There are times when it is valuable to struggle on in a losing fight. As Malea is so stern about, there is some purpose in maintaining your dignity as much as can be done, and as an aspect of that, to prove one’s own strength. To show others that though I might lose in the end, I’ll make them pay an unacceptable price for victory.

More than that, this is a fine chance to get into fondling distance of the strongest threats hiding in this dungeon. Getting the chance to abuse the nobles and political elites of society is really the opportunity of a lifetime, but I guess I’m standing somewhere close to their equal now, and I should really try to show some limited respect.

Respect aside, the longer I can last in this fight, the more opportunities I’ll find to steal from them. Skills, contact lists, and more if what Nel’s told me is to be believed.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t get this opportunity, because the end result is simply too offensive. It simply doesn’t matter how much I get from a fight, if I die at the end of it.

As our opponents ready themselves, Malea and I prepare for the fight ahead.

Beside me, the half-spier arachne sets her legs wide and lays out a thin thread on the ground around us, making loops and whips. I’ve thoroughly investigated the Skills that I stole from her, so I understand well enough what this is. That understanding is purely academic, however, and I’m not quite sure how she’s going to take this fight.

“Begin!” Arduelle shouts, without any countdown.

I don’t hesitate, flushing my mana in a burst along my legs and sprinting straight for our enemies. In a close quarters fight there’s no chance of dodging my annihilation magic, and I have a chance to drain their mana as well. My teacher up on the surface really did have the right idea about all of that, but it’s still so much more tempting to blast them away from a distance.

I stir up a few magic bolts inside, charging at the enemy spearman who matches my pace while readying his spear. His steps are steady, and his eyes are sharp. He’s not going to go down easily, and he’s ready to fight with all he has.

At his back, the minister with the bag of black rocks is summoning some sort of magic to target Malea. He shapes the black stones into spears that rest on his shoulders, ready to fly.

All this preparation turns upside down in a moment.

The mage casts his magic, but the spears are tied up with invisible threads and crash into the ground at his feet. He struggles to prepare the next spell, while retreating back from us.

The spearman charging me, in the very same moment, trips on a thin silken thread pulled taught around his ankle. His attempts to recover failing as a whipping thread strikes the back of his neck with a terrible snapping that makes my skin sting in sympathy.

He tumbles down to the ground, barely catching himself with his arms, and I don’t hesitate to take advantage of it. I slam an annihilation strike into his head before he can recover, at the same time pulling at his mana and stealing his information.

A flash of mana fills the space where he was lying, and my magic loses its target, when half way through his skull.

Arduelle burns who knows how much mana just to transport him a few hundred metres out of the arena.

If she can just pop over to that other universe she showed us, and bathe in the raw mana of forming stars, then I think I can understand why she can be this blasé about spending ridiculous sums of mana.

The stone mage raises walls around himself as Malea’s whips crack all around him. The white, silk whips are nearly invisible and strike from every angle, wearing down his stone shields.

Before he can waste any more of our time, I step in to take over. I punch the wall, feeding annihilation into the stone wall, and hit again in the same place to make it crumble. Reaching in, I grab the mans arm.

I can only vampirize a tiny fraction of his energy before Arduelle deems it wise to pull him out of reach. I doubt it was even enough to hurt him, apart from his stinging pride.

I turn back towards Malea, who wears a terribly smug smile, as she spreads more of her threads around.

“Next round!” Arduelle doesn’t give us even a second to catch our breath before sending the next pair against us.

Through liberal application of my destructive magic, and mana drain I can put up a strong fight against the challengers, but more and more I’m finding myself relying on Malea’s traps, and the openings she offers me.

Ashamedly, I can’t even say that I’m doing all that much to properly read her intentions and work with her. She’s adapting her fighting style to support me, and even as our challengers grow stronger, her assistance easily grants us victory in short order.

It can’t continue like this forever, our enemies are very much our equal in power and ability, and wounds start to gather.

I don’t see the flashing sword until it cuts into me, severing the flesh of my arm, as I was simply too slow with forming the mana shield to defend against the attack. I’m only barely fast enough to annihilate the blade as it cuts through my bone, but the magic was not cheap.

We retreat from one another, a whip cracking on the mans wrist as he tries to pull out a dagger giving me half a moment to recover.

The flesh and bone of my arm moves with the magic that I developed into it, bone gluing itself back tighter as the split skin and muscle moves like grasping fingers, wrapping around each other. The two hands gripping tightly together, my arm pretends to be whole again.

The warrior pulls his dagger and lashes out with a blade of wind, I can only react with a defensive use of my annihilation to disrupt the attack. Pushing through before he can do anything more, I strike with a serious of punches, each one pressing branching destruction through his body.

When I land a blow to his head, he casts a magic of his own catching not only my fist but the magic as well. The annihilation magic is consumed by the defensive shield, not only the first time, but with the hits that follow.

I switch it up, using mana drain instead and pulling at the fraying edges of his mana form, but that’s not going to work fast enough.

A whip strikes his side just as I punch for his head again, and his defences crumble for just long enough to take him out of the fight. His partner is already gone, and I retreat back to Malea’s side as the next pair are brought in.

We’ve knocked out a dozen fighters already, but even so, we’ve barely begun. The Skills that I’ve stolen already are certainly interesting, but I want more. For some reason Arduelle has only been choosing the weaker council members to face us so far, but there are enemies here that would defeat us with a snap of their fingers.

“I’m afraid that my mana situation is rather desperate.” Malea says, as she readies a few whips for the new pair that face us a little more conservatively. They’re trying to cooperate, but there’s so much bad blood between factions that they simply can’t overcome it all in a few minutes.

“I’d share mine, but how quick are you with digesting it?” I ask, knowing that my method is a little more brutal than most others. By simply accepting the soul rending pain, I can consume some serious mana.

“Don’t underestimate your betters.” Malea says, smirking as she pulls at her silken strings wrapping our enemies together before pulling at another thread which causes enough damage that Arduelle has to pull them out and heal them.

“Then try this.” I say, plugging some mana into a gummi bear that I smuggled from Earth.

While I wasn’t entirely planning for this, I’m so used to having to keep it around for emergencies that I’ve been carrying snacks with me on second nature. That and the loss of a few lollies isn’t going to cost me much.

Malea catches the gummy bear with a soft frown, squeezing it between her fingers. With a flick of her wrist it’s gone from view, but it’s clear that she hasn’t thrown it away.

“If you are so interested.” She says, glancing back at me as our new contenders take their stances. “You ought to flush some of your own mana into the unconverted mana to hasten the process. Perhaps you can learn how to put it to practice in time, not that you seem to need it.”

“Thanks for the tip.” I say, not bothering to investigate it further. I have my own brute force solution, and we’re not in a position to be trying out new things right now.

We continue the fight for a while longer, our foes stronger and stronger, and our own bodies weakening more with every engagement. Even between my adaptions and my mana drain, I’m not yet ready for an unending war, something that I’ll have to consider.

The places where my adaption holds me together are tenuous at best. If I swing my arms too hard, too fast they start flopping all about. That my flesh is now just a sequence of hands holding onto each other, it’s not a surprise that I can’t fight at my full potential.

I leap over a low strike from an axe but my leg detaches and flies off behind me. The axe blade never even touched me.

The force of jumping using burst movement was simply too much for the struggling adaption to hold me together.

My opponent tries to take advantage of the moment and finish me, but I don’t let him, grabbing his neck and slamming annihilation magic in through him while draining mana from his own body to replace a small fraction of what I spend in the spell.

When he flashes out of existence, I spin around on the spot and quickly catch the leg flying back at me.

“I hope that you can reattach it.” Malea chuckles in the way of a proper lady, as she whips the man pushing through her traps. She doesn’t even show any sweat on her brow, but I can tell she needs assistance, her offensive power has been waning, even while her traps and distractions show their strength.

I move my leg to the stump where it was before and try not to gag at the writhing muscles and torn skin as it wraps itself back together again. My skin feels much tighter than usual, stretched thin from all the injuries I’ve taken.

Stepping carefully on my wonky limbs, I charge in and eliminate the warrior before he can trouble Malea any further. I need her traps and whips if I hope to last.

“You know, it’s a shame I couldn’t bring Eshya in on this.” I say, adjusting my stance as I take in the sight of the two mages that we’re up against this time. It’s rather easy to counter their spells, with a combination of my magic, and Malea’s threads.

“If that’s what you want, then all you need to do is get her a cavern to rule over, and with that she’ll earn a seat.” Malea says. “I thought taking territory was the one area where your expertise most shines?”

“You think I can take more land now?” I ask. “I have to win a gauntlet as bad as this, to be permitted to seize more land, no?”

“Then I suppose you’ll have to make some alliances, no?” Malea says with a chuckle. “Not everyone is so keen to fight as you are, if you can gain enough support, then the other side is likely just to surrender.”

“You mean that only I’m stupid enough to fight against these odds?” I ask, shooting down a fireball.

“Not at all, this occasion is far too important to let slide.”

“Well, I’m glad you approve of my actions.” I say, setting my feet and getting ready to charge at the mages. They’ve settled down a little, but if we let this continue, they’ll wear us down to nothing.

“For today.” She says, “Let’s show the council our best sides, shall we?”

“Yeah, yeah.” I grumble, charging at the mages. They react with prepared blasts of magic, but threads of silk lift me up and throw me over the raging elements to tackle the mages and take them out in one quick exchange of blows.

Two more enter the arena, and we ready ourselves to face them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats and Skills

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 24,381 / 60,892 units

Current mana volume: 12,118 / 30,266 shards

Mana volume at crystallisation density (Max. mana volume):

Kyra: 30,266 shards

Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards

Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards

~Forms

Mana Canon

-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)

-Blood Fuel (20,000 mana shards)

-Bone Magic Storage (40,000 mana shards)

-Nail Shifters (50,000 mana shards)

Dancer

-Flash Nerves (8,000 mana shards)

-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)

-Burst Reflex Muscles (35,000 mana shards)

-Layered space Muscles (80,000 mana shards)

Turtle

-Rebinding Tissue (Adapted)

-Catalyst Sweat Glands (140,000 mana shards)

-Repulsive Skin (80,000 mana shards)

-Prehensile hair (10,000 mana shards)

-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (100,000 mana shards)

Investigator

-Wide eyes (5,000 mana shards)

-Wide ears (5,000 mana shards)

-Sharp nose (5,000 mana shards)

Misc.

-Clean bowels (Adapted)

~Favourited Skills:

-Tag and Film

-Trapping

-Stealth

-Mana surge movement

-Annihilation defence

-Annihilation flame burst

-Annihilation net

-Eyes of an Empire