
Root Chakra! The anchoring node of his personal energy network was the only thing that might save him, except he hadn’t opened it yet. He desperately tried to do so, unlocking the complex puzzle at the base of his spine. Rushing the complex process rarely worked, but he forced it, pouring Mana through the body Node. He felt something give down there, but he wouldn’t know if the Chakra was open until he released the time-freeze and saw – and felt – what he had done. One thing he was sure of, whether he succeeded or failed, it was going to hurt. A lot.
Here goes nothing, he thought, and let time flow normally again.
The hurting part happened right on schedule; every nerve in his lower body exploded. The sensation was similar to being kicked in the groin and ass, being stabbed in the kidneys, and having lava injected into his veins. Like all those things combined, except worse. His legs stopped working and he fell, mercifully landing on his face instead of his ass, which was on fire, perhaps literally. It took everything he had to look at the notification through the tears of pain half-blinding him:
Congratulations! You have acquired access to Chaos magic.
You have learned a new spell: Chaos Funnel.
Guilds at War: The LitRPG Saga Continues Page 2
