Chapter 25

Shattered

Our charge was immediately slowed by the shades of those long since passed. They weren’t just numerous; they were powerful. A quick glance showed the regular shades at level 120 or higher. A large part of their level was that, for all that they looked solid, they weren’t. Those vines and ice were as incorporeal as the shadows, only solid enough to kill when they pleased and as intangible as fog otherwise. Mana was the exception, it usually is. Remove that intangibility and they would be level 70 at best.

Dollface hit the enemy lines like some unholy cross of an eel and a tank, her armor tearing jagged rents in the shades as she slipped between them only to obliterate the upper body of one with a well-placed blast of her hammer. Man, that skill was terrifying. It brought a smile to my face.

Rose was basically a shadow herself, if a shadow normally let off a continuous stream of tracer rounds. Her armor piercing bolts were very effective against the fallen Shimburr, ripping holes in them that leaked shadow on every hit, and there were a lot of hits, so many hits. While weak individually, those blasts of hers poured out into the enemy shades like water from a hose. It was glorious.

As much as the Risen Shimburr outclassed our group in strength, they had nothing on us in skill. My companions dodged every hit, every claw and thorn, every wooden sword sharper than steel. Even our healer was keeping them at bay with an aura of holy light and flashes of toxic purple.

The brothers were having a blast as they fought, singing some song about ghost busting or something as Shin channeled the anti-magic properties of his stone through his strikes, erasing large chunks of the bastards with every sweep of his blade or fist. All the while Rocky gave off plumes of that nasty smog of his, it acted like an acid to the Shades incorporeal forms and forced them into reality, letting him cut them down with ease.

Of course, Santa topped them all. He used his incredible strength and mana density to act like a martial arts freight train. Each step actually a horizontal jump at high speed, usually ending up with his mana wreathed fist through the face of a Shade or a glowing leg completely bisecting them.

The problem was numbers. There were a lot of the damn shades. Too many. For each one we felled, another body climbed to its feet. It wouldn’t have been that bad if it weren’t for the Elites, the personal guards of the Shadow King. They were forming a circle around him, and dark silhouettes were slowly rising from the gaps in the roots. He was building more.

I had to trust my companions to handle their parts. I couldn’t let him build up a force of those things.

Shifting to my stone form, I called up my mana; called up fire and stone, and got to work.

Launching myself above the pockets of fighting around my allies, I let loose a hail of lava and oil, all aimed at the ground near the Elites. As my barrage landed, I caught four of them in Grasp of the Rotten Tree, picking the four furthest away from the lava and oil puddles. I caught a dozen corpses and three Risen Shimburr in the barrage. Those not outright destroyed burned. I needed to control the terrain if I was going to win this.

As I fell towards the remaining two Elites, I realized I was an idiot. I forgot the damn buffs again. This is why I was never a damn support caster. I just don’t think that way. Nonetheless, I quickly applied the Mantle of Healing Waters to my team, alongside my pitiful defensive enhancements. In my hurry to fix my oversight, I got knocked right out of the air by a mass of shadowy thorns and vines.

Pulling myself out of the crater I made with my stony ass, I flung a boulder ripped from the ground at the asshole that shot me down. The Elite Shade blocked it with a barrier of conjured vines and thorns.

Fuck…. I knew the Elite Guard would be tricky, but I didn’t realize they would have fucking classes! The Guard had come out of the root structure just looking like larger Shimburr-shaped shadows; they hadn’t finished forming. The ones not caught by my Grasp spell continued to refine their shape, becoming more detailed and unique. One was garbed in robes of woven grass, and the other decked out in rune-carved wooden full-plate. This was not good. They must have kept the skills they had in life, or at least an echo of them. I needed to end these things before their fellows broke free or more formed.

The only saving grace was that the new wave of Elite Shades seemed to take longer to form than the first batch, a lot longer.

I summoned two Bony Macewolves from the burning oil and directed them to disrupt the new shades. Hopefully, they would buy me some time. I charged at the mage and was, predictably, intercepted by the warrior. Gotcha. A stomp and a flex of will brought the stone up to trap him in a mound of rubble, which I promptly infused with the heat of lava…. ouch, those things can scream, good to know. It even carries a damage and stun effect.

It wasn’t dead, so I formed a blade on my arm from conjured stone and went to decapitate it. I was too slow. The mound of burning rock exploded as the Shade used some sort of skill to break free and parry my slash with a sword of leaves. Really evil looking leaves. I got parried by nature’s evil paper-mache project.

Not only parried. In my surprise, he kicked me right in my stone stomach, knocking me off my feet. At least I managed to identify him.

Level 186 Corrupted Shadeguard Knight (Elite)

Yup, these guys were going to suck.

With some earth magic I threw myself to the side to avoid a follow up attack, repositioning myself mid-flight. It was a good thing I got the hell out of there because it wasn’t the knight that went for the kill; it was the mage. Moments after I vacated the spot, it was torn to shreds by thorny plants, like a damn meat-grinder. As I landed on my feet, I got a better look at the Knight. His trick had cost him a lot. What little remained of his armor was splintered and burnt, and his exposed body was missing bits, large bits.

Beyond him was the mage, with shadow-vines and clouds of thorns surrounding him. The knight was just buying time for him to set up a killing blow. Sadly for them I’m not that vulnerable, and I certainly don’t miss an opening that large.

I let my mana roll out of me in a wave towards my foes. Not enough to do damage, just enough to be present in a layer on the ground. It was a harmless intimidation tactic used by many creatures to lay claim to territory in the wild, so the shades didn’t defend against it. I made it a weapon.

I used my own mana as a conduit for more mana and triggered the conversion into lava, making a thirty-foot-wide area of lava an inch deep in a flash. It caught the mage, the tree, and the Elite Shades trapped by Grasp. The edge of it even caught the feet of the Knight.

An inch of magical lava at my power level wouldn’t do much to these things. It would hurt, but it couldn’t kill them. I didn’t want it to; I wanted it to burn the plants, all the plants. That mage was a factor that I couldn’t account for in the grand scheme of things. If he broke away from this fight, he could tear through my party in an instant, barring Santa. I wanted his effectiveness hampered until I could kill him.

It worked like a charm. For only the mana of a concentrated Lavabolt spell, I destroyed all the mage’s active spell effects and burnt some feet. As a bonus, the wave of mana passed through the roots of Grasp and while the lava damaged the deadly prisons, they were already cracked and wouldn’t last much longer, anyway. For what little time they remained, the shades inside would have to deal with both focused rot and decay magic, and lava trying to burn them in a confined space.

It distracted the knight when the Shadow King let loose a shriek and a pulse of freezing darkness to extinguish its prison. I took full advantage of that moment of inattention and cleaved it in half lengthwise.

My lava had very little power behind it, so most of it cooled into rock in seconds, leaving behind barely heated stone. I used to use that trick with darker magics, especially death magic, it’s much harder to fight when a thin section of the nerves to your feet have died, rendering them unresponsive. I liked to target above the ankles back then, making the entire foot a flopping hindrance as an unstable platform. Works great on armies when you are powerful enough in necromancy to bypass the inherent magic resistance of high-level flesh.

After killing the knight, I summoned oil, lots of oil. Oil and Stone were currently my cheapest mana conversions. Lava also got a discount from my Blood of the Stone class, but it was much more expensive to start with. If I was going to win this fight, it would be by conserving mana, where possible. I formed the oil into a cloak and mixed it with shards of stone, then I heated the stone. My will alone kept the oil from evaporating because of the white-hot shards that suffused it.

Making the best use of class abilities is always key in a tough fight, and the fact that I could heat my conjured stone to the level of magma without it melting was a huge energy saver. It cost very little to trigger the ability. Yay for fucking over conservation of energy, ‘Fuck you physics, this is MAGIC!’ as an old friend used to say.

I boosted myself into a flying tackle at the mage, right as my Grasp spells broke. I slammed into the mage with my super-heated cloak while he tried to reestablish his spells. This is always a weakness of those that use magics with a setup time. They get to spend less mana while taking more time for powerful effects, but it leaves them vulnerable. This bastard practically disintegrated on contact with my cloak, typical mage fragility at work there. These guys were only such a high level because anything without mana would do jack squat against them. I was so glad I didn’t wait longer for this assault; the Shadow King would not have left them so weak for long. If their strength truly matched their level, we would have been in deep shit.

Turning to look at the remains of my Grasp spells, I got bad news. Only one of the bastards was dead. The other three finished forming, although they took some serious damage along the way. One shade looked like a posh nobleman with a floppy hat and a rapier. If the nobleman was made of braided roots and thorns and doused with a large quantity of acid, that is. Another was a large brute, more of a shadowy wooden golem than a humanoid. Damn thing didn’t even have fingers, just blunt clubs on elbows. The third one seemed dangerous. Sure, the first looked like it had speed, and the second power, but the third was a wooden sculpture of a woman, with flowers sprouting from her shoulders and arms. Coupled with the rotten lyre in her hands, the third shade practically screamed ‘Enchantress’.

“Santa! Charmer!” I bellowed.

In a flash Santa was there, kicking off the face of the brute and returning to the general melee, clothes-lining the Enchantress in the process and taking her with him. As the brute fell over, I breathed a sigh of relief. Charmer or Piper were our old target designations for anything that could affect the mind or control people. Probably one of the most dangerous types of foes, really. Damn things are a menace. Santa was always particularly suited to taking Charmers out, and I knew I could rely on him to end this one before it could do anything.

With even a moment of warning he is immune to the low-level effects that could be employed here. Santa figured out a strange skill called Icemind Fortress years from now, and there is no way he didn’t get it again. It was a real shame no one else could ever learn it. We all tried. Something about his mindset and thinking just made it work. Violet thought she had it figured out at one point but didn’t have the required Ice Affinity to trigger the creation of the skill. Personally, I’m not sure it needs an Ice affinity at all, there have always been hidden depths to Santa. Because of that skill Santa became one of the designated ‘Charm Breakers’ in the guild. Anyone encountering a Charmer was supposed to call out, and a Breaker would find the target and eliminate it as fast as possible. A lot of us eventually got mental resistance skills, but Santa’s was always one of the best.

True to form, I heard a distinctive ‘crack’ of something being flash-frozen and shattered. Santa has a particular hatred for Charmers as well, for good reason. I’m very glad he was here for this fight; without my old skillset I was still weak against those sorts of things. The skill Dead Mind really doesn’t work as an elementalist variant.

With the enchantress taken care of, I launched my super-heated oil at the brute on the ground. It was already a cloak. Why not let it be a cloak of death? By the time I had to dodge the strike of the rapier-wielding shade, my cloak was locked around the brute. It would kill him… eventually. In the meantime, I dodged the rapier strikes and focused on my actual target, the King himself. If I could kill him, the battle ends and we win, well if Cuddles managed to burn his Heart Tree down, we do.

I parried a stab and sent a massive spike of stone towards the King, hoping to kill him in one hit. It didn’t work. The nobleman shade shot vines from his chest in an instant that wrapped around the spike and stopped it cold. With it distracted, I relieved it of its remaining arm and then its head.

Finally, I could end this. I formed a lance out of lava and launched myself at the bound King. One strike with full power should be enough.

I didn’t get a chance to find out.

The brute cracked open like a walnut and a child-sized tangle of roots shot out of it, directly into the path of my lance. My momentum carried me forward, but the damn thing deflected me just enough. Instead of obliterating the chest of the Shadow King, my lance of condensed lava destroyed his right arm, and a good part of the tree behind him.

I rallied quickly and formed an axe of stone to just behead the fucker. As it was forming, I saw a golden glint on the ground. The shattered links of a chain.

“Oh Fu...!” I didn’t get to finish my statement as the King ripped its other arm free and caught me by the throat. I felt my summons disperse into oil and the tattered remains of the elites flew to the King, forming an entirely new arm out of shadows. Then the shadows turned red.

“I thank you for freeing me, but you have fulfilled your purpose here. Now die!”

Before I could do more than identify him, his crimson arm buried itself in my chest, ignoring the defenses of my stone form completely. I could feel the cracks spread from the impact point as I flew. Large sections of my torso simply flaked off like broken shale in the wind.

Level 261 Shadow King - Unchained (Legendary Boss)

Landing was the worst; my fractured body hit the ground and did what fractured things do. I shattered.

Not all of me, just most of my front, where the fractures were the worst.

I have had so many injuries over the years, I’ve been bisected, crushed, dismembered, burnt, frozen. Hell, I got magical super cancer once. I’ve felt all kinds of pain, or at least I thought I had. Shattering while being made of stone was a new one for me. It wasn’t the worst pain I’ve ever felt, but it made the top 10 easily.

I wasn’t sure how far I flew or where I landed. The pain messed with my mind. I barely knew that my body was broken, my health almost gone, and the only reason I wasn’t bleeding out was that I had lava and oil instead of blood right now. The moment I run out of mana and the transformation ends, I’m dead. The moment an enemy finds me, I’m dead. If I don’t move, I’m dead. Unfortunately, I think my legs snapped off mid-flight.

Extreme pain detected; Death Option enabled. Do you wish to Retreat to the Lounge?

Yes/No

Shit… maybe Santa can end this without me. Oh, who am I kidding, I would never take that out, it’s against my nature. I don’t die. Oh, look it’s one of the normal shades about to kill me… I tried guys; I gave it my best. Why do I feel so strange, is it cause I lost? Is it okay to die now? Nah, it’s never okay, I’m unkillable, everyone says so. Did someone get the plates on the dragon that ran me over? I want an ice cream… I’ll be back to help with the fallout Santa, you can count on that. Oh, I still have a bit of mana left. Guess I’ll kill the damn thing to help the others, one less shade for them to worry about.

Right as I readied my mana to spear the leaping specter with magical stone, a bubble blew its head off.

What the fuck?!

A soapy film formed a shield above me as a familiar figure stepped into view. A golden glow shone from her mop as the cracks in my body started to slowly seal.

“Kate? What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to help.”

You’d think I would be happy, but all I felt was a bone-deep terror.

“You shouldn’t have come. Your death isn’t worth it.”