Arcane Apocalypse [LitRPG]

A crack reverberated across the forest, and hushed conversations died in an instant, heads snapping towards the source. Mia felt her heart stutter as a cold dread coiled in her gut.

Her eyes, sharp as a hawk's, were fixed on the origin of the deafening crack. She saw it, then gulped. The monster had the fingers on one hand buried within the armrest of its granite throne.

"Battle formation!" Brent roared.

That jolted people into action, squishes slinking back as the tougher fighters stood as a vanguard at the front.

A metallic creak echoed, sounding louder than it was, and the monster slowly started to rise. It pushed itself up, fingers digging into stone to push up its doubtlessly colossal weight.

Its presence, which had been a rather subdued glob of potent miasma to Mia's senses, roused like a waking dragon. It was strange, chaotic in a way no other monster's presence felt, its tainted mana stuttering and flowing haphazardly. It pulsed, expanding, then stuttered and seemed to collapse upon itself, the process repeating endlessly every three seconds.

It took a step, its footfall shaking the earth slightly, then tried to take another. The step coincided with its presence collapsing, and its leg jerked, a convulsion running through it, and the monster fell to its knees as the leg gave out underneath it.

The landing was deafening and grating to the ears from how its palms snapped forth hastily to halt its fall, but crunched a layer of scrap metal in the process.

Mia was really starting to hate that sound. The sounds of metal screeching on metal, tearing, and bending. Each felt like nails scratching the inside of her skull and made her teeth clatter.

An arrow clinked off the monster's head, not even leaving a mark on the smooth metal, but it did make the faceless head slowly turn towards the shooter: a rather pale archer, the one from Sebastian's squad.

That was the beginning of a tide, so no one needed to tell the ranged fighters to unleash whatever they could on the monster. Mia joined in too, with an Arcane Blast, though she paced herself somewhat, unlike others who seemed to be pushing their channels to the limit.

The monster disappeared under a barrage of colourful explosions. Spikes of earth, crescents of water, missiles of pure darkness, and of course, arrows of light. But those were just a few. The miasma the monster radiated clashed with the storm of chaotic mana now surrounding it, but that only seemed to make it all the worse as elements clashed in a storm of fury around it.

But its presence didn't change; it still pulsed in that eerie stutter; it still radiated power unlike any monster Mia had ever felt before. It was concerning how common that was becoming, her sensing monsters stronger than any other one after the other, while she herself remained largely the same. That Rank-Up couldn't come soon enough. Mia was getting tired of being outclassed, wondering at the beginning of every fight whether this would be the one where her luck finally ran out.

The fact that this Guardian was the first type of monster, neither those who'd devoured the System-given monster encyclopedias, nor Nikki had the faintest idea what type of monster this Guardian really was, didn't help Mia's nerves. All they could tell was that it had metallic-themed abilities, had dark magic — before the effigies' destruction took that off the table —, and that it likely had some commanding or summoning abilities, based on the fact it wore a crown on top of its head. But all that was guesswork.

The silver lining was that Unique monsters couldn't be Guardians, apparently, so it might be unique, but it wouldn't be Unique. The difference mattered, since it determined whether the creature was just a new variation, or something with an ability no one else in the System had. The latter kind also came together with much enhanced intelligence. Something that would have likely spelt doom for everyone involved when fighting a Guardian an entire Rank above them.

The melee fighters fidgeted in place, tightening their grips on weapons, eyes staring unblinking at the elemental storm that had consumed the Guardian.

"It's doing something," Mia said, feeling a strange pulse of miasma expanding from the Guardian, though her voice was nearly lost under the sound of explosions.

The spreading pulse didn't seem to be doing anything, harmlessly expanding outwards. It too stuttered, retracted a bit, then pushed further to the rhythm of the Guardian's own miasmic 'core'.

Mia eyed the clearing's floor, full of discarded pieces of scrap metal. Her varied experiences with RPG bosses and watching movies told her it probably had a purpose beyond setting a scene. A part of her thought it'd all start to float and swirl around in a metallic tornado or something, but the metallic garbage didn't so much as twitch.

A screech, then another and another, cut through the air, barely audible over the din of the battle. Then, the sound of something cutting through the air, coming from right above, just faintly tickled Mia's ears.

Her gaze snapped up, and her eyes widened, mouth opening in a warning cry.

"B- Oof." The breath got kicked out of her lungs, and Mia found herself rolling through the dirt, bits of scrap poking at her Wards as she went.

She jumped back up, adrenaline thrumming in her veins, her heart thundering against her ribcage. Her eyes, wild and panicked, snapped to the half-buried metallic bird digging itself out of the ground right where she'd been standing.

Then it got whacked, hammered down like a protruding nail. It just so happened that the hammer was another metallic bird wielded like a club by Carmilla.

All across the battlefield, metallic birds circled around, some perched on top of downed fighters and pecking at their Wards. Others were getting torn apart by the fidgety melee fighters who finally had something they could hit without having to walk through a miniature elemental storm.

Mia focused, her perception stretching out as she counted the non-monster presences around her. A sigh of relief slipped through her lips when she finished her quick headcount. No one had died from the ambush, though a few had their Lesser Wards shattered, and got some bruises, maybe a fractured bone or two, but nothing a simple health potion couldn't fix up in short order.

The next thing she noticed was that the constant barrage on the Guardian had petered out, not fully, but the birds seemingly targeted the mages, so it was a bare fraction of what it used to be. The elemental storm, born of the wild, chaotic elemental mana released on impact by inefficient spells and elemental Skills, was still going strong, though it too was starting to even out and weaken.

A silhouette emerged from the storm with a creak of tortured metal, a single metallic foot stomping on the ground as it pushed through. Mia's breath hitched in her throat, seeing the creature's battered form. It was scorched all around, but what caught her eye were the chunks of metal torn out of its sides, and the smaller bits from where its jaw should have been, and at either side of its neck.

With the next step, the creature shrank, losing maybe half a metre of height. Its metallic surface rippled, scorch marks, dents, and tears disappearing like a mirage while the missing chunks were filled in by liquid metal.

An arrow of Light smashed into its head, snapping its head back and turning its blank faceplate into a rugged map of half-molten metal. The Guardian bent down, grabbed a twisted metal branch off the ground and launched it through the air in a single fluid action, then it tripped and fell on its face again when its inner miasma hitched and convulsed.

A meaty thud reached Mia's ears, followed by a pained groan, dragging her eyes over to Tristan's prone form. The high elf had the makeshift projectile lodged through his stomach. It was thin, maybe less wide than Mia's delicate wrists, but that was still severely unhealthy to have impaling you.

Mia saw the healer kid from Konstantin's squad run over to his prone form, tailed by a minder-bodyguard. She put them out of her mind. The kid had a number of System health potions on him if his healing magic proved insufficient, so the Archer would probably live.

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Much more pressing was the matter of the Guardian clambering back to its feet, even if its rhythmic seizures made the process slower than it should have been.

"You should keep attacking it," Nikki spoke up, giving Mia a side glance from where she stood halfway behind a thick metal tree. She lobbed an icicle at the Guardian with a flick of her wrist, and Mia's eyes tracked its flight, watching it burst into icy mist on impact that coated the Guardian in a thin sheet of ice. Which didn't seem to be doing much to trouble it.

"I was intending to," Mia said, taking a careful step to put herself under a tree at the edge of the clearing. But first, she reapplied her own Ward, because she'd be healing a fractured shoulder from that rough shoulder check Camie gave her to throw her out of the bird's path now if it wasn't for the now dangerously dim Ward. "But why? It doesn't seem to be doing much?"

"That twitching? That's probably the result of a severe mana backlash," Nikki said. "The monster's ignoring the pain aspect of it, but it can't ignore the effects the backlash has on its energy channels and core. Having some alien arcane mana seeping into its channels would make it so much worse. I'm trying to do the same with Ice mana to freeze its channels shut, but it's not going well; the bastard still has enough mana to effortlessly break through any blockage I make."

Mia was struck by how calm the woman was. Sure, there was a tint of fear in her voice, but the edges of her lips were curving into the beginning of a grin. She looked alive, like a kid on their first rollercoaster ride, terrified but giddy from excitement.

Swallowing thickly, Mia straightened her back and prepared her Arcane Blast spell circle, priming the mana in both of her arms for casting. Nikki was the most knowledgeable mage she knew, so relying on her advice was only common sense. Without further ado, she started her own barrage, aiming at the stomach, face and arms, places she guessed might be a bit more vulnerable, or knew had a thicker concentration of energy channels.

She'd never read about anything like this in the books, never knew it was even possible for unguided mana to press into someone's energy channels and make a mess of things. But considering she could guide her own mana into the channels of someone else, when she was touching them, it made sense that wildly flowing mana might occasionally find its way inside, too. With enough saturation and mana concentration, the law of big numbers would all but ensure it.

Though she was guessing it was rare, since the Spirit was supposed to protect the body from such things, wasn't it? The Spirit was what made sure that no Air Mage just ripped the air out of your lungs, or that no Water Mage just drained the moisture from your eyeballs. It was also supposedly partially responsible for how mana responded to foreign magical influences invading the body.

But Mia trusted Nikki's judgement and experience, and she trusted the woman not to throw around unfounded ideas in the middle of combat.

She filled each spell circle to near-bursting with mana, guessing that if there was more waste leftover, it might work better for Nikki's idea.

The elemental storm had fizzled out, simmering down into an errant crackle or random elemental manifestation in the background, leaving the Guardian fully exposed as it set off towards the raiders at its stumbling, eerie gait.

Injured mages drank healing potions or were seen to by the healer kid further back. They would hopefully soon return to the fray, because Mia couldn't see the Guardian falling under the current onslaught before it reached them.

Maybe they'd have to fight a retreating battle through the forest?

A titanic bolt of lightning, radiating Helene's mana, struck the Guardian, blasting it off its feet and sending it falling on its back. Arcs of electricity webbed across its form, then hopped over to the lesser scrap metal carpet beneath, making a few pieces melt or sizzle or jump, then sank into the earth beneath its form.

The monster didn't seem overly perturbed by the strike, beyond the fact that it once again had to pick its heavy metallic ass off the ground, but it had to have gotten used to that by now. It seemed like there were no squishy, meaty bits hidden underneath that metallic skin, nothing for the lightning to hurt. It was predictable, but no less disappointing. That could have been an easy win.

Rex's squad pounced on the prone monster, the bulkiest of the lot — a bear-blooded beastkin if Mia had to guess — charged at it, and managed to kick an arm the Guardian had been using to prop itself up right out from under it. The monster collapsed again, then came another seizure, keeping it down for a second more than claws, jaws and fists landed in a flurry of blows on it.

They didn't seem to be doing much damage, just thin rakes and surface-level tears in the metal skin.

Then the Guardian's miasma calmed, and its arms snapped out, grabbing Rex by the ankle and another fully shifted Werewolf by the neck. It swung Rex away, throwing him like a child would a toy they'd gotten tired of, and the massive Lizardman went spinning through the air for dozens of metres before he slammed into a trunk. The werewolf fought for its life with the fervour of a cornered beast, clawing, biting and kicking, but the Guardian ignored it, just like it disregarded the other beastkin trying to save their comrade. Its fingers squeezed, and a sickening crack rang out, causing the werewolf to twitch, then go limp.

The monster threw him away like throwing out garbage, rising to its full height in a single fluid motion. The next second was horrifying and beautiful in equal measure. The monster moved with fluid grace, arms snapping out and dealing blows that landed with the weight of a mountain behind them. Beastkin were sent flying like rag dolls, bones snapped like twigs, arms were torn out of their sockets, all with clinical precision and in record time. The creature made no wasted movements, as if it knew it only had mere moments before another seizure from the backlash would bring it low once more.

The mages landed a few blows from a distance, though the effect was negligible, as they had to be careful as not to hit their struggling allies.

The Guardian stumbled once, its rhythm broken before its expectation by the ground dropping out from beneath one of its feet. The hole was barely half a metre deep, but that was enough to make it miss a savage hand-chop that could have taken off the head of the bear-man.

Mia glanced over at Mark, wondering if he could bury the Guardian at least up to the waist to immobilise it on her lips, but it died an early death as she took in her friend's quivering form. Mark had his teeth gritted as sweat beaded down his paling face. His two hands were sunk into the ground, channelling earth mana that burrowed out towards the Guardian.

The mana guttered out, and Mark's cheeks seemed to sink in around his cheekbones. His presence in Mia's Spirit Sense dimmed to dangerous levels.

Lina quickly grabbed a mana potion and helped him drink it, holding the vial to his lips after his trembling fingers almost dropped the precious potion.

"Fuck," Mark breathed raggedly. "I've had more cooperative constipations than the fucking earth here."

That probably meant he would be of little use going forward. Mia should have known, the earth up here on this floating island was thick with miasma. It was obvious in retrospect that it would resist manipulation better, though she'd initially thought it was just how whatever magic held the island aloft was showing itself to her senses.

All that was left to do was to wear down the Guardian. Each chunk of metal blown out of its body was a small step. Every so often, the same ripple passed over it, and while its wounds repaired themselves in a blink under its effect, it also always caused it to shrink proportionally to the amount of missing metallic flesh.

'Sparkle? Any ideas? Or will I have to hope it falls dead before it slaughters its way through our vanguards?' Mia asked, shooting off a careful Arcane Blast when she had a clear line of sight at the Guardian momentarily.

'Nope. That abomination's tough as nails, you gotta wear it down first, then I can go chew at it in that feline vessel. As it is now, it'd tear it apart and I'd just be wasting your mana.' Sparkle said, sounding an odd mixture of disdainful as it spoke of the Guardian and frustrated when he admitted he couldn't just strut up to it and kill it with a harsh glare.

'It's fine.' Mia reassured him, though she wasn't nearly as confident as she made herself sound.

Her eyes snapped around, tracking the still-circling birds. The archers and sharpshooters who'd quickly found their projectiles harmless against the Guardian had been hard at work in thinning their numbers, but there were still enough of them to cause trouble.

Mia started targeting them when there wasn't an opportunity to shoot the Guardian. A part of her wanted to scream at the vanguards getting their asses handed to them to pull back, to let the mages fire their spells freely … but she knew that was silly.

She'd end up like Tristan in short order; she'd be one among many mages impaled on branches if the vanguard let the Guardian do as it wished to counter the pesky mages persistently blasting chunks out of its form. This was teamwork.

Teamwork that wouldn't have worked without Rex's squad being so goddamn tough. The werewolf that Mia had seen get his neck snapped just a minute prior had rejoined the fight with renewed ferocity, having somehow recovered from the supposedly very lethal injury without even drinking a potion or having the healer kid treat him. The other Shifters exhibited similar regenerative capabilities, though Rex's kind, who were always in their bestial forms, didn't. In turn, they just refused to break in the first place.

Some of Konstantin's squad had joined the fray too, along with the towering Leonid himself, and even the two berserkers, Sandor and his friend — whose name Mia couldn't recall for the life of her—fought with them. The pair were lunatics; that much was obvious. They fought as if they had plot armour, dodging the Guardian's attacks by a hair's breadth to deliver savage axe-blows to whichever parts of it they could reach.

The two fought like beasts, rivalling the most ferocious of beastkin in ferocity, if not in strength or toughness. Still, their blows struck against the Guardian with considerable power, landing heavier than any attack made by Level 10 humans had any right to.

A few of the brave beastkin didn't get up; the Guardian's blows hit something vital, probably by sheer misfortune on the fighter's part. Cracked-open skulls, fully decapitated heads, crushed chests.

There were only three of them so far, and while even that number was higher than Mia would have wished for … it was better than her worst fears. Much better. They weren't winning cleanly, but there was a clear, bloody path to victory.

They could do this. They just had to keep going, had to keep fighting, had to keep doing what they were already doing. It was working.