Blessed Time: The Complete Series: (A LitRPG Adventure Box Set), page 65
“Right now we’re making it work because the Luoca can overpower almost everything.” He shrugged helplessly. “But when I go toe to toe with the Khan, I’ll have to go solo. He’s not a speed-based fighter, but he has enough levels on me that I don’t want to stand still casting a spell. He’ll boil me alive. I need to be able to hold my own in hand to hand or this entire plan is done for before we even really start.”
“How strong is he anyway?” Trevor asked, looking back at Micah. “You’re always so worried, but I’ll be honest—I’m pretty sure you could take on the guildmaster from the Lancers and beat him two out of three times right now. With a couple years of levels, he should be a breeze.”
“At least level 60.” Micah cracked a smile as Telivern flapped its wings, aiding a jump across a stream to escape Jo. “I’ll eat my spear if his blessing isn’t at least Rare. I had him fighting a fully empowered Luoca. It barely won.”
“Fuck.” Trevor cracked open the notebook, glancing down at its blank pages without an ounce of excitement.
“Once I can solo the Decrepit Behemoth”—Micah set his jaw—“then we can talk about me fighting the Khan. It won’t be a sure thing, but at least it’ll be an actual fight.”
“Gods,” Trevor exhaled. “That bad?”
Micah just nodded. In the distance, Jo landed in the stream after trying to leap across and catch up to Telivern. The stag snorted with laughter before primly trotting off.
“Maybe we should try training again.” Trevor tucked the notebook into his pocket and took his weight off of his spear. “I think the issue might be that Wind Burst is a first-level ability. By this point, it’s just second nature for me. It seems counterintuitive, but maybe we should start with a more complex ability like Wind Barrier?”
“Is that the one where you wave your spear in a crescent and it deflects arrows and spells?” Micah asked, nodding slowly. “That’s one of the more useful abilities I’ve seen you use.”
“Honestly?” Trevor chuckled, “I’m sure I’ll learn more moves as I level up, but it’s really just four main abilities right now: Wind Burst, Wind Barrier, Flash Step, and Returning Spear. Everything else is rather situation-specific. I guess Rustling Wind lets me meditate and restore my mana a little quicker and Calm Before the Storm gives me a ten percent bonus to my speed if I hold still for ten seconds, but that isn’t the sort of thing I’m using day to day.”
“I’m assuming that Flash Step is a movement ability.” Micah tapped his jaw. “That sounds like it could be very useful.”
“It is.” Trevor flashed him a grin. “Why do you think I’m only a little bit slower than you when we spar? I swear, your level-by-level stat gains are cheating.”
“That’s one I’d like to learn for sure,” Micah responded thoughtfully. In combat, speed was life, and that precept only became more true in his case. The faster party could control the range of engagement, meaning he could hopefully run circles around the Khan while peppering the man with spells.
Micah didn’t hold any illusions about what that would mean. Speed would give him an advantage, but the Khan was hardly helpless at range. He would still need to dodge globs of magma and spikes of rock, but that was preferable to getting melted from standing too close to the molten titan that stood guard at the end of his journey.
“From what I’ve seen,” Trevor continued, pulling Micah out of his own thoughts, “my martial art should be easy for you to learn. I’ve tried to make sense of the rituals and enchanting you play around with, and all of them make my eyes cross. Once you get the feel for the mana flows and movements, it should be a breeze for you.”
“Wait”—Micah cocked his head at Trevor—“was that a Wind magic pun?”
His brother winked at him. “Maybe. Now grab your spear and let’s give this another shot. I’m not promising anything, but if you could sit through hours of me tearing my hair out and trying to sneak out to flirt with girls, it’s the least I can do.”
He just rolled his eyes and pulled up his spear to mimic Trevor’s posture, knees slightly bent with the haft of his weapon held between his thumb and index finger, his other hand on its butt. Trevor exhaled slowly, swirling his spear in the air.
Micah could feel a flicker of mana passing out of his brother, only for the circle traced by Trevor’s spear to glow green, gaining the solidity of an iron plate for a three count. Then his brother inhaled and the light faded.
“Okay.” Trevor turned back to him. “I don’t know if you got that, but the first step is building up mana in your arms and chest. Then you draw the outline of the barrier with your spear and imagine a bunch of little triangles in it. I think the smaller you can envision them the better, but if you don’t completely fill up the barrier the entire thing will fail.”
“A basic mana circuit, then.” Micah nodded knowingly. “That makes sense even if you don’t see triangles and squares that much. It’s usually circles or octagons.”
“Sure.” Trevor shrugged. “I guess? If that’s what you call a bunch of interlocked triangles with Wind mana in them, that’s what it is.”
Micah began pooling mana, willing it into his arm and chest simultaneously. He lifted his spear, beginning to trace a circle in the air. The image of hundreds of scale-like triangles appeared within it.
“Shit, sorry.” Trevor blushed. “That won’t work. The most important part is your breathing. You need to exhale your mana and let it fill the triangles. As soon as you breathe back in, your body will reabsorb some of the mana and the ability will cancel.”
He glared at his brother before setting his feet once again and repeating the process. This time he exhaled, willing the mana in his lungs to leave his body with the stale air. The circle traced by Micah’s spear flashed brightly before shattering.
Micah shook his head, ears ringing but a wide grin on his face. He clearly hadn’t learned the ability—that would take weeks of practice—but unlike their aborted attempts with Wind Burst, he actually had a feel for this portion of the art. Not much, but a thread that he could grasp onto and follow. With enough practice, he’d be able to finish off the specific move, at which point the martial art would be added to his status, along with some instinctive knowledge of their operations.
It was still better to learn a martial art from a book or a master, but given Trevor’s struggle with relaying information, it didn’t seem like Micah would have that luxury. Perfecting a single move of a martial art wasn’t the most common method of learning it, but from the dozen or so theory manuals Micah had stolen from the Royal Library, it would work.
“Say”—Micah glanced at his brother—“we just keep calling this ‘your martial art’ and that’s incredibly awkward. What’s it called, anyway?”
“Actually,” Trevor said, grinning at him, “it’s a brand-new art. I got the option to name it when I woke up on my sixteenth birthday.”
“Oh gods,” Micah mumbled to himself, face in his palm.
“It’s good to know that Trevor’s Incredibly Talented Spear-art finally has a worthy disciple.” His brother burst out laughing, doubling over as he slapped his knee while Micah just stared at him, half in awe and half in disgust.
“You’re a child, Trevor.” Micah shook his head, struggling to keep a hint of a smile from his face. “How the fuck are people supposed to take me seriously when I tell them my martial art is named TITS?”
Trevor literally fell to the grass, tears streaming down his face while he laughed.
THIRTY-NINE
HIDING THE TRAIL
Micah stepped to the side, bursts of Wind mana accelerating his feet until they were almost too fast to see as Jo’s knife whistled past him.
He backpedaled, shoes trampling the ankle-high grass near the lake when Jo tried to stab him once again. At the last second, Micah’s hand flashed out, grabbing her wrist.
“Fuck!” Jo bit the words out as she tried unsuccessfully to wrench her hand from his grip. Then, without warning, she dropped the knife.
He pushed, slamming her hand into her own chest and sending her tumbling to the ground even as she tried to contort her body to catch the knife in her other hand. Micah simply picked it up.
“I win”—he grinned at her—“but you’re certainly getting better. You were fast enough to almost hit me when you followed up on that Triple Thrust move of yours with a low kick. That’s a good combination.”
“I thought you liked me,” Jo grumbled, brushing herself off as she stood up. “If you liked me, the least you could do is let me win every now and then. This is getting demoralizing.”
“Jo…” Micah shook his head, flipping the knife blade around and offering her the weapon’s hilt. “It’s precisely because I like you that I’m treating this seriously. You’re gaining levels in the dungeons, but that’s happening too fast. The only way you’ll be able to get used to your new abilities and attributes is if I push you to your limit.”
“Usually when a guy talks about pushing you to your limit it’s a lot more fun than this,” she complained, sliding the knife into her sheath.
“Forgive me for wanting to keep you alive,” he snorted, crossing his arms. “Look, if you just want to goof off you can always go hunting with Ravi or play tag with Telivern. Both of them love spending time with you, and if someone doesn’t keep them active they just end up sleeping all day. I don’t know much about how their bodies work, but that can’t be healthy.”
“Maybe later,” Jo said, walking past him toward the rough wooden compound that housed their group in the field, “but we should probably get going. Sarah and the others will be finishing up in Basil’s Cove soon, and they’ll need you to ferry them back.”
He glanced up at the sky, noting the sun’s position, and turned toward the lake. Unfortunately, they couldn’t quite survive on their own yet. Food and necessary ritual reagents still came from Basil’s Cove even if Ravi and Telivern’s exploration missions helped alleviate the party’s needs on both fronts. Most importantly however, Trevor and Drekt still needed to report back to the Lancers, occasionally taking on missions for the guild and keeping their ears to the ground regarding updates from Baron Hurden’s search parties.
Micah stripped off his shirt and pants, leaving them far enough back on the beach to ensure that they’d stay dry before wading into the water. A couple of splashes later and the sweat and grime from the day were gone.
He stretched, enjoying the sun on his bare back for a moment, eyes closed and knee-deep in the water. The past month or so had been productive. He knew… Trevor’s spear art… almost as well as his brother, partially because Micah made a point of actually practicing the martial art’s component skills whenever he got a chance.
Their constant forays into the Caverns of Rust provided a steady stream of experience, and Micah was edging his way toward level 30. The levels themselves were coming a little slower, as he was no longer fighting monsters grossly above his official level. Still, the rest of the team was growing a little faster than him, and they were well on course toward making it past level 40 in time for his fight with the Khan, even with the anticipated experience bottleneck as they began to outgrow their dungeon.
Shaking his head to dry his hair, Micah cast gust on himself three times to dry off. The air was a bit chilly, but Micah could use the invigoration after his brief but languid soak.
A minute or so later, his clothes and armor were back on and Micah was walking back toward the compound. Ravi and Telivern hadn’t returned from whatever adventure they’d engaged in for the day, but Jo was standing outside the crude palisade they’d built around their residences, waiting for him.
“Ready to go?” she asked cheerfully, leaning against one of the logs.
“I am,” Micah said, cocking his head carefully to the side and squinting at Jo, “but I don’t understand why you’re here. You never come on teleportation runs. They’re exhausting and fairly miserable. Most of the time you make up some excuse and make yourself scarce.”
“That was then.” Jo shrugged, shooting him a coy smile. “Right now, I’m going stir crazy.”
“Suit yourself.” Micah rolled his eyes as he walked past her toward the lean-to, where he’d set up the teleportation formation and stored the enchanted quartz formation keys.
He walked over to a crude wooden shelf built into the side of the shack and grabbed three of the fist-sized chunks of mineral. Each of them glowed with its own internal light as Micah quickly sorted through them, placing two in the carrying satchel he retrieved from the same counter before slinging it over his shoulder.
Jo followed him in, a flash of discomfort on her face as she crowded next to Micah in the dark and stale room. He squinted his eyes in the dim light, making sure that both of them were standing fully on the wood plate that he’d carved the teleportation formation onto. Nodding, he looked up at Jo.
“Are you ready?” he asked, grasping the teleportation key in both hands once the woman nodded back. “Then stay close and make sure that we have skin-to-skin contact. If you lose hold of me you might end up getting lost, and considering what occupies the space between ‘here’ and ‘there,’ I would not suggest it.”
“I know the drill by now, Micah.” She rolled her eyes. “Plus, anything that feels like the Luoca is nothing I want to mess with. I’d prefer to not be dropped into some abyss, thank you very much.”
“Like the Luoca?” Micah stopped, chunk of quartz in his hand. “Can you actually feel Elsewhere when we travel through it? That isn’t supposed to happen.”
“Elsewhere?” Jo shrugged. “Is that where everything feels wrong on a fundamental level? Like the air is just filled with some sort of residue that coats your lungs and tears at everything that makes you ‘you’?”
“I guess.” Micah scratched the back of his neck. “Gods, it really sounds bad when you put it like that. I suppose I just got used to it after a certain point.”
“You just got used to feeling corrosive energy slowly melting your soul from the inside out?” she snorted at him. “Maybe Drekt is right about the daemon. I’m not nearly as doom and gloom as he is, but if you can get used to that monster, maybe that isn’t a good thing?”
“Maybe.” Micah shrugged noncommittally. “We can talk about that later, though. I don’t want to leave Trevor, Drekt, and Sarah waiting for too long.”
“Almost as smooth of a sidestep as when we were sparring.” Jo winked at him before wrapping her hand around Micah’s forearm.
He didn’t respond, in part because he wasn’t sure that she was wrong. This time, he didn’t feel the chains of fire tugging on his personality and influencing his opinions, but that didn’t mean he was safe. For all Micah knew, the exact same thing would happen again, just slower.
Closing his eyes, Micah mentally reached into the ball of quartz in his hand. A hazy white path appeared in the darkness, disappearing into the distance. In his mind’s eye, Micah put his foot upon the trail and took a step forward.
The world blurred and spun around him as the magic from the formation tossed him like a stone into the ocean of Elsewhere. Around him, the howling nothingness crowded in. Micah could feel the perception of entities that had never needed eyes fixing themselves upon him. Great formless shapes shambled toward him from just outside the path, its thin white light the only thing protecting him from forces older than Karell itself.
Micah stumbled forward, falling onto his hands and knees in the grove. The two remaining giant trees towered over him as the world spun. Nearby, Jo fell to the ground, clutching her head and mumbling to herself.
As useful as Micah’s teleportation network leading back to Basil’s Cove was, with each jump covering almost a day’s walk on foot, actually using it took a toll. Each additional person required more mana and strained the ritual. There were other factors such as distance and the skill of the crafter, but there was a reason why nations didn’t simply shift armies around via teleportation. Even bringing the rest of the party back from Basil’s Cove was likely to push him to his limit.
After a minute, the grove stopped spinning and Micah pulled himself to his feet with a groan. Jo was still curled into the fetal position in the grass, but at least she’d stopped mumbling things to herself.
He walked over and touched her shoulder gently, drawing a bleary and unhappy look from the huddled woman.
“Gods,” she mumbled, “I forgot how awful that is.”
“It’s not great,” Micah agreed, “but it’s effective. You and I need to stay far from the city if we want to avoid unwanted attention from a certain mercenary, and we don’t have weeks to waste on supply runs.”
“Ugh,” she replied, standing up and wiping her face with a forearm as she walked to the carved wood panel that Micah was already standing on. “Just remind me next time that coming with you is a stupid idea.”
“I did,” Micah chuckled. He grabbed her wrist with his left hand, while his right held a different sphere of quartz.
The world faded into darkness once again as reality blurred, flinging them down a narrow pathway of light. Tendrils of… something reached for the two of them, recoiling as they touched the tunnel of white energy. Micah felt a dagger of ice jam into his stomach as the ritual ripped enough mana from him to sustain the crystalline magical structure, which was all that protected him from the corrosive formlessness of Elsewhere.
Just as they neared the end of the lighted trail, Micah’s senses tingled. There was something different, a loose net of red and green surrounding the teleportation formation. Before he could make sense of it, he and Jo were pushed through by the power of the ritual, tumbling out into the stone chamber of the cave where he and Trevor had killed the dire stoat.
Micah just sat there, heaving for breath on his hands and knees on the stone floor of the cave. Once again, Jo was whimpering something indeterminate, but he was more concerned with the way the chamber undulated and spun around him.
The vertigo lasted almost twice as long as his previous bout. Micah wasn’t entirely sure if that was from the entity in Elsewhere, the grid of magic around his cave, or if he was getting tired. Either way, he had time to kill until the rest of the team signaled that they needed a pickup from his parents’ house.
