Neon Lights

Saya Noss Nuira
Level 19 Druid
<The Grave>
HP: 554/554 (Ironskin HP:100/100)
Relationship: -124
Effects: Ironskin (46 Minutes Remaining), Darksight, Hive Linked.

Ashid Hectore Nuira
Level 21 Paladin
<The Crescent>
HP: 821/821 (Stoneskin HP: 50/50)
Relationship: -166
Effects: Stoneskin (41 Minutes Remaining), Darksight, Bulging Biceps, Hive Linked.

Neither of the Elves seemed to have nearly as much trouble seeing as John did when he tried to look at the two of them. The low lit throne room interior obscured details around John just as much as it revealed things to him. He had just enough of a moment to get his Observe ability off, to give him a moment to question how far he was willing to go to win this battle, but he didn’t have enough light to determine what kind of armor the two Elves were wearing. He had already killed Elves to get to this point in his… crusade. Would it change the type of person he was if he killed two more? Did it matter as long as he could stop them from messing around with necromancy anymore? Or was the fact that he was looking for some kind of a way to excuse himself for causing their deaths a sign that he had already changed?

In the end, it didn’t matter either way. When bare Elven feet started padding on the cracked stone towards him, he reminded himself of the same thing the Abyss had drilled into him since he first got his powers. Sometimes… the decision was just made for him. Sometimes his enemies chose. He saw two heads with white manes and purple highlights streaking through their hair and glowing blue eyes piercing through the darkness dart towards him. He saw their character sheets, but he didn’t have time to scan them. He knew most of their abilities already or could guess what they did. The only one he didn’t know for sure was Bulging Biceps. For all he knew, it could have been one of a hundred different things.

When he tried to Observe the status effect to get more information on it, the dark elf man, Ashid, tore through the image of John’s pop-up and **** the Gamer to jump back. Ashid’s methods were… erratic. It was almost like he could barely decide on which direction he was moving in. When he charged John it was more like he hopped towards the Gamer, switching his weight from one foot to the other. He switched from aiming for John’s left side to the right, then back to the left again before he finally took to the air with a single kick off the ground and came at John from above with a heavy jab of his spear. His first attack was probably the worst, empowered as it was with all the weight of a falling warrior behind it. Even when John successfully slipped out of the blade’s path, the strike still tore through the air next to John’s cheek with enough **** to nearly blind the Gamer with light reflecting off of the weapon’s surface. The shiny speartip that Ashid tried to gut him with got close enough to John for him to Observe it, but even with his abilities, he wasn’t able to identify the type of metal that had nearly killed him. He just managed to spot himself in the blade before Ashid yanked it back far enough to catch the reflection of neon purple lights from the floor in its mirror-like surface.

Ashid Fel’das. (Rare Quality.) Cursed.
Named after its creator and...
...This spear can be used as either a Strength-based or an Agility-based weapon. Using this weapon for an attack with any other stat causes all damage dealt to be halved.
+40 Weapon Damage to attacks made with the spear of Fel’das.
+???
+???
+???

The only thing John needed to see in his pop-up was the weapon’s damage. He skipped over every other piece of information that wasn’t important. Knowing how badly it would hurt him if Ashid hit him made it easy to focus on slapping the spear away from himself as quickly as possible, but it didn’t make it easy for him to deal with the sister. While John was distracted and somewhat blinded by the laser-like effects bouncing off Ashid’s spear, Saya began chanting. Her fingers started to flicker and pulse with the light of some kind of sickly purple energy while John and Ashid tried and failed to trade blows, but John couldn’t stop her. Kennedy tried to start chanting as well, but even without knowing what they were saying, John could hear how slow he was in comparison. Ms. Lask was even worse. Urga tried her best to help, but with her low level and beginner bow, her arrows never even managed to pierce Saya’s skin.

“Stop her!” John shouted, and Ashid growled in response and shoved closer to the Gamer. Another flash of purple light traced the arcing path of Ashid’s spear as he threw it at John’s face again, but… for once, John’s enemy wasn’t faster than he was. If anything, they seemed to match each other in terms of speed.

“You...” Ashid growled again, and the glint of his bright blue eyes whipped by John’s head as the dark elf tried to smash their heads together. “...will stop…” Three more times Ashid jabbed his spear at John, and, just as quickly, John deflected the spear away again and again. “...here!” Ashid snapped, and as John lifted his arms to defend himself from another stab, Ashid drew the weapon’s tip back from the Gamer. He realized what the dark Elf was doing just before it happened, but failed to move quickly enough to stop it. The bright tip of Ashid’s weapon pulled back from sight as Ashid lifted and drove butt end of it into John’s gut.

For a moment, John’s vision flickered. The room grew darker as white spots danced in his eyes and stole away what little bit of light was left in the room before Ashid was on him again. He didn’t even give John time to catch his breath again, to clear the scent of sweat and dust from his lungs, before purple lights were flashing in his face again. John persevered for a couple seconds, only thanks to the fact that he was used to moving while in pain because of all of the times that Frank had bullied him, but he couldn’t keep up with Ashid for long anymore. For only a couple seconds after the first hit, John managed to block every attack, even the ones from the butt of Ashid’s weapon… but he was still dazed. Soon enough it didn’t matter whether or not Ashid was attacking him with the tip of his spear or the butt of it. John stumbled in his dazed state, and all the dark Elf needed to do was to spin his spear, whirling it around faster and faster until John couldn’t keep up before he finally brought it down on the Gamer’s head just as he finally finished registering the pop-up he got from the first attack.

-61 HP!

The damage from the first attacked disappeared from his eyes… and then the damage from the second followed.

CRITICAL HIT! Ashid’s high Strength has increased Ashid’s Critical Damage! The Spear of Fel’das has increased Ashid’s Critical Damage! -81 HP!
The Spear of Fel’das has cut you! Bleeding Effect Added: -1 HP per second. (40 Seconds remaining.)

Despite how hard Ashid had already hit him, nothing seemed to stun the Gamer more than the taste of his own blood again. The presence of a metallic flavor dripping into his mouth caused not only John to stop, but everyone in the room who could see it as well. A chorus of gasps echoed throughout the glowing throne hall as a cascade of crimson red liquid poured down from John’s forehead… and the Gamer’s gaze flicked over to the weapon that caused it just in time to watch as the blood that was stuck to Ashid’s spear slowly shrank away, seeming to be consumed by the weapon itself. He stared at it for a moment as Ashid chuckled and twirled his weapon in the air like an overgrown baton, but his focus didn’t stay there for long.

“Think your whores might still like you if someone showed them you’re mortal?” Ashid taunted, and John staggered on his feet. He dismissed a pop-up informing him of a dazed status effect and let out an incoherent growl back at the Elf. He wasn’t going to let dizziness affect how he fought. Ashid didn’t wait for a proper answer. As soon as John growled, the dark Elf shrugged, drew his spear back to put his brain-damaged enemy out of his misery, and answered his own question anyways.

“It doesn’t really matter. Dornwich will ‘care’ for them when you’re gone.” He chuckled… and then threw his body through the air at John again. The Gamer pivoted, as well as he could have in his condition, cast his Infused Strike ability and shoved two brightly burning hands into his enemy’s face. Red and purple light clashed for a moment in the center of the room, like glow sticks in a rave, barely illuminating anything other than the two of them, before the explosion made by John’s abilities let out an echoing boom and knocked Ashid’s spear to the side. The edges of the blast flickered out towards Ashid as the two of them fought, and singed the hem of the Elf’s armor barely before the Gamer spun into a whirlwind of his own attacks.

8 Damage!

Unlike John, Ashid didn’t get the chance to block or deflect the Gamer. When he realized the two of them were matched in speed, John activated his Fighter’s Eyes ability and simply let it take control of his movements. For what might have been the first time since he had gotten his abilities and named his fighting style, John actually felt like he wasn’t just flailing around in a fight. Every movement became about directing the fight in the way that he wanted it to go. If Ashid tried to take a step back, John moved into the Elf’s personal and pinned his feet in place by stomping on them before he spun an elbow around and smashed it into Ashid’s cheek. If Ashid tried to counter with an attack of his own, then Fighter’s Eyes showed him the path his weapon would take fast enough for John to just inch out of the way of his strike before he continued on with his ****. Blocking became pointless on both sides. John didn’t need it to stop Ashid from hitting him if he could simply move around Ashid’s attack, and Ashid couldn’t form any kind of defense that John similarly couldn’t slip through.

It… Well, it felt like the first fight that John had had with Urga when she simply whaled on him with her abilities until she was too weak to continue fighting. Only, as John continued fighting… he found himself only getting faster and faster as the two of them sparred. His arms retracted slightly towards his body and his center of balance more and more until every attack seemed to become a part of one twisting motion from John and add into the momentum of his next move. Fighting with his Infused Strike became less about punching and more about hitting Ashid with any part of his body that could reach. More than that, the Gamer found that as he continued fighting Ashid, he actually stopped… backing up. Every movement, even when he was defending himself, seemed to help move him in the direction of his target. He was almost never giving ground, and on the rare occasion that he did have to backpedal, it was immediately followed up with a step forward again to stay in melee range with his opponent.

Fighter’s Eyes used 0.9 points of mana!
CRITICAL HIT! Infused Strike dealt 52 Damage!
CRITICAL HIT! Infused Strike dealt 49 Damage!
Fighter’s Eyes used 0.9 points of mana!
CRITICAL HIT! Infused Strike dealt 50 Damage!
CRITICAL HIT! Infused Strike dealt 52 Damage!
Fighter’s Eyes used 0.9 points of mana!
CRITICAL HIT! Infused Strike dealt 52 Damage!
CRITICAL HIT! Infused Strike dealt 49 Damage!
Fighter’s Eyes used 0.9 points of mana!
CRITICAL HIT! Infused Strike dealt 52 Damage!
CRITICAL HIT! Infused Strike dealt 50 Damage!
Fighter’s Eyes used 0.9 points of mana!
CRITICAL HIT! Infused Strike dealt 49 Damage!
CRITICAL HIT! Infused Strike dealt 50 Damage!

Achievement Unlocked! ‘Learn quickly, you must. Young Padawan.’
Your continued attempts at creating an actual fighting style have finally paid off! ...In minuscule proportions at least… Feel tired, yet?
+1 Agility
+1 Endurance

Your Fighting Style has leveled up! Arete is now level 1!
You have reached the Amateur rank for the fighting style of Arete! Becoming so comfortable in the ways of combat has affected you in ways that only major increases to your Agility score normally would. The number of attacks you can make each round has increased by 1! Becoming so comfortable in the ways of combat has affected you in ways that only major increases to your Endurance score normally would. Your hit point maximum has increased by 15 points!

You have gained the title ‘Initiate’! Would you like to equip it no-

John barely even bothered glancing at the pop-ups appearing in front of him. He noticed how much faster he seemed to be moving while fighting with Ashid, but all of the reading could wait. After just two attacks from Ashid, John was nearly down to half health, which meant he couldn’t give the Elf time to fight back. He just had to keep hitting him. Hell, He tried to keep hitting him... but Saya didn’t let that happen.

He only noticed that her chanting had stopped just before he felt the heat in the room rise and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. The room lit up brightly for a second, just long enough to make both dark elves shield their eyes, and then the castle shook again as Saya’s own thunderous fireball echoed its roar out to the city and threw John out of Dornwich’s great throne hall.

-183 HP!

He idly noticed the feeling of wooden splinters poking into the small of his back as he crashed through one of the side doors to the throne room and slammed into another heavy stone doorway, one overgrown with thick, grey vines, but the splinters seemed like minor worries compared to everything else. When Ashid had a moment to drop to his knees, nursing his ribs and his jaw because of the odd angle it had been turned to, John exhaled and his breath seemed like it came out in the form of smoke. There was no clean air or even dust around him. There was so much fire it felt like he was breathing it in, burning him inside and out.

Kennedy finished chanting while Saya helped her brother to his feet, but the arcs of amber lightning that sparked from his fingers stopped in the air before it could hit either of them. The druidess simply tilted her staff towards the rest of John’s allies to summon some kind of unseen shield to block their attacks. Ms. Lask’s attack came shortly after Kennedy’s, but it had the same effect. Urga’s arrows continued on in a useless ****, bouncing off the skin of both brother and sister. For once, though, neither sibling said anything coherent. Saya started chanting for another spell and pointed her brother off to John’s allies, and Ashid nodded grimly at her and bared his spear in Kennedy’s direction first since he was the most prominent threat out of everyone left in the room.

Ashid against the three of them wouldn’t be an actual fight. He would slaughter them, and John recognized that immediately. He pushed to his feet, coughing and wheezing, but before the Gamer could even make it back into the throne room, Saya finished her second spell. It wasn’t the same spell as before, but the image of ash and flame shooting out at him caused John to jump back instinctively and use Evade to try and lessen the amount of damage he would take this time, except…

...the fire never made it all the way over to John. When he jumped back and pressed against the stone door behind him, Saya directed her fire to surround John and the door. She blocked him off with so much heat and flames that it became impossible to see her or the hallways around him. It was just him… and the stone door. For a moment, he considered charging through the wall of fire just to get to the throne. If he could just sit on it... then perhaps he could finish the quest and earn himself a level-up to win the fight… or end the battle in some magical way and declare himself king. Whenever he got close to her circle, however, his body started to ache simply remembering the hit he just took. The fire she had been controlling slowly began to slink around to the other side of him, between him and the stone door, and nearly did before he finally heard it.

“Get Ba-AHK!” Kennedy shouted, and then his cry was cut short and was followed up with a quick grunt. Urga roared next while Ms. Lask whimpered in the background. Fire roared all around him… but John turned his head back towards the stone door as the sound of serene… singing crept through the cracks in its opening and barely graced his ears. For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating… but the sound never actually faded even when the fire roared louder in his ears as it closed in on him. His eyes fell on the solid grey surface of the door and the outline of the door frame as Saya’s fire continued to close in on him… but despite the fact that her fire was slowly pushing between him and the door, he noticed that she was keeping the flame far enough away from it to not burn the vines that were weakly holding it shut. She could have just killed him. She could have launched another fireball or just spewed flames directly into his face until he burned away… but she didn’t. The second he got close to that door, he realized that she had changed tactics to avoid harming it or the vines protecting it.

The sound of the fire and Urga’s roaring cut off abruptly once John ripped the first vines away. He heard the sound of Saya screaming for her brother in the background… but her voice sounded almost muffled to him by the time he pushed those doors open. John became almost… enchanted by the way the voices on the other side called out to him and the idea of what he thought was behind that door. Unlike the throne room, the room that John walked into wasn’t quite so… abandoned. It was actually well-maintained. The relaxing embrace of steam and the scent of soap in the air greeted John’s senses gently when he stumbled into the room. Warm, clean, pink tiles helped to steady John’s steps better than the cracked stone bricks outside while dozens of different moving, sparkling lights illuminated the hidden bathhouse that stretched out before him. Each light, he noticed, was a different color and seemed to squeak when he walked into the room. Some lights moved away, others moved closer, many just moved over to one of the snack tables or bookshelves littered around the room.

The room wasn’t empty by any means, but he didn’t see any enemies when he arrived. Just slaves. Orcs, Gnomes, Humans, and even Elves quickly dashed away from John to hide behind marble pillars or into one of the many baths that the great room held. The central bath, the one that held John’s attention the most, had a massive, complicated mosaic of a giant, purple crystal pillar being worshipped by dozens of people on the floor of the tub. It was barely visible when you tried to look down into it because of the number of times that the water had been used, but John barely spared it a glance. He barely looked at any of the mosaics or sculptures in the room, actually. His focus was mostly affixed on the item in the center of the bathhouse, above the main pool in the room, where a single circular gem floated above everything else and pulsed with a familiar blue light.

The gem was smaller than his fist, but bigger than a coin and shaped in the same way. It had no pedestal or string to hang from… it simply floated in place with just a bunch of slaves to care for it. They were in the endless process of pouring pleasant soaps into the water beneath it, singing to it, or casting spells on the baths to fill the room with fresh steam again when John walked in. He heard the padding of Ashid’s feet again as the spear-wielder rushed forward to try and stop him, but Ashid was too far away to actually be a danger by that point. John got to the crystal before he did… and rubbed his thumb across it idly. His touch caused the gem to squeak sharply, like a window might when someone was cleaning it, and then turned to grin at Ashid and Saya. Both warriors stopped in place as John stared at them and all but confirmed his suspicions with the look on their faces.

“This is you, isn’t it?” he asked and cocked an eyebrow at the two paling faces. “This is all of Dornwich. This is what connects you to each other,” he said… and then John’s expression darkened.

“Surrender…” he ordered them… and promptly stole the stone from its place and gave it a cautionary squeeze, “...now.”