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Arcanist - Chapter 19
🕑 Added 2025-03-09 11:47:35 +0000 UTCThe two forces clashed as Valens tried to keep his hold from slipping away. Blood was precious for a reason, and he was too deep in the Ward’s body to manage a Lifesurge to tend his wounds. The delicate balance was hanging over a thin rope, and losing it meant certain death.
He felt a stubborn insistence rose within him. He would keep at it. End this creature for good, then take a look at that gaping hole. Just another wound. Yes. He’d fixed broken men all his life, and could fix himself just as he’d done before.
Clenching his teeth, he gazed deep into the Ward’s body, feeling the strange movements of the rotten source. Death mana had always laid in a lull in the Resonance, its song one clear tune that lost its rhythm ever so slowly, but here, it had a stronger, wilder set of frequencies that thrummed in Valens’s ears.
An unnatural strength that seemed to be coming from beyond.
Something or someone was feeding this creature. That was the only explanation. And life mana was responding with fury against it.
These two different sources almost seemed as if they were made to clash, Valens thought, even if mana was supposed to be this mindless, emotionless energy. Like water spilled over on a burning bonfire, the Resonance hissed deep in his mind. The fleshy maze grew wide and weak, the bony walls flexing into a stretch that allowed Lifesurge threads to course free.
On their way they came across more rotten mana spheres. Valens noted the change in them. That how weak they felt. That how aimlessly they hung there, now that the Lifesurges had slashed them apart from the main trickle that fed them.
One tendril wasn’t enough. He had to dig his way to the main mass of the Ward, where he hoped he would find the real core of this foul energy, and fix this freakish creation that defied nature like how he would fix a cut on a patient’s arm.
Stronger resistance on the way. Clanking of a sword and a brutal tear of a roar that dinned sharp in his ears. The woman’s cry, a warrior’s cry, one that carried nothing but a deep, hot fury. Nomad was screaming at her. Alive, then. That was a relief.
Valens wanted to open his eyes and see them for himself, to tell them that he was trying to end this creature for good. He couldn’t. He feared that the moment he let the outside fill into his vision, the delicate threads of Apathy weaved across his emotions would break, and pain would spill forth like a crushing wave. Here, in the dark, it was away. A stray thought that was cast off from his mind like an unwanted guest.
Lifesurge threads reached the end of the tendril. The Resonance had told him so. Threads of it found their way into the main mass of the creature. A Lifeward painted its outer frame in Valens’s sound vision. Human-like, but not quite. It didn’t have a heart. Any organs or such. Bones were missing where they should, replaced by a blend of cartilage and rotten flesh patched over with an ungodly amount of balmy skin.
One, two… ten… eighty. A total of one hundred fifteen gaps in the Resonance, scattered across the creature’s body where it sent the tendrils outward. Valens didn’t have the mana to pull them apart one by one. Not when the Ward could easily patch them with more rotten sources. He had to find the hole that the woman had opened, the one that screamed closer to its head.
A long way, Valens thought. His chest felt empty, a well about to dry out. He didn’t know if his Lifesurges could reach that far. He didn’t know, but then he’d done many things without concrete information before. Just one more to the pile. This time a dangerous one, it looked like.
Ding! [Lifesurge(Master): 3 > 4]
Ding! [Lifeward(Master) : 3 > 4]
The faint sound seemed to add some depth to the surge threads. Something palpable, as if the frequencies of the strings had been granted a deeper sound. It wasn’t much, but Valens would take it. He needed all he could get right now.
Around the stomach, right below the ribcage, the Lifesurge threads splashed into a river of yellow rot. It wound into dozens of streams that ran through the holes of the fleshy maze, guided by some invisible force toward the tendrils to keep them animated. Valens thought for a second to seal the holes to keep the river inside, but decided against it when he saw how many of them dotted the walls.
Onward, up through the sloshing waves, the Lifesurge threads cleaved a path like a counter current of pristine clarity through the rot, spearheaded by a tight web of strings that Valens kept renewing with his mana pool. A little slip, then the rot would wash over the Lifesurges and drown them in waves.
He never wavered. His hold around his mind remained hard as steel.
Metal scraped against the cold, wet earth. Breaking stones. Steel singing songs. Green fog’s touch, oddly similar to the rotten mana but different in a curious way, cradled Valens like a warm hug. Nomad grunted, followed by the sharp whistle of his sword.
Shadows stirred. Shadows fell. Someone screamed.
Valens kept at the threads, forcing them stubbornly up through the Ward’s mass. The rotten river’s touch was biting. It grew more insistent. A weight over the Resonance. It tried to trick his mind ever so slightly, like an insidious snake that aimed at the Archmagus in him. Talking about mysteries. Giving out promises. What was there beyond the veil? What was this foul energy? What if he let it seep inside his body?
Eats away the mind.
But this was no Warmagic. Nothing like Valens had ever known. Yet its sound was most alluring. It forced itself upon Apathy and lingered there. So long as he willed it, so long as he wanted it, it would become his own. Or Valens would become it. There was a difference.
The Resonance ruptured, gaps streaking across its rhythm. Thousands of voices echoed inside his mind. He could hear them. Life over death, and death over life. A hideous mix. Coming from all around the membrane that sheltered a ball of pure yellow, full of rot and pus and death.
He paused as he faced the source in his sound vision. This was the core that kept every bit of the Ward’s body being fed. Where was the string, then? The thread that’d bound it to the real source, the one that supplied all this energy to the core?
There.
So small was the strand that he almost couldn’t catch it. It dangled from over the core, hidden inside an ethereal fog wafting off from the sizzling rot, its tip bound to the roof of the molten core. The Resonance pulsed, and so pulsed the strand with it. It was feeding the Ward constantly.
When Valens tried to trail it to the real source, he lost its sound just where the string vanished into the Ward’s head. It stretched somewhere he couldn’t reach. Not now with him as he is now.
He then willed the Lifesurge threads to lash at the part he could see. They clawed over the core and slashed across the strand with cold obedience. The fleshy walls and the rot within the core squirmed as the source line trembled with the impact. And yet it held true, the Lifesurge threads bouncing harmlessly back.
Again, he tried, but the strand remained rooted. It was as though he was trying to sever a metal pipe with a pair of blunt knives. He couldn’t put a dent to it, let alone cut into its hardened shell. The difference in strength was one that he couldn’t overcome with pure will alone.
So he searched for a different course, sending a Lifeward to the core. The painted picture in his mind was one that described a round, sturdy shell, its outer layer clad in a wave of rot so thick that it could eat away the Lifesurge threads with ease. It was almost seamless. Almost, but not quite.
There was an opening.
Valens guided the Lifesurge threads there, over to the core’s roof where the lifeline strand had been strapped with a tight knot into the rotten source. He might’ve failed to cut into the line itself, but so long as he untied those loops, he could leave the Ward all dried out.
The moment he reached it, an invisible force weighed on his control. He seemed to hear a surprised voice right then, a wicked voice. It died away instantly, replaced by the sudden outburst of rot that spurted out of the core. A giant wave of foul mana threatened to drown the Lifesurge threads.
Valens twitched.
Panic grabbed at him, rattling the cage of his chest. He was too tired and too battered to mount a resistance against something this big.
There was no end to it. No—
A strong hand weighed over his shoulder. It clutched him there and held him.
Nomad…
“To the Healer!” Valens heard him say, voice muffled, barely oozing through his focus. “It's aiming at him. Distract that creature, woman. Listen to me… Listen! I need you here right there on that fucker’s face!”
A furious roar answered the call.
The air boiled with sudden heat.
Somewhere something hard crashed into the Ward’s skin. Fingers punctured through the shell and sent the rotten wave flailing away.
Focus.
Valens wasted no time to stretch one of the Lifesurge’s into a tight web, laying it over the other surge threads that were trying to untie the knot. The scattered wave of rot splashed across the newly formed net, hissing, sizzling, trying to bite in, but failing as the surge threads preserved on.
Slowly, painfully he worked the battered Lifesurge threads round the knot. The strand was pulsing still, but it was softer around here, almost delicate enough to give him some chance. It took him a long moment to pluck the first one away.
Once that was done, the rest started coming out on their own.
The Apathy broke.
Everything spilled through the cracks and stabbed into his mind.
His eyes cracked open.
He was lying there staring into the ceiling with his body screaming and his throat dry, his skin lifelessly cold around where the blood dried round his wound. He tried to breathe, but there was no air. Nothing left in his lungs. A soundless, painful cry parted his lips. His chest burned when he called for a Lifesurge. He had barely any mana left.
He doubled over with the stub of a tendril still deep in his stomach. The other part of the shadowy limp lay a few inches before him, carved by something sharp. Beyond its tip Nomad and the woman were thrashing the melting, bubbling form of the Ward with steel and fists.
‘Ding’ You have managed to defeat [The Necromancer’s Ward - lvl 108]! 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!
You have leveled up! 5 Stat Points granted!
You have leveled up! 5 Stat Points granted!
…
You have leveled up! 5 Stat Points granted!
Ding! [Lifesurge(Master): 4 > 5]
Ding! [Lifeward(Master) : 4 > 5]
Ding! [Apathy (Master) : 4 > 5]
Valens slumped back to the ground, some pressure behind his ears, his vision a mess of dancing lights. He faintly heard the sounds, then the world grew dim and dimmer still, until it had become completely dark.
……
