Rising Kite - A story from the world of HWFWM

Kite had barely sidestepped the last overhead swing of the crystal club when his foe, a five meter tall blue humanoid with writhing skin suddenly sped up. Its form was a blur for but a second, but that second led to its massive weapon suddenly closing in on Kite once more in a sideways swing.

“Oh not again- Ward!”

Last time when Kite had been struck by the uneven length of crystal, it had spelled the end of their battle as he was flung over the side of the plateau. The huge gouges where the weapon had hit the ground so far gave some more merit to Kite’s theory that the concept of force was involved somehow.

The ruler of the plateau, one of several flat and rather low mountains of the area, sure was an odd one. Even if he had been up close with it before, Kite found it hard not to be unsettled by the writing motions beneath the creature’s skin as well as the eyeless face which only sported a toothless, fleshy hole in place of a mouth. From his earlier experiences, Kite knew that flickering tendrils would sometimes shoot out from that orifice, but so far their whip-like slashes had been the least of his problems.

Said problem was closing in with massive force behind it. The twin barriers of Heaven-and-Void warding appeared in the weapon’s trajectory, but compared to the last time where it had blown through them and Kite both in short order, this time proved to be different. While each of the barriers did crack and shatter, Kite still got the distinct feeling that they absorbed a lot more of the blow than the last time around.

And this time, the club met a third barrier of magical glass. And stopped dead. Soil and gravel sprayed far behind Kite as the ground was torn up, Unyielding redirecting a lot of the force of the blow into the poor terrain, but even more helped disperse the strain upon Kite’s body. Because in the week and a half since their last encounter, Kite had improved again, in preparation and power both.

WWJS:

Congratulations!

Your ability [Spiritual reprisal] has reached Silver 0.

[Spiritual reprisal] has received additional effects.

- Spiritual reprisal (Karma) -

Special ability. Cost: None Cooldown: None Current rank: Silver 0

Effect - Iron: Any creature striking you or one of your barriers will suffer one instance of [Unstable flow] - a stackable affliction which increases the effect of one of your special attacks, which consumes one instance of this affliction.

Effect - Bronze: You may choose to consume all available stacks of [Unstable flow] at once, increasing the effect of the attack further the more stacks that are consumed. Stacks above a certain amount start giving diminishing returns.

Effect - Silver: Each stack of [Unstable Flow] on a creature causes it to deal less damage to magical barriers, with diminishing returns after a certain limit.

Congratulations!

Your ability [Unyielding] has reached Silver 0.

[Unyielding] has received additional effects.

Unyielding (Solidity) -

Special ability. Cost: None/moderate mana Cooldown: None Current rank: Bronze 8

Effect - Iron: Become highly resistant to all hostile effects that would move or displace you, including physical momentum. Any additional damage that would be dealt to you by the canceled momentum will instead be transferred to the environment.

Additionally, this ability may be activated for a cost of moderate mana to give increased damage reduction from external sources of damage for a short duration.

Effect - Bronze: Some of the damage and movement negated will be stored in a separate reservoir of potential, which you may release to add additional momentum to a leap or stride. Any excess will still be transferred to the environment.

Effect - Silver: This ability will take effect even if you are not in contact with a solid object. You may now use excess momentum to fuel the increased damage reduction of this ability to forego its mana cost.

Kite froze in elation for only a moment, but it was almost enough for him to suffer another swing as the blue giant sped up again, but he was able to leap out of the way while projecting another slash from his sword towards the blue-skinned torso, where several wounds were already visible, the energies of Void-Sunders-Firmament hampering further healing.

“At least I have the chance for attrition this time around,” he thought, backing up a few steps to create a bit more distance while sending more attacks towards the monster. The biggest difference came from the advancement of Spiritual Reprisal. Kite now had the option of leaving the building affliction on his foes, which in turn meant that they had an increasingly harder time breaking through his barriers. And as that meant all barriers, it also affected the glass shield of the Heavenglass protector. It was a cost in opportunity, trading damage for resilience, but in a battle such as this where his opponent had an overwhelming advantage in brute force, it was one Kite made gladly.

But even though he now had the chance to endure the more powerful hits, it still felt wise to give it as few opportunities as possible. His body was aching and throbbing from the sustained impacts, as even standing close to where the swings hit the ground meant that he suffered some light damage.

Fortunately, there was a delay in the moments of increased speed for his giant adversary, which gave Kite ample moment to get as many attacks in as possible in between. Had he not been able to project his attacks as freely, this would have been an almost insurmountable slog.

Even so, the fight felt like he was under constant strain. A silver-ranked entity, lopsided in attributes as this foe may be, was still a rank higher. While the rank disparity itself was gone, courtesy of Tempered Soul Resonance, the attributes were still there. But Kite also found himself recognizing a feeling like what he had felt when surviving the onslaught of mistress Wither back in Bastion. There was a pattern to his foe's motions; more specifically to its bursts of acceleration.

He noticed it after managing to block three more such swings the same time as the last, his barriers and shield stopping the weapon even though the rocky ground of the plateau became even more scarred.

“And now it should- Ward!”

The fourth block went off just as expected, Kite having raised his shield when the crystal club had barely started its arc.

“Then what if-?”

At the fifth attempt, Kite flicked a projected attack towards the ruler of the plateau even while he readied himself to receive the next attack. His timing was slightly off, and the strike did little, the process repeating on the sixth. But on the seventh, his disrupting strike struck true at just the right timing; a mere moment after the monster had started blurring with speed. Speed that suddenly reverted back to normal in an instant.

Both Kite and the ruler seemed surprised by the development, but the latter was the one to suffer the most, as the sudden shift in momentum actually made it stagger. Kite could block the strike using only his barriers, and he did not hesitate. His shield vanished, replaced by his staff with the weapon already mid-swing, its length trailing the darkness of the void. Potential of Stolen Power fed its gathered might into Void-Sunders-Firmament, and Kite also let the infused fragments of Something From Nothing enter the weapon. He had taken to the habit of saving up for his attempts at taking on one of the rulers, as the new option of his looting ability had proven invaluable so far in moments such as these.

The monster had just righted itself as the attack hit, empowered spatial tears unfurling in a chaotic mess from the point of impact in the ruler’s sternum. The gory mess left behind was not a shallow wound, and Kite’s foe still standing after the blow proved the durability of a silver-ranked being. But Kite’s discovery of this timing was not just a one time occurrence, and with it the pace of the accumulating injuries was greatly increased.

The ruler struck, and Kite endured. It tried grabbing him with its tendrils, and Kite endured. It showed vast reserves of both health and stamina. And Kite endured.

As he delivered the final blow, the last Void-Sunders-Firmament of gods knew how many finally shredded enough of the gory cavern that was now the monster’s chest, Kite almost slumped himself. Only the gauntlet he had received from sect leader Dusk before his grand clash had allowed him to refrain from using Immortality, and he still almost stumbled as the heavy monster toppled to the ground with a crash.

At least this time he had the foresight to step away from the corpse, which was fortunate as the massive body produced an equally massive pillar of rainbow smoke.

“A ruler slain, a prize claimed,” the officiator stated with the same somberness as last time when Kite bent down to pick up a shard of crystal. It almost seemed to vibrate with pent up power, as if it was constantly fracturing and reforming at different paces without releasing some great force kept within.

“Force, might, time…” Kite muttered, feeling as if that only scratched the surface as he tried to reference the traits the ruler had shown against the list of essences he knew.

“As I said, the rulers are complex,” the officiator provided. “Their concepts are many, interwoven. It will be up to you to be perceptive enough to choose the right ones and bring out what you need.”

“Now that is quite cryptic,” Kite noted as the orb seemed content to let things end there. “Glint, please come out. I believe that it is time that we rested. Maybe even celebrated a little, as another ruler has fallen.”

Kite couldn’t help but chuckle as Glint made glittering loops in the light from his heating lamp, the little carp caught up in the joy he felt himself; that kind of special exhilaration which one felt after living through proper peril.

“You are like a gemstone to my heart, little beauty, bringing richness and joy in abundance,” Kite said, quoting an old poem he had memorized as a younger teenager in order to impress Brook. While he cringed slightly at the memory these days, he had to admit that it had worked at the time.

“It is a fish, not a gemstone,” the officiator noted, surprising Kite by once more breaking into the conversation.

“As I believe I said before, it is a metaphor,” Kite noted.

“I still cannot comprehend wasting time on such things. Mortal failings are as illogical as they are fascinating.”

“Well, you do it too,” Kite protested.

“I most certainly do not, trial-taker.”

“Oh? I do believe that the word ‘path’ is central to your vocabulary.”

“I do not see the connection.”

“Speaking of my powers as my path is a metaphor.”

“No.”

“No?”

“The path is the path. As the queen, our creator dictated.”

“Sure, but it is also a metaphor. The path towards the heavens. But surely you know that it is not a physical thing.”

“Of course I do.”

“So that makes the word path here a metaphor. The heavens too.”

“I- But the heavens are absolute, the goal of all paths.”

“And a metaphor.”

“No- you- are… I- they…” The officiator seemed to stumble over its words, the first time Kite had seen it even hesitate as it spoke. Then it fell silent, the quiet stretching out for over a minute before the orb suddenly shook once, before falling to the ground. Inert.

“Officiator!” Kite called, startled as the orb just lay there among the undergrowth next to his camp. He even had time to properly panic a bit, realizing how troublesome this would become if he had actually, against all odds, broken the thing.

That was why he almost fell back in apparent relief as the orb suddenly floated upwards again with a jerking movement.

“Restart complete. Assimilating new experiences. Compressing fragmented memories,” it said, seemingly to no one in particular. Kite was content to let it do its thing for as long as needed, and inwardly swore to never contradict the orb again if this was what came of it.

Eventually, the sense of the blank sphere watching him returned.

“Officiator?”

“Yes, trial-taker.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, trial-taker.”

“Good… Good…” Kite finished, leaving the debate at that, thinking to himself; “Only a fool risks stumbling on the same stone twice.”

“Nothing?”

“No, mistress,” the servant confirmed, keeping his deep bow.

“Then keep the watch rotating,” mistress Pristine said, frustration still leaking into her aura. “Even if we need to keep the gate locked down for months, I will want to know the very second that the corpse of whatever fool is in there is ejected. We will need to know who sent them, and act appropriately. So far, we have nothing. Nothing! I don’t know which of the other families it is that is aiming to humiliate us, but this will not stand.”

“Of course, mistress.”

As the servant left, mistress Pristine sat down again, returning to her work. Managing the family’s assets was a never-ending task if there ever was one, even though she constantly felt her mind drift to the gate ever since they had discovered its inaccessibility a week ago.

“I should at least have answers soon. And maybe even some resources for the family. Whoever sent someone to sneak in there has already proven themselves unworthy of having the fool’s remains returned to them.”

“Another retreat, trial-taker?” the officiator asked. Kite was not sure, but he thought that he could hear some patronizing in its voice. Or maybe it was just his own frustrations leaking through.

“I would rather retreat than risk losing the possibility. Had it not been for Gate of Nihility, that stream of lava would have left only a pile of ash for the gate to return. The lava river that toad is spreading around simply curtails my movement too much.”

“There are plenty of other rulers. Not each foe is for each path to conquer. Judgment in that regard is wisdom one should always cultivate.”

“That may be so,” Kite noted, looking back towards the shifting air above the lava pits in the distance. “But I still hope to make my return, heavens willing. I won’t give up just yet.”

Kite’s bracers connected, and the pulse of resonating force damage washed over the two-meter wide beetle in front of him. The thing had retreated into its copper shell, seemingly gathering some kind of energy inside as extra layers of metallic chitin had formed around it. So Kite had decided to gather some energy of his own. And the Twofold Toll of the Bells proved quicker.

After the resonating force came the burst of kinetic force, and the deep impact showed satisfying results; the shell bursting into pieces like a pile of sand scattered by a sudden wind. The whole creature was even flung backwards to crash into the hive wall. And, even more surprisingly, broke through.

For the last two hours, Kite had been making his way down into the region which he had dubbed the ‘Metal hive’; a winding series of tunnels into what looked like rough metal. The monsters here shared much with their environment, coming in various shapes of large metallic insects. Both they and their tunnels were quite resilient, but compared to the three rulers Kite had taken down and the few others he had encountered so far, going back to fighting bronze-rankers felt almost like rest. And said resilience was why Kite was so surprised at the wall actually breaking.

He put that detail into the back of his mind as he prepared another attack. His bracers did excellent damage against bronze-ranked monsters with rigid defenses, but many of the tougher monsters weren’t so easily dispatched. But a few more strikes as the beetle tried to right itself proved enough to kill it.

While waiting at a distance for the rainbow smoke to clear, Kite looked down at his pair of bracers, one white metal and the other clear crystal, unified in the patterns covering them both. They had served him well through bronze rank, but this challenge had been proof that he would need to think of new solutions as silver-rank drew near. Monsters, and people, of that level were simply too resilient for the singular application of bronze-ranked magic to deal with them.

“I suppose that Peony will not mind thinking of something new,” he thought with a smile. “But I might have to sponsor her with some more monster cores if I want her to join me at silver as soon as possible. Can’t have my best crafter lag behind me now, can I?”

As the smoke had finally cleared, Kite went over to gather the quintessence. He stepped into the hole made by the beetle’s involuntary flight and, after retrieving the treasures, took a good look around. The new environment was the same but also quite different; the same metallic surroundings now creating rooms in neat, angular symmetry.

“It looks as if it has been built by people,” he mused. While there was no furniture or other signs of habitation, the complex spread further inward through different corridors. All of them were unlit though, and Kite once more thanked his foresight in bringing over a dozen glowstones. He had already lost four in combat, and it would not do for him to be forced to fumble in the dark in future challenges.

Going deeper into the mountain, he eventually found what looked to be a nexus of the different tunnels, eight of them converging on the same unadorned chamber. In the middle was a pedestal, upon which rested a blue orb of some kind. It was the size of Kite’s head, and cut into thousands of tiny facets. Each of them had a miniscule dot inside, each dot moving around seemingly at random. But as Kite approached to inspect it, those closest seemed to hone in on him, following his movements like tiny eyes.

“That is… unsettling.” Kite remarked, turning to the officiator. “Is this more hidden treasure? How in the heavens were I supposed to know that this wall could be broken?”

“It is not up to me to guide you, trial-taker. Those with wits and perception worthy of it will find them. The rest will languish forever, unknowing of what treasures that their ignorance cost them.”

“At least Third had some more sense of flair in his designs,” Kite muttered, reaching out and retrieving the orb. “Would you deign to tell me what it is, like you did with the amber?”

“Certainly. That is the Marble of the Unified Mind, containing the concepts of vision, myriad, swarm and unity.”

“And like the amber, I can use it in addition to the ruler’s treasures.”

“That is correct, trial-taker,” the orb confirmed. “Assuming, of course, that you can succeed in taking it out of here.”

Kite froze at the orb’s ominous words. He felt nothing wrong from the orb itself, and could detect no harmful magics from it. But his sense of foreboding rose as he sensed something else; not from the orb in his hands, but at the edges of his aura perception. A second after, the sounds started reaching him as well; a horde of metallic legs coming closer from every direction. The sound rose, converging on him from all eight corridors.

He only sent a single flat look towards the officiator orb which floated innocently at his side, then strode to action. Through his expansive vision, he already knew that the environment itself didn’t offer much in the way of options. The eight corridors were all identical and smooth, making some turns, which left only the last dozen meters visible to him.

“When the situation doesn't give you too many options, the daring makes their own,” Kite said under his breath, hands going to work as he produced what looked like stacks of wooden plaques from a dimensional pouch. “Glint, please be ready to assist me, because-” he continued, but halted as another aura entered his spiritual perception. A silver-ranked one.

“Because heaven knows I will need it. The local ruler seems to have answered whatever call that was sent out.”

The powerful aura was moving like a shark through a school of fish to his spiritual senses, easily overtaking the weaker bronze-ranked ones in terms of speed. If Kite was not mistaken, it would arrive from one of the corridors other than the one which he had entered through.

“Small mercies,” he breathed, finishing one stack and producing another. Had there been any source of light except his this deep in the complex, judging by the sound of skittering legs, he would probably have seen shadows play over every wall.

Then, as the herald of Kite’s sudden misfortune, the ruler rounded the corner. Or rather, shot past it as the thing came shooting from out of sight only to land squarely on the wall in the bend, sticking there without issue before skittering forwards at terrifying speed. Its body wasn’t much bigger than Kite, but it was surrounded by at least sixteen thin articulated limbs which carried it forwards at terrifying speeds. Like its bronze-ranked minions, it was insectoid, but more closely resembling a sleek ant rather than bulky beetle. At the front of the silvery body was what passed for a head, but it was hard to distinguish as it mostly looked like a mass of antennae poking out in every direction.

Given the speed of the thing, Kite was already casting even before it had started towards him.

“Wall!”

Layers of force walls appeared in all tunnels except from the one which Kite had entered, with double the amount raised in the direction where the ruler was closing in. This proved wise, as the front legs and antennae became a blur, shredding the first two layers through sheer momentum before Kite could even think to reinforce them. But they at least slowed it down enough to force it into a more measured pace before it started tearing its way through.

Kite did what he could to mount a resistance, Channeler working best it could to buy him a few more seconds. Only a handful of seconds after the silver-ranker’s arrival, the rest of the bronze insects came like the tide, the varying insectoid monsters crawling over each other to get to Kite.

The second stack of plaques done, Kite put it down beneath the small pedestal while he kept a pair of small crystals in his left hand. His barriers were breaking down all around him, but he took a steadying breath and assumed a ready position even as the unhindered bronze-rankers charged towards him.

“Almost-” he thought, but then the ruler suddenly flared with magic. Magic arced between its antennae before shooting out in a cascade of rippling magic. And whatever it was, it tore through the rest of Kite’s barriers as if they were decorative paper walls.

“No time,” Kite cursed. A few more seconds and he would have gotten the timing perfect, but it indeed seemed like plans only went to the battlefield to die. His fan appeared in his right hand, and he swung it toward the approaching silver ranker and the horde which followed it. A mighty gust, almost like a wall of moving air, impacted them. The creatures weren’t flung back like Kite had hoped, but it at least halted them in their steps for a moment. Even the silver-ranked monster was at least slightly delayed, which gave Kite an extra second to activate its most potent enchantment.

A vortex of wind appeared around him, and he shot off towards the open tunnel, allowing all of the remaining walls to dissipate behind him just as he started zooming above the mass of monsters, picking up some light wounds through the sheer numbers of legs and other sharp body parts swinging up at him. The rest of the tunnels disgorged great numbers of angrily clicking beetles, the monsters having been bottled up against the barriers. And a heartbeat later, just as the ruler had regained its balance to continue its pursuit, Kite crushed the pair of crystals in his hand.

Somewhere beneath the press of bodies which had suddenly flooded the room, a pair of matching crystals cracked as well, flooding a series of rune-covered ribbons with mana. Which in turn went into the two stacks of exploding talismans which Kite had left beneath the small pedestal, a multitude of magical runes activating at once. Even though, at that moment, a very small part of him still chafed at the expense of what was to take place behind him, the rest couldn’t help but be a bit impressed.

Having followed Dragonfly’s sage advice that fire worked very well against most foes, Kite had bought quite a lot of those during their short stay in Convergence, along with some other complementary ones, and the inferno which engulfed the cramped space behind him truly did not disappoint as the white-hot flames suddenly welled up from within the mass of pursuing beasts.

Kite himself was not entirely unscathed either as fire, true to its nature, took every path available to it as it expanded, but he ignored the blistering heated air in favor of a more pressing concern; the ruler as well as the mass of bronze-ranked monsters over which he was currently still speeding as well as he could. It was fortunate that the activation of the detonators did not strain his mana overly much, as too much of an offensive action would cause the vortex to vanish.

This meant that Kite would get at least a little bit more mileage out of it, as what he was to do next was sure to count.

“Void!”

Even as the dark portal that was Gate of Nihility appeared in the room behind, horizontal close to the ceiling as it was the only space currently not occupied by burning insectoid monsters, Kite was already swinging his staff, the strike of Immutable Echo projected straight into the dark aperture. Because Kite knew that he didn’t need to just create the inferno, he needed to keep his foes from pursuing him en-masse for as long as possible. And detonating that gate through the enchantments of his staff was his best chance at doing just that.

The silver-ranked metallic beast had just lined up to shoot down the corridor towards Kite when the projected strike hit the void which had appeared above its head mere moments before. Its multitude of thin legs had just started propelling it out of the sudden inferno, the bronze-ranked talismans dealing less damage to it than its minions, when it seemed as if the pull of the earth shifted.

What had been a mess of insectoid monsters shambling inside an inferno suddenly became an even greater mess of said insectoids and the accompanying inferno suddenly being lifted into the air and thrown around as if caught in a maelstrom. More of the monsters were sucked in from adjacent corridors, and even though Unyielding would make sure that Kite resisted its effect, he still threw himself around the nearby corner as fast as he could, the enchantments on his boots already active as the vortex of wind around him was quickly fading after the strain.

The corridor ahead of him still had a few bronze-ranked stragglers, but the ground beyond them was blessedly clear, and Kite did his best to leap over or rush past them as he wanted to gain as much distance as possible before the collapsing gate detonated. He did not know what would come of this, but said a prayer to Fortune that it would prove to be enough.

In the roughly five seconds it took for Kite to reach the next bend, where he was forced to halt in order to avoid a pair of metallic mandibles almost managing to bite down on his legs, the chaos that he had left behind had apparently reached its climax. Even through the walls he felt the gate collapse, a ripple echoing down the corridors. He thought that he had felt a lot of auras wink out during the chaos, but unsurprisingly the silver-ranked one remained and was the first to take up the pursuit.

“Maybe if I had deployed Fulminating Sirocco as well,” he thought, but quickly thought better of it. He still didn’t know if he would even be able to return to that chamber or be forced to flee, and did not fancy the thought of losing the head of the weapon unless the need was even more dire.

Grabbing another two talismans, Kite infused the mana into them himself and threw the plaques behind him to further distract the four bronze-rankers in his vicinity, Glint assisting by conjuring restraining globes of water to further hamper those closest to him. This gave Kite the blessed time to reach the next bend before he felt it.

“Ward!”

The twin barriers of Heaven-and-Void warding appeared just in time to block the beam of focused magic directed at him by the silver ranker, and still wasn’t enough to completely negate it. The disrupting force sent painful shocks through Kite’s shoulder where it hit as if both his body and the magic it was partially made of were dissolved by the impact.

Dashing around the corner, he had Sage use one of its charges to start healing the injury, and Kite slowed and turned a few meters after the bend to prepare. He had caught a glimpse of it before turning the corner, and while its silvery surface was definitely scorched and damaged, it still moved with purpose. And with the speed the thing had shown itself capable of, he could not hope to outrun it.

“Fighting an unknown ruler within these tight confines is not ideal by any means, but is it truly a tempering of one’s path if you control all the variables?” Kite tried consoling himself even as he made ready to face down the insectoid aberration.

As he had decided to make his first stand there, this time the ruler immediately got a face full of spatial tears as it rounded the corner, Kite’s silver-ranked perception power helping him to more precisely gauge the thing’s speed and time a projected slash of his sword. He immediately followed it up with another strike, this time with his staff, and felt a stir of elation as many of the glowing antennae at the monster’s front wink out as Disrupting Strike did its work.

Its momentum ruined, there was a split second in which Kite felt as if his foe stopped to truly size him up, the alien mass of antennae that was its face giving nothing away.

Face set in a tense smile, Kite prepared his next move. And the silver-ranker charged.