I’m dead was the first thing to go through my head as he drew that massive bow and took aim at me. Weapons concentrated force into a small area, and arrows took it to the extreme. Looking at the strain on that bow, and I could only guess the crazy amount of force that poor arrow was going to go through right before it went through me. Deflecting it at this range was straight out, and blocking it was a fool’s dream. I had to dodge. To dodge, I had to slow it down.

Instead of a solid steel wall of mana, I tried to change it to be more like a thick rubber. It would give and let the arrow pierce through it, bleeding off energy that way. But it would also cling to the sides of the arrow, drastically increasing the drat. It would buy me maybe a second. Thank the system that mana could be influenced at the speed of thought, otherwise I would be toast. While all those changes were taking place, I was trying to fall backward as the elf had just released his arrow. My eyes widened in horror as I saw the arrow flexing back and forth in flight. The original shot would have taken me in the chest, and at the rate I was falling I was about to take it on the chin. No time for a simple gravity sphere, I made a cylinder of high gravity right where I was, grunting in pain as I slammed forcefully into the ground.

The arrow didn’t think much of my mana barrier. As soon as it impacted it, there was a green glow around the tip and it basically ignored the mana trying to stick to it. It pierced through, much as the skill was designed to, and shot close enough to my body that the wind from its passage shredded my shirt and drew a line of blood up my body and on my chin. The buildings and alley behind us didn’t fare nearly as well, as the arrow blasted through bricks like a cannon ball, sending massive chunks of shrapnel following along its trajectory.

“SEAN!” I heard Elendria cry in horror before I felt her mana surge. I looked over to see her sending a massive storm of ice blades at the group, only to have the woman’s cape come to life and morph into several heads that were easily batting down all the projectiles.

“HAHAHA! This is the power of our god recruits! Survive the first year, and your armor will upgrade itself. Survive the next five years and you won’t need armor. Like a butterfly from a cocoon, you will shed your armor and be reborn. Even at this small stage, we are more than enough for almost any monster you will come across. And we will pair you with others to bolster your weaknesses. Tory’s Hydra Cape has no offense, but is the ultimate in defense. She covers for me as I destroy our enemies.” I watched as the empty quiver surged with a bit of mana from the archer, producing another arrow. Their entire plan came into focus at that moment.

His quiver was obviously enchanted to reproduce the last arrow that was in it with a bit of mana. So he only needed one arrow capable of being launched by that absurd bow of his. If he only used one skill to kill most enemies, he would almost never run out of mana. While he took care of the offense, Tory would use her cape to intercept any attacks coming at them. But there had to be a limit to what she could intercept, especially since her cape seemed to thrive on shadows. The immediate question became where to attack to neutralize the archer. Could I snap the string? Or would it be better to slash down the muscles in his back, making it impossible to draw the bow. What other hidden abilities had he acquired with those odd tattoos?

“Oh? Well, I’ll be damned. It isn’t very often someone manages to survive my attack.” The archer chuckled. “No matter. You won’t survive this.” He started to draw that massive bow again, only activating a few more skills this time. “Piercing shot. Multi Shot. Thundering Arrow Storm. Heart Seeker. Mage bane. Barrier Buster. Overdraw. Passing Wrath.”

I wasn’t about to let him get off what was obviously his ultimate skill combination. “Elendria! Overwhelm that bitch.” I snarled. “Sunburst. Ice storm. Spirit blade.” A fake sun appeared over the head of Tory, and I swear her cape flinched for a fraction of a second as the new source of light weakened it. The shards of ice doubled, and several daggers of light flew toward the recruits behind Tory and the archer, who hadn’t moved the entire time at the sight of the mage battle. While she was preoccupied with the massive number of incoming projectiles, I silently cast the smallest void blade that I could and sent it toward the string of the bow. I gave a savage grin watching events unfold, as she never expected me to be able to silent cast spells. In addition to being hard to spot, the void blade was coming in on a different plane of attack from the spirit blades. Just as the archer managed the full overdraw of that massive bow, the void blade passed slashed the string of the bow at the top of the bow.

“HAAAAAAA!” The archer screamed in pain and horror as the backlash was devastating. The string whipped backwards, severing his arm near the elbow. Blood sprayed as his arm dropped, still clenching the glowing arrow between his index and middle finger. It only dropped a few inches before everything was sent flying from the force of the string slamming into the ground and sending cobblestone shards flying in all directions.

The reaction from the cape was immediate, as it cocooned its owner in darkness to protect from all the flying damage. The recruits were saved by the explosion, as it knocked them down enough that they only suffered a few direct piercings and some slashes from the ice storm assaulting them. As the cocoon dropped, I saw the archer slowly gaining his feet, his arm already sealed off by some blackness that had expanded to cap is injury. Damn, there goes bleeding these guys out to weaken them.

“You ok Cameron?” Tory asked.

“I’ll be fine if I can find my arm.” He growled, turning to point a finger at me. “I am going to rip you limb from limb, and beat you to death with your own arm!” I ignored his taunting, thinking back to what happened. Two things struck me about Tory, and I realized it wasn’t the ultimate defense. She took the ice attacks head on, but the spirit blades were all deflected from the sides. It was vulnerable to spirit attack. But even more so, it was also dependent on her senses. She could see the blades and ice particles, but the void blade got through because she either didn’t see it or didn’t recognize it as a threat.

Wanting to test it, I sent a compressed air bullet rocketing towards her face. “Gotcha.” I muttered as her head rocked backward from the impact, sending blood spraying everywhere. “If she can’t see it, she can’t block it Elendria, and her cape is vulnerable to your spirit blade.”

“Really?” She purred, smiling. “Well, isn’t that nice to know.” She sauntered forward, concentrating a miniature snowstorm around Tory’s head. “Take care of archer boy, I’ll handle the recruits and her.”

With a flick of my wrist, I called the archer’s arm to me with a bit of telekinesis. He froze, looking at me. “Need a hand?” I couldn’t help but ask, watching as his face went to an entirely new color of rage. Red with white spots, I could see his heartbeat in the bulging vein on his forehead.

“Keep mouthing off, mage. Your death will only take longer.” He growled. Though his tattoos never glowed, I could see the mana pooling in his legs. At the first twitch of his leg muscle, I connected a series of powerful gravity wells to him, watching as his eyes widened in terror at the extreme difference between what was supposed to be a lunge only to find himself soaring above the rooftops. As he passed each well, I let it dissipate until he passed the last one. He slung around it at around thirty miles per hour, and I only released the tether when he was heading directly toward the ground. I had tethered him between the shoulder blades, and his one good arm immediately extended to try and lessen the impact. It didn’t help.

*KABOOM!*

Again rock shards were sent flying at the force of the impact, and Cameron groaned as the dust cleared. I walked over, noticing that his arm was clearly broken. A quick scan of his body revealed that several ribs had cracked as well, but his legs were surprisingly fine. “Well, we just can’t have that.” I muttered, wanting to incapacitate him truly. Who knows, Elendria might be able to save these people. “Sorry about this, but it’s gonna hurt. A lot.” Warning given, I shot his tibia with a bullet at half power, shocked to see it ricochet off with minimal damage. Three shots at a 5% increase in power later, and it finally broke on impact. I repeated with his second leg, and had to use telekinesis to break the bones in his lower arm that I was still holding.

“How quick’s your healing?” I asked, kneeling down and holding his broken arm next to his severed elbow. The blackness immediately latched on, drawing in the broken limb and reattaching it, though there was the thinnest of black lines surrounding the injury. I watched in fascination as the lines snaked down his arm, only they were unable to fix the broken bones. Instead they simply held them in place, but I could tell it was a flimsy fix. Since the road was already destroyed, I went ahead and manipulated the earth to encase his arms from the elbows down, his legs from the knees down, a band across his waist, and crafted a band across his chest and above each shoulder to prevent him from gaining any sort of leverage to break free.

“Just kill me already.” He muttered.

“No can do.” I shook my head. “See, we are here to try and free your people. If we go around killing off the strongest, it doesn’t do much good, does it? Besides, shouldn’t you be struggling to live? I’ve never seen anything in nature simply give up and die.”

“You wish to overthrow our religion, and then use our religion to motivate me to live? You truly are a devil.”

“Nah.” I shook my head as I stood up. “Devils don’t exist in nature. But that’s not my problem. You be a good boy and stay there.” Turning, I looked to see what was going on with Elendria.

Each recruit was unconscious, and from the way Elendria was ignoring them I assumed she had already destroyed whatever was infesting them. Now she was slowly whittling down the cape, though it wasn’t making it easy. She would start to get a slash, and the cape would recoil as its owner flung a random physical attack in her direction. Occasionally it would completely envelope Tory’s head and explode outward to disrupt the snowstorm, allowing her a few seconds of offense before Elendria managed to re-establish the blinding conditions.

Not wanting to interfere too obviously, but still needing her to speed things up, I went ahead and created a mana shield around Tory’s head. It wouldn’t let the cape or fresh air through, and it didn’t take long for her to start slowing down as oxygen deprivation set in. “Wha? What’s. Going. On?” She panted. Elendria had seen what I was doing, and had stepped up her assault as a distraction. As Tory’s concentration started failing, the cape started moving much more sluggishly as well. The final blow was Elendria creating an ice chunk behind Tory and smashing it into the back of her head.

“Well, that was a bit more eventful than I had anticipated. You ok?” I asked Elendria.

“I’m fine, how’s your chest?” She asked.

“No worries there, just got a bit cut from the arrow passing so close.” I said with a shrug. “Did you manage to save the underlings?”

“For the most part. One took an ice shard to the throat and bled out. Two more had their souls drained before I could sever the connection. I managed to kill the other two from the advanced armors, and the weakest armors were saved. I just.”

I looked at her odd, as she paused. I wanted to guess what she wanted to say, but I had no clue and it seemed like it was important. Eventually she said, “I don’t know if we are doing this the right way. Even the ones with the lesser armor are showing massive soul trauma. All the appendages we removed are barbed, and cause massive trauma on the way out. I just. I wish we could burn the damned things out.”

“Well, why don’t you?” I asked with a shrug. “Spirit is incredibly adaptive. Why not try and make it act like fire after you sever those pieces that drain the soul?”

She stared at me for a moment, blinking her eyes. “How the, damnit. Why didn’t I think of that?” She growled, before walking over to Tory’s unconscious body. She arranged her like a mummy, and used ice magic to seal her arms to her sides and her legs together. She conjured a small spirit blade, and made a quick slash to the chest before letting it dissipate. She then created a spirit fireball, and shoved it into Tory’s chest.

“AAAAAAH!”

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Tory’s back immediately arched, as twin sounds erupted from her mouth. The first was her own scream, the second was felt more than heard, and it sent shivers to my core. Suddenly Tory’s eyes bulged, and her jaw opened as wide as it could go. I watched in horror as black smoke erupted from her mouth, nose, ears and eyes, reforming into a blackened and scorched centipede type creature. I tried to grab it, but telekinesis was completely ineffective and gravity barely slowed it down. Elendria took care of things, beheading it with a backhanded slice from a spirit blade. When the half with the head continued to squirm, she pierced the brain before turning the spirit into flames and incinerating the thing.

“Spirit creature Sean. Use spirit against them. I’m going to go and sever the draining things from the archer and drive it out, but my spirit is running low. You’ll have to finish it off.” She said, and I nodded. Much better prepared this time, I let the thing almost resume its true form before blasting it with a spirit flame. I was able to handle the rest of the living guards under Elendria’s instruction, burning the leeches from the bodies that they hadn’t quite invaded yet.

Larval soul leech x2 slain

(ethereal lesser shadow)

Soul leeches go through several stages of development. At the larval stage, they have fully integrated within the host body, protecting it from the majority of attacks. At this stage, they siphon both skills and experience from the host soul, drastically slowing the host’s growth. Skills stolen will determine the next evolutionary pathway. The leech circumvents this by using a series of drugs to boost the powers of the host body, providing them with a false sense of power. Occasionally a variant will emerge and bestow upon its owner a unique skill.

As this creature is from an invading universe, the standing bounty has doubled experience gained from slaying it.

Hidden quest discovered!

Let My People Go!

Unbeknownst to the elves, they have been infiltrated by soul leeches. You have freed the town of Hedge from the influence of soul leeches. Thanks to your highly visible and somewhat destructive battle, the townspeople know of the danger. Earn experience for each town liberated based on completion percent.

Hedge:

Completion percent: 100%

Damage to surroundings: Minor

Infected hosts killed: 5

Civilians killed: 6

Leech hatchlings dispatched: 14

Leech burrowers dispatched: 4

Larval soul leeches dispatched: 2

Overall grade: A (range from F to S)

Gain 15% experience to next level

Hidden quest discovered!

Breeding grounds

Soul leeches don’t manifest from thin air. Find out how and where they are being bred, and destroy the production by any means necessary. Rewards will be variable.

Quest complete!

A corrupted soul

You have learned the guards new armor contains a soul leech hatchling. The hatchling takes a year to upgrade to a burrower, at which point the armor will be strengthened. Five years after that, the burrower has completely infected the host and has become a larval soul leech, shedding the armor and providing temporary boosts to the host body. Further evolutions have not been discovered.

Though not immediately, you have discovered the method to remove the leech with minimal damage to the host soul. For discovering it so swiftly you have been granted a title and a bonus reward.

Rewards:

Soul sight: See past the mundane into the realm of the soul.

Title (upgradeable): Etherfoe: Increased damage against ethereal foes by 5%

“Most impressive you two. Most impressive indeed.” I spun to see the Oracle standing there with a group of elderly elves. “I know you wish to be on your way soon, but please. Stay a while. Cameron and Tory will recover in two days, and you might be able to find something from their memories. If not, I have already put a call out for aid. A seer of the past is on their way, and will be able to follow where these two have been.”

“Oracle.” One of the elders started, only to immediately freeze when she turned on him.

“Absolutely not. You saw the blackness they drove out of our guards. They are heroes to us, and will be treated as such. The least we can do is give them a place to rest and recharge before they charge headlong into dangers that you have no inkling about! And this way, we can at least repay them by offering them a few locations to search!”

“Of course, Oracle.” He said, backing up with a small bow. Turning to us, he said, “We thank you for all you have done. Please, come to the Hedge Maze Inn. It’s the best in town, and your stay there will be covered by the council.”

“Lead on.” I said with a smile. “We could really use a good meal, a soft bed, and a bath.”

“Wrong order.” Elendria corrected. “Bath, meal, then bed.” I resisted the urge to take a sniff, simply figuring she was probably right. I had a feeling this was going to be the last bit of luxury we could appreciate for a long time.