Stormblade 5 C3: Battle Lines (1)
3 - Battle Lines (1)
Stormfall.
The lightning-quick attacks ripped through the Spirit-Slither’s tentacles as they blocked, and the shockwaves cracked its armor. I pressed even harder, ignoring the blows it managed to land. My lightning-and-maelstrom armor took the impacts, eating away at tentacles. I didn’t have time to defend myself. The S-Rank monster might not be a threat to me—at least, not in the way they’d been dangerous at A-Rank—but if I lost control over it, it’d be more than enough to hurt Ellen.
Or, worse…if I wasn’t fast enough and gave her a window to start casting or using Shadow Box, her core could weaken even further. I couldn’t let that happen.
So…Stormfall.
The monster only lasted maybe twenty seconds. After five, Ellen’s aura pulled back as she relaxed. After seven, so did I; she wasn’t going to join this fight. After twelve, it was only a matter of attrition—of cracking through the Spirit-Slither’s armored scales in enough places to kill it.
By twenty, it was over. The S-Ranked monster was dead. I breathed shallow, quick breaths and recentered myself. The Storm’s Blade hung in my hand. When I spoke, it was as calmly as I could. “Ellen, we’re going down the stairs, toward the exit portal. I’m getting you out of here. This is an S-Rank portal invading the Black Tower, and I can’t risk you getting hurt here.”
“I’m staying,” Ellen said stubbornly, but she looked at the ground.
I reached out with my free hand. “I need you to help get Jessie lined out on her part in this. It’s the best thing we can do for your core right now—unless you can convince Terrel Young and the Portal Tyrants to try repairing it with what they know.” I spent thirty precious seconds explaining exactly what my progression partner and girlfriend had to do.
And every second, more monsters entered the Black Tower.
When I finished, Ellen nodded. “Let’s go, then.”
I readied the Storm’s Blade and pushed down the stairs, toward where I’d left the Black Tower’s entrance. Ellen followed me.
The third floor was a mess. It was awash with A-Rank monsters—dozens of them, eel-shaped predators with thousands of rotating teeth in their round, gaping maws. “Their portal’s here. I’ll come back for it once you’re safe,” I said.
Then I slipped into Cyclone Forms long enough to fire a Darkness in front of us and follow it with an unbuffed Hand of the Thunder God. The spell’s lightning beam was only a finger-width. It bored through a handful of the man-sized morays, but didn’t last long enough to clear the room. Behind me, Ellen stiffened as the swarm closed in.
Back to Thunderlord. Stormfall. Slipstream. The dozens of monsters exploded as my attacks hit simultaneously, carrying the shockwave with every blow. I hadn’t bothered setting up Laminar Blade. Defense was still a waste of time.
Stamina: 574/600, Mana 710/830
I hadn’t even started consuming my resources; with Ellen and Cheddar, I could sustain my Mana much faster than before, and my Stamina had hardly taken a hit. I pushed myself faster. There were still surviving eel monsters, but after another few blows, it was obvious none were in good enough condition to hunt us down.
Ellen was already halfway down the stairs when I turned and sprinted after her. Three or four steps at a time—a controlled pace—I dropped down to the second floor and pulled up next to her.
Deep-Pool Lurker: S-Rank
It was massive. Thick plates of calcified, coral-covered armor in a spiraling shell form. Orange tendrils, each with an eye at their tip, emerged from the shell’s single opening. From each eye, a ray of superheated air rippled as it sliced toward us. “Go back up. Get something between you and it,” I said.
Ellen nodded. At least she wasn’t fighting me right now. Small mercies; she could easily be pushing herself—and a small part of me wanted her to, just to see how badly off she was.
As she retreated, I dropped back into Cyclone Forms. And this time, I stayed there.
The Deep-Pool Lurker’s armor might fold to repeated Laminar Blade strikes. In fact, on a long enough timeline, that would certainly kill it. But I didn’t have that kind of time. I needed it dead fast.
So, I started up the Brendan’s Storm Sigil combo. Ariette’s Thunderhead, with Rolling Thunder running. The narrow stairway and labyrinth of the second floor filled with black clouds as I repeated the cast and doubled, then tripled it. The Lurker barely reacted, except to pull itself into its shell and close its armored bulk around itself. It dwarfed me, easily a dozen feet tall and probably ten tons in weight. But that didn’t matter.
Brendan’s Storm Sigil pulled all the energy from five Thunderheads, glowing bright in front of me for a moment before I cast Hand of the Thunder God.
Ten seconds later, I called Ellen down, and we ran through the scorched, burning hole I’d bored through the S-Ranked monster.
“What did you do to yourself?” Ellen asked. “I knew you’d gotten powerful, but…”
I shrugged. “S-Rank is a big power increase, especially if you get there the right way. No one on Earth’s done it right before, though. We’ll get you caught up. I promise.”
“I believe you.”
We ran down through the empty first floor and pulled up in front of the Black Tower’s exit portal. I put a hand on Ellen’s shoulder. “Remember, you need to convince Jessie to set up a meeting with the Crone as soon as possible. Later tonight would be best.”
“She’s probably asleep,” Ellen said. “And you’re sure the Crone’s our best bet for fixing my core?”
“I’m sure the Crone can get us in touch with the Soaring Sabers, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they could help us—or at least point us in the right direction. Tanat knew a lot about cores and ranks, even if her understanding was different than ours.”
“And you’re sure you’ll be okay here?”
“I’ll be fine. This world is mine, not the Placid King’s.”
“Okay. I’ll see you soon, Kade Noelstra. Make sure you keep that promise.” Ellen hugged me quickly and disappeared into the portal.
The moment she did, I relaxed. With her safe, I could finally push myself to my limits. The first of the surviving lamprey monsters worked its way down the stairs. So did a handful of S-Rank horrors—crab things, a floating jellyfish, and a kraken that pulled itself along the floor and ceiling at the same time.
I dropped into Torrentborne, the defensive upgrade to Mistwalk Forms that I’d gotten at S-Rank. But I wasn’t planning on playing defense.
These monsters were here for me, but they’d have to catch me first.
◄▼►
Lightning Dance.
I disappeared and reappeared on the kraken’s far side. It turned toward me, gigantic limbs slamming down. Another instant reposition, further up the stairs. A lamprey lunged toward me; I parried and jammed the Storm’s Blade into its body, and it shivered as it died. One more reposition as the S-Ranked crab-monsters skittered and closed in around me. Lightning Dance stopped.
Stormrunner. I catapulted myself into the air, speeding up the stairs without laying a foot on them. The monsters turned to pursue me as one. That was fine. Let them chase me. With Stormrunner, I was faster and more maneuverable than them.
Besides, I had only one goal. The Black Tower had been a maze of electrical traps and armored knights when I’d cleared it with Tanat’s help, and even though I’d been working hard to redesign it, I’d barely scraped the surface of my plans. The lightning surging up the tower’s outer frame was only the beginning.
But it was enough of a beginning to turn the tide here. I just needed to get back to the throne room on the fourth floor.
Stormrunner was a ridiculous movement advantage. I surged up the stairs on lightning wings that arced out to touch the Black Tower’s walls. It was almost too fast to stay in control, which was why I’d saved it until after Ellen was safe. I couldn’t risk abandoning her to the monsters, but now that she was out of the fighting, that wasn’t a problem anymore. My path took me across another swarm of lamprey monsters; the lightning arcs touched them, but didn’t do more than burn a few scales.
This wasn’t a weapon, and it wasn’t meant to be.
It also hadn’t been electrical. I’d only been working on the Black Tower’s changes for a few hours, and already, it was having an effect.
The third floor flashed by, and I skidded to a stop, spun in place, and dropped into the throne.
And the Black Tower came alive. The lightning surging up its sides poured into the electrified floors and beams of lightning I’d had to bypass so many times. Every one of the four floors became a trap, with the only possible escapes out into the remnants of the Dark Citadel outside or back through the portal to the monsters’ own world. Or—since these were portal monsters, and portal monsters had one overriding goal—to hunt me down and end the Black Tower as a portal world altogether.
They chose the third option. I grinned from the throne as the portal world fought against its invaders. It would lose. The Black Tower was missing well over half of its defenders—the legions of Script-casters and animated armors Tanat and I had painstakingly cut our way through. Without those soldiers, even the best passive defenses would be overwhelmed. I had a few ideas for that in the future, but that would require finishing my renovations.
So, even as A-Rank monsters fried in droves, the S-Rank jellyfish and crabs made it through the beams of lightning and shocking floor panels with surprisingly minimal damage. I stood up, leaving the tower’s traps running, as the first crab pushed its way into the fourth floor’s boss arena. Its pincers clacked together as it surged across the room. Each step cratered the floor below it.
I moved.
Laminar Blade. Stormfall.
The Storm’s Blade punched through the crab’s shell, right below its massive, clawed arm. An explosion rippled outward, and chitin rained down on me. The gigantic crab shrieked in pain, but I wasn’t even close to done. Attacks hammered against its carapace as its other claw slammed closed on my free hand’s bracer. Portal metal buckled, but it didn’t break—and neither did the maelstrom protecting me. And every blow I landed punched another hole in the crab’s armor.
It took a half-dozen massive gashes before the thing bled out on my throne room’s floor.
Empty-Mind Drifter: S-Rank
The jellyfish was next. Its body glowed a sickly yellow-green, and as it entered the now-domed room near the top of the Black Tower, its tendrils expanded to fill the space between ceiling and floor. Every one of them pulsed with Mana; if they touched me, all of that energy would discharge, and it’d almost certainly bore through my defenses.
It wasn’t fast, though.
It only took a moment—and a pair of A-Rank lampreys who limped into the room and became Charges for me to power my abilities a few seconds later—to set up another Storm Sigil/Hand of the Thunder God combo. The beam fired off, cutting through the hanging tendrils and ripping up into the slow-moving jellyfish. It didn’t die right away, but the sheer damage was enough to knock it out of the fight. I ignored it as it desperately poured its Health into repairing the catastrophic damage.
There were plenty of other monsters where it came from, after all.
◄▼►
Stamina: 459/600, Mana 601/830
It took time. Time I didn’t want to spend. But when I was finished, there were no more monsters in the Black Tower.
A few had made it out into the Dark Citadel’s streets. There was nothing for them there but the storm overhead and the lightning conductors strewn around the Black Tower. Nothing to kill. Nothing to fight. Nowhere to hide—at least, not for long. The storm wasn’t close to its full strength; it’d take days or weeks to figure out where that line was. But it was strong enough to kill the stragglers in my portal world.
A handful had fled back through their portal. I stood before the golden circle, staring into it, sword in hand. On either side of me, half of a crab slumped to the ground. It had been the last monster to fail at leaving; the cut wasn’t clean, and it definitely hadn’t been a single blow, but it was in two pieces. I’d taken my time with that one, with the intent of sending a message to the rest of the retreating invaders.
It was satisfying, in a way. I’d reached the height of power—at least on the scale I’d known before the God of Thunder had shown me more. S-Rank. Enough strength to stop a portal break of my own rank. This had been the promise I’d made to Dad and Jessie, and to myself. Enough strength to take care of her. To make Dad proud. Enough that I could fight anything and win.
Two of those promises should have been considered kept by now.
Instead, I only knew that Dad would be proud of me. Jessie was still in danger. I still had monsters I couldn’t defeat—and that was about to be a problem.
Still…it was satisfying.
Part of me wanted more, though. The golden portal was there. It had attacked me. It had attacked Ellen—kicked her while she was down. That familiar feeling rose up inside of me. Fury. Righteous anger. Whatever it was. I could step through that portal and destroy the world on the other side. Kill the boss. Close the portal. Easy. Simple.
A waste of time. A waste of time I couldn’t afford.
Instead, I turned, unsummoning the Storm’s Blade, and returned to the throne room. Most of the traps were intact. Electricity filled the air. I adjusted a few elements, turning the room around that shimmering, golden, S-Rank portal into the most intense, unsurvivable death trap I could design. It didn’t take long. A solid array of lightning floors, a dozen electrical beams pouring energy into the portal’s entrance, and a labyrinth to navigate to escape from the second floor.
Then, when I was satisfied, I walked the stairs, double-checking that not a single monster remained in my tower, and stepped through the portal to Earth.
The Black Tower could defend itself for a while, but it had proven its limits. Against something like the Placid King or the God of Thunder, it would need more. More power, more flexibility, and more defenders.
Ellen would be the first of those allies. It was time to bring her up to speed.