[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 220 – Somewhere Ogre the Rainbow

Vaskad’s blood boiled.

He had finally found his quarry. The creature he hated foremost in creation was hurtling toward him like…like a very fast thing.

The puny man in his shell of blue and gold armor hurtled through the air, with a screaming cat clinging to his pauldron and wrapped up in his cape.

Vaskad frowned. Like the rest of his ilk, he was not very bright, but he more than made up for it with sheer ferocity and strength. However, something in the back of his mostly empty mind screamed that he should be wary of this quick moving creature.

The most-hated manling swung his greatsword at the crown of the ogre’s head. The ogre accepted the opening blow. It would not be harmed. Vaskad had feasted well since his awakening and he was vastly stronger than he had been when he first woke up.

With the blade infused deeply with mana, however, it unleashed black and silver flames into the ogre’s flesh and bone. Pain like the ogre had never known before flooded his head and made him scream in agony.

He hardly recognized his own wails of pain. When was the last time he felt such a sting? He couldn’t remember.

Vaskad stumbled from the surprising blow, shaking the floating island. Multiple magic-throwing manlings fell to the ground, whereas the fast, cowardly manlings with bows and the metal shelled manlings were able to stay standing. Even Vaskad understood attributes. These magic throwers apparently could not grasp the simple need for some Dexterity and Agility.

Not that it mattered. Vaskad would crush them all once he was done with his quarry.

The scintillating chain the man rode in on was falling away, its dangerous point aimed down toward the ground teeming with Vaskad’s minions.

As the spearhead fell, it sank into the ground, obliterating scores of monsters, with the heavy spectral chain annihilating dozens more right up to the edge of the crumbling Skyshard.

Vaskad traced the chain to its originating Skyshard below. Vaskad would bash that rock too. Rip out that tree and crystal with their blinding, burning light.

He cared little for his minions. They would fight and die, or he would feast on their bones.

Keeping the milling creatures with their tiny toothpick weapons away from him was all that he cared about. His fury could only be sated by one creature.

…Where had that creature gone?

Vaskad looked around, aware now that he had lost sight of his most-hated enemy. Where had it gone? Reaching a large blue-skinned hand up to his head prompted another burst of agony as something stabbed straight through Vaskad’s palm.

Bellowing, the ogre pulled its hand away to reveal a moderately sized sword speared straight through his palm. The sword burned and spat like an angry volcano, splattering molten stone all over his palm and burning it with a rage to match his own.

The hateful little gremlin shouted at him, but Vaskad could hardly understand and wouldn’t have cared even if he could.

Shaking like a dog the size of a skyscraper, Vaskad managed to get the creature dislodged from his foul dreadlocks filled with the armor and weapons of tiny manlings he had slain.

The little imp managed to grab one of the weapons. A weapon Vaskad knew and feared. A mighty axe that had nearly cut his legs off once upon a time. The manling had died like the rest, but only because he had stopped fighting to protect another manling.

Vaskad could not allow this creature to learn the power of such a weapon.

Summoning his innate magic, the ogre used [Thunder Roar], its most powerful ability. It ate through its meager stores of mana. Stores that would take weeks to replenish, but it was worth it to cast the creature back.

The booming attack ripped through the air and hit his hated foe squarely. His armor crumpled like a tin can, and the giant axe was wrenched free from his grip as he tumbled to the chaos below.

Vaskad waded forward, snarling, but only managed to make it a few steps before his breath hitched and the effects of mana drain slowed him down.

He took a few moments to breathe in, more to steady himself than to hone in on his prey. Now that he had the manling in his sights, he would not let him get away again.

Vaskad snarled and ripped the manling’s weapon out of its palm, taking a sizable chunk of flesh with it. Barely paying any heed, Vaskad put the weapon into one of his dreads. He would add the manling’s armor next.

***

The life was blasted out of Sam’s lungs as [Thunder Roar] hit him like a speeding freight train.

He barely managed to use [Void: Surge] to blunt the blow, or else he would have likely been crushed flat. As it was, he felt like an empty soda can somebody had stepped on.

Komachi, uncomfortably but safely hidden away in his armor, yowled her head off as they careened through the sky.

Sam’s head swam from the attack, his health cleaved in half even after using [Void: Surge].

Unable to gather the necessary mana to mount a defense, Sam curled up in a ball protectively around Komachi. She may still be in his armor, but that didn’t mean she was invulnerable.

He cried out when it felt–and sounded–like his back was snapped in two, but it turned out to be the tree he collided with.

Sam collapsed in a heap on the ground, turning his head to see a confused and startled drow of all things, and a massive tree towering over the both of them.

The impact where Sam crashed into the tree was splintering like the sound of an entire forest being crushed beneath a giant’s foot. The tree looked like an ironwood back on Sil’mara.

Sam couldn’t help but feel impressed by the damage done to it. He had to use [Heavy Blade] to cut the ones down on his Skyshard, and that was no easy feat! If he could deal comparable damage to the ironwood just from the ogre shouting at him, then he needed to rethink his strategy.

I’m going to need a better weapon, he immediately thought, a sly grin coming to his bloodied lips.

He could feel Komachi struggle to play her harp in the confined space. Coins clinked free when she [Bribed] the armor for more room.

The pleasant sound of [Regen Paeon] began to filter out.

The drow—an honest-to-god dark elf straight out of his childhood stories—was watching him with horrified interest.

Sam nodded toward the tree. “You mind if I take this?”

The drow shook his head, clearly perplexed. No doubt he thought Sam had scrambled his brain on impact. But he had an idea.

Not a good idea, mind you, but an idea all the same.

“Thanks,” Sam said, standing and stretching the kinks out of his back. His spine popped several times as it straightened, though he doubted anybody else could hear it over the splintering sound of the tree in front of him.

Sam called upon all of his prodigious Strength. A mist of power rolled over his body, rising off it like steam. Sam called to it, pulled on it.

Renewed strength flooded his veins, his muscles, his very core. Sam’s face went red with effort, his every muscle screaming with agony as he drove them to the limit and beyond.

***

Xero watched with horrified fascination as this man, who had just survived what should have been a fatal attack, got up and began to hug the tree that was seconds from toppling.

The drow couldn’t tear his eyes away from the spectacle as he, in a futile attempt no doubt caused by severe brain trauma, tried to rip the ironwood tree out of the ground.

Xero hardly recognized the soul aeder in its jaunty little hat and cape that poked out of the bulging armor now and again.

As a drow, Xero was no stranger to magic. He understood mana better than most mages did of the other races, and right then he realized he was witnessing an idiot savant at work.

The man couldn’t have known the depths of his genius, because if he had he never would have attempted to use the overwhelming Tin aura he possessed to empower his physical body.

It was not just a fool’s errand, but suicidal.

Whatever power he could coerce from his Tin aura would turn his muscles to bloody pulp in seconds. There was a reason auras had to be carefully cultivated and channeled over years of intense study.

Even still…Xero could not deny that the man was somehow doing the very thing that should have spelled his doom.

Against all wisdom, Xero watched in stunned silence as the man grabbed the tree just above the break and snapped it like a toothpick.

Without batting an eye, the human–his body now infused with Tin power and something more that Xero couldn’t determine–took the gargantuan tree and strode back toward the dazed ogre.

Xero heard the man snarl, “I’m going to bust some kneecaps!” and he was gone, bounding away with the towering tree in his arms like the world’s largest club. Even the ogre would feel more than a sting with that weapon!

***

Sam had had enough. He was furious. The ogre had attacked an innocent Skyshard to get to him, and now it was at his home. He wasn’t about to take this lying down.

Growling with rage barely kept in check, Sam bounded with all of his strength back toward the ogre. The blue-skinned monster was just getting its bearings again. Sam watched as it stole his latest weapon and placed the smoldering thing into one of its many dreadlocks.

“That’s two fucking swords I’ve lost now!” Sam bellowed with rage. “That’s it. Say goodbye to your kneecaps, you blue-skinned asshole!”

With one more bound, Sam brought himself to the ogre and cocked back his crude weapon. With all of his newfound strength brought to bear, Sam cracked the ironwood tree into the ogre’s knee, just as he promised he would.

The ogre paused for a moment, staring down at Sam as if it could not believe what just happened.

The ironwood tree disintegrated into splinters the size of javelins as it obliterated the ogre’s kneecap and mangled the stony flesh as if it was paper.

Sam watched, stunned, as the ogre’s leg gave out under its prodigious weight. He couldn’t stop staring at the mangled kneecap and the forest of splinters that littered the things shin and thigh.

“Dayum,” Komachi said. “You took him out like he owes you money for betting on the horses!”

“What?” Sam asked, pulled out of his stupor by Komachi’s strange exclamation.

“You busted up his kneecaps real good!” Komachi elaborated.

Sam chuckled and scooped up a piece of ironwood shrapnel the size of his torso. “Let’s show him what monsters get for messing with our home!”

Komachi howled with delight and began to strum a different tune, one that empowered Sam’s already colossal Strength.

Though much of that strange power seemed to be diminished by his attack, Sam was still plenty strong enough to leap through the air and drive the shrapnel into the ogre’s thigh.

[Void Infusion] made sure that the ogre’s stony skin provided no resistance as the jagged spear was driven deep into the ogre’s exposed thigh.

[Void Infusion]

(Legend Trait) (F-Class)

(★☆ Uncommon)

A core tenant of a Voidknight is that they are able to wield the Void as if it were just another blade. You may not be at that level yet, but you have learned through long bouts of using your Void mana in difficult scenarios how to infuse your Void mana into everything you touch. Your abilities, your armaments, and even your other Arts. Grants a minuscule bonus to the effect of Strength, Insight, Arcane, and Vigor when using [Void Infusion].

I love being me, Sam thought as he watched the ogre wail in agony.

A few of the Mages surrounding the monster took this as their cue to launch another array of powerful attacks. Half a dozen boulders the size of small shacks were wrenched from the ground, leaving behind great pits. Their stony projectiles launched at the ogre, knocking it onto its back.

Sam saluted to them in thanks and leapt on top of the ogre, sprinting across its chest to get to its face. He needed the ogre to see what was coming.