Stormblade 5 C25: Sanctum (2)

25 - Sanctum (2)

Ellen’s Tides of Darkness continued to ripple across the Void Garden.

It wasn’t enough to kill the S-Rank monsters. It never had been, but the sheer damage it did made them easy pickings for both my sword and Ellen’s remaining suite of spells. Her Shadow Puppeteer made copies of the injured monsters; they weren’t as strong as the originals, but they’d stalled most of the A and S-Rankers in place, deep within the water-filled hedge maze.

But even through it, more monsters kept pushing forward. They surged through the still-flooding waters that poured out of the golden portal; the Placid King seemed to be emptying his entire world into mine. And worse, I had a monstrosity of my own to fight.

The four-armed, brass-armored monster closed the gap. My sword whipped out, not to do damage, but simply to generate charges. I needed one Rainfall Charge for Laminar Blade. That’d be the core of my strategy against it. Two Lightnings for Stormfall would give me the ability to keep up, blow for blow. But even then, the SS-Ranked monster was going to be a heck of a fight.

“At least it’s not a Paragon,” I muttered. And at least Ellen had already worked it over.

An arm swung toward me. I dropped into Torrentborne and nailed the parry. The blow sent shockwaves up my arm; I almost dropped the Storm’s Blade from the sheer force. But I held on, stepping back. Stormrunner for the speed. Thunderlord stance. Two thrusts. Neither made it through the thick brass armor. Fine. That was fine.

Laminar Blade. Stormfall. The Storm’s Blade hummed as a sheen of perfectly smooth water covered it, and lightning crackled underneath the mirrored surface. I went on the offensive. A fist slammed into my off-hand shoulder. Something cracked. I poured Stamina into the joint—and into the rib right below it—and ignored the pain. The Storm’s Blade punched forward in a quartet of thrusts.

Armor gave like butter; even the SS-Rank monster’s bulk wasn’t enough to stop Laminar Blade. Then the Stormfall shockwaves went off, one after another. The attacks ripped into the massive machine’s four shoulder joints. Brass and string exploded outward. The stink of burning cloth filled the air.

And I ignored the monster. If I was right—and I was pretty sure I was—it was a construct from the Craftsman’s Workshop, and those monsters hadn’t displayed any healing. It wasn’t a threat anymore.

I whirled as a haunting, feminine laugh filled the air.

Dark-Soul Angler: SS-Rank

She—and the monster was definitely one of the curviest women I’d ever seen—stood near the lightning rod I was trying to defend. Her green-tinted skin dripped with water, and her hair hung in sheets around her face and chest. A single, delicate-looking hand reached out and touched the metal rod.

Lightning pulsed into it from the storm overhead.

The woman screamed. No. Not the woman. The gigantic anglerfish she was attached to, almost like…like bait. Its jaws were big enough to close around me, trapping me inside its myriad sword-like fangs.

I rolled my eyes. The monster was a walking trap, but I wasn’t about to fall for it.

Before I could react, though, the fish shifted in the water. It didn’t swim. Instead, it almost seemed to warp through it. Its jaws slammed shut around my legs. I screamed as a half-dozen spears sliced into my thighs, punching straight through my armor. Not that it hadn’t stopped a dozen more of them, but the monster was strong enough to power through even the lightning-and-wind maelstrom armor.

But I couldn’t stop. Pain was nothing. I’d experienced worse. I forced my legs to move and flex, and the piercing fangs snapped, one after another. I wasn’t free—I was still being dragged under by the Angler—but with the teeth broken, I forced even more Stamina into my thighs and calves.

Then I got to work.

There’d be no maneuvering. The monster was still stuck; some of its fangs had gotten trapped in the portal metal and maelstrom of my armor.

And I couldn’t get a good angle for Laminar Blade and Stormfall.

I shifted stances as best I could—this time to Cyclone Forms. Then I started the Rolling Thunder and Ariette’s Thunderhead combo. The storm built quickly.

And the crying, half-burnt woman noticed.

Her eyes locked on the clouds building overhead. They widened. The fish tried to disengage, but I grabbed one of the broken fangs right against its gums and hung on. More storm clouds. They built quickly all around me. Brendan’s Storm Sigil. Then, at point-blank range, Hand of the Thunder God.

The beam of lightning sliced into the Dark-Soul Angler, right at the base of the woman’s stalk. As it cut through flesh, watery blood poured out in a fountain. It splattered against the lightning rod, hissing and sizzling—and it splattered against me, too. The beam kept right on going. It bored a hole into the SS-Ranked monster.

Then it stopped.

The two jaws disengaged, but I wasn’t fooled. Even as it dove into the ever-rising tide of deep-ocean water flooding the Void Garden, its wound was already healing. The woman thrashed around on the brick platform, screaming and seeming to beg for help.

For a few seconds, I found myself moving to offer that help.

Then I froze in place. An aura. The angler was using its aura—and its aura made me want to…help it. It was still baiting me.

I growled in anger. “I’ve had enough of your bullshit!”

Then I used Stormbreak.

I didn’t mean to. It was objectively the wrong choice; even in this world, with Cheddar flying high over the Lightning Tower and Ellen’s Abyssal Well to draw from, it’d take me precious minutes to recover my Mana.

But I also wanted this monster dead.

And as the flowers rippled outward and electricity filled the water around me, I realized that not only did I have the Dark-Soul Angler in my sights, but I had close to a dozen other monsters targeted.

Blossoms rippled through the dark ocean water. One for me. One for the bait woman. One for the Angler. Ten others, ranging from almost right on top of me to thirty feet away.

The storm broke. So did my enemies. I’d excluded nothing. Nothing at all. Lightning pulsed—seven pulses that ripped through the Placid King’s forces, shredding them.

But, somehow, the Dark-Soul Angler stayed alive. Maybe it was because it was SS-Rank, and Stormbreak was only B-Rank. Or maybe I just had too many targets. Either way, the biggest threat was still alive. Smoking even through the water around it, yes, but alive. I needed to fix that, but without Mana…

I only had one option. The Angler was already diving. I couldn’t let it get away to recover.

So I used Stormbreak a second time. Then a third.

It didn’t survive all of that. For a moment, I felt like I wouldn’t, either. But a familiar pressure built up inside of me even as lightning charred my veins and burnt out every drop of Mana I recovered.

I smiled.

Stormbreak was ready to hit A-Rank.

Then I closed my eyes and let myself drift into the rank-up fugue. This would only take a minute.

◄▼►

I had a moment.

So I pulled up my stat block the second I arrived in the tower in the clouds. It wasn’t my mountain, but that was fine; it was definitely still my mental space.

User: Kade Noelstra
Reforged Core, S-Rank
Stamina: 283/620 (+20), Mana: 28/850 (+20)

Skills: 
1. Stormblade Core (S-01 to S-02, Unique, Merged, Path)
2. Thunderlord (S-01 to S-03, Path)
3. Torrentborne (S-01 to S-02, Path)
4. Cyclone Forms (A-10, Altered, Merged)
5. Stormlight Bond (B-10, Altered, Merged)
6. Shadowstorm Battery (C-10, Altered, Merged, Dual)
7. Stormbreak (B-08 to B-10, Unique)

Path: Path of the Stormblade
Aura: Stormkin Avatar

Growth proceeded. Slowly. Clearly, the gap between S-Rank and SS-Rank was a big one. That was fine; until I knew what it’d take to hit SS-Rank, I needed to avoid putting pressure on my core to do so. The Crone’s words about the pressure to ascend played in my head. I couldn’t leave Jessie here by herself. That’d be a violation of the single most important promise I’d ever made.

Pushing Stormbreak to A-Rank wouldn’t be a problem for my overall rank, though, so I focused on it.

I’d spent a lot of time contemplating Stormbreak. The training session with Eugene…with the God of Thunder, that was—came to mind.

The difference between this rank-up and the last one, when Deborah had been working at cutting my head off, was palpable. Yes, we were in the middle of battle, but at the same time, the sheer pressure was less overwhelming. Part of it was that I’d just cleared the area—and probably fried every nerve ending in my body. But part of it was that I just didn’t see the swarms of monstrous fish, eels, and crabs as threats. Not the same way Deborah had been one.

So, Stormbreak.

As I focused on it, a sheet of lightning so thick I couldn’t see the night through it rippled up from the sky, all around my tower-top perch. I closed my eyes against it, but even then, the afterimages rippled across my eyelids and seared my retinas. In only seconds, it was as if my eyes weren’t closed at all. And it only got worse; with every second, the sheer presence of the lightning and overwhelming volume of the thunder that came with it pressed in on me, like the storm itself had an aura.

I fought against it. Gritted my teeth and flexed my every muscle as I pushed it back—or tried to. My will fought with the very will of the storm. My determination against its strength. I’d embraced its power before, of course. I’d shown it my dedication, my willingness to pay the price of the Stormsteel Path. But I wasn’t on that Path anymore. This was my Path.

And, gradually, I realized that I shaped its turns and switchbacks. Not the God of Thunder. Not some other entity. This was. My. Path.

I could bend it to my will, not through determination, but through simply wishing it—much like how the portal world I now shared with Ellen would bend to my will.

My internal world shifted as I made sense of the storm in my core. It wasn’t that the storm appeared to have an aura. It did have one. And the moment I understood that, I summoned my own. Dad erupted forward. His power pressed against the storm’s, and the storm gave way.

Not all at once. Not quickly. The power of my S-Rank Stormkin Avatar wasn’t enough to force the entire storm to obey my will. But it helped. Bit by bit, the storm gave against my memory of my stepfather. As it did, I simply watched. The battle of my will against the storm’s played out in front of me, and I focused not on winning, but on learning. There could be no victory—not for my father’s memory, and not for me.

The storm was too strong for that.

But I didn’t need to win. I just needed to understand how to continue shaping Stormbreak. I could hold the storm at bay for a few seconds. The next step had something to do with that.

Could I hold part of it back for longer? And if I could, what would that mean, tactically?

I closed my eyes. Was that what the storm was trying to teach me?

A few seconds—in my mental space, not in reality—later, I opened them. It was!

Law Learned: Fourth Law of the Unbroken Storm
Stormbreak: Rank B to Rank A

All that you need, and more. The price you have paid, Kade Noelstra, is dedication and commitment. What you buy from the thunder and lightning with that commitment is everything. The storm’s power and fury continue to bend to your will, and as you claim its strength, your journey down your Path continues apace.

Your control over the storm within you becomes more refined.

Stormbreak was Rank A now.

I’d gained newfound strength—but at a newfound risk. As my Unique skill approached my power level, I understood intuitively that I wouldn’t be able to ignore the damage it did to my body as easily.

But then again, neither would the Placid King.

And I was counting on that.

◄▼►

I rejoined the battle in my portal world a split second after I’d left it.

Ellen was casting again. She’d dropped the Shadow Cell across a section of the Void Garden, and even as I watched, it ripped into a swarm of A and S-Rank monsters. Not all of them died, but even from halfway across the portal world, the screaming was…impressive. At the same time, her Black Hole/Abyssal Storm combo was shredding another entire section of the battlefield, scouring the water below it. The sheer volume of green-black lightning and shadows was all but mind-boggling.

But while she was doing plenty of damage, she’d need more time to actually kill things—and we’d need more time to get the Eye of the Storm up and running. That was our ace in the hole, and we needed it—

“I told you the war was won, Kade Noelstra. And I told you I would be back soon.”

A wave of calm washed over the battlefield. Ellen’s spells continued by virtue of her Arcane Resonator skill, but she stopped casting. The Eye of the Storm kept building overhead. Shadow Cell kept ripping apart monsters.

But it didn’t matter. The wave of calmness…of centered thought that had washed over the world was all that mattered. I stared at the golden portal in the distance. The Storm’s Blade dropped to my side.

And the Placid King entered my portal world.

It started with a single tentacle, easily a hundred feet long. Suckers large enough to fit me—or maybe even Ellen’s car—in them gripped the Void Garden’s hedges and slid through the maze, seeking something. Eyes covered the black tendril, peering in every direction.

A second tentacle joined it, pulling on something massive. Then a third. A fourth. They just kept coming, and as they did, they seemed to stretch toward the Lightning Tower. I should care. Why should I care? It seemed important, but I couldn’t make myself feel the urgency I knew I should be feeling. The black tentacles and yellow eyes filled the portal world, slowly choking off the open space.

The Placid King: SS-Plus Rank

His body was gigantic. Easily the most massive portal monster I’d ever encountered, he could have completely filled any of the E and D-Rank portals I’d cut my teeth on. It slid through the portal like that of an octopus, fitting through the impossibly small gap and then expanding outward. Jet black slime dripped from his bulk. A beak the size of the Desert Wind Building itself loomed over me.

A single thought pushed through the overwhelming aura pressing down around me.

The Placid King had arrived, and the Eye of the Storm wasn’t ready yet.