Chapter 248: Forsaken Place (2/2)

Ability: [Hero’s Moment] (Growth)

Spell (boon, holy, recovery)Cost: Extreme mana.Cooldown: 24 hours.Current rank: Bronze 2 (87%).Effect (iron): Bestow a powerful boon on an ally, increasing all attributes and resistances by a significant amount. They receive damage reduction, their maximum mana and stamina are increased and they gain ongoing mana and stamina recovery. They ignore the effects of rank-disparity. When this effect ends, they are temporarily debilitated, suffering the inverse of all previous effects.Effect (bronze): Affected ally’s essence abilities have increased effect.

Neil then used his Bolster spell, which Jason used to conjure a new and more powerful dagger. The bolstered version would make the afflictions it bestowed more potent than normal.

Hendren’s silver-rank senses were allowed him to pay attention to the whole field of battle. He had figured out which of his enemies was which, and which  were illusions. He spotted the healer throwing spell’s on Asano and knew a push was coming. It galled him that bronze-rankers had driven him this hard and knew he needed to put an end to proceedings.

He made another dash at the healer, but it was a feint as he immediately stopped and used a special attack on the empty space in front of him. The thief girl fell for the bait, moving into place right as the attack activated. Light shone up from the ground, trapping her in place.

It would normally only hold someone for a short moment, but a silver-rank power on a bronze-rank enemy gave him more time to spare. He turned on Humphrey, charging into support and again used his spinning-staff wind blast to send Humphrey flying.

He turned back to the thief girl, who had been discovering that movement powers were suppressed in the silver-rank trapping field. He raised up his staff, the runes glowing brightly, the way it had when he shattered the golem chrysalis into fragments. He brought it down on the thief girl as the light field faded away.

Sophie caught the descending staff in one hand, leaving the archbishop in disbelieving shock. She gave him a savage grin as she slapped a palm right into his chest. Red light glowed under her hand, the same light that had spread through the golem and destroyed it. The light spread through the archbishop’s chest and then exploded, leaving him with a wound much like Clive had left on Humphrey.

Hendren was a silver-ranker, however, not a bronze. His body was closer to the amorphous flesh Clive had once described to the team, and his fortitude was far higher. Even with a gaping cavity where a normal person’s heart and a good chunk of their lungs would be, Hendren little more than paused before resuming the fight with Sophie. He hadn’t even dropped his staff.

His body started glowing with internal light as he activated a powerful self-healing ability. Humphrey arriving back to press the fight once more.

Jason also joined the melee, with both himself and his dagger rippling with power. He was faster, stronger and tougher than ever before. Around him were three of Shade’s bodies; all that were still present. Of the seven total bodies, two were still off scouting, one had self-destructed in the enemy camp and one had been destroyed by Hendren.

Jason had a very different form of aggression to Humphrey or Sophie. In the early days of his training, he had naïve ideas about being the perfect counter-striker, deceptive and cunning. As his understanding of fighting developed and he gain new powers, he had gained a better understanding of what was possible and what worked best for him.

He had kept the deceptive and manipulative parts, using his cloak, his shadow arms and the bodies of Shade to play with perception and distance, toying with his enemies. He even used aura manipulation to project false positions.

The goal was to provide opportunities that, for other fighters, were worthless. When all he needed was there merest wound, his idea of a successful attack was, to other fighters, a failed strike. It was an unusual margin for success that allowed him to use trickery that for most fighters would be wasteful play-acting.

Jason used every trick in his repertoire against the silver-rank priest. Even empowered by Neil’s incredible spell, he was not the equal in speed or strength of the archbishop. He did prove, however, that he was a match in skill after all.

Again and again, Jason made nothing but a grazing slash, but that was all he was after. his empowered dagger revealed the lack of protectiveness combat robes suffered in return for flexibility and lightness. As someone who used them himself, it was something he was very much aware of, using that knowledge to know how far he had to push. All the while, Sophie and Humphrey pushed the archbishop as well.

That was not to say that Hendren did not hammer blows on all three in return, especially focusing on Jason. For a short while, though, Neil was assisted by Belinda in burning through cooldowns to repeat shields on Jason. His afflictions stacking up also quickly added stacks to his amulet. Even piling on, however, they could not outlast a silver-rank essence user. Hendren continued relentlessly, the healing light closing the wound on his chest even as the others flagged. Jason took a couple of big hits, hurting him even though the layers of protection.

“It’s time for the second coming of Humphrey,” Jason said through voice chat. In response, Belinda cast a spell on Neil.

Ability: [Blessing of Relentlessness] (Adept)

Spell (boon, magic, recovery)Cost: Extreme mana.Cooldown: 24 hours.Current rank: Bronze 2 (94%).Effect (iron): Reset all cooldowns of a single ally of bronze-rank or below.Effect (bronze): Affected ally gains a powerful, ongoing mana and stamina recovery effect.

It was the big sister to her ability to reset one affliction, giving one ally a once-per-day full power reset. The advantage of letting someone with their own once-per-day power use it back-to-back was obvious.

Neil repeated his Hero’s Moment spell, this time on Humphrey. As when he recovered from Clive’s spell, Humphrey pushed hard into Hendren, surging forward in an aggressive attack. Neil’s potent boon, normally usable only once per day, raised his strength to a level even above his silver-rank opponent.

Neil followed up with his Giant’s Might spell for good measure, turning Humphrey into a towering hulk that could for the brief while the spells lasted, overpower his enemy with pure strength. With both Jason and Humphrey under the effect of the spell, though there was a danger looming at the end of the spell’s duration.

Neil’s Hero’s Moment spell was a Cinderella magic, and when it wore off, Jason and Humphrey would turn back into pumpkins. The spell’s end would bring with is debilitating effects as potent as the boosts the pair currently enjoyed.

Jason went wild with his dagger piling on afflictions, before leaving Humphrey to bundle up the priest while Jason backed off to cast spells. He locked in his full affliction sequence, under a heavy block of dagger-inflicted maledictions, then cast Punition, which inflicted damage for every affliction he was suffering. Finally, the familiar traces of black rot from Jason’s power became visible of the enemy.

Hendren slammed his staff into the ground, sending out a blast wave that knocked even the giant, empowered Humphrey away, let alone the rest of the team. Further, he left the staff standing vertically in place, blasting out force waves that continued pushing them away. Unaffected himself, Hendren started chanting out a spell.

A bolt of dark blue magic erupted from Belinda’s outstretched hand, still laying on the ground where the wave of force had sent her falling. It ignored the pulsing waves of force and struck Hendren mid-incantation. Belinda’s aura was flush with the power of the silver-rank spirit coin she had just taken to make sure her attack was not resisted.

Ability: [Power Thief] (Magic)

Special attack (boon, affliction, magic)Cost: very high mana.Cooldown: 5 minutes.Current rank: Bronze 3 (21%).Effect (iron): Make a magical ranged attack. You become able to use a random active-use ability of the target, who cannot use that ability until you have done so. It can be an essence ability or the inherent ability of a magic creature, but functions at your rank, not the rank of the target. You may not use the ability more than once. This ability cannot be used again until the copied ability is used. If not used within 24 hours, the copied ability is lost, restoring the target’s ability to use it.Effect (bronze): You can choose a specific ability of the target. If the target does not have that ability, a random ability is stolen instead.

One thing that Belinda had learned about this particular power was that when choosing a specific ability, she wasn’t restricted to just designating abilities she knew the target possessed. She was able to designate as the targeted ability one that the enemy was in the process of using. Her instant-use special attack was faster than the somewhat lengthy spell Hendren had bought the time to cast with his force wave power, and his spell was cut off as she stole it for herself.

She collapsed as the power of the spirit coin drained out of her. She would be able to make no more contribution to the fight, while Jason and Humphrey were close to being the same. They could both feel Neil’s spell reaching the limit of its duration, while they were still held back by the waves emitting from the staff.

“You think that’s enough?” Hendren screamed wildly, spitting mania. “You think it can ever be enough? There is no stain that true Purity cannot burn out!”

Hendren started casting yet another cleansing spell, but Jason used one that was faster.

“Feed me your sins.”

The priest’s life-force became visible, filled with a distressing amount of taint for a priest of Purity. Jason’s Feast of Absolution spell took it all. Jason’s passive Sin Eater power gave him an immediate burst of mana and stamina, along with a pile of the Integrity boon, granting ongoing health, stamina and mana recovery.

More importantly, Feast of Absolution left, in the wake of the dark and sinister afflictions, the transcendent light of holy afflictions. They filled up his life force, then lit up Hendren from the inside when his life force once again retracted out of sight.

Hendren fought through the pain and finished his own cleansing spell which, to his shock, did nothing.

“Holy?” he asked as he dropped to one knee. “How can it be holy? How can you… you, of all people…?”

It was as if the shock of being ravaged by holy afflictions was more debilitating than the ravaging itself. Hendren dropped completely to his knees, throwing back his head. He did not even seem to notice the transcendent damage burning him from the inside out

“Lord!” he cried to the sky. “Why can you not speak to me in this forsaken place? Why did you send me here?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Jason called out to him, “your lord is bit of a prick.”

He chanted out his spell to finish the job.

“Mine is the judgement, and the judgement is death.”

Hendren didn’t acknowledge Jason or his words, dissolving into nothing under transcendent light, face still gazing at the sky.