Stormblade 4 C34: One's Company (2)
34 - One's Company (2)
Kou Veri’s mace thudded into my armor. Portal metal cracked, and so did my ribs. The Dark Citadel Scriptsmith had proven to be a good match for me; blood covered the sections of floor that weren’t electrocuted, and my Mana and Stamina were both just about bottomed out. As I retreated around the room, I had to feel behind me for the boss’s Bindings—I’d hit a couple, to devastating results.
She’d broken my ribs, my shoulder ground painfully when I parried her blows, and one of my legs bled from an injury I couldn’t bother sacrificing healing for. But I’d given as good as I’d gotten. Three separate stab wounds bled from Kou Veri’s chest, dripping blood from wounds that had cauterized and then ripped open as we’d fought. Her off-hand trailed almost uselessly behind her. I’d gotten a good cut in and severed a tendon near her shoulder.
We’d been fighting for almost ten minutes.
I’d been feeling eyes on my back for three of them, though—and those eyes were only getting more intense. It was time to end this before a familiar face ambushed me.
The Stormkin Avatar flicked out for a quick blow, then vanished, leaving a gouge in the boss’s armor and triggering two Bindings that destroyed him as quickly as he appeared. That was fine. I didn’t have the Mana to sustain him anyway.
But I could capitalize on Kou Veri’s momentary lapse as she reacted to the lightning knight. That was how I’d gotten two of the chest wounds on her. This time, I used Thunderblade and launched into a brutal series of attacks. Nimbus Edge punched through her armor, cutting something that sprayed even more blood before the lightning sealed it shut. Two more stab wounds opened up—one in her stomach and another on her neck—and she fell to a knee.
I didn’t waste a second. My sword ripped across the boss’s throat, and she hit the ground, dead. As she did, Cheddar sent me a mental picture. Someone was coming.
Nimbus Edge whipped around as I spun, dropping into Mistwalk stance.
It was Tanat.
She stood there, black leather armor and breastplate covered in blood. She’d been busy, too, but her sword was in its sheath, and she didn’t have a hand anywhere near it. The cuts I’d given her weren’t healed, but she didn’t seem to notice them. Her lip curled in a slight smile, and she nodded, then bowed again.
Then, before I could stop her, she sprinted for the now-unblocked stairs. I tried to catch up, but my resources were bottomed out, and she was too fast. Instead, I looked at the stairs more closely. There were two of them. One set led down, and the other spiraled upward. Both were made of a dark, almost gray, wood, but the upward-leading one was wide enough for three or four people to climb at the same time, while the other was so narrow Jeff would barely have fit.
I went down first. But I only made it a half-spiral before the stairwell ended in a solid brick wall. My hands ran along it, looking for trap triggers or levers to open a secret passage. Nothing.
Stamina: 31/500, Mana: 52/620
I groaned. My resources weren’t high enough, and my body was too battered, to keep pushing. I only had one choice. I climbed back up to Kou Veri’s chamber, then backtracked through the tower, the dark city outside it, and all the way to the portal in the wall.
As I approached it, the green-black lightning seemed to increase for a few moments before settling back down. I took one last look over my shoulder. Tanat was pretty strong; it’d be a toss-up whether she could clear the tower’s second floor before I returned. And I didn’t know if she was human—either someone from Earth or one of the portal people. But I did know one thing: Tanat didn’t act anything like a portal monster. She didn’t even act like a Paragon.
She had to be a delver. But not one from Earth.
◄▼►
Sarah Cullman didn’t take part in the team’s spars.
The Falcon’s Eye had challenged her on their first day of training. She’d filled him full of diseases and internal injuries, then left him to sleep it off for a night before healing him the next morning. After that, no one had been brave enough to fight her—which was how she liked it.
It took a lot more effort to inflict injuries and then heal them than it did to heal the injuries others caused. Sarah didn’t know why. She just knew that was how it worked. It was easier to watch Bernard and Terrel go at it with their full weapons and armor, then pick up the pieces after. It was also better practice than curing Hugo Martinez of multiple diseases had ever been.
Kade hadn’t joined their sparring session this morning, though. Odd. He usually pushed himself as hard as he could. In fact, he’d already fought everyone on the team, excluding Sarah. It wasn’t like the kid to take a day off if he didn’t have to, and he’d just spent a day mourning his fallen former teammate.
She stood and walked down the hall, then pounded on his door. “Kade, you in there? You’re missing Bernard and Terrel. It’s a real mess, but you might learn something.”
“Just a sec,” Kade said.
Sarah paused and listened. He sounded…rough.
Then the door opened, and Kade smiled through bloody teeth. “Alright, I’m ready.”
“No, you’re not,” Sarah said. She reached for the kid’s shirt, pulled it off, and stared at the half-healed, broken ribs and bruised skin underneath. Then she pointed at the desk chair. “Sit down. Now. I’m going to get you patched up, and then you’re going to explain exactly what happened to you.”
Kade didn’t argue.
That was smart of him, because if he’d tried to ignore the doctor’s orders, she was fully prepared to put him on bedrest with much, much worse injuries.
◄▼►
As Sarah Cullman healed my broken bones, I stared at my new status.
User: Kade Noelstra
Reforged Core, A-Rank
Stamina: 25/500, Mana: 506/620
Skills:
1. Stormsteel Core (A-05 to A-06, Unique, Merged, God-Touched)
2. Thunderbolt Forms (A-06, Altered, Merged)
3. Mistwalk Forms (A-04 to A-05, Altered, Merged)
4. Cyclone Forms (A-05, Altered, Merged)
5. Stormlight Bond (B-10, Altered, Merged)
6. Shadowstorm Battery (C-10, Altered, Merged, Dual)
7. Stormbreak (C-09, Unique)
I’d fought hard. Really hard. But I’d only gained two total skill levels. Clearly, the push to the pinnacle of A-Rank wasn’t meant to be easy. Still, I couldn’t be disappointed. Tanat was in the Solo Portal, but I was sure I’d run into her again, and I had a plan for that. More importantly, this was a viable method for leveling.
Especially now that Sarah Cullman knew what I was doing.
My original plan was to keep this secret from the S-Rankers. If they knew, they’d insist on clearing the portal for ‘safety reasons.’ But I’d just drained the multicolored core of all the Mana I’d put into it, and the portal had shut down a moment later. We didn’t need to worry about a portal break, so the S-Rankers didn’t need to be involved.
Sarah, though…The Spark of Life represented an opportunity. So, when she cleared her throat and asked, “What were you doing, Kade?”, I told her the truth. Every bit of it that I could.
She nodded when I finished. “You’re not telling me everything. That’s fine, though. If this gets you caught up, I’ll help you. What do you need from me?”
I took a shallow breath of relief. It would have been deeper, but my ribs were knitting themselves back together as Sarah’s magic did its thing. She winced sympathetically, and I shook my head. “It’s fine. It’ll feel better when you’re done than it did before you got started. I’m going to be clearing the Solo Portal every night. Can I text you for healing when I get out? That’d let me train with the team during the day, and I’d be able to catch up faster that way.”
“Fine.” Sarah finished up in silence, and I stretched my arm out. The cuts on it were mostly healed, but not all the way. “The sooner you find me after you get out, the less residual damage I’ll have to leave behind, though, so when you’re done, move fast. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said.
“Great. Now, Terrel and Bernard should be finishing up in the next few minutes. I’ll put one of them back together first, and you can have the next fight. It’ll be Hugo, though—so be ready for that.”
I groaned. Fighting Hugo was like fighting a living hailstorm of arrows. He could put dozens of them in the air at the same time, and they were all five feet long and twenty pounds each. This was going to suck.
◄▼►
My training fell into a rhythm over the next few days.
In the mornings, I’d stagger out of my room, bloodied, bruised, and broken. Sarah would be waiting for me. I’d get healed for twenty minutes and, when my body was put together enough to keep going, I’d get thrown onto the sparring floor against one of the other S-Rankers.
Sarah had been right about two things.
Bernard was the easiest to fight. He was also the slowest to beat me, but I felt like I had opportunities to maneuver and find weak points, and to land meaningful blows. He just wasn’t fast enough to handle my full speed—but he was tough enough to weather the storm, and I couldn’t handle the damage even an S-Rank tank put out. Not for long enough to win.
Hugo, despite his being obnoxious, was pretty simple, too. If I could close the gap, I could worry him for a while—until he used his escape skill. It broke Lightning Chain. Not for a few seconds, either. Something about it made spells slide off of him for almost fifteen seconds after he used it. When he did, I’d lose. Fast.
After him, it was a tie between Terrel, who out-muscled and out-blitzed me at the same time, and Nathan Anders. The Phoenix Reborn wasn’t faster or stronger than me. It was more that I couldn’t attack him without suffering burns, and I couldn’t beat him with spellcasting. I’d thought my skill loadout was good at killing mages, but the S-Ranker didn’t fight like a mage. He fought like a fighter with magic. It was almost a spellblade build—but with no blades.
Then, after we’d sparred and Sarah had put us all back together, we’d hunt portals.
Sometimes, that’d be an A-Rank in the desert. Other times, there’d be an active B-Rank in Phoenix, and we’d have the GC claim it for us. Twice, we poached portals Jessie had already staked a claim on; she’d text me, furious, but she couldn’t stop the S-Rankers, and we needed the portals.
We all did. It wasn’t just about getting me caught up. It was about getting the six of us operating like a unit. And Sarah, despite never launching an attack on a single monster, was the shot-caller and tactician.
Then, when the S-Rankers packed it in for the night, I’d grab three or four hours of sleep and dive into the Solo Portal.
I’d learned one useful thing in my first trip back inside. The multicolored core didn’t open up against the Dark Citadel’s outer wall anymore. Now, it opened at the base of the tower’s lowest staircase. That was one piece of good news—I wouldn’t be wasting time traveling anymore.
The bad news was that my progress slowed down after the first floor.
It took me two days of beating myself against the Dark Citadel knights and Scriptsmiths inside the tower before I managed to clear the second floor. The boss of that floor was a suit of armor—but an absolutely massive one. Its spear was easily twenty feet long, and unlike most of the enemies I’d fought before, it could move that spear. Every time I ducked in for a Rain-Soaked Blade, I found my path blocked as the armor retreated and the spear cut off my attack. I ended up using Stormkin Avatar and my spells to whittle the thing down.
The third floor was even worse. I’d been working on it for three days; the enemies were so densely packed that I had to use most of my resources on every fight. I’d give it a few hours every night, but I couldn’t commit to more, no matter how useful the fighting was for leveling skills. And it was leveling my skills. It just hurt to do it.
Tanat didn’t show up again. Whether she’d gotten cold feet, gotten killed, or we just hadn’t crossed paths again, it was both a relief and a source of anxiety. If she was making progress, the bosses and monsters should be dying. But they weren’t, so she had to be…something. I didn’t know what, but something.
And at the end of my nights, when I couldn’t do more, I’d fall out of my room, texting Sarah, and let her put me back together. Then I’d do it all over again.
◄▼►
I was being put together after Day Six of my brutal training regimen when my phone went off.
Sarah’s did, too. She didn’t stop healing me. In fact, she didn’t even move except to roll her eyes. “That’d be go-time. Looks like you’re as strong as you’re going to get. Think it’s enough?”
I closed my eyes and nodded. My skills weren’t capped out. I hadn’t met that goal. But unlike our clear of the Arborial portal world, the S-Rankers weren’t making opportunities for me anymore. I was making my own—and holding my own, both in training and in portals. “Yes. This is as strong as I can be right now with what I have. I wish I’d been able to clear the Solo Portal, but I’ll keep working on it when I can.”
“Great. Check your phone. And I’m reading over your shoulder.”
“Fine with me.” I opened the screen, and we started reading.
Governing Council Private Message:
Sender: Councilwoman Myers
Status: High Priority
Delver Noelstra,
The mission is a go. The Texas Cities are in position, and our forces have linked up with the West Coast teams near White Sands. Your team will be deployed via helicopter to the elevator shaft entering Carlsbad Caverns once the defenders are deemed sufficiently drawn out. There is a steel blockage halfway down, consisting of the melted elevator and cables. Beyond that point, your team will be on its own.
The Governing Council authorizes the Carlsbad Cavern operation to begin.