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Arcanist - Chapter 14
🕑 Added 2025-03-09 11:32:54 +0000 UTCThe moment Valens let the pair of Fireballs sail across the cave he was instantly struck by a sudden jolt round his hands. Something was different. Mana roared within his chest, the furious river sending a gurgling wave of magical source through his fingers to feed the spells.
Such intensity that the Fireballs grew twice in size, bloating the narrow passage with burning lights. They splashed in a grand wave of crimson fury against the first line of Steelmoles, drowning them in sparks and sending restless droplets of fire about the cave.
Pained shrieks stabbed at Valens’s heart, the muffled cries jabbing hard into his ears in the close confines of the passage. The air blurred and twisted before the resulting wall of flame. The heat was suffocating. It ate away all the oxygen in the air.
*Ding! [Fireball(Proficient): 4 > 5]
Next to Valens, Nomad was staring at the sight with hands hesitant around the handle of his sword. His mouth parted, that same piece of flesh hanging from the upper lip. “This…” he muttered absently, sounding greatly disturbed. “You’ve got a level in Fireball or what?”
Valens grinned at him. Seemed like the stats he’d recently poured into the Intelligence were doing some work here. Some curious work, indeed, but there was something else that piqued his interest.
It almost feels like the spell yearns for more. It grew — no, that’s not it. This is not mere growth. The Resonance hadn’t changed. It just became more clear? More alive? I can catch the notes with a clarity unlike before.
Valens focused on the frequencies. The Fireball’s rhythm had always been a constant flow, a melody that remained unbroken so long he supplied it with mana. But just now, when he focused on the Resonance, he caught scattered gaps to its rhythm.
Were those always there?
If so… Valens’s heart dropped. Such a waste! Such impotency to let a spell flail mindlessly in a broken, almost painful cadence! If Headmaster Eldras had been here, he would have long cracked that stick of his on the back of his incompetent disciple even though Valens was basically a rookie in the field of Warmagic.
He reached out with haste, eyes fixed on the burning wall. Though the spells lost their form, their core remained strong as Valens kept them bound to his inner mana source.
It took him a moment to prepare a Lifesurge while keeping the Fireballs alive. Once he heard the bloom of the life mana, a strong thump in his reeling mind, he cast it upon the fire wall. The invisible surges rushed forward, seeking the gaps in the otherwise constant rhythm as Valens strained with keeping three spells at once.
That was when a pair of sharp claws cleaved across the burning flames, parting the wall just enough that the Steelmoles could spill through it.
“Stubborn bastards,” Nomad cursed, and lunged for the incoming beasts.
His sword found purchase with a sickening squelch, sending a couple of corpses sprawling over to the side. Blood spurted in waves and sprinkled about the cave. Dotted the walls in blackish streaks that slid down through the jagged stone.
A claw caught Nomad by its unprotected bony legs, scraping and grinding against the kneecap as the Steelmole tried to rip out that part. Another one was aiming low, its claws striking against the armored feet and trying to dig deep through the silvery metal.
The heavy sword fell upon the first one and through its thick fur. Its tip broke free from the creature's soft belly. Nomad cast the corpse away with a flick of his wrist, then drove his right knee down at the other one.
He came out swinging, turning and twisting about, feet crushing the little moles and leaving puddles of bloody soup and mashed bones in their wake. Still, the moles rushed at him, as if taken by mindless fury.
There!
Valens finally caught the gaps with the Lifesurge. The invisible surge threads filled the strange empty sequences with a set of frequencies Valens painfully adjusted to that of the Fireball’s song. While doing so, he came across a most bothersome find, one that brought back the Archmagus inside of him who was obsessed with every bit of magical knowledge.
The spell was wrong. Somehow, something was just not right with its inner core. It felt like trying to find the word that lingered on the tip of his tongue, but for the life of him Valens couldn’t quite put a name on this issue.
He could only patch the broken cadence for now, as it wasn’t the time to dwell on this oddity. The moles were swarming over Nomad as the large Steelmole kept the flame wall parted.
Nomad wavered and cursed loud, but he remained nailed before Valens. Bodies lay in heaps around him. Blood painted his plate in blackish crimson.
Mana burned within Valens’s chest once he patched the gaps. Then, as if a pipe recently unclogged, it rushed in a flood toward the Fireballs and bolstered them with a constant rhythm. Still wrong, but at least uninterrupted.
Valens felt unimaginable power in his fingers.
Ding! [Fireball (Proficient) has been upgraded to Fireball (Adept)!]
Rather than laboring with the flame wall, he instead let go of the Fireballs and conjured a new pair over his fingers. Flames burned red and white along his finger tips, radiating a heat that nearly scorched the side of his face.
“Move aside!” he yelled at Nomad.
Nomad spared him a momentary glance. His emerald eyes blinked at the feverish balls hovering an inch above Valens’s hands. “What the hell are those? You’re going to burn this whole place!”
“Move… Aside! I can’t keep these for long.” Valens urged him with a glare.
Nomad twirled his sword around himself to get some distance from the moles, then stepped back… back behind Valens’s and took cover there. With a tired sigh, Valens finally released the Fireballs.
The whole cave came alive with blaring lights, washing over the ranks of Steelmoles in waves. Valens saw their little eyes grow wide as they scrambled hesitantly back. But there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide from the burning suns that covered nearly every inch of the opening.
Spells crashed down hard into their ranks. Splashed across in waves of scorching heat, filling the air with the stench of burnt fur and flesh. Pained cries and broken lines. The side walls dripping wet with melted stones. Shaking. All around the cave a mad shaking rocking them to the core.
Valens flinched back. He stared at his own fingers, feeling the mana threads still feeding the spells. So long he wanted, so long he had enough mana, he could keep those flames burning around the cave.
Yet his stomach turned. Bile piled into his mouth. The little creatures thrashed and flailed about before him, droplets of fire biting deep into their skin. Some of them looked like broken shapes charred beyond recognition. Others clawed at their own skin, ripping out parts where the fire refused to die out.
You have managed to defeat [Steelmole - lvl 54]! For killing a creature above your own level, you are granted bonus experience.
You have managed to defeat [Steelmole - lvl 47]! For killing a creature above your own level, you are granted bonus experience.
You have managed to defeat [Steelmole - lvl 48]! For killing a creature above your own level, you are granted bonus experience.
You have managed to defeat [Steelmole - lvl 45]! For killing a creature above your own level, you are granted bonus experience.
You have managed to defeat [Steelmole - lvl 49]! For killing a creature above your own level, you are granted bonus experience.
You have managed to defeat [Steelmole - lvl 45]! 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!
Ding [Fireball(Adept) 5 > 6]
Ding [Fireball(Adept) 6 > 7]
Notifications blinked in his vision. Walls of text trying to keep the hellish sight away from his eyes.
Valens waved them off. Skeletons had been different. Burning them almost felt like it was the right thing to do, but this made him sick in a way he couldn’t quite understand.
“The big guy is coming,” Nomad muttered, and strode off to meet the large Steelmole crawling on all fours toward them.
Bits of its fur were missing. A gaping hole right around its head had flesh squirming in it. Valens could see its skull there, white bone barely visible under the pooling blood. Through the force of habit he checked the Resonance of the wound. Felt it stir slightly, naturally as if guided by an invisible hand.
The creature was healing.
Its flesh burnt with the Fireballs was somehow stitching itself back. Valens knew the moment he laid his eyes upon that reaction that it would take minutes, perhaps hours for that wound to be closed. Still, it was faster than a human’s natural regeneration rate by dozens of times.
Endurance and Vitality.
Valens steeled the apathy and forced his thoughts back to the present as Nomad raised his sword at the mole. A Resonant Healer’s real forte was his strong mind. His hold around his emotions tightened. He squashed them with practiced ease, and prepared another Fireball in his right hand.
The mole lunged at Nomad, easily dodging around the sword in mid air and clawing across his helmet. Metal cried sharply as the claws scraped against the worn armor, but it held true, which gave Nomad a chance to turn his sword and stab at the mole’s underbelly.
Sharp claws swatted the tip of the weapon away, the mole using the resulting momentum to launch itself toward the side wall. All four claws caught the rock in a steely grip, then the creature tensed back and threw itself yet again to Nomad.
Valens sent the Fireball hurtling toward its path, Nomad stepping back to allow the spell an interrupted passage. White and crimson flames scattered about when the mole clawed the Fireball through the middle, barely slowing as its claws glinted with strange lights.
The change to the Resonance was slight, but enough to alert Valens’s senses. He called for a Gale to push the creature back, the wind stirring the fiery droplets still burning on the mole’s black fur, only to pause when Nomad snorted and banged an armored fist to his chest.
Green light burst forth. So bright that Valens had to shade his eyes and let go of Gale. A harsh note bloomed in his mind, as if a hammer had caught him by the head and sent his thoughts reeling.
It took him a Lifesurge to regain his focus, one that he forced over the screaming note. When he pried his eyes open, he froze.
Nomad’s plate was alive with greenish fog. There was no heat to them. Nothing but that strong note and the waves of rolling fog that told Valens they really existed. Like ethereal limbs they stretched forth and coiled around the mole, caught the creature in mid-leap and held him there.
The undead’s sword ripped the Steelmole Carver’s body through the middle.
Tendrils of greenish fog drilled into the creature’s carved flesh. They pulsed and wriggled as they sucked all the blood out of the mole. Left it drained and cast the mangled body parts away while Nomad watched with disturbing apathy in his emerald eyes.
Before long the green fog was everywhere, seeping through the half-dead moles’ wounds and leaving them bloodless. When the last one wheezed weakly as it died, Nomad clenched a fist and thumped it on his chest.
“Lord Zahul’s calling,” he said to the silent question in Valens’s eyes, then glanced upward and scowled. “We need to move. Fast. Something’s wrong above there.”
Valens nodded. The look in Nomad’s face gave him no chance whatsoever to argue.
……
