[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 284 – Two for the Price of One

Sam struggled against the thrumming power of the Lumanot. It perpetually strained against his control, trying to break free. Containing it took almost all of his power, leaving little left for controlling it or his body.

That didn’t turn out to be much of a problem.

[Heavy Blade] became a gargantuan sword of silver light that scythed through the ranks of monsters as if they were nothing. Even Komachi’s music returned, paralyzing and enfeebling the monsters, rendering them easier to strike down.

Experience rolled in, but Sam pushed aside the notifications. He needed to focus.

The largest creature, a grimal with two heads, unsheathed a bone sword the size of a small hut and brought it down in a sweeping strike.

Sam’s [Heavy Blade] crashed into it. He expected it to shear straight through, but it stopped.

The jarring vibration of the two blades clashing nearly threatened to dislocate Sam’s arms at the joints. A similar argent light flowed over the creature’s colossal sword.

Hot sparks of molten mana flew in every direction from where the two Lumanot’s met. At first, Sam thought they were harmless, until one touched a bulky creature in fine imperial armor.

A single spark, no larger than a bullet, bored all the way through the creature’s armor and exited the other side with the creature quite dead.

The reaction reminded him of disparate types of Apocalyptic mana colliding.

Which gave him an idea.

Void mana was a stabilizing force despite it being Apocalypse mana. His physical and magical strength were not cutting it. Even now, as he struggled in a deadlock with the monster ahead of him, other creatures were filling the cloister.

If he stayed like this, Sam would eventually be overwhelmed and killed. He couldn’t control the Lumanot as well as the grimal could. He lacked the experience and the strength.

There was something Sam had that the two-headed grimal didn’t.

Using [Void Infusion], Sam coated his [Heavy Blade] with Void mana, using it to contain the raw power of the Lumanot.

Rather than focus on his mana or his muscles, he used the Void to wrap around the Lumanot’s power. He envisioned it settling into his middle with a barrier around its spherical argent light.

The more contained the Lumanot’s power, the weaker Sam’s [Heavy Blade] became until it was no stronger than usual.

Sensing weakness, the monsters surged forward by the dozen. The two-headed grimal seemed more than happy to let his minions slaughter Sam despite the devastation that he had just wrecked on the monsters moments ago.

That overconfidence would be his undoing.

Making a small hole in the shell of Void around the Lumanot, Sam let loose a thread of the Lumanot’s power that turned his Tin aura into a towering inferno. He lunged forward and swept his greatsword in a wide arc, taking out half of the creatures in one swipe.

Sam opened another small hole to release more of the Lumanot’s power. His push against the stone tiles of the floor shattered the ground and sent him flying through the air like a rocket.

The two-headed grimal waded into the fray. At least the creature was significantly larger than Sam and much slower. The grimal tried to catch him, but Sam stayed just out of reach using bursts of the Lumanot’s power to enhance himself in a similar manner to the Immortal he fought.

Before the towering bastard knew what hit him, he was alone with Sam in the cloister. Those members of his army that weren’t dying or dead were in full flight. A few were taking the pretense of guarding the cloister against the imperials from outside.

With each passing second, Sam could better control the power of the Lumanot with the use of Void mana. Carefully channeling the raw power in bursts was easier than attempting to control a sustained burn.

The two-headed grimal, however, was no stranger to the Lumanot’s power. He met Sam’s first strike with one of his own. Unlike Sam, the grimal was able to keep up his draw on the Lumanot’s power.

It quickly revealed the gulf between them. If it was just Sam against the two-headed grimal without any Lumanots, Sam could have beaten the grimal handily. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

The grimal’s Tin aura nearly filled the entire cloister and pushed back against Sam’s until his aura began to gutter.

Sam’s only option was to release more of the Lumanot’s power, expanding his aura to the limit of his control. All the while, their swords clashed. Sam’s [Imperial Baldr] to the grimal’s massive, serrated bone blade.

They settled into a rhythm as Sam became more and more familiar with his foe’s fighting technique. A difficult thing to measure when there was none.

It didn’t take long for Sam to understand that the grimal’s power was solely derived from his raw strength. Add in the Lumanot’s overwhelming power and it became clear that the grimal never needed to learn finesse or skill.

Sam danced to the side, narrowly avoiding a strike that would have cleaved him in half. Every cell in his body screamed out in agony. He couldn’t hold the power of the Lumanot the way the grimal could.

If he tried to approach this fight the way he used to, he would be dead already. It was only Zarishna’s–and later Zahif’s–tutelage that had kept him alive.

Sam had never met something he couldn’t crush with raw power before. A situation that the two-headed grimal was clearly finding himself in.

He baited Sam with a wide swing, trying to get him to engage in a battle of strength. Sam rolled forward and brought up his greatsword with a burst of speed, courtesy of the Lumanot and Komachi’s stat boosting songs.

The grimal couldn’t get the bulky sword down in time. Sam’s greatsword gashed across the grimal’s scaly hide, forcing it to leap back to avoid a more serious cut.

“First blood,” Sam chided. “Not a good look.”

“We will crush the blood from your flesh!” the grimal screamed at him in two voices. “We will turn your bones to powder!”

Sam spread his arms wide. “What’re you waiting for, then?”

With more speed than the grimal had ever shown before, he lunged forward with an overhand chop that could have split a mountain. Dust and debris were thrown up from the impact, but when the dust cleared, Sam was nowhere to be seen.

The more he used his Void mana to manipulate the Lumanot, the more comfortable he became. It was like turning on and off a hose of power. The more holes he opened at once, the more power came pouring out. Controlling them was key.

Directing the Lumanot’s power to a specific body part meant that Sam could leap away like a flea with only a trickle of the Lumanot’s power being used.

The more Sam used the Lumanot’s power, the more his body hurt. He wasn’t as accustomed to it as the grimal, who was almost constantly using the power of the Lumanot. The faint glow beneath his breastplate told Sam where the Lumanot was located, but he had no way of retrieving it short of killing the grimal.

A feat that seemed increasingly unlikely as the battle dragged on. The more familiar Sam became with the use of the Lumanot, the more he realized how close he had been to death in those first few moments. If he was still using the Lumanot as he had at the beginning of the battle, he would already be out for the count.

The grimal used his backhand to swipe the guillotine bone blade toward Sam, then released a hand and tried to rend him with his massive claws.

Sam used a double burst of Lumanot energy to weave between the two attacks, but he could not get closer. The grimal used his superior reach and size to keep Sam as far away as possible.

Whenever Sam closed the gap, the grimal leaped back.

He’s not as stupid as I thought.

They exchanged blows back and forth, with Sam using small bursts of Lumanot power to counter or turn aside the large monster’s attacks. He hardly had the strength to keep his Void mana shell around the Lumanot. If he used a single Void ability, he felt certain that the shell would break.

When that happened, he wouldn’t survive for long.

Komachi’s music flowed in and out throughout the battle, piling on stacks of [Heroic Rock] and [Haste Mazurka] then transitioning into short bursts of [Ninefold Harmony: Regen Paeon] to keep his body together. She was struggling, but it was enough to give him a chance while rationing the Lumanot’s power.

He saw the signs of her low MP too. Emptied mana potion bottles were crunched underfoot.

Sam fell into the 13 movements of the primals, falling back on his training with Zarishna and combining it with his martial arts training to make something wholly his own.

It was all he could do to keep the grimal from crushing him flat or cutting him in half. No matter how fancy his moves, Sam was the weaker fighter here. His skill was only delaying the inevitable.

Sam watched as the two-headed grimal’s attacks grew more measured. He was falling into a steady attack pattern. One that was designed to keep Sam away from him, while simultaneously keeping the human on the defensive.

All the monster had to do was wait.

Staggering to the side after a near-miss, Sam slumped his shoulders and grimaced. Despite everything, he could feel hairline fractures in the Void shell around the Lumanot. He didn’t have much time.

Seeing Sam tiring, the grimal renewed its attacks. Ferocious swipes accompanied lunging bites with its two heads. Sam staggered a little more, pulled less upon the Lumanot, and did his best to present a juicy target.

One that the grimal could not hope to resist.

Snarling with victory, the grimal swiped with a clawed hand aimed to take Sam’s head from his shoulders. As Sam ducked, the grimal sliced with his massive sword, forcing Sam to use the power of the Lumanot to block or otherwise be killed.

There! Sam saw his opportunity.

He dropped his greatsword, leaned forward, and jumped as he flattened his body so it was parallel to the ground. The wide blade passed less than an inch below him. Sam reached out and grasped the hilt of the blade, riding its backswing out and up.

With the grimal’s hand blocking his vision, he temporarily lost sight of Sam as he brought his sword up.

The serrated bone blade was large enough for Sam to walk along as if it were a sidewalk. He got to his feet and leapt again, this time with the power of the Lumanot raging within him.

Normally, the grimal would never have let him get so close or present such an opening, but he was getting sloppy. He could see Sam was on the ropes and was pressing his advantage instead of continuing to take a measured approach.

If he had done that, Sam didn’t know if he would have survived.

Leaping off the blade, Sam cocked back his fist and shattered the Void shell keeping the Lumanot’s power in check. Searing pain boiled his blood and scorched his bones as he let the power flood into his fist.

The two-headed grimal, unsure of where his opponent had gone, looked up in time to see his doom.

Sam’s fist glowed with the power of the Lumanot. His bones stood out as black lines amid the argent light as he crashed down into the grimal with [Meteor Fist] leading the way.

Zahif’s attack struck fear in the grimal’s heart. Every monster there had heard of it or seen it firsthand to devastating effect. With the power of the Lumanot backing him, Sam was well on his way to making a legend all his own.

Try as he might, the grimal was too slow to back away or shield himself. His thick, corded arms were halfway up to shield his heads when Sam’s leading fist met the left head’s snout.

Bone, tooth, and scale crumpled like a tin can beneath Sam’s [Meteor Fist], obliterating the creature’s first head. The second head had a moment to contemplate its own death before Sam pivoted and continued the strike.

Scales hardened by the Lumanot’s life-giving force disintegrated under Sam’s assault.

You defeat [Kel’brek (Boss) (Level 52)].

You gain substantial Experience for slaying a Very Tough Boss monster!

Sam rode on the creature’s headless shoulders until it collapsed to the floor. He looked up, light and steam wafting off his armor, to look into the hearts of every monster still gathered.

Seeing their two leaders cut down, the monstrous alliance broke apart with every monster tribe only concerned with fleeing to safety.

Any who tried to rally them into a semblance of a fighting force was quickly left behind. With the odds no longer in their favor, even those stalwart souls fled.

As the life force that had once been bolstered by the Lumanot winked out, the body of Kel’brek withered. It shrank, mummifying itself back to the state it should have been in without the aid of the Lumanot.

Sam looked down at the pitiful, twisted frame. The armor it wore was several times too big and unable to hold back the Lumanot’s power.

The sphere of light broke apart into a stream of glittering silver motes and joined with the Lumanot housed within Sam.

Without knowing what he was doing, Sam weaved the power threatening to break free. He recalled the Proving Grounds, the Pinnacle he was last at, and fixed an image of it in his mind’s eye.

The silvery streams of light formed a twisting portal before him. All Sam had to do was step through, but something stopped him. An itch between his shoulder blades.

He turned, curious, and saw his friends.

Zahif, Rhagur, Renni, Zorin, and even Zarishna stood at the broken entrance to the cloister, watching him.

“It was good seeing them again,” Sam told himself. “One last time.”

Komachi groaned, poking her head groggily out of Sam’s armor. “Did I miss the end?” she slurred, ears twitching and messy fur sticking up all over the place.

Sam lifted his chin and nodded to them. Zahif winked back and disappeared to chase down the fleeing monsters. Sam made a gesture to Zarishna and Zorin, one she had taught him in the Dead Echo, then stepped through the portal.