[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 138: Anodyne

The warmth of Aldoverre’s potion spread into every inch of Sam’s body. Any and all pain vanished like mist in the midday sun.

He set himself into [Power Stance], switched to [Essence of Escha], and lastly used [Rolling Strikes]. He felt like a new man, fit and ready to go.

Looking at his HP, however, was more than a little unsettling. Rather than showing how much he had in his [Status] like usual, it now stated he was at ????/3,890.

That wasn’t good. He was counting on that to keep a gauge on his physical state, and yet the potion occluded it from him in all ways.

The professor had warned him, though. So he’d need to keep track the old-fashioned way… only, how did you do that when you couldn’t feel anything?

He could feel every sensation he was used to, but he no longer felt even the slightest twinge or sensed fatigue in his muscles.

Kai looked at Sam. “You look better. What was in that?”

“Something to heal me,” Sam lied.

While he struggled to remember what the professor was doing with the Mana Engine, Sam did cling to a few tidbits. The most important of which was that they didn’t have enough people working on the Engine at any one time.

With Sam out of the picture, Raiko had to take up some of the slack, but that still wasn’t enough and Raiko didn’t have the affinity to be possessed by any of the Blacksmiths.

She was the best fit for Enchanting and Alchemy, still a very useful Profession, but it worked hand-in-hand with more physical ones like Blacksmithing.

Which was now out of the equation because Sam was gone.

In an ideal situation, the two of them would be working side by side with all the time in the world to fix, refine and complete the magnum opus of an entire Islegardian Academy.

Komachi pranced over, tail high, gave him a squinting suspicious look, then got back to work.

He wasn’t sure if she was even possessed anymore. Her eyes didn’t glow as much as Matt’s.

“Go,” Sam told Kai. “You’re compatible with Professor Nihl. Help them finish it. I can hold the line until then.”

With Professor Freneche inhabiting Raiko’s body and Professor Nihl taking Kai’s, Sam knew they would get much more progress than if they kept swapping people in and out to defend the Mana Engine.

Kai gave him a curious look, but trusted that he was telling the truth. He dropped a [Cure] on Sam before he left to get possessed.

Now there’s a brand-new sentence if I ever thought of one.

And Sam did hold the line. For over an hour.

He fought against the hordes of monsters that were summoned with twisting shimmers of light. They had been faster than him once, but freed up from the pain of his wounds, he was at peak performance.

Perhaps even beyond.

But he wasn’t alone. Not entirely. Chompers trotted to and fro, eating dead monsters and biting at them in typical dog-like fashion.

Often, it was enough to distract the monster long enough for Sam to deal the killing blow. It seemed even Dungeon Core monsters feared mimics.

Fierce and loyal, Chompers didn’t give up, no matter how many times he was knocked over or hit.

He did cough up a few items, though. And not intentionally either.

At least that meant the mimic wouldn’t burst apart into flinders from an errant blow.

It was like watching Sonic getting hit. Instead of rings, Chompers seemed to drop items he’d eaten as if his Inventory space was his HP.

Additionally, the more monsters Chompers ate, the faster and stronger he seemed to get. Maybe the mimic was immediately earning Experience from these Dungeon Core monsters, unlike the rest of them.

Sam dearly missed Komachi’s songs. From the speed enhancements to the continuous healing, combat was entirely different without her. As if some of his potential was locked away.

Somehow, [Glyph: Refresh] remained active on Sam, ever so slowly fighting back against the never-ending attrition of his MP.

There was no burning in his muscles as he swung again and again, slicing, cleaving, hacking, and hewing creatures into bits. Blood caked his armor, and still he kept going, hoping and praying that the others would finish the work.

Just one more, became a mantra. A never-ending lie that he told himself again and again.

With all of his pain suppressed, there was no warning when Sam’s arms suddenly failed to lift the blade up to parry one of the [Stone Imp’s] scything tail attacks.

Sam felt a cold sensation and a wet stain spread across his left arm. It didn’t hurt, but he could no longer lift it.

We’re doing this one-handed then.

***

The imp, cackling to itself at taking out one of the foolish human’s arms, readied a killing blow. Now that the hulking man could no longer wield that dangerous weapon, he was easy pickings.

He just had to stay away from that treacherous mimic and its baleful bites.

So new to life, the Stone Imp didn’t know what to do when the man-creature raised the colossal weapon in one hand and swung it with the same effort of using two arms.

The imp screeched and fluttered his tiny wings out of the way just in time to avoid being bisected, but his tail was cut off for his troubles.

Another Stone Imp appeared, born from the glorious light of the Core, and the imp rejoiced. The mimic was easy enough to keep away from as long as they stayed aloft, and the human was slowing down, getting sloppy.

A few more minutes was all the imp needed to last. More reinforcements would arrive. And then, they could kill this pathetic excuse of a soldier.

Readying [Fugue Blast], the second imp brought a tiny abyssal horn to its mouth and started to blow his deadly music. No sooner had he stopped to sound the debilitating ability than that treacherous blade swung one-handed and cleaved the poor bugger from tail to crown.

Its abyssal horn fell into two pieces and shattered on the ground, but the first imp wasn’t about to let that stop him. He had seen the man’s attacks, he was slower. He had to be.

If only there was a way to exploit his obvious failings as a mortal. Ah, there it is. As the imp swooped down, leaking blood from its tail that hissed and pitted the stone flooring, the man readied to swing and then stopped.

The mimic! He wouldn’t hurt the mimic. What kind of nonsense was that?

Diabolos be praised! The Stone Imp had found a way to protect itself long enough for reinforcements to arrive. All he had to do was duck in, swipe some claws at the armored man, then swoop back toward the mimic.

The stupid thing couldn’t jump, so he was safe so long as he stayed above its treacherous lid.

Though the Stone Imp was weak, it was cunning, and growing more powerful with each passing minute. The warrior in front of him was bleeding from several wounds, but he refused to feel them. It was unfair.

The Stone Imp’s poison was so painful that most people afflicted with just a drop tried to cut their limb off to stop the agony.

And here he was, shrugging off the poison-laced attacks as if the Stone Imp was nothing but a mosquito!

Ducking beneath another swing, the imp hissed at the man, cursing it in his native tongue and dropping even closer to the mimic to prevent a retaliatory strike.

He would live. It had been foretold.

Just keep it up for a few more—

Against all reason, that traitor mimic hopped into the air with its dozens of very un-mimic-like paws. Its lid-like maw opened wide for the Stone Imp.

He could see his incoming fate amongst so much treasure.

The mimic even had the gall to growl as it shot upwards.

Then the mimic swallowed him whole into a swirl of darkness and treasure.

The Stone Imp, summoned from the darkest abyssal plains, remembered well the future that had been read for him by a Denizen of the Deep. They could read the future like a map, and they were never wrong.

But sometimes what you thought you heard was not precisely what they had said.

And now the Stone Imp remembered the words clearly, “You will not die easily, but when you do, you will be a very rich imp.”

***

Sam collapsed to one knee, propped himself up with the tip of his sword, and stood guard once more. Blood pooled into his greaves and leaked out onto the floor, creating a sticky mess, but he didn’t stop.

Even with one arm, Sam swung his blade back and forth at every blasted twist of light, unsure if he was breaking or tearing something in the process. Always wondering if that last sensation of pressure was a bigger wound than he thought it might be.

But the creatures kept coming. There was no reprieve.

And though he could use [Void: Smother], the damned things didn’t seem to use much mana to begin with, so there was little point.

His head felt stuffed full of wool, but finally he managed to come up with an idea.

“I need you to keep away from the mana I’m about to make,” he told Chompers. “I won’t be able to keep it from harming you, so whatever you do, stay away.”

The mimic hopped once and barked. He actually barked. That seemed as close to agreement as Sam was going to get.

Sam would have patted the lid, but his left arm wouldn’t respond to any of his commands. It hung limp at his side, moving oddly when he spun around. It was almost comical.

Chompers whimpered.

He didn’t have much MP left, even with Raiko’s Glyph refueling him. But he had enough to use [Escha: Smother]. To his surprise, the many options available to him were entirely different from [Void: Smother].

While the standard could only shut down or inhibit mana, the Escha variant worked on physical aspects. Sam’s grin spread ear to ear as he set it to Agility.

The first speedy little bastard that appeared made a beeline for Sam, seeing as he stood between the Dungeon Core and its prize of destroying the Mana Engine.

Behind him, the Mana Engine had managed to erect its own shimmering barrier much like the Dungeon Core’s, and it was expanding at a rapid pace.

Chompers let out an excited bark.

Sam tightened his grip on the [Dullahan Greatsword] and waited as the imp zoomed into the smothered region of purple and black mana to get to him.

The result was immediate and shocking.

Confusion and fear twisted the imp’s gruesome, oversized features, as almost all of its speed was wiped away. It was like watching a fly try to dive bomb through a bowl of jelly.

Any choice it would have made at this point would have been the wrong one, but it chose perhaps the worst possible when it decided to flee the area, turning its back to Sam.

[Shockwave] flattened it to the ground in a fine, purple-blooded paste.

As the Mana Engine’s barrier pressed forward, Sam found the frontline of the battlefield shifting.

With nobody to warn them, the creatures that the Dungeon Core summoned into being all dove unsuspectingly at the lone human clearly on death’s door.

Sam laughed to himself as he spun and cleaved through another [Gargoyle] as it slowed to a crawl within the [Smothered] area.

That Signet ring must be working overtime to keep me from dying, Sam thought darkly.

Exactly how much “Death Blow Resistance I” was helping was anybody’s guess. Without an idea of where his HP was, Sam was floundering in the dark, but he wouldn’t change a thing.

It was only by allowing the others to work together that they were getting this far.

Sam felt something press into his back, and he risked a glance over his shoulder.

The Mana Engine’s barrier was accelerating and in response, the Dungeon Core’s twists of light were making the far side of the room look like a Christmas light show.

Every foot of space was twinkling with twisting light as the Dungeon Core made one last ditch effort to stave off the Mana Engine’s barrier.

Sam steadied himself and prepared to meet the creatures, only to realize that the Mana Engine’s barrier snuffed out his Void Art.

He wasn’t sure that he could survive with [Escha: Smother], but without it? That was a death sentence.

Sam stepped up to the edge of the Mana Engine’s barrier anyway. All he had to do was keep the monsters at bay a few more minutes.

Easy, right?