Basic Thaumaturgy for the Emotional Incompetent [A Magical Academy LitRPG]

Severa moved before the Chasm Broodmother even attacked.

When the creature's thorax trembled, she was already sliding sideways just enough to not get into the line of fire. The Broodmother spat a fan of green venom a heartbeat later, but it splashed across an empty stone where she'd been. Another poison spray erupted a moment later, yet it splattered on a line she'd vacated as if she'd been warned.

By the third, Fabrisse realized with a start: she wasn't reacting at all. She couldn't have reacted before the creature could even do a thing. She was predicting, possibly with the help of those twelve eyes.

Still . . . something was wrong.

Fire and Light were her strengths. If the Broodmother absorbed energy, those elements would be useless. The more elemental power you pumped at it, the more it multiplied its swarms.

So what was she planning?

Severa slowed, feet gliding over stone with the wind still cinched around her ankles. She waited for the precise angle where the Broodmother's body twisted to track Tommaso's fire sweeps.

Then she did something Fabrisse had never seen from her.

She raised her left hand and flung a line of light that immediately solidified into a crystal chain, similar to Kaldrin's golden one, except this one was brownish and had a grappling hook at one end.

The hook flew into the darkness like a harpoon, then Severa flung herself into the deep. Chittering sounds resounded, then nothing. Fabrisse had no idea what happened. The far end of the cavern was too dark to see. Yet he knew the Broodmother wasn't dead. The insect swarm was still diving themselves toward a fiery death, now with an even more frantic frenzy than before.

"Tom, she—"

"Worry about her later." Tom bellowed. "Watch those coming!"

Tommaso's fires were holding, yet the swarm only grew more frenzied, hurling themselves into the fire with a mindless desperation for inexplicable reasons. It was a matter of time before one of them stopped following the pattern and decided to veer sideways instead of straight into Tom's flames.

Fabrisse reached into his satchel for a Stupenstone. It was still his best weapon, and a stone could really hurt with the right force applied.

This skill is good! I won't have to walk over to the stones anymore, and more importantly, I won't have to actually find them if I don't know where I've thrown them.

But why am I getting so many quests? They'd only shown up at least seven times already. Maybe the erratic aetheric nature of this rift was doing funny things to the Eidralith, because this had never happened before until now—

A skittering hiss cut straight through his thought.

Fabrisse threw his head up just in time to see a tiny Chasm Nymph launch itself from the side wall like a hurled dagger. For a second, Fabrisse's brain blanked out everything except the velocity vector, the arc, the exact point where it would collide with his face.

He wrenched his shoulder and let the Stupenstone fly, and reflexively channeled Resolve into it.

The throw wasn't perfect, and if the Nymph had been any smaller, it would've missed.

The stone clipped the nymph's left thoracic plate instead—an area that should've been tough enough to shrug off a glancing hit.

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But with 31.5 m/s behind it, there was no shrugging. The impact punched straight through the chitin, flipping the nymph. Its body pinwheeled once, twice, then slammed into the wall with a brittle crack before dropping lifeless to the floor.

Even a half-decent hit was too much for something that small.

Then Tommaso's voice came, "Fabrisse! Several others are coming! Don't just stand there!"

Fabrisse snatched another Stupenstone from his satchel without even looking, but as he aimed, a second Nymph lunged straight at him. His throw went wide, clipping the wall instead.

Before he could correct, a third Nymph darted from the shadows. Fabrisse dove, narrowly avoiding the attack.

The reflexes had to chain now—aim, throw, dodge, repeat.

Fabrisse rolled to his feet and yanked another Stupenstone from his satchel. The bigger Nymph—the one with armored forelegs and glinting mandibles—was already barreling straight at him. There was no time to calculate. He let instinct take over, twisting his body to the side, and flung the stone at the charging beast.

The stone smashed into the creature's chest just below its mandibles. The impact was enough to flip it backward, crushing its forelegs and sending it slamming headfirst into the cavern wall. The brittle crack of exoskeleton echoed as the Nymph's body tumbled to the floor, twitching once, then still.

Fabrisse barely had time to breathe. Another Nymph veered in from the shadows, even faster than the others. He snatched yet another stone, bracing himself for the chain of throws, dodges, and instinctive strikes that had become his only rhythm in this swarm-frenzied battlefield.

Yet another one came. The next Stupenstone left his fingers, slicing through the air, but the nymph twisted to dodge it. He fumbled with another one, but let the nerves get the better of him.

It was nowhere near. The stone shot from his hand like it thought it knew where the Nymph was going, but apparently it didn't. It careened wide, clanging off a stalagmite, ricocheting once, twice, and finally pinging against the far cavern wall with a tiny tink.

He only had one stone left—Gravelkin. There was no margin for error. The creature's mandibles were nearly on top of him, just inches from his face. He threw.

The weak launch barely carried it forward, yet it hit the insect anyway. Somehow, the Nymph threw itself backward, flipping it once in a graceless arc before it smacked against the floor. It didn't move.

That . . . that was it? How did it die to such a weak throw?

His mind ran through the physics in a frantic loop before finally clicking. It had been an insect, after all, and it had been so close. The force seemed to have been concentrated perfectly at the point of collision.

Fabrisse's heart hadn't even begun to slow when an orange hue dyed his vision. Fire, burning even brighter than before. The cavern suddenly felt way too hot.

Tommaso was turning it up a notch.

Not one, not two—five Chasm Nymphs surged from the gloom, charging at him all at once. He didn't even have a Stupenstone on him.

What can I do? I can't dodge them all. What if—

Then the idea occurred to him.

What if I use Stupenstone Retrieval?