The Classless Sorcerer's Self-Stealing System

Blychert's heart raced.

Brilliant, repetitive hues of yellow-tinged mana flashed before his very eyes in rapid succession, one after the other, as the casting and recasting of barrier magic filled the errant chamber. Sweat flooded his brow, dripping down the length of his neck and seeping into the folds of his robe collar, though he remained steadfast against Kubranul's assault.

The mighty dragon reeled suddenly, its silhouette long since replaced by the black scales and dark extremities of its true form. Lightning crackled from the tips of its jaw, before its neck snapped in Bly's direction. He barely had enough time to put up another shield spell before the emulsion of heat, wind, and electricity burst in front of him.

Wincing somewhat at the impact, Blychert quickly adjusted his vision, knowing better than to think a reprieve would be allowed in this moment. Muscles tightening, Bly glanced up to where a massive, black-scaled foreleg was already ripping through the time-frozen air towards his exposed position.

"Swift shield!" Bly muttered once again. However, he immediately pivoted and bolted to his left, not sticking around for what was coming next.

Just like the first few dozen shields he'd deployed, Bly's latest exploded upon impact. Over Bly's shoulder, Kubranul hissed, retracting its claw through a dusting of latent mana, though Blychert was already yards clear.

He's adapting quickly. Bly thought to himself with a worried frown, his breath somewhat haggard now that he'd been running around for a bit. However, he decided to double down on the high tempo, shortly recasting hasten just as it reached the end of its lifespan. Freshly replenished with additional speed, Blychert quickly dashed forward towards the nearest of the large columns.

Worryingly, it hadn't taken very long for Kubranul to establish himself as the aggressor in this fight, despite Bly's best attempts to keep the dragon guessing.

For a creature that had only just been "born" Kubranul seemed to have a substantial capacity for synthesizing Blychert's strategy in a relatively short span of time. It didn't seem farfetched to suppose that a boss type enemy would possess far greater intelligence than the average spawn—assuming "boss" was what Kubranul even was—but it was another matter entirely to witness such drastic adaptation in real time. The dragon already understood that the best way to break through a shield spell was simply to smash through it, and Bly wasn't certain how much longer he could move at hastened speed before Kubranul was able to calculate a surefire attack path.

The irony wasn't lost on Bly that for someone who had supposedly stopped time in its tracks, he sure didn't have much time to work with himself.

Scrambling behind the column, Blychert stopped for but a moment to catch his breath finally.

There had to be something more he could do? The chamber was damned near endless, but maybe there were some terrain advantages he might be able to utilize? Rows upon rows of endless columns separated by wide open spaces made it impossible to say for certain, and running out into the open was a death sentence. He already had a target painted on his back, so there was no point in making it even bigger by giving that dragon a free shot at him.

"Why do you hide, spawn of Reach?" Kubranul growled, "Is it not our fate to destroy one another? Why do you reject the inevitable? Fight me!"

Come on, come on… think! Bly gritted his teeth, otherwise at a complete loss for how to get himself out of this situation.

There was simply no way he could do this alone. But the rest of his group were still suspended in time, mere milliseconds away from being torn apart by a massive wave of heated energy. He could certainly use their help right about now, but he didn't even know how to get them back, much less without putting their lives in danger.

It wasn't like he could activate that weird "SVAC" ability—thing at will! Whatever it was, it was a part of the system interface that only ever seemed to pop up when he was doing classless stuff... in other words, he might as well have been completely oblivious.

Unless… that was the entire point of the ability?

"Ugh…" Bly groaned under his breath, "Just once, I'd like to know how you work without having to get myself killed… alright, we'll do it the hard way then."

Glancing over his shoulder, Blychert peered out from behind the column towards where the dragon stood. Its neck craned in Bly's direction, and it growled. A crackle of lightning snapped from its jaws as it bellowed out in thunderous roar, "There you are!"

Hm. Impatient. I wonder…? Bly pondered, reeling back behind his cover for another moment.

What he needed was to isolate the dragon somehow, then put enough distance between the two of them so that he could double back to the group and figure out how the hell to get everyone back into the fight. Clearly, neither he nor the dragon were affected by the time altering spell, which posed its own questions, but for now it wasn't on the cards to pretend like he could get away with doing it again.

No, he was going to have to rely on a classic combo for this one.

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"You want to fight me so bad? You're going to have to work for it, you filthy lizard!" Bly shouted over his shoulder, before dashing forward at his full, hastened speed. Thirty yards ahead, Blychert thrust his arms outward, and murmured, "Input spell override: concealment. Execute. Input spell override: ensnare. Execute, execute, execute…"

One after the other, a patchwork of brown-green magical energy sprawled out across the chamber floor ahead of Bly, who carefully navigated his way through the maze of curse spells. However, each ensnare spell was simultaneously concealed by his active illusion spell, rendering each one practically invisible to the naked eye. Blychert had no way of knowing what the dragon's ability to see through illusions was, but he was counting on the creature's combined impatience and naivety to shine through.

Kubranul was a quick learner, true enough. But if it stood to reason that he wasn't like other spawns, that he and Blychert were truly more similar than not, then it must have also been true that in this world, in the world of fighting for your very own survival, he was no more experienced than a newborn.

And that… that was going to be the one shot Bly had at turning the tide of this battle.

"Come on, come on!" Bly muttered under his breath, continuing to pump out ensnare spells as he moved forward, "Just a bit closer."

Each layer depleted his mana pool by a not altogether insignificant amount, roughly twenty-five points per spell, and affected his endurance heavily since he was holding onto them, rather than allowing them to activate of their own volition. It was a necessary precaution. The concealment placed upon them meant that he needed the dragon to be standing in an area of maximum coverage, otherwise this was all for nothing. But between those and the array of spells he'd already cast in the last few minutes, he'd already dipped quite handsomely into his experience for the purposes of mana replenishment.

Well, he supposed that was what it was there for, anyway. No point leaving anything on the table, not when it was a matter of life and death.

Kneeling, Blychert feigned his own resignation for a moment, even as he worked to really catch his breath. The dragon sauntered forward, stepping into the zone of concealed curse spells with either little care or no notice at all, it was difficult to say. Whatever the case, the stage was set for Bly to initiate his master plan.

"What tricks are you playing now? Hmm?" Kubranul questioned, a mild curiosity in his voice. The dragon squinted, his massive blue eyes beaming straight at Blychert, as he continued to press his advance, just as Bly had hoped, "How is it that you continue to elude me with magic?"

"Heh—" Bly wiped his face, looking up into the approaching dragon's eyes, "Looks can be deceiving, you know."

"No matter, surely you must be depleted at this point." Kubranul flourished his wings, "Yes, I see it now… you have spent yourself completely, and thus have fallen at my feet in the hopes I may yet show mercy. How truly delightful! It would seem the strength of Reach is not so promising, after all." Reeling back, the dragon opened its mouth, and a spark of crackling energy began to build along its teeth, "Very well, I will spare you the agonizing death I had been preparing for you. Let this be the least I can do, for one who once walked with abundance!"

"Release…" Bly murmured calmly, unfurling both his hands as he spoke.

Against the might of the dragon's thunderous attack, the combined series of ensnare spells erupted with force. Green-brown energy lashed out, licking up the dragon's legs and hide, until it had consumed him like a lowly insect caught in a web.

Blychert didn't stop to inspect his work though, knowing it wouldn't likely hold the dragon at bay for more than a minute or two. Thus, he was already dashing back across the chamber to where the rest of his group stood frozen in time.

Gesturing for his sage terminal to open, Bly quickly swiped across to the log and inspected the lines of text for any insight into what he was supposed to do. There had to be something—some way of undoing the spell he'd inadvertently caused to fire off in the first place. It might not have been him that cast it, but it was his experience that was spent in order to do so. That had to give him some sort of input, surely?

"Effect lasting until World Fragment is normalized, or until operator status is confirmed…" Bly murmured, reading the line back to himself. A flash of light off to his lefthand side was more than enough to remind him that Kubranul wasn't long for restraint, but he couldn't focus on that right now. "I don't know what normalize means, but confirm status? Do I… confirm status. Uh—status confirmation. Operator is confirming status!"

None of it was working! And moreover, Kubranul's forelegs and most of his head and neck were already free from the layered ensnare spell.

"Come on, come on—" Bly slapped his face several times quickly, trying to prompt anything into action. It wasn't like he had any formal training in the deep-rooted mysteries of Sage. Hell, not even Alyse was able to teach him much past a few simple system commands—

Blychert's eyes widened, and he immediately said, "System command, confirm status."

***

> Operator Status: confirmed

- - - SVAC auto-activation sequencer terminated - - -

> Operational conditions set to [normal]

***

"Disengage all—"

Blychert stopped himself just short of disengaging his active spells. If he did that now, everyone including himself would be pulverized in a wave of heat and energy.

"Input spell override: shield, tenfold lattice, execute, execute, execute…" Bly spoke, layering a series of barrier spells between the group and the column of energy directly in front of them.

Because of the Time Shift, his spells were also affected by the stoppage in the localized area. But that didn't matter necessarily. Once the normalization of time came back into effect, the spells were still technically cast, just suspended for the moment. If he treated the moment as a simple resolution to the previous action state, then it was really no different than being given a second chance to make good on his promise. This time, he was ready for it.

"Disengage spell: Time Shift."

The wave of heat and thunderous energy exploded into real time, bursting the stone around them. Everything that had once been affected by Blychert's unseemly spell returned to its normal condition in an instant. The multiple layers of shields held, just as Bly intended, though they didn't manage to catch everything.

Without missing a beat, Nelkaar turned fully around to shield Blychert from the wave of energy that seeped through.

Wincing from the temperature, Bly looked up into the swordsman's mask, where only her eyes were revealed this close. Curiously, they were no longer red as they once were. Her left eye was a yellow color, while the right eye was blue.

"Nelkaar—" Bly panted, relieved to have them back again.

"I know." She nodded in response, "I will take it from here."

Turning to face the dragon, which was now very much released from its hold within Blychert's layered spells, she brandished her sword.

"All of you!" Nelkaar shouted, her longsword gleaming in crimson at the head of the group, "This creature is an abomination. For the sake of your city, and all that we stand for as companions of the Hall, I beseech you now… uphold your oaths, and let us slay this foul beast!"