Magic Breaker Ch 52-54

Chapter 52: Surviving

/I was there. I saw Ion get burnt alive by Respitia’s Paladin. Fuck, what a sight it was. The rookie wasn’t even past level 20 yet, y’know? And got roasted by someone over the third threshold. Brutal.

The smite was so strong that the ground cracked. It would’ve killed me. But Ion? Nah. That monster’s a different breed. You shoulda been there. Seen those eyes. 

No, I know Ion will be back. And I think it’s a real good idea to keep away from the church of Respitia. No amount of healing can buy your life back when the little Magic Breaker comes for you./

-Leonard Zurok, lv. 29 climber

- - - 

Two days later, and I’m walking again. It takes another day until I’m healed enough to consider myself “healthy”. It’s given other humans time to catch up… but I don’t think the tower compares us. Not in that way, at least. Otherwise, I should’ve gotten more for reaching level 10 in [Suppression].

Why do I think so? 

No one else in the party has a skill at level 10. Not any of the aliens, not any of the humans, not even Sylves, even though her affinity with her class is probably insane. There’s probably some kind of bottleneck before specific milestone levels, and, well, ten is the most obvious one, if the wider universe uses a decimal based system.

I breathe. 

It’s okay. Having to pour all my mana into healing is just fine. I don’t mind at all. 

At least my eye is mostly better, though it heals far slower than the rest of my body. I think that the lovely Eye’s avatar that branded me probably added something to make it take longer to heal. It hurts, but I can deal with that. So what if I’m in pain? Nothing new. 

What are my immediate objectives? 

Revenge. That [Darkbreaker] is gonna get it. Then, of course, healing Sylves’ arm. Maybe I messed up the order of those two, but it’s okay. Learning more magic is another one. Climbing higher. Messing up the plans of some of the Eyes that annoyed me. 

I look forward.

[Cave Crawler lv. 13]

The thing is already pathetically weak compared to me. My mana roils, and for the first time in days, I get to cast something that isn’t focussed on healing. [Selection] latches onto it, and [Suppression] flows along the link like a slick rope of oil. The bug stops screeching, suddenly unable to move. 

I stab a knife through its head. Well, what seems to be its head. It thrashed, but after a second stab, stops.

[You have killed a lv. 13 Cave Crawler]

Dar looks at me. “The way you fight is terrifying,” he says. 

“Sure,” I reply. Says the wulven warrior made from muscle and wild ferocity. 

He gives me a long look, then smiles a feral smile. “Can your skill make someone stronger, too?” 

I tilt my head, just a little. Have they caught on? Do they know that the duel was, perhaps, not entirely legitimate? “What if it can?” I ask.

Dar’s grin grows wider. “Use it on me,” he says. “I wish to know what it feels like.”

For a few moments, I consider it. Long enough for them to kill another bug. They’re big and aggressive, which is sad. I like bugs, usually. Just maybe not this close to me, when they want to bite my face off. “Alright,” I eventually say, and [Selection] reaches the wulven.

Something flows back towards me. A bit of power, of intent, of strength. I tilt my head. “What’s that?” I ask.

“... [Blooded],” Dar answers. He’s quiet about it. Quieter than usual. “It seems our skills interact.”

“What does it do?” I asked.

Dar breathes, drawing in a heaving of air, then pushing it out. “Many things. It lets me recognize my blood-siblings, like Opal. It lets me get a glimpse of who they are. Of the vow we’ve made.” His eyes shake a little.

“You’re scared of me,” I note.

A barking laugh escapes his throat. “Yes,” he rumbles. “Yes, I am.”

“Why?”

“I refuse to tell you,” Dar says.

A small smile blossoms on my face. “You’re silly,” I say. Then, gently, I reach out with [Suppression]. “My first skill is a targeting ability. It’s generally really sneaky, but apparently, there’s a bit more to it than just targeting.”

The wulven shivers for just a brief moment. “Apparently,” he murmurs.

“This second skill,” I explain, “is what I can use to affect someone’s capabilities.” I reach out, and cast it. My skill impacts their skin, unfurling like a lotus flower, and blossoms. I can see it better now that I’ve had so much time to practice my mana sense. At least the healing was good for that. 

When it applies, I [Suppress] Dar’s fear, their hesitation, and even try to target their weakness.

A moment passes, and I can feel the wulven’s heart beat. A side effect of [Blooded], maybe? It lets me tell a lot about him, and some of those emotions bleed through. Battle lust. Fearlessness.

He looks at me and the tension has bled from his face. “This is good,” he growls. “Better than I anticipated. I feel more ready for bloodshed, more prepared. Do keep it active, companion of Opal.”

“Even if I need to keep the targeting spell, too?” I ask.

Reluctantly, Dar nods. “I cannot feel my fear right now. So it is of no matter.”

I smile and nod, then push deeper into the caverns with the wulven. There are bugs to clear.

- - -

After a day of hunting, we return to the others in the camp. I was out with Dar, the others also splitting into groups. Since the wulven is still getting more of a benefit from hunting than I am, I instead focus on using every ounce of mana I have, acting as a support and practicing.

It’s kinda fun. I push [Solidification] by creating a little sphere of mana, then changing its shape back and forth. A needle, a tiny rubber ducky, a javelin, a cube, a sphere, tetrahedron, octahedron… So on and so forth. When that gets boring, I heal my skin a little, and when I’m low on mana, I trace the inscriptions on the mana maze.

That’s what I’m doing now, too. The others sit and eat, while I trace those runes, over and over. They’re an array, I’m sure by now. Half of them act as little levers and conditionals, establishing zones where mana is harder to control - zones I’ve not even reached yet, deeper inside the cube. Some others work to make it durable, and some others ensure it remains stable and able to dissipate anything inside it.

The thing is a marvel of engineering, and I’m so pleased with it. What a good investment.

Another day passes. I practice. Every moment I have, there’s an orb hovering above my hand, slowly changing shape. Healing my eye feels weird, my skin crawling across my skull. The others hate seeing it, so I only do it when they’re asleep. But we survive. We grow.

[Inscription 3 > 4]

[Flesh Restoration 4 > 5]

It’s routine. A slow one, but we live. It gets a little more exciting when the first bounty hunters find us.

Chapter 53: Hunted

Thatch spots them first. Sees them through the darkness with that ocular skill of his. I kinda wanna steal it, but I also know it doesn’t quite suit me. That thought gets discarded when he holds up a hand. “Someone’s approaching us,” he says.

It can’t be the sumeen party. Paulino left us a while ago, taking their earth mage with him. They haven’t visited us, even once, and their debt to us is more than repaid. No, I’m pretty sure this is someone else.

Gently, the orb at my side becomes a long needle. “How many?” I ask.

He narrows his eyes some. “Hard to tell,” he says. “At this distance, the shapes blend into each other. Four at least, maybe six.”

Something tells me they don’t mean well.

Wait.

Something tells me?

Yeah right. I focus in on that sense, on that distant tingling. It’s on my skin, the same way my mana prickled when the blob of darkness snuck under my skin. The same way it tickled just before the arrow hit Inu. And I find something.

Mana is prickling against my skin. Tiny bits of it, poking me. Giving me just a little bit of intel, a vague sense of foreboding. It’s unreliable. It’s janky. But it’s undeniably real.

“Snow,” Sylves hisses. 

Right. Something to investigate, just not right now. I focus. “Yeah,” I say. “Bad news. I don’t think this is gonna be pleasant.”

Thatch looks at me and nods. “Yeah, agreed.” 

“Wait,” Opal says. “How do you know?”

“[Piercing Gaze] doesn’t say what I can and can’t pierce,” he says, then shrugs. “So, I pierced their intentions. They’re bad, for reference.”

Norman snorts. “You’re all ridiculous,” he says.

“Your skill made me forget you were there at all,” Richard notes. “Stealthy human.” 

Inu knocks against her armor, resonance ringing through it. “Focus,” she says. “What do we do?”

I blink. “We kill them,” I say. It should be obvious, no?

“What if they’re high level?” Norman asks. 

“... We kill them?” I suggest. 

Dar laughs at that, though I suppress the sound from a bellow to a quiet laugh. “Opal’s friend is right,” the wulven says. “We fight. We kill. That is all there is to it.”

“We should set a trap,” Bay says. 

I look at her, curious. “How?”

She gives me a sheepish smile, then rummages around in a pack. “I got bombs.”

At that, everyone goes quiet for a moment. I smile. How wonderful. “Let’s do it.”

- - -

Liam had been a bounty hunter for about three years. He was decent at his job, though not infallible. His skills were focussed on tracking prey, on identifying tracks, new and old. He didn’t know why the church of Respitia was paying out so much to kill a rookie, and he frankly didn’t care.

Knowing why wasn’t his job. He just brought the boys to the playing field. They snuck through the tunnels, making sure to be quiet. Rookies were usually easy targets, in that they barely knew what their skills did. Most would have gained their class just before ascending, if at all. 

That was why he felt comfortable taking the job. Hunting sapients was dangerous business, after all, with their unpredictable abilities, but rookies usually had just three. Maybe four, if they got lucky or creative. 

He held out a hand. “Stop,” he said. 

Something twinged at his wings. His [Sixth Sense] was going off, but he couldn’t see anything in the tunnel. Slowly, he turned to their scout. “See anything, Leah?”

The woman squinted, looking at the tunnel ahead. Then, slowly, she shook her head. “Nuffin’”, she said, her wings relaxing slightly.

Liam breathed. Slowly relaxing, looking at the traces on the ground. They’d been through the area a few times, but not recently. And yet… was it just him, or did it smell like wet dog? 

His [Sixth Sense] flared, but he ignored the skill. His attention slipped off it. What was he so worried about anyway? The alarm bells, usually so useful, quieted down to almost nothing, really just like the background noise of the caverns.

He relaxed, and walked forward. Then the floor exploded and tore his foot off.

- - -

Dar releases his hold on [Inertia], and suddenly, gravity pulls on him again. His claws come undone from the ceiling of the cavern, and he crashes down on the attentive woman that had almost spotted him. 

Norman falls with the wolf, releasing a graceless screech. The man had been clinging to Dar with all he had, and the warrior was glad to finally be free again. But, he had to give credit where it was due. The woman lost her sight on them only because of [Unassuming].

Now, she would pay.

Opal blinks to his side, and in one smooth motion, they tear into the backline of the bounty hunters. Dar tackles the scouting woman to the ground, instantly tearing into her. She swings back, but her fist comes into a barrier of [Protection] and the bow on her back snaps as Dar’s claws rend her flesh.

His blood-sibling slashes their sword, keeping another attacker at bay, and then, a silent wind descends in the cavern. Another explosion rocks it, but the noise is quieted by Sylves, and Dar is able to easily keep going. Amelie’s puppets join the fight, and the hunters are outnumbered.

“No one told us there’d be so many of them!” one screams, finding only pain and grunts as a reply.

A battlefield was no place to lazily speak, and Dar punishes the man for the mistake, tearing into his back in a moment of respite. The woman tries to rise from the ground, but Snow’s spell slams her right back down. One of the hunters raises her hands, and fire gathers, only for Richard to swallow it up. 

And then, all around, the hunters’ skills start failing. 

Dar smiles. It was time to bleed them.

- - -

I stand at the back of our group, at the far back with Sylves, managing the battlefield like I’m directing an orchestra. Skills fail, important attacks are weakened, a floating dagger of mana stabs someone’s leg… the usual. 

My friends all fight. It’s messy, it’s brutal, and they get in each other’s way, but that’s okay. They still manage. Richard focuses on a mage. Opal and Thatch take on a dagger wielder together. Inu helps Dar wail on a woman that looks like an archer. I break the tracker’s [Sixth Sense], just as Bay lobs another bomb at him. Jess freezes him in place before he can scramble away.

Then, their rogue slips a dagger between my ribs.

Chapter 54: Stabbed

It burns with acid and venom as it bites into my skin. I look at where the knife came from and find… nothing.

“Hey,” I announce to Sylves and Amelie. “I’ve been stabbed. I’ll be doing something about it.”

Instantly, I stop helping the frontline, and instead deploy my field of [Suppression]. It crashes down into the rock with gravity, stopping Sylves from floating, pressing Amelie into her wheelchair. I don’t have the luxury of excluding them. 

My side stings. It burns and melts. It hurts. I look around, trying to find a hint of the rogue, but there’s nothing.

Another stab, this one into my lower back. I whip out to grab a wrist, anything, but come up empty again. I feel my flesh dissolve. My eyes narrow. The field thins, smaller but heavier. Mana pours into the skill, weighing down anyone, anything approaching me. 

I get stabbed in the shoulder. Damn it. Not strong enough. I draw the field even tighter.

[Suppression 10 > 11]

It’s not enough. The slash lands on my ankle, and my leg buckles. I am sent to the floor, kneeling. But my field holds. I feel a tingle of heavy, slowed mana leak from the wound. 

My mind whips at it, and I take hold of it. It’s inside my body, so it’s enough. [Selection] lands on my wound, from there, latches onto the tendril of mana, and traces it back to a target. 

[Selection 8 > 9]

I look in the direction of the rogue, kneeling. They’re a blur to my magical senses, and invisible to my eyes. “Opal!” I yell, and then reach out.

My skills form a brutal chain of effects. First, [Selection] lets me target them, find them. [Suppression] comes down like a hammer, slowing the rogue, slowing their abilities, dragging them down. Then comes [Solidification], a needle of mana driven into their leg when they don’t pay attention, exploding and messing with their skills. Finally, when they’re disrupted, I pull on my new knowledge, and [Deconstruct] the rogue’s magic.

Effect after effect, I find, analyse, weaken, and then break the skill.

The magic shatters.

All of a sudden, the rogue is just standing there, blinking, confused. The invisibility is broken, and suppression hammers in even harder. They try to move, but I break that skill, too.

[Deconstruction 7 > 8]

[Class up! Nullmage 0 > 1]

Then Opal appears in a blink, and stabs a sword through their chest. Their wings stop beating, settling on the ground as their heart is pierced, 

[Level up! 22 > 23]

I begin to focus my efforts on the poison and acid currently working its way through me.

First, I [Suppress] the effects, pouring more mana into my skill. Then, I rip off bits of my shirt - which means I’ll need a new one yet again, dang it - trying to wipe away as much of the horrid stuff as I can, smearing the fabric with blood and goop. It burns my fingers, too, but I’ll live.

Then, I use [Flesh Restoration], leaning on the system a bit, but fueling it with enough mana to kill me, focussed entirely on purging the venom.

A surge of vitality passes through me as my mana gets converted, the new points in vessel from my class level already proving valuable. “Level?” I ask Opal.

“Thirty-one,” they reply, then blink back to the scramble of frontliners.

That’s… high, but not impossibly high. Enough to counter with a combo of my skills, apparently. I vomit a good mouthful of blood.

Okay, maybe not completely counter.

But it’s enough. I breathe, slowly, the sensation of my heart thrumming against my chest uncomfortably exhausting me as strength pours out of me and into healing. I’ll need a big meal after this. That’s okay, though. There’s something more important to do first.

Loot the bodies.

- - -

In the end, there are only two enchanted items among the bounty hunters. A waterskin that purifies even the nastiest stuff poured into it into drinkable water and can hold about twice as much as it looks like it should, for one. That one’s valuable and we want to keep it, so it is immediately taken away from me and safekept by Inu.

Shame. It would have been interesting to take it apart.

The other is a stone. It looks like a compass, with a needle that points at something near us. Probably the city, given the direction.

We decide there is a good chance it might be transmitting our location to whatever guild the bounty hunters belonged to. Everyone decides we should break it, so I get to trace the runes, then try to modify them to practice. 

[Inscription 4 > 5]

It goes poorly. As I pour mana into the modified version, some mistakes light up and blow up in my face, showering me in a minor debris of mana shards. Nothing major, But it makes my mana go haywire for a moment, and gives me a horribly tight feeling around my heart for a moment. A little like heartburn.

Slowly, bit by bit, I’m figuring out runes. Whenever I have time, I still trace the ones on my phial, slowly making sure I remember them all. I also analyze the bits of the sensory skill of the tracker I broke, and the stealth one from the rogue.

There’s a decent amount of overlap between the rogue’s skill and whatever shadow aspected ability that I broke before befriending Kuro. 

But, of course, a lot of my mana goes to healing our frontliners. Dar, especially, took a couple of nasty blows, and Norman got stabbed once. Inu’s tough, so the wounds she did receive are a lot more shallow, but I heal her, too.

We eat. It helps me feel less weak, and returns the feeling to my hands and feet, which’ve been all pins and needles from the poison. It’s nice to be able to hold a spoon again without using mana. “Where did we get the spoons?” I ask.

“I had Norman take them,” Jess supplies calmly. “From the inn, where we stayed at? A couple plates, bowls, pots and pans go a long way in the wild.”

Her husband looks a little ashamed at it, but I just smile. “Good call.”

Somehow that makes Norman feel more ashamed. “I’m a thief,” he mourns into his hands. “I never thought I’d be a thief.”

“And we’re eating better for it,” Richard says. “I, for one, think we should steal more!”

I smile at her, too. She’s absolutely right. Stealing is the best.