[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 67: Flames of War II

Sam plummeted through the air while Komachi screamed.

Then he realized that was him screaming. Komachi, of course, yowled her head off.

The ground was coming up fast. What can I do? I can’t fly, I’m not Raiko!

Stacks of restorative [Regen] layered continuously higher upon him, buoying his newly increased HP up at a steady tic. At a glance, his maximum HP went from 400 to over 600.

Too bad her healing didn’t seem to keep up with that growth, but he was empowered by a Second Order Job now, and she was still one of the base First Order Jobs.

He didn’t know how severe falling damage could be at his current level without anything to soften the blow. Sam wasn’t wearing those greaves with falling resistance any longer, and he cursed himself for it.

Worse, his armor was significantly heavier than it used to be.

On the plus side, he was completely armored with a high tier of physical defense stacked together from all the pieces of gear.

That had to work for falling damage, right?

Those damn high stats seduced me with their stupid sexy high tiers!

Sam hastily searched for anything to grab a hold of. Pieces of the destroyed Isle descended all around him. He tried to reach out to grasp one, but they merely tumbled out of the way at his touch.

“Hold on Komachi!”

She did not stop yowling. He felt something warm trickle down his armor from his cat. Not that he could blame her. Hidden in the darkness of his armor while falling and having no idea when they were going to hit the ground was no doubt terrifying.

What better way to anchor himself but with his greatsword? He must have the Strength to do it, even if the claymore wasn’t as new and upgraded as the Thanas armor. He probably had the skill too to land an accurate hit.

Flipping his sword into a double-handed reverse grip, he raised the hilt above his head, then stabbed down into a chunk of rubble coming his way.

His blade did such a good job of piercing through the rubble, it shattered the stone to powder.

“Shit!”

He crashed into another piece of rubble, taking the brunt of the hit through his cuirass. It didn’t quite turn to powder, but shrapnel that scraped sharply across his armor.

I’m having a bad time.

His foot caught an errant chunk, and he seized the opportunity to push off. Gaining just a slight amount of control over his fall, he used that to clumsily hop across a series of descending rocks.

That bled some of the speed out of his high-velocity fall.

A long, slim chain of blue mana unfurled in front of Sam.

Sheathing his claymore, he grabbed the chain for all he was worth.

It only occurred to him as he finally arrested his fall that the chain had to come from somewhere.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t somewhere, but someone.

Sprinting through the air, the Chaos Sage glanced over at him with burning flames occluding her eyes. The magical chain gripped with supernatural strength in one hand. She had Raiko’s features, but there was something incredibly wrong.

Her sheathed katana surged with mana threateningly. And Sam had just grabbed onto her chain like a fish on a hook.

[Hollow Chaos Sage (Level ??)]

Raiko, in her spirit form and thankfully less hostile, swept in front of the Chaos Sage and struck out with her blade. Apparently, Raiko was willing to attack her own body to save him.

A debilitating effect passed between them, staggering them both momentarily, and the pillar of lightning that was meant for Sam went wide.

It splashed against a distant shaman, leaving cracks in its shielding.

Sam was yanked horizontally through the air like a kite on its last ride in a category 5 hurricane. Unwilling to see where she took him, while struggling to hold on at top speed, he pulled free his claymore and tried to time his strike when the Chaos Sage suddenly darted upwards, harried by Raiko.

There were no good options, so he worked with what he had.

Sam let go.

The only other option was to be dragged even further up into the sky. Unfortunately, the chain was stuck fast to his palm.

Not willing to admit defeat, Sam leaned out and swept his blade through the air with all of his might. It cleaved through the taut chain, rendering it into a series of immaterial motes of mana as the spell was banished. Sam continued his briefly paused fall, now significantly closer to the ground than he was when he started.

“Brace for impact Komachi!”

Sam landed with enough force that even with his new levels upping his Strength and Vigor sharply, he still fell to one knee and lost a sizeable chunk of his HP.

Not good!

The demons he had unluckily landed amidst had turned his way, sensing weakness. The last thing Sam wanted to be while surrounded by hostile forces was down on one knee, his teeth still vibrating from the jolting fall.

His only saving grace was a plume of dust and debris that was thrown up, obscuring his exact position.

Knees aching, joints crying out in agony, Sam whipped his sword around, cutting through the wall of obscuring dust with the only [Power Stance] Art that he could do from a kneeling position.

[Reaping the Willows], emboldened by his single stack of [Fury], extended the cutting edge of his blade by several inches, enough that the wary demons who hadn’t run headlong into the smoke were still struck by his blade.

He felt several tugs of resistance on the [Charred Claymore], bringing a smile to his lips. Sam rushed out, sword raised for an overhead strike as he broke through the veil of dust and cleaved the first bleeding demon from head to groin in one smooth motion.

I couldn’t do that before, he mused as he pivoted and brought his sword up in one smooth motion, lopping the arm off the nearest demon.

He sowed chaos through their ranks. The dust was still settling and already several demons were bleeding out on the ground. Move quickly and don’t give them time to regroup, he thought to himself.

Sam could feel where they were. The thrumming heartbeat of the battle pulsed through the soles of his boots and into his blood, connecting him to each of the nearby demons.

This was what Sam lived for.

You defeat a [Hellsent Ashmaker Oni (Level 16)]

You gain greater Experience for slaying a Tough monster.

You defeat a [Hellsent Barbarian Oni Summon (Level 14)]

You gain additional Experience for slaying an Even Match monster.

You defeat a [Hellsent Grunt Oni Summon (Level 12)].

You gain additional Experience for slaying a Decent Challenge monster.

You defeat a [Hellsent Barbarian Oni Summon (Level 14)]

You gain additional Experience for slaying an Even Match monster.

Dashing about in a large circle, Sam cut down demon after unsuspecting demon. They all had their eyes trained on the area he had landed. That had been their fatal mistake.

The other was not having any armor whatsoever.

Even with his new power, some halfway decent leather armor would have stopped him from cutting the creatures in half with hardly a thought.

He had to admit. It did feel satisfying.

By the time the smoke subsided, Sam was alone in a large rocky area strewn with monster bodies. Those that weren’t dead were quickly on their way to wherever it was these things went.

Wincing despite Komachi’s [Regen] stacks recovering his HP at a decent pace, Sam hadn’t escaped unscathed. But he had survived.

And that was the important part.

If they managed to get organized and came at him as one unit, Sam wasn’t sure of his odds.

It was a good thing they were as confused and disorganized as he was. All he had to do was swing his sword around, and he’d hit an enemy. If they tried the same thing, they’d hit an ally instead half the time, making Sam’s task easier.

No such luck. The demons weren’t that stupid, but there had been a few close calls.

From Sam’s right, a column of water ten feet high fountained upward, narrowly missing him. He reacted quickly, readying his sword and widening his stance, but nobody was there.

Instead, from high above, Kai dropped into the pillar of water, slowed, and drifted to the ground just as the spell collapsed and splashed water all over the fading bodies.

“That’s an inventive way of getting down,” Sam admitted, cataloguing it for future use.

“Thank Matt,” Kai said. “He’ll be joining us momentarily.”

Sam was about to object when another column of water appeared, followed by a falling Matt. Unlike Kai, he smacked into the water much harder and significantly less grace, floundered in the water, and eventually was spat out onto the ground in a soggy heap.

“It was a condition of his,” Kai said. “He received very little Experience. It seems he needs to either be close or participate in the battle.”

“Besides,” Matt said, spitting out water. “The Skyshard is safe for now, it’s so high up and there’s nothing below it for quite a ways. Nobody is going to look up.”

Sam sighed but accepted the help. “At least the mandys are still up there, right?”

“I don’t think they would have come down even if I tried to throw them off,” Matt explained. “So, what’s the plan?”

Pointing with his blackened sword, Sam said, “Onto the next anchorstone. It’ll be a lot harder now that we don’t have the drop on them, but most of their forces are still focused on the tree at the center of the island. We need to skirt around the rear so we don’t attract too much attention.”

“Just point and I fire,” Matt said. “I’ll stay out of the way.”

Sam doubted that was possible, but he kept that much to himself. He couldn’t blame Matt for wanting a piece of the Experience. He’d gotten more levels in a single sitting than he ever had before. And if he was lower level, he would have gotten even more.

As it was, 4 Job levels, 2 Path levels, and 2 Legend levels was an insane amount of progress, and there were still more anchorstones and shamans to go.

Sam stalked off across the rubble-strewn ground, climbing over hunks of what looked like broken buildings. And then he remembered the nearly broken tower. That had to be nearby, right?

Getting up on a pile of carved blocks, Sam looked above the chaos of the fighting in the distance and spotted the tower.

“Change of plans,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re going to make for that tower. Maybe the dullahans there can help us. They seem to be fighting off the demons.”

“Oni,” Matt corrected.

“Is there a difference?”

“Actually—”

“I believe that was rhetorical,” Kai said, putting a hand on Matt’s shoulder meaningfully.

They skirted from rocky outcrop to rocky outcrop, and when the area changed suddenly—Sam suspected it was a different Tile—to plains and rolling hills, he picked up the pace to avoid being seen.

A few demons turned, fired off arrows or launched spears, but they were far enough away that most of them went wide. That didn’t stop the demons from trying though.

Matt coalesced a stream of water at such high pressure that it resembled a frosted laser beam. It cleaved halfway into the first demonic archer from the neck to the collarbone before the spell fizzled out.

Kai launched himself at the nearest demon, taking a page out of Sam’s book by kicking at the inside of its knee, then clubbing it so hard that Sam swore he could see stars twirling around the monster’s head.

Leaping with all of his newly acquired Strength, Sam raised his claymore over his head, arched his back, and sailed toward his target.

The demon fumbled for an arrow to nock, got it drawn back to its weathered, leathery cheek, and then exploded into a fine red mist as Sam snapped every muscle in sequence to bring his claymore down onto the thing’s head.

Landing in a small, muddy depression, Sam dove to the side to avoid a thrown spear, then kicked out at a hammer wielding demon to get some breathing room as more demons clustered around him with weapons raised.

He cut down the hammer wielding demon and found to his surprise that there were no enemies in reach.

Several demons with shields and strange markings came forward.

They were getting smarter.

Instead of rushing all at once, they let the shield bearers pen him in and slowly closed Sam off from the rest of his group.

On the one hand, Sam was impressed. On the other, he had made the classic mistake of separating from his group.

His friends were free to attack the rear of this dozen-strong group, but Sam wasn’t about to let Matt and Kai have all the fun.

Turning slowly in place, Sam concentrated on forming weak points across all of the shields at once. It was a gamble. He could have made a concentrated effort to break through, but he found himself having fun.

It was the oddest, most surreal sensation of his life.

Surrounded by enemies, marked for death, and with Komachi already maxing out her [Regens] on him, he was on his own.

And he had never been calmer.