Arcanist In Another World-Chapter 32: Warmage

Valens sprang forward, Light Feet carrying him toward the whistling tendrils, onward through the broken ground, breath rasping in his chest. Nearly ten Wards were wriggling at the back of the Necromancer, stretched in a row like a score of highly disciplined soldiers.

Except these creatures had dozens of spear-like limbs, and this close to their Master, Valens could feel the difference in their Resonances. The source line feeding their cores seemed to be cherishing the Necromancer’s rot, cherishing it well like a group of children happy to be around their ever-loving parents.

But it hardly mattered. So long as he could lay a hand over their bodies, he could untie the sourceline and turn them limp. That was the plan, either way.

Tongues of flame came alive on the tip of his fingers as he pushed himself sideways, pulling barely through a lashing tendril and smacking it with the back of his fiery palm. The stretching, elastic skin of the creature popped when the Fireball ripped into it, dark smoke wafting off from where it burned a dozen holes.

That gave him confidence. The last time he faced one of these creatures, his war magic scarcely made a noticeable change. He had to personally operate on its core with a Lifesurge to kill the creature.

Yet this time they couldn’t even shrug off a simple Fireball.

What about Inferno, then?

The lashing tongues roared forth and sprawled into a storm of fire that stretched across the distance. Valens then stopped, peering round the alighted cave, before taking a step back to draw the Wards away from their Master.

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Chaos raged by his side, the green fog hissing, the deathly mana seeping through the cracks of the earth. Beyond, each lurching step of the Death Knight sent a tremor that rocked the ground from within. Swords clanked off its dark carapace, sending a shower of sparks about it. Men and women pressed hard into it, got bloodied whenever that hideous sword made for a sweep.

Valens’s nose was filled with the stench of death and golden light, and the rot working underneath the Wards’ tendrils.

Light Feet carried him onward to the side as the Wards ripped their way across the burning storm. There was no pain, no particular response to when their skin popped against the burning heat, but when Valens sent a lashing chain at their Master there was a reaction.

They grew restless, poking at him from all around, sending their tendrils screeching into the air. Valens covered himself with the storm, and relied on his sound vision to find openings through their assault.

Step by step he began to close the distance, stubbornly clinging to the spell, refusing to give in against the promise of a silent escape. He spent all his life accepting the rules of another. All throughout his youth he kept his head low, and tried not to think too much about it.

There were rules, Master Eldras would say to him, laws that preceded them that they couldn’t undo. So they must accept, and act only in the shadows. Never show your true colors. Be another face in the crowd.

The crowd here was all mad and senseless. Warring against horrors of the world. Dying for a purpose that Valens couldn’t quite comprehend. Yet they kept at it, undead and men both, and there was something refreshing about that.

Embrace the changes. Fill the role you’ve been given.

And today, that role was to be a true Warmage.

A tendril broke through the storm and streaked toward his face. Valens tipped his head back. Raised an arm and caught the tendril right over his wrist, felt the burn of the wound like a biting thought in the back of his mind.

The limb yanked at him even as it melted against the furious flames, and that gave him the time to send a Lifesurge through the sizzling tendril. Invigorated, thick threads of lifemana tore into the creature. Unlike the last time, they breezed through the yellow rot, splashing the waves of foul mana against the walls of its inner web, then oozed easily into the core.

There they latched at the sourceline, and smashed into the knots. Tearing them apart was one smooth effort that gave Valens an insidious satisfaction. Dangerous thoughts, they were. It was too easy now.

‘Ding’ You have managed to defeat [The Necromancer’s Ward - lvl 127]! For killing a creature above your own level, you are granted bonus experience.

You have leveled up! 5 Stat Points granted!

You have leveled up! 5 Stat Points granted!

It took him but a second to deal with the cursed thing, then he was walking, the storm growing, the Wards uneasy and shivering round the back. There in their Resonance was something novel that Valens hadn’t caught before. A sudden spike that told him they were… afraid.

I’ve become a terrible, terrible Healer.

He let out a smile as another tendril caught him below the stomach. Foolish creatures thinking they could outbest a Resonant Healer’s control. Valens washed the wound with a wave of lifemana, stopped the bleeding, his mind standing steel against the pain, then sent a pair of Lifesurges drilling into the limb.

Confidence rose within him, spilling like a wave of pleasure burning into his heart. A Healer felt at home whenever he was in the proximity of his clinic, but looked like a Warmage could turn anywhere into his home with a simple spell.

‘Ding’ You have managed to defeat [The Necromancer’s Ward - lvl 125]! For killing a creature above your own level, you are granted bonus experience.

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You have leveled up! 5 Stat Points granted!

You have leveled up! 5 Stat Points granted!

Another tendril to his left thigh. Right into one of the gemstones. This one bounced back like a spear crushed into a wall of steel, but Valens caught it before it could draw back, clasped it tight in the palm of his hand, and sent his surges across its inner web.

More. He needed more. These Wards couldn’t do anything against him. They had no thoughts. Not a speck of intelligence to see and understand he was a bad match to their specific talents. A bad match to all creatures of deathly origins, that is.

I’m still fighting against death, aren’t I?

He saw green fog thrash away out of the corner of his eye. The edge caught the back wall of the cave, right under the ceiling, snapped a big piece of rock, and sent it hurling down to the Necromancer.

The dark mage spared a momentary glance at the approaching rock, the tails of his robe flapping in the wind, and thumped his staff to the ground. Dark mana pooled over him and stretched into a slimy blanket, caught the man-sized rock like a spider’s web, and covered every bit of it in a lusterless black. Then it tightened hard, ate away the rock, bit by bit, crumbling it into tiny gravel that he let rain over the battling crowd.

That slight pause gave the Lightmaster a chance to send a streak of golden light into the Necromancer’s chest. The dark mage reeled back, dragging his bony staff across the ground to resist the burning mana. He hissed out a rasping laugh, and it was a vile sound that sent shivers all across Valens’s skin.

Before he knew it, the Lightmaster was flailing beside the Undead Lich. His mouth frothed with spit, breath gurgling in his throat, fingers of his right hand clawing at his face as if an invisible hold was choking him tight.

Lord Zahul tried to move in to help him, but a pair of slithering snakes, formed solely from the Necromancer’s filthy mana, managed to seep into his robe, making for the Heartstone thumping in his chest. That gave him no time to do anything for the light mage.

What’s happening? They look… too weak against the Necromancer. Something is strange with their frequencies as well—

A tendril squelched into Valens’s chest. Stabbed at him hard, and missed his heart by a hair’s length. The tip of it wriggled further deep through the flesh to find something, anything that would break him, blood gushing down the newly opened wound, spilling wet over his skin.

Pain bloomed in the Resonance. He winced, breath wheezing in his chest, and stumbled back. Wrapped a shaky hand around the tendril and tried to regain his focus. But it was spilling, the ground trembling, everything about the cave melting into a mess of light and stark colors.

The Inferno slipped slowly away from his hold. Disoriented, but he could feel it at the edge of his skin like a thread he wrapped around his index finger.

He lurched out a step, the tendril yanking him down. There was no time to scrutinize the wound, so he washed his flesh with a wave of lifemana, watched a great part of it spill aimlessly into the rotten air. It did give some semblance of a mind back to him, but it took the Inferno away, the embers of the storm dying all around him.

Then he was facing the Wards. All seven of them, their freakish forms ever-changing as they wriggled in a heap of tendrils and burnt skin. He was close now, so close that he could feel their fear in the Resonance. There was something else. A presence like a deafening cry over the Resonance.

He couldn’t look back. Not after he’d paid a grim price for a single glance. The Necromancer was not his problem.

Roaring madness and the taste of blood. Brightening his eyes. Clearing his mind. Thoughts became silent, then went off. Gone was the tight hold he’d kept around his steely Apathy.

He became nothing in the din. Just a tool sharpened for the occasion, sent here to complete the deed. A tendril caught him below the armpit. Another one drilled him through the chest. He bled, he cursed, and he killed them both with teeth clenched tight.

There was little time to think, then there was no time at all, him and the Wards, their forms growing limp, the cave stretching forth in a wavering mess. Blurry vision through all of it. Blinking made scarcely a difference. He had his sound vision keeping him company, and it seemed it was all he needed.

Notifications dinned inside his ears, chest burning, his mana pool drying. The bones of his ribcage cracked where the limbs got him. He couldn’t manage them all, so he let some of it spill. Made an effort through the pain. Nothing quite as fascinating. Being alive. This must be the thrill soldiers couldn’t stop telling him about.

Then the Resonance crashed down into a cadence that brought him back. He found himself in the deep of another Ward, gazing at its molten core, watching as the Necromancer’s sourceline pumped filthy rot inside. Up high in the dark of the Ward’s body, the thread was going… somewhere.

Valens paused, chest heaving with breath. He sent a Lifeward upward to see the source of it. He couldn’t quite understand how the Necromancer constantly fed its minions, but this close, he could trail the magic of it. The sourceline grew tight up above, and tighter still, until he couldn’t see it anymore. Yet he felt it. The Necromancer’s oozing pus, shaded by a play of colors, unseen to the naked eye.

When he tried to move further ahead in the Ward’s body, his Lifeward splashed hard against something solid. The invisible line went beyond it, but the barrier kept him caged inside. He couldn’t reach where he presumed the center of the Ward’s connection to the Necromancer.

I can break it.

He ground the tips of his Lifesurge threads sharper until they started gleaming inside the core. Then he sent pairs of them stabbing at the barrier. Once. Twice. Thrice. Felt it crack after a number of attempts, and pushed harder, blood trickling down his chin. Wet and warm. He was alive, still breathing. This wasn’t the time for excuses. A Warmagus should thrive in the thick of battle.

The barrier broke. Valens felt his heart stir when a Lifeward oozed through the broken pieces. Deep down it went, and stretched, painting the picture of a canal as dark as the Necromancer’s filth. The dimensions of it felt different, just like the time he’d used the Void Sphere. It seemed pointlessly small, yet wide in a way he couldn’t quite put it.

But onward he pushed, keeping the Lifeward alive. It wormed its way like a stubborn beast, wriggling through a yellowish river, the rot coming in waves from beyond. It took the Lifeward a moment to let Valens see the end of the canal. A bright light welcomed him on the edge.

Then Valens gasped. Took a step back, stumbling, his control over mana flailing. There were only two Wards left before him whose tendrils caught him from all around his body. They seemed flustered, frustrated as if they couldn’t understand how this tiny human could stand his ground after getting riddled like a hedgehog.

“Beautiful,” Valens muttered, mind reeling as he gazed at the scene the Lifeward painted over the Resonance. It was a structure of blinking lights, some larger than the others, some on the brink of bleeding out, some already having lost their gleam. Dozens of them in the web, with the largest one burning in the middle of it, connected to the others by sourceline canals.

It was Void. Master Eldras’s life’s work, displayed here beyond what Valens could have ever imagined. The Necromancer squashed the dimensions in such a way that he kept them hidden from the eyes, stored them inside his core, from where he fed every single one of his minions. And he didn’t have to do anything to keep them alive, as these creatures were all a part of him that shared a single mind.

Valens could see it from here. Could see it clear as day, and he could use the canals to reach the Necromancer’s core. The one light burning bright over the others. The one that fed them all.

So he did that. He sent his Lifesurges whistling toward the big bad magus.