Knives & Levels - Chapter 114

Colt's first reaction to seeing his friends speeding down the hill and gathering enemies was preparation. If his guess were correct, he had about 15 minutes before they would reach the Academy at the speed they were going. Behind them, the blizzard blazed forward, spiraling but outsped by them, yet still rushing forward. If they arrived in 15 minutes, he figured the blizzard might arrive in 30 to an hour.

They’d be clashing with the Phantoms already out there when they arrived. By the minute, more of the ghosts were trickling out of the Academy, gathering on the wall near the coming storm. At this rate, there would be hundreds out there in an hour.

Luckily, though, they weren't all congregated in the same place. Still, that amount of phantoms going to the defense of the Academy meant that if they all managed to swarm his friends, his friends were, without a doubt, goners. They couldn't fight off that many. It was simply too thick a number of enemies to cut through.

So Colt had to plan.

First, he sat down where he was, laid out his knives, and sank into meditation. Using his Cut to push back against the Edicts, trying to drain him as he tried to settle his soul.

It wasn't a haphazard attempt at healing it. To fully recover his scorched wounds that the two combating Edicts had left, he would need to sit in the sauna for at least a day or so. But here, it was a quick patch job. Balancing where he could and preparing his mind. The smell of musty books and dust left in this desolate Academy was his sole companion as he took each inhale, trying to calm the ravages of his soul, prepare his mind for the coming fight, and bring himself to a different elevation and mindset that he would need.

It was a preparatory move that took less time than he would have liked. But he maximized the time he had. At the end of the ten minutes, he broke his concentration because the Phantom said, "Uh, your friends are almost here. Are you going to do anything?”

Colt didn’t respond, but instead raced down the corridor, using bursts of Movement until he reached the first floor, then, finding a wall, dashed through it with a Phantom’s Gambit, finding himself in the courtyard itself.

One of the Phantoms immediately turned his way; its jaw unhinging as snow driven by the increasing wind almost obscured it. It raised a hand, and a purplish bolt formed, then flew towards him. Colt ignored the blow, darting to the side with a burst of Movement, rebounding, and redirecting himself directly at it with a pull of Momentum. Every step resonated between the two, building speed, until he was upon it, bisecting the Phantom with a cut.

The ground before him shook as he hit too hard, cleaving past and leaving a small crevice in the snow and ice. He spun, looking at the phantom.

It was half-disassembled, stitching together, but not yet dead.

With an afterthought, Colt sent a golden wave its way and finished it off, getting a nice notification a second later that he'd slain a monster.

———

You have leveled up!

You have 3 Stat points to spend. You have gained 1 point of Dexterity and 1 point of Soul.

———

Colt spent the points as fast as he got them. All three went to Soul. His soul was damaged, and this would be a race to see how much power he could output to fight the enemies he was fighting. He would shove away into his reserves every single bit of every level he got.

Maybe Soul wasn't the best stat for every person, but for him, and with the tools and weapons he had, it was, especially due to those ancient edicts which seemed to rely heavily on the Soul itself.

Colt stalked forward; some of the Phantoms rushing towards the wall now had their full attention on him after the burst of Soul. 

Do this fast.

He darted forward with another burst, cutting down a Phantom in his way, but not finishing it off. Another short burst, time slowing as he let himself go forward, each one after the other faster than before. In a second, he found himself in a thicker concentration of Phantoms, fighting his way through with a series of twists, bursts of speed, and Cuts. 

Spells rained down after him, but they couldn’t keep pace with his frenzied movement, and in seconds, he’d crossed his way to the wall and was able to phase through it.

Colt wiped sweat from his brow, feeling the chill creep into his bones as he was once more outside the Academy… Only, this wasn't the place to rest. He saw movement above as the Phantoms marked him as a target. If he stayed here, they would rain down spells and attack him. His breath came in gasps, but he was not yet done, flashing forward along the wall until he reached the gate.

There, he saw his allies still rushing down the slope… In the distance came the Yeti’s roar, following behind as the blizzard headed toward them. It’d picked up speed from when he saw it in the window; much closer now, a roaring tempest bigger than before.

“Guys!” Colt called as the sled broke to a stop, skidding and kicking up a metric ton of snow, then slipping and spilling everyone within the glorified steel death trap onto the wasteland with a sudden jerk.

He was there in a second next to Nate, shaking the soldier and helping him to his feet.

“It was faster than we guessed,” Nate groaned, eyes towards the blizzard. “We need to hide.” There was a big bruise on the soldier's head, and his eyes were slightly glazed. He’d overextended himself while fleeing from the boss.

“That’s not our only issue,” Colt glanced back at the Academy—Phantoms were starting to pour out of the gate like ants from a hill. A good number of them, about 15, had arrived. On his own, it would be an unbeatable amount. He could see a couple of professors amongst them, who would be his priority target. But as he took in his companions, they had also gained a number of levels, maybe it was possible?

“That doesn’t look good.” Nate agreed, plodding over to the sled and yanking it out of the snow. In his hand, formed into a hammer, which he set on his shoulder.

The rest of them got up, with Colt bouncing between them to ensure each was fine. He felt a rush of joy that each of them was still living, still breathing, even after he'd been forced to leave them during the fight with the Yeti. They looked none the worse, except for Nick, who was clearly in pain as he tried to reach his feet. Colt helped him up and then gestured to the phantoms.

He pointed a couple out and said, "Nick, those," gesturing at the Professors. "I need you to target those specifically with your arrows. Curse them as much as you can and disrupt as much of their magic as you can, because those are going to be the most dangerous threat."

“We just got here and we’re in another fight?” Nick asked, rubbing his forehead.

“Welcome to being in a dungeon,” Colt clapped him on the back and moved on to the blue-haired mage, making sure she was fine. He raised his voice as he spoke, seeing the phantoms move closer by the second. They had to prepare now. "Julia, they're weak against water-based spells. Their Edicts are contested by yours, I believe. If you can fight the same targets as Nick, that will make the rest easier to accomplish."

Then he took in the rest of the fodder. The students, if one could be killed with two slashes of his knife, would mean that he would need about 20 slashes, which was a lot, but each would yield a level.

He calculated it as both Sarah and Nate looked at him. Ah. They were waiting for their roles. “You two are the same as me. You're going to help me take out the students; they look less complete than the professors. I will take them out only if I see an opportunity to go for a professor. You, on the other hand, are going to help me target the fodder. The more of them we clean up, the more we can reduce. The idea here is that we need to kill these guys quickly because there will be hundreds more past the gate. I think they're spilling out to defend the wall against the Yeti. Once we clear them, we’ll dash to the Academy and hide inside.”

He took one last glance at the blizzard flowing down the hill. It would be minutes before it arrived? Maybe? And with it, a boss he still didn’t feel ready to tackle.

It was a simple plan. There were a lot of places for it to go wrong, as simple as it was. His friends had never fought this enemy type before. Even he had had some trouble beforehand, but with his two Edicts now in balance, he felt a certain confidence. Whether it was overconfidence or justified ability, knowing that he'd slain them before, at the very least, they would be capable of putting up a good fight.

He took a deep breath as more of the monsters arrived. They were already beginning to cast spells, meaning now was the time for the strike.

"Go," he said.

In a flash of movement, Colt popped into the horde of ghosts and began slicing. His blade sliced through a phantom student even as it began to form an arcane glyph. He felt a burst of cold in his side as something slammed into him, but quickly activated Phantom's Gambit; the object passed the rest of the way through him. A shard of ice?

Colt returned to his natural state and finished the Phantom with a rapid second cut, only to see another reward.

———

You have leveled up!

You have 3 Stat points to spend. You have gained 1 point of Dexterity and 1 point of Soul.

———

Like before, all the extra points went straight into Soul, but he dismissed his notifications with the hectic movement and the plethora of spells already going. It would be too much to manage that along with simply surviving.

Colt moved where he could, flashing like a well-placed knife around the battlefield. Each blow came with an infusion of his Edicts, using Movement and Momentum in conjunction.

With both flowing into one another, he felt like an omnipresent force on the battlefield. Not only could he move incredibly fast to the point where everything felt like a snail’s pace around him for bursts of time, but he could also move exactly how he needed. Able to now jerk his body and shift the Momentum of his force in directions on a whim.

For one second, he could be slashing at one thing. In another, he could be far to the right, trying to take out another phantom at its knees. 

The two Edicts, in conjunction, not only boosted his maneuverability but also gave his slices a speed and a strength he had never seen before. It was slightly wasted on the fact that these were incorporeal beings. So he didn't lean as much into the Momentum aspect, which would be far more useful against something with strong defenses or flesh. Here, relying on the Yeti knife and its inlaid cold Edicts was the trick to maximizing damage.

Every kill built his Momentum, too. Making the next slice easier to place and more critical to damage. The battle itself had a Momentum and flow, turning him into a tide of death that wrought the destruction of his foes.

The only cost was his Soul, depleting away at a rate he’d never seen before. Now that he was able to weave all three edicts together, each slice felt like a chunk of him taken away. And the strain of it on his already wounded Soul made blood run from his nose and eyes.

There wasn’t any choice but to continue.

Thankfully, though, this wasn’t a fight he faced alone. Julia slammed Phantoms with her water and ice spears. Where the cold hit, it wrecked the phantoms, condensing them down and making their intangible form break and weaken. It was particularly effective against the Professors as she targeted them and made them lose concentration on their spells. They could take one of Colt’s cuts and still fire off a spell, but if Julia hit it with a concentrated spear of ice? The spell was gone.

All around Colt was chaos. Flashes of fire, arcs of lightning, shards of ice, and blasts of cold everywhere dominated the battlefield and meant that one wrong step was going to hurt.

Lights flashed around him as different colored arrows barreled into the Phantoms, disrupting them and burning away their cold; it wasn’t quite as effective as Colt’s Yeti knife, but it was better than his Skyheart dagger… And then there was Nate, who had a new trick up his sleeve. His axe was wreathed in a blue flame, which did the most damage of all, dissolving phantoms in a single hit or two, despite still being levels below Colt.

They’d gained levels. Just not the same as him, hunting in the Tundra had been scarcer, but they appeared to have advanced themselves regardless. One by one, they killed more Phantoms. Though Colt received minor wounds as spells flared and damaged him in the process, it became clear things weren’t going according to plan.

More phantoms appeared, and the blizzard was an overwhelming gale of white and red, almost upon them.

Their initial plan of simply killing these things and then rushing into the walls was a faulty one. They couldn't get through them fast enough. They just took too many hits, and they would become overwhelmed as they ran out of firepower. Colt screamed out his next plan, his voice carrying as he used Cut to project it through the increasing gale around them.

"Push for the academy!" he yelled. "Don’t stop fighting, but fight to move ahead!”

It was a simple order, but his friends caught it, and so the tactics shifted. Instead of concentrating on killing things and stacking them on levels, everything became about pushing through.

Julia took the center, forming a bubble that they ran into. Nick darted out of the water barrier and shot arrows. If anything got too close, Colt or Nate would step out and dispatch it, with the help of Sarah, who had the hardest time fighting the phantoms.

Step by step, they made their way past the gate and into the Academy grounds itself. Spells flared against Julia's barrier as the woman concentrated, gasping as she threw her all into her magical might. In the Academy grounds, the number of Phantoms let up. Many of them redirected towards the walls—the blizzard had arrived, its wind whipping around as the sound of a Yeti screeching filled the air and diverted attention from them to another threat.

They reached the Academy itself—but there was no door in sight.

So Colt did what came naturally, and slashed through the dark stone exterior with four strokes of his golden Cut. Then Nate smashed it inward with his hammer.

Just like that, through the power of teamwork, they had a door.

In the distance, Colt made out the shape of a Yeti on the walls, roaring as it tore through some of the Phantoms there. Making easy work of them.

“How did it follow us so quickly?” Nate shook his head, retreating into the Academy with the rest.

“Doesn’t matter, keep moving,” Colt said, directing them in—the Phantoms stopped following, instead rushing to deal with the Yeti on their wall now, leaving the intruders to the Academy alone as they flagged it as a much graver threat. That didn’t mean their group took the reprieve for granted. They sprinted deep into the Academy for a good thirty minutes before finally finding a small nook to settle down in and shove the door closed behind them.

It was a secure little library, with red feathered armchairs and a burnt-out fireplace—a perfect place to take a minute, breathe, and relax.

Nate collapsed into a chair, staring up at the ceiling. Julia lay on the ground—Sarah lingered near the door, her fists tight, and Nick leaned against the fireplace, puffing away, but safe. A little hurt, but alive and safe.

“We lived,” Nick said, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it.

“Yes, we did, and now, we’ve come out the other side stronger than ever,” Colt replied as he shifted his attention over to the key pieces of information he’d disabled during the fighting.

Just how many levels have I gained?