I saw red. I spelled my >!

It is a sidekick with one leg, in this case, my left leg, held straight on one side, the body and the leg forming a line through the alignment of the hip, knee, and ankle. My right leg curved with the sole against the left leg, supporting it. The body is bent to have the upper part upright, but the lower part as a continuation of the leg. Much like your typical karate jumping sidekick, Yoko Geri, however, it adds the teleport feature to it.

It is a devastating kick as the whole body is in movement behind the impacting leg, increasing the damage caused. It is my only teleport spell and helps me cover in an instant a greater distance, about a dozen meters for one spell.

I jumped with fury hitting him hard, but the result was like hitting an iron pole.

How is this possible? He cannot weigh 10 tons? I felt the impact shock in my whole body and fell to the side.

That's a bit of a problem with the teleport kick, as your whole body must be in the air and in movement at the time of your teleport, and you need to control the 'landing'. When the result of your kick is very different from the expected result, you got some landing problems.

He turned to point his wand at me, and I instinctively rolled sidewards, hit his hand, and jumped back on my feet.

Interestingly I could hit his hand away. It was one hard-hit against his ice armor, but I deflected his hand with relative ease, and his bolt missed me.

I had to use the > spell to escape the freezing that was spreading over me from where I had made contact with his armor.

I hit him with the right hand, trying to plant the katar in his side with a vicious >. The magic activated, but I had again the same feeling of hitting a 60 tons heavy armoured vehicle with my katar.

Ow! Why does this shit pain? Your character feels the pain, but it should be much attenuated by the interface. In addition, Cala has high pain tolerance, so why did it pain so much?

Add to this the total random happening, and I was not understanding the world anymore.

What the hell was happening?

The first hit was like fighting somebody with 100 levels above mine. No. Worse. OK, maybe that's what happens to a level one against level 100. The second hit was different. Confusing. He had the armor of a very high level but not the power of such. The third strike again the 100 level above me feeling.

I did the right thing. You fight a mage by stalking him, not letting him blast you from a distance, mages are like glass cannons. However, he did not fit the classical definition of a mage something did not fit quite right here.

Screw this, fighting mechanics seems bugged, I need some distance to re-think this.

I shot him a kick in the belly to just get away from him. To my surprise, the kick made contact and threw him flying into a stone column.

That was my luck as he had just spelled an ice area spell, and everything around the column was subsequently frozen like in some Antarctic scenery.

It was just an ordinary kick that I gave him, and I did not even have my enchanted boots on, only my city boots.

The only boots that I can wear with this jacket, I will not wear boots that do not fit with the jacket! At least not here inside the city!

And the kick threw him like a doll?

Well, it was a bit disappointing, he did not seem really harmed, his ice armor not even cracked, but I did throw him away like a ragged doll.

My > should have sent him to the moon, what the hell is happening here?

Fuck, I almost got an ice bolt to my face as I stood there meditating, watching him. Stupid me. Lucky I was fast enough to avoid it.

I had again to use > to stop the spreading ice. This is getting cumbersome, his armor is enough to slowly incapacitate me.

He cursed and shot another ice bolt in my direction. Again I barely avoided it.

I hate to be the turkey in a turkey shoot.

I jumped behind one of the many stone columns that were supporting the market's roof, trying to make sense of what was happening.

He shot another bolt at me and hit the column pulverizing part of it.

What the fuck, this is an impossibly high level of ice bolts!?

I looked around.

The soldiers were coming toward us, the idiots, probably the sergeant had told them to stop the fight. They could easily become collaterals with these area spells, however now they moved as in a slow-motion film. Fuck he had created a time bubble where the time runs faster than in the exterior! This is high-level magic and what an immense magic power! He is not only an ice mage but a cronomancer too? How can he have access to these spells? Or maybe he is a cronomancer and the ice magic is just the low-level spells that any mages have, but with tremendous power behind it? Does this make sense?

But why would he do this spell when I am in the same bubble, so I move with the same speed as he does? Why not a limited area for him only?

Oh shit, he can block me from using my speed spell, it does not work inside a speeded-up bubble!

I jumped away, avoiding another hit as the bolts froze the trees around. I shot two deadly stars, but he already shoots another frozen bolts salvo at almost the same time. How can he recharge so fast? The cooldown of a spell depends on the capacity to get the magic energy moving inside the body...something...something. Never really liked to read magic theory. He must be exceptionally good or has some artifacts that help him.

One of my stars was iced by the snowbolts, the other would have hit him, but he managed in extremis to duck it out.

He laughed victoriously, sending another ice bolt my way. Your laugh is for naught, my stars always come back like a boomerang if you avoid them the first time! And indeed the star came back and hit him and… nothing happened. Well, it did happen, he looked angry at the metal star that fell to the ground and cursed, but he was not paralyzed by the poison, he was only disappointed that he could not avoid the star.

Not even a little hampered by the poison.

I spelled a > that tried to ensnare him with its tentacles, but he simply blasted it in Nirvana with a single bolt.

I avoided the next bolts, with my mind working in overdrive, thinking frenetically, trying to compute the data from the fight. Does this shit make any sense? It is as if he would be completely immune to any magic attack…

Fuck, that's it. He is completely immune to any magic attack!

Blast! A fireblast singed me, burning my hair and setting my cloth on fire. I partially avoided it but the edge of the huge fireball still caught me. The pain went up a notch, and a pained scream escaped my lips. My interface must have a problem! Should I run away? As if he would stop shooting if I tried? This is not real pain, this is not real!

Damn, these are low-level spells with incredible firepower behind them! On the positive side, it annihilated the effects of the previous ice bolt, on the negative side, I am being drained...

Another >, again it felt like hitting a giant metal golem. However, before he managed to teleport away I was able to hit him with another kick with my left foot. That sent him in a spin and the first ice bolt he shot went directly up in the air.

Yes, this confirmed my theory: he is immune to magic attacks, but not immune to common attacks.

Due to the spin I've put him in, he sent another bolt straight to the ground and came almost horizontally from his teleport.

He sent another ice explosion around and tried to get straight on his feet.

Fuck, my damn interface is not working. How much damage did he take so far? I guess about two percent. My attacks are annoying whilst his attacks are deadly. Just his fucking armor must have cost me by now about ten percent of my life points. I can feel the damage, but it is hard to guess.

Whatever, these points are only relative info, it is not vital to know.

Many do not understand how these numbers work. In Mephisto, there is no life computation as in classical games. Here your life points are only a piece of numerical information about your status. You do not get fifty points hit subtracted from your life. You get a hit and the computer calculates how many life points you lost. So you lose ten percent, but that only means you have some wounds.

A higher level has more life points because he is 'tougher'. Yes, literally tougher. It is magic that strengthens your body with each level. A dagger to the heart however is still a dagger to the heart and you probably die in both cases, but being higher level needs a stronger hand. The system would simply subtract all your life points with that hit.

In addition to this, blood vessels are also enhanced and controlled by magic. You do not bleed the same way with higher levels. Blood vessels auto-repair and stop losing blood if you have more magic in your veins. So yeah, higher levels are more resilient, that's why they have more life points.

Well in my case now, I got some ice burnings so far plus that fire that arranged my haircut, all these affected my health whilst my hits do not seem to have much effect on him. For sure I did shake him a little but it does not look like I've managed to break him anything yet. People in our high levels are incredibly tough.

However, he does not seem to be higher level than me when I judge him by my common hits, my non-magic attacks. Except for the ice armor of course.

Fuck he almost got me again, the column behind which I was hiding exploded, and I had to launch a dust cloud to escape.

At least the soldiers got the message and stopped advancing.