NOVEL NEXT 81 - Passing the Threshold (Irrevocably For Real This Time)
Normally, when you cut off parts of a Monster, it became weaker. It burned through its vital energy, if you could call it that for the wrathful dead, to regenerate its limbs, reducing the power it had for attacks. Force it to regenerate enough, and it would be fully depleted, an easy kill.
The Ghost of Granavale didn't regenerate. It sharpened the severed nub of its arm against its own flesh until it was a spike. And now it jabbed at Archmund wildly, its eyes-upon-wires pivoting like gyroscopes to trace his every movement.
He drew back his magic, stopped forcing his soulstuff to flow through the angry prism of his Gemstone Sword. Anger strengthened his offense, but weakened his defense. There was a lot more battle left to fight, and it wouldn't do if he were to get grievously injured so early.
He was on the backfoot, blocking each jab with his blades. Every other step, he glanced back out of the corner of his eye, desperately hoping he wouldn't trip. He could hold out, but there had to be a better way.
He was inexperienced with the art of using both blade and spell at once. Such a fighting style was rare because of political reasons. Uplifted peasants gravitated towards Gemgear. The highest Nobles, when they fought, used proper magic. But that didn't mean that strictly using proper magic was superior.
His allies were still so far away, except for Mary, who knew not to get close. He was on his own, and he liked it that way.
Magic could do many wondrous things, which he'd seen with his own eyes. Killing was the least of them.
Anyone could kill. A peasant with a pitchfork. A crazed chef with a knife. A ghost with a pointy limb. You didn't need magic to kill effectively.
But to warp space, to throw people to the four corners of the earth, to change your appearance so your closest friends had no idea who you were — that was the domain of magic. In his old life, you could achieve similar outcomes with large amounts of money. But magic circumvented that.
And yet he used his Infrared Lance like a gun, and when he used his sword, he barely used it at all.
Time for that to change.
He slid back, using his blade to keep his traction like a third leg. The Ghost did not relent. Its blows swept at him; he dodged backwards just a hair, and felt the wind slice at his cloak. He shuddered. He didn't want to test his durability against such a strike, even if he did have a Bodily Barrier.
He blasted it with his Infrared Lance. Though its skin darkened just a shade, there was no deeper impact. It had increased its durability, as hard and sharp as diamond, marrying offense and defense.
That was a problem.
He had a solution.
Heat diamond up to around 800 Celsius, and it would evaporate into carbon dioxide.
Heat the entire diamond-skinned body of this Ghost, assuming it wouldn't adapt and become something more heat-resistant like ceramic.
Heat it without creating a massive amount of ambient heat putting himself at risk.
The plan seemed, at best, inefficient.
Okay, so maybe he didn't have the solution.
He dodged to the side as the Ghost of Granavale pierced its nubby arm into the ground. It jerked around there, stuck for a second, before pulling itself back outwards with its other arm.
By becoming rigid, it had become fragile. And yet it sharpened itself along the fault-lines of fragility, letting its weakness become its weapon.
And yet there lied a symmetry.
These creatures always spawned more eyes when he blinded them.
He was certain there was not a hint of intelligence in this creature's mind. Only reaction.
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It was creatures of base instinct following a simple drive. It had no eyes to see, so it grew more eyes. From weakness came its strength.
And that strength could be made weakness.
"Strobe," he said, his voice quiet, ever slightly lacking in confidence.
He closed his eyes for the initial flash.
His Ruby Tetrahedron flickered harshly with light, flashing on and off a hundred times per second. In the light, the fluid swings of the Ghost became stilted stop-motion, though its limbs shone like a disco ball. Every flash burned a slight after-image on his retinas, ghostly spectra that clouded his vision.
But whatever he suffered was visited upon the Ghost a hundredfold, strobing lights dancing across a hundred outgrown retinas.
It was like a slideshow.
In one frame, at the ends of a hundred black stalks, a hundred eyes closed.
In the next, a hundred more grew anew.
And then in the next they were blinded, closing again, repeating the cycle.
And yet those seconds of vision were enough for the Ghost to keep swinging, aiming where Archmund had stood just half a second earlier. Of course he kept dodging, but now he dodged to the side, taking advantage of the half-seconds where its vision folded closed.
So often fights against Monsters became endurance battles. Once you found a way to whittle down the threat, you just had to survive long enough to deplete its life force.
But if you did that, you'd hollow out the Monster and its power, and whatever Gem you looted from its corpse would be weak and useless and only worth selling to the Omnio Empire.
He allowed just a little of his magic to flow into his Gemstone Sword.
This world had quite a perverse loop.
Anyone could beat down a Monster — eventually. If a town threw enough peasant bodies at the problem, they would whittle the Monster down until it was nothing at all — not even Gemstone that could make them strong enough to take out future threats quickly. No Gem, no Gear, nothing. But if you had Gemstone, you could take out much stronger monsters quickly, cleanly, and safely.
He could hardly deny that his approach was brute force.
Slamming his blade into the Monster's side — half an inch in that diamond hide. Aiming for pain points, limbs, the targets of a sadist. Doing his best to shatter the creature utterly. Every strike like a frame from a stop-motion in the flashing of his Strobe.
This was not the way.
Grinding away for growth was for times of peace, not the heat of battle.
If you wanted power you had to kill fast and kill utterly. Sometimes, the plowshares were worth far less than swords.
It was in Archmund's best interest to use every resource available to him to be the world's greatest killing machine.
In his chest burned a hate for the Dungeon, the world, the Ghost that mocked him even still. The trappings of the Middle Tier, that brought to mind all the corporate world he'd suffered in his last life.
And that hate turned hot.
He dodged to the side as the Ghost lunged towards him, its pointed diamond arm aimed straight for his heart.
And then, he let his Strobe go dark.
All his power focused into his Gemstone Sword, through the toxic power of the Rage of the Dead, for one final, vicious strike.
Aimed right at the neck of the Ghost of Granavale. At the hairline, where the diamond-skin failed to integrate properly with the darkness of flesh and simulacrum of bone. Along the one perfect faultline where it would cleave.
And cleave it did.
The Ghost's head flew forward, bouncing like a soccer ball against the marble tile; its body fell to the ground. It began to decay, motes of darkness seeping out from between a shell of speckled diamond.
He'd done it. The way ahead was clear.
Immediately he pulled back his magic from the Gemstone Sword.
There was no one else to kill. Nothing needed to die. He could return to peace.
And now he looked around.
Mary was rubbing her eyes.
Gelias was muttering with his eyes sealed shut.
Rory was squinting and shielding his eyes.
And Beatrice was covered in a shell of darkness.
"Were you guys planning on doing anything?" Archmund said testily. He was pretty sure he was actually annoyed, and this wasn't the fading aftereffects of his Gemstone Gear.
He imagined they would have looked at him with disbelief if they weren't blinded.
The darkness receded from Beatrice's face, like ants a carpet of crawling out of the way, and she looked at him with disbelief.
"Seriously?"
"I'm fine if I have to take the lead," he said testily. "Really, I am. But I was kind of hoping you'd step up — Gelias, you tried, and that's what counts. None of you are going to get any stronger if I have to carry you through this place."
Mary looked at the floor. Normally this was when she'd have a sarcastic quip for him, but in the presence of other nobles, she was far more reserved.
Beatrice had picked up the slack.
"You basically blinded us!" Beatrice shouted. "That weird light trick of yours threw all of us off. How do you expect any of us to help if you're going to pull out weird techniques none of us expect?"
"With Monsters it's kill or be killed!" Archmund spat back.
"Alright. Stop fighting, you two," Rory said. "Now that we've seen it once, we can figure out how to fight with it the next time. We're all on the same side here."
Rory's words were calming. His Gemstone Quarterstaff gleamed with crimson light that matched his hair.
"Don't pull your mind-magic on me, Rorhid," Beatrice said. "I think I get to be a little mad."
"Betty, you always have a reason to be a little mad," Rory said. "But you're the only one of us who doesn't have afterimages in your eyes. And look—"
He swept his arm across the vastness of the Dungeon, across the strangeness that resembled open offices more than dank corridors.
"Look at all of this. It's all ours for the taking."