Arcane Apocalypse [LitRPG]

Did the heavens truly exist in this wide cosmos? Mia had heard of mighty creatures that would have blown most mythical gods of Earth out of the ballpark, and she'd learned of the existence of Realms governed by rules entirely unlike the one she lived in. There were Realms where thoughts were as solid as steel and emotions were wielded as weapons, but maybe there truly was a space, a dimension somewhere deep into that Realm where beings beyond imagination played with the threads of fate itself.

If there was, Mia was pretty sure they were sending them signs. She was also reasonably sure they thought Mia and her comrades were idiots, because she couldn't imagine a sign as foreboding as this.

During their walk back to the campsite, the light dripping down through the canopy thinned rapidly, and now the world around them was drained of colour. Dusk had fallen, and only Mia's supernatural eyesight allowed her to navigate the world around her without any detriment.

Rain poured, constantly crashing into the metallic canopy and turning its ethereal song into a haunting wail. The Wards stopped the water from touching Mia, but each drop crashing into the defensive construct drained a tiny slice of its power. Now, Mia stood in the dark forest, drenched and shivering like everyone around her. Reapplying the Ward would only waste even more of her mana and result in every other fighter asking for one of their own, then resenting her when she told them to pound sand.

Chaos aspected mana cycling through her channels in a controlled surge was at least warming her body up somewhat, but it was far from enough. Her clothes were sticking to her skin and her hair clung to her scalp, making her feel absolutely miserable.

I should have packed a raincoat. Mia groused to herself, glaring at the few people standing around covered in just that. It was just another sign of her lack of camping experience, though she still placed some of the blame on Brent, who reviewed their backpacks before heading out. As it was, she only had a single leather jacket that did precious little to protect most of her body from the rain.

"This changes things," Brent mused aloud, fingers rubbing at his chin thoughtfully. If one looked at him, they would think he was waterproof. Mia knew he was not; the man just ignored being drenched down to his bones with an ease Mia found enviable. "Three Dark Effigies and three Lieutenants … sub-Guardians. This Quest has just granted us so much information for free. I hope it's a good sign and not the System thinking we are destined to fail unless it puts its hand on our side of the scale."

"Nikki said Rift Quests are a well-documented thing from Rank 2 and up," Mia said. "For some reason, this Rift acts like a Rank 2 one. Maybe the System halted it while it was Ranking Up and some aspects of it were already changed … ?"

"Doesn't matter now," Brent said. "We know the Guardian wields some sort of dark magic and that we can disable it by destroying the effigies. We will have to prioritise that. Kruger didn't find the sub-Guardian you said?"

"No, he did not," Mia confirmed with a nod, shivering as a chilly raindrop landed on her nape and rolled into her shirt, continuing down the length of her spine and leaving uncomfortable goosebumps in its way. "He should be back soon. I think."

A sudden crash of thunder high above the canopy made Mia jump in fright, and flashes of yellowish light reflected in the silvery leaves made their way down to the forest floor. The previous gloomy dusk suddenly looked much more appealing.

"That might be a problem," Nikki said from a little ways over, glancing at Mia as she took a significant few steps away from the tree she had been huddling under. "These trees are made of metal."

Metal. Metal trees. Thunder. Storm. Lightning. Metal trees and lightning.

"Shit," Mia muttered, swallowing heavily. "Brent, I think you should tell everyone to get away from anything metallic or they will get deep-fried if the next lightning strikes closer."

"For the l-" Brent sighed, then drew in a deep breath, his chest swelling in size, visible before he bellowed. "GET AWAY FROM THE TREES IF YOU DON'T WANT TO FEEL WHAT GETTING STRUCK BY LIGHTNING FEELS LIKE!"

People jumped away from the trees with startled yelps, pulling their coats tighter around themselves as the downpour they'd been a bit safer from while hugging the trunks came down on them in full force. Some erected earthen shelters, small half-domes and such, but those housed the fighters with Body stats much lower on the scale, people who still had to fear catching a cold or hypothermia.

Fortunately, Mia was past that stage, with her Body stat being beyond the 10 points threshold, although she wasn't feeling all that 'fortunate' at the moment. If anything, she felt like a drenched cat.

"I don't suppose you could handle the lightning?" Mia asked, looking over at her mother, who stood behind her with her face turned towards the canopy. Or perhaps facing the sky, shrouded behind it.

"I can handle any that would strike you, probably," Helene said in an absent-minded whisper, her gaze staring at something far off. "I wouldn't like to try it, if I can help it. Lightning is … fickle and powerful, I can't be sure it won't twist out of my grasp at the last moment. Protecting fifty people is … impossible."

Mia sighed, nodding thankfully, though Helene's mind was obviously somewhere else as she didn't even notice. It wasn't like Mia had been expecting anything else. Water mages and Lina both said they would drain their entire stores of mana in minutes if they had to protect everyone from the downpour.

There was mana in the rain, they had said, making it a damned pain to protect against through magic. At least it didn't do anything beyond what regular rainwater does; the healers had made sure of that. The only thing they had to fear was … getting struck by lightning. Water made even non-conductive things conduct electricity, and they were in a forest of metal.

"Maybe we should head out and wait out the storm?" Mia muttered, glancing back at the shimmering gateway leading back into the real world. "I doubt we can get anything done with it going on. Might as well spare ourselves the suffering, or at least get some more appropriate wear for this weather. I could use a raincoat."

There was a time limit, sure, but she was … reasonably sure the storm would abate just as quickly as it came. Mia refused to believe their luck would be so atrocious that this accursed storm would rage on for two days straight. There was no reason for them to stand around and be miserable when the gateway could painlessly transport them back outside. With a few people staying inside to keep watch on the weather, the rest could be back out in the sunny mid-summer weather.

"I don't know," Brent said wearily, his voice dropping to a whisper as he glanced at the portal. "I don't think we've read anything like it, but I refuse to believe the Rift just … allows unlimited passage through the portal. Can you ask your icy friend about it? We can continue this discussion later."

"Hey, Nikki? Sorry, can I ask a quick question?" Mia called, and the similarly drenched and clearly displeased ice mage came over. "Is there any reason why we shouldn't just … get out of the Rift and wait out the storm?"

Nikki blinked, wearing a dubious — and honestly a bit dumb — expression on her face. "Yes, yes, there is. If we go out, then come back in, then the Rift — the portal, that is — will transport us to a new instance and not this one. Anyone still inside will be left alone as if we'd abandoned them."

"Really?" Mia asked, her curiosity getting the best of her. Again. "How can it just do that? I thought the Rift was using up as much mana as it was getting to infuse its monsters and grow their levels. How can it just … replicate everything inside it? Wait, will the number of guardians breaking out of it double the next time if we make a new instance?"

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"I don't know," Nikki said, her tone saying she'd have loved to add a descriptive profanity in there but couldn't bring herself to be so undignified even while being this … displeased. "I'm not a Space Mage or dimensional researcher. Rifts in the Mystic Realm never break because the right to delve them is a fought-after commodity, so most of them are kept in a constantly mana-starved state."

"Mia," Brent cut in. "Yes or no?"

"Uhm, no." Mia shook herself out of it. "Very no. We'd not be coming back to this rift if we went out and came back in; instead, the portal would drop us in a new 'instance'. Sort of like a parallel dimension of thi-"

"I know what a dungeon instance is," Brent cut in. "I am not that old. Okay, so … fuck. MARK!"

"What?!" the grumpy dwarf shouted over, his voice almost getting lost in the persistent noise of crashing rain and wailing trees.

"Get me whichever Earth mage has the best efficiency," Brent said. "We need shelters, preferably ones that will hold, not fill up with water and someone who can get it done without exhausting our supply of mana potions."

"I told you already it's going to take a shitload of work to compress the earth enough to hold," Mark grumbled. "This fucking rain eats through regular hardened earth in seconds, if you want anything that holds up better than a sandcastle then you'll have to either cough up your fancy mana potions or let us work in peace."

True enough, another half-dome was being constructed, but it was coming along slowly as the Earth mages cycled themselves, some always sitting under it and meditating to replenish their mana. The first half-dome took them about half an hour to build, but that included the initial trial and error where they figured out how strong they had to make the walls to resist the rain for at least a short while.

"Would the instance … reset if we all went out then came back in?" Mia asked the Ice mage. "Think that would be worth considering with this awful storm?"

"I wouldn't do it," the woman said without pause. "Rifts aren't alive, per se, but it does seem like that sometimes. I've heard from one of my tutors, a retired Adventurer, that Rifts like to fuck with you and hate when you try to cheat their tricks or mechanics. If he was right, we'll get an even meaner storm the next time around, and you'll get a few lightning bolts on your head for coming up with the idea."

What the fuck. Rifts held grudges like petty Dungeon Masters who hated their players? What manner of bullshit was this?

"What the fuck," Mia said, speaking her thoughts aloud with her eyes going wide. "That had to be bullshit! … right? I mean, if I was an old retired Adventurer, I'd love to mess with my students with all sorts of over exaggerated stories and random bullshit."

Especially if those students were prickly noble scions.

"We paid him good money to educate me," Nikki said, her nose scrunching up into a delicate frown. How could someone frown elegantly? The girl needed to be studied. "Even if it was not academically proven, I believe he spoke from experience, or it is common adventurer wisdom. I wouldn't dismiss it, and neither should you."

"You're right," Mia said, letting out a slow breath. "Sorry."

"I am, but what are you apologising for?" Nikki asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You never gave me any reason to doubt your advice." Mia shrugged awkwardly. She was not taking this Rift, this Raid, seriously enough.

"All is fine," Nikki said, then, when she was about to open her mouth again, she hissed.

Mia didn't hear it; she felt exactly what prompted the other woman's reaction. Something was shifting; her Spirit Sense couldn't tell her what or how, but there was a massive shift in the mana around her.

Broken mana, the dark miasma clouding her senses, was pushed back as something wild and chaotic surged forth. With a crash of thunder, a crackling beam of mana struck down from the heavens, parting the miasma. There was so much power in there, it made Mia shiver.

She only had a fraction of a second to pale in fright as some subconscious part of her brain read the vector of the lightning. It was coming straight down, right atop their heads, but so fast she barely even had time to feel horrified before it struck with a resounding crash.

The smell of ozone and a wash of sizzling heat enveloped Mia, and she warily cracked an eye open in the hope that if she could still smell, then she wasn't dead. Sure enough, she soon confirmed that she was still among the living, though her relief died in her the moment she turned to make sure the others shared her luck.

Helene stood a few metres away, clothes charred and lighting still arcing around her body. Most horrifying of all, her eyes were wide open and glowed with an intense yellowish light.

There was more mana in her body than Mia ever thought possible, and she stepped forward, arm reaching forward in an effort to do … something. The only thing she knew was that she had to help her mother. She couldn't lose her. Not her, too.

"Wait," Nikki grabbed her shoulder, holding her back. That earned her a threatening hiss from an overprotective vampire, but the girl didn't let go.

"What?" Mia demanded.

"Don't interrupt her," Nikki said, staring at Helene with a strange expression. "Even if it doesn't hurt her, I doubt she'll be happy about it. I've seen Spirit communion before, and that looks like she caught the attention of a powerful one. Don't rob her of a chance at contracting it."

***** A few minutes ago *****

Helene, despite everything, was still just a human. Not that she wanted her bloodline to grow more powerful and change her race, who knew what permanent changes would be made to her body? She did not want to have the head of a horse, for example, or deal with permanent wings on her back.

Still, whenever Mia described how she could feel the mana moving and flowing in the world around her so clearly, she felt some envy in her heart.

Helene had searched for alternatives that could be learned, but the best she could do so far was a nifty little technique to suck in some mana into her channels and 'taste' it. Apparently, she would be able to do more in the future, feel the ambient mana through her own mana, even outside her body. But that was in the future.

Now she had to make do with taking little nibbles out of the ocean of mana she was constantly submerged in.

That was until the storm started. With the first crash of thunder in the distance, something ephemeral yet powerful filled the air. It was there in every raindrop, in every rough gust of wind and in every lightning strike, in every thunder shaking the canopy, and Helene felt it all resound in her Spirit.

With every minute that went by, she felt it surge in power, becoming clearer, and she reached for it, feeling like she was about to catch the feeling every time until it slipped from her grasp.

In a moment of sudden epiphany, Helene recalled a book she'd read. Unlike her daughter, who fluttered about between a wide variety of books discussing diverse topics like some hyperactive moth unable to decide which light to buzz around, Helene was more focused in her research and spent her time a bit more wisely.

She approached magic like she did IT and technology, willing to learn but only as much as she needed. She didn't need to know how to set up routers or whatnot; she was satisfied with knowing how to send emails and make Word documents. Likewise, she only needed fundamental magical knowledge to work her mana and specialised instructions that assisted her with wielding her Class as best as possible.

Helene was a Storm Sorceress, someone who was supposed to call on a Spirit to work her magic. Which was a pain, since according to a book about the various types of them, Storm Spirits were especially prickly.

Made up of the elements of Water, Air and the Fused element of Lightning, they took the worst aspects of them all. They were persistent like the rivers, flighty and whimsical like the wind and overbearing like lightning. They also believed themselves to be the apex of Spirits, and of course, all other beings in existence, which meant a lowly Rank 0 human's chances of contracting one could be rounded up to zero.

And yet … Helene could feel it, the Storm Lands were close, they had to be. The book on Spirits spoke of the place, the home dimension of all Storm Spirits and Elementals, deep within the Spirit Realm. It was the place her Class drew power from, the place that supplied her with energy when she used her Storm Calling subskill.

That's it! She thought. Of course. I have to call out, even if they can sense me with this heavy storm linking our dimensions, they'll never come without invitation.

Well, 'invitation' wasn't quite the right word. She'd be a supplicant, beseeching the mighty Spirits for help; there was no way their pride would allow them to make the first move even if they were curious about this new Realm. Maybe, if one of them took a liking to her, they might throw a newborn Sprite her way to contract with. That would open up so many doors for her.

So far, she could only throw Lightning Bolts and empower them with Storm Calling, those being the subskills of her Class Skill. Besides that, she could sometimes entice an Air elemental into helping her, but those things were as flighty as the wind and just as intelligent. She was lucky when they understood what she asked of them and actually bothered to do it once she gave them their payment in mana.

With a deep breath, Helene straightened her spine and steeled her resolve. She was a mobile turret at the moment, one that ate through her mana faster than a starving hyena. Already, she'd been a strain on the entire town's collective mana potion storage just so she could be useful to the war effort.

She needed this power, this versatility. Without a Spirit Bond, Sorcerers couldn't progress beyond a point, and that point was usually the peak of Rank 0. After this Rift, Mia would leave her behind, everyone would leave her behind … she would be forced to let her daughter's head out into danger without her.

I can't become a burden. I will not become a burden. Helene gritted her teeth and lit her mana alight, letting the potent Storm mana in her core crackle along her mana pathways.

Her mana sang and sent out a Call to the very Storms themselves, sending up a beacon into the heavens above and into the distant dimension of the Storm Lands.

Helene was not left waiting for long, not a second after her Call went out, for the first time since she'd gotten the Class, the Storms answered.