Book 3: Chapter 31: Intense Defence and Mage Rage
Lone didn't have time to think about why he was being attacked. Hell, he didn't even know what his attacker looked like, only that they could evade Sophie's Mana Sensing somehow and that they were strong enough to ignore his Oaken Flesh and even cut through his spinal bones with their now-destroyed sword.
'Hopefully, it was the sword that was capable of that and not the attacker now that Sophie's destroyed it,' Lone thought as he immediately reshaped his Blood Clone cape into a fortress shield and then invoked Bone Armour, leaving one Blood Clone in his bloodstream to aid in any healing should that be needed.
'She is 14 metres to your seven o'clock readying a skill under her illusion. It is something stronger than that neck slash but not strong enough to break one, let alone two, fortress shields, assuming the bone one is the outer layer,' he heard Sophie say telepathically.
'I don't have a bone fortress shield ready yet but that can be arranged. The attacker's a woman and Sophie knows where she is so she must've stepped into the void. Quick thinking. I need to finish this fight in half a minute then if the plan is for her to stay there.' He wasn't quite sure yet if he should go for the kill or not, but considering the looming threat of Arch Devil Zel, he would go for the kill. He couldn't show mercy here and risk an even greater threat.
'Roger Roger,'he replied as he sent a tendril of bones out past his blood shield to create a second, stronger, fortress shield.
The moment it had finished forming, he invoked two active skills as he moved towards the location Sophie had instructed him the enemy was currently hiding at, preparing her next attack. "Survivor's Speed! Ramming Strike!"
As soon as he had moved four metres, he invoked a skill effect, "Full Charge!"
He barely had the mental processing power to activate another skill the moment he was about to reach the supposed location of his adversary considering how fast he was moving.
He was using Ramming Strike which, while only at beginner level one, did the following: When ramming a target with a shield, the host's speed shall be increased by 5% and the force of the shield on impact with the target shall be multiplied by 2.
That, in addition to Full Charge which was being used with the maximum velocity granted by Survivor's Speed - a skill that multiplied his speed by a factor of 12.5, plus his incredibly high base Agility stat, resulted in Lone, with both of his fortress shields, rocketing towards his directed target at almost the speed of sound.
The additional skill he had activated was the only one he had that could allow him to completely ignore the effects of the woman's illusions. "You!"
With the sound of glass shattering, the illusions clouding the woman from existence broke apart, revealing her as she slid dozens of metres back.
Lone adjusted the make-up of his fortress shields to allow him to see outside of them. This did technically remove their classifications of fortress shields since they were no longer fully encapsulating spheres, but Lone had no way to look outside of his protective spheres beyond relying on his still burgeoning ability to detect auras.
He also needed a line of sight for his next set of moves. 'Need to develop my sight magic so I can see outside of my shields, but for now, you die, Miss Assassin.'
"Mental Destruction. Mental Destruction. Mental Destruction. Menta-. It isn't doing anything," Lone remarked. That meant one of three things. This woman was either incredibly resistant to magic-based attacks, soul-based attacks, or both. "Well, that complicates things. Thorny Itch."
Wild brambles and thorns sprouted from the nature magic in the air to cover the Crimson Foxkin woman who didn't seem bothered by them in the slightest.
"I guess that tracks. It is only beginner-level-one and is only meant to cause itching. There's no distracting you, huh?" Lone mumbled as he sunk into thought.
He'd already burned through half of his SP during this fight, although his MP reserves were doing much better with only a tenth of them having been spent thus far. SP was very expendable with the recovery bonuses from his two fortress shields but he had to be more frugal with his MP if he wanted to go on the offensive.
'She's not bothering to use illusions anymore?' Lone thought as the woman whose aura felt like that of perhaps an X-ranker's lunged at him covering several dozens of metres of distance in a mere moment. A new shimmering red blade had appeared in her hand as she made to stab Lone with it.
He quickly closed off his bones and blood, reforming the fortress shields. A powerful force clashed with the two shells and through his connection with his Bone Armour, Lone felt the outer shield splintering and warring against an attack that would have been fierce enough to breach his defences without absolute ease were it not for the bones' ability to regenerate. And this was in spite of the 95% damage nullification and 95% weakening of the remaining 5% damage that got through.
'I can't win this fight unless I draw on Void to use its Primal skill Nothing Vortex to delete her brain or something. If I didn't fear for her safety, I could unsummon Sophie now and get her to charge up a Barrier Maelstrom- fuck, stop attacking my shields! I'm thinking!' Lone growled internally.
'If she used her aura on me, I could maybe stab her to death with Tail Spear but she isn't bothering. Why? That could turn the tides... Fuck. Darkness, Death, any ideas?' Lone asked.
'To kill her? As you've already surmised, Void is probably your best bet. Shame you don't use cold weapons that much. That fire magic skill of hers will likely rot in your growing arsenal,' Darkness commented.
Death replied, 'Check. See if it is her time. You have no connections with this woman beyond being her target. Her power matters not, you should be able to see her lifespan with some effort. The skill has a matching rank restriction, but such things can be overcome in moments of distress. If it is her time to die, figure out on your own how to accomplish that if you do not wish to use Void. She will die regardless. If it is not, you must be saved or do so yourself somehow. It is that simple.'
Lone cursed internally. Darkness was being useless but at least Death had given him some advice. The only problem was that the woman was hammering his bone fortress shield relentlessly, not giving him a chance to create an opening again to try and see her lifespan.
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If he created a spot to look out from, he would lose the Fortress Shield Mastery bonuses, and quite frankly, he didn't trust the Blood Clone shield's chances against her magical sword.
'Sophie, I need you to teleport me away from her for a moment. Can I safely unsummon you then summon you in my shields with me for that?' Lone asked.
'Do it,' Sophie said. 'But wait until Soph tells you to unsummon her. We will be giving control to her and we will force this worthless scum to stop her assault. She will die, but not today. We have both used too many resources already and her immunity to Mental Destruction complicates things. We also cannot affect her ripples despite our rising stress, so we must improvise.'
'Endure until you're ready. Easy enough with near-infinite SP, so, Roger Roger,' Lone replied. "Unsummon Sofia Vladimirovich."
Not a moment later, he felt his Bone Armour being penetrated but thankfully, his Blood Clone fortress shield barely stopped whatever force was left behind the attack before it could reach his Bone Armoured form.
Flames rushed through the gap in his rapidly closing bone shield, immediately raising the temperate enough to cook Lone alive which added an additional strain to his draining SP as Basic Regeneration worked to keep both him and his bone shield functional. The recovering SP could keep up, but not by much. 5% per second multiplied by two was a lot, but it wasn't as infinite as Lone would have preferred.
The bone shield closed up, fully activating his second Fortress Shield again but the flames were still there and were getting even hotter, boiling his Blood Clone and him within it.
He briefly let his Blood Clone open up to allow the magical flames to directly hit him before sealing it up again. His thinking was that this would heavily increase the levelling speed of the relevant resistance and would likely be a more cost-efficient solution for his SP over being indirectly cooked.
Lone could barely make out indistinct shouting from outside of his fortress shields as a powerful attack slammed into the side of his bone shield, sending him flying.
'I hope Breena or Rodorick aren't risking their lives. Or anyone from the convoy, for that matter. They're far too weak to fight this monster,' Lone thought as he began chanting two words over and over again to buy more time. "Forced Parry. Forced Parry. Forced Parry. Force Parry..."
The talent wouldn't activate until it actually parried a blow and since he was always wearing a small bone buckler on his wrist, he could use the ability of Buckler Mastery with any shield he was using.
Not a moment later, he felt the drain of 5,000 SP and a 24-hour cooldown sinking into place. "Deal with that for a few seconds, ya bitch!"
'I'm ready! Summon me behind your bone shield! I can't deal with those flames so I need to be outside of the fortresses!' Soph ordered.
"Summon Sophie Vladimirovich," Lone invoked and then immediately felt two things. One, he had been teleported as planned, and two, he experienced more so than sensed an intense magical death looming not far above his head.
He ordered his Blood Clone to become a cape again and also ordered the one protecting Soph to encapsulate her in a Fortress Shield thin enough to be seen through but thick enough to still function. Finally, he ordered the Blood Clone in his veins to exit his body and become a tabard, ready to expand into a fortress shield at a moment's notice that would cover both him and Soph.
With that done in the flash of a moment, he retracted his Bone Armour fortress shield into his armoured body.
Soph yelled at the rapidly approaching foxkin woman, "Another step and I destroy the entire clan with this!" She was obviously referring to the seven-metre-wide Barrier Maelstrom that could flatten a small city with its raw destructive capabilities.
The powerful Crimson Foxkin frowned but she did stop in her tracks, killing all of her momentum somehow. For the first time since appearing and trying to cut off Lone's head, she spoke, "If I kill you first, that threat disappears."
Out of the corner of his eye, Lone saw Breena not too far away in a crumpled heap but he couldn't see any injuries on her. Her basically non-existent aura had been destroyed so the woman was likely accosted by Breena so she decided to shut her up by overwhelming her with her own aura in an instant. A smart and effectively harmless way to pacify someone, he figured.
Lone shook his head. "It really doesn't. The skill is unblockable and it is already primed. She just needs to direct it. If you kill her, it'll direct itself. And trust me, you do not want to kill her. My contingencies are for an Arch Devil, but I'll use 'em on you if you force my hand. And as an aside, the only thing that has stopped me from killing you outright already with my Void Primal skill is that I want to know why you attacked me. I don't have a skill that can force your corpse to talk, not quite yet anyway. So, wanna doom your clan or wanna get to explainin'?"
"Yes, I would appreciate an explanation as well, War Leader Clari," the voice of Gilbert boomed in pure fury and nothing else as he appeared, his robes fluttering in the wind. His two perfect eyes glared at the woman. He was using gravity magic to float down from the sky. "How dare you attack two adventurers unprovoked, one of them being a silver plate and my good friend Lone here being a silver-gold plate adventurer at that. If I don't get a good explanation, Sofia here will not need to destroy your clan, the guild will do it like it did in Milindo."
For the first time since her appearance, the face of the Crimson Foxkin Lone now knew to be called Clari, changed from impassive to disappointed. "You're trying to tell me the guild accepted the avatar of Void as one of its inner members? You're a guildmaster. You know what Void is. If you didn't know he was an Avatar until now, I'll forgive your words and allow you to join me in killing him. He might actually be a fuckin' demigod turtle or something under that flesh and not a Golden Foxkin what with how defensively capable he is."
At this point, a huge crowd has formed, both from the caravan members since they were right outside of the pagoda they were staying at, as well as from people who had heard the commotion or felt Soph's intensively powerful maelstrom that still hung in the air menacingly.
Lone frowned. "You attacked me for that? Were you born stupid or did you grow into it? If I was an avatar as they normally appear, I would literally be Void. Would Void just peacefully exist in your clan? I'm pretty sure it would have destroyed everything from Milindo to Mystopolis without stopping or just be dead by now, murdered by some powerful deity or Divine or something. For fuck's sake..."
War Leader Clari wore a brief look of uncertainty. "Your racial skill, guildmaster. It forces you to speak the truths you hear when asked about them at the moment of you hearing them if you choose to reply, no? Does he speak the truth?"
'Huh. I never knew that. So White Dragonkin can tell the truth from a lie but it isn't unconditional. Interesting,' Lone thought.
Gilbert nodded. "He does. Lone Immortus, Immortus the Immortal, B-ranked gold-silver plate adventurer of The Adventurer's Guild is in perfect control of his mind and at no risk of being an avatar of Void like others have become in the past aeons. To not already know this is a testament to the lacking information-gathering abilities of the Crimson Foxkin Clan as a whole. I expect you to comply entirely with the guild's investigation into this matter. Purely formal, of course. You have deeply wronged a member of my guild and he will decide the guild's course of action in this matter since he yet lives."
"Earned the title of Immortus the Immortal, I'll tell you that much," War Leader Clari muttered as she held her neck, dismissed her new flaming sword, and sighed. "I should have let Anda finish reporting. I bet he was gonna tell me this. No way the Elders didn't know. Fuck."
Lone had to resist smiling from ear to ear. The things he could accomplish with such a powerful person deeply indebted to him... Oh, the skills he would be learning, the resistances he would be gaining, the skill level-ups that were bound to come... Not to mention the wall of system notification that already awaited him.
At his side, Soph wasn't smiling. A dark look could be seen in her eyes, a look more belonging to Sophie than her but it was definitely the softer personality in control. Lone was too lost in his own excitement to really take stock of this look or what it really meant. At least, not right now.
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