Chapter 487: Never Underestimate Adventurers (1/2)

Despite his mana-efficient abilities, Jason’s reserves depleted as the fight dragged on. He and Colin had tainted dozens upon dozens of the monsters carpeting the bottom of the gorge, pushing Jason’s mana towards empty.

Jason was uncertain of how many monsters were swarming around like ants. Well over a hundred, maybe twice that. The earliest afflicted were ready to drop. He hadn’t loaded them up heavily and they boasted silver-rank endurance but without cleansing, Jason’s afflictions made their deaths an inevitability. He vanished into the shadows again, this time not draining life force but the afflictions from one of the monsters closest to succumbing.

“Feed me your sins.”

He only drained the afflictions of a single monster to replenish his mana and give his regeneration a boost by converting the afflictions into self-healing boons. This was useful as he continued to be hammered by attacks. While the monsters he already attacked were slowed down by his rigor mortis affliction, Jason was always going for the untainted ones, who were happy to pound away at speed.

“How is he still going?” Luis asked. “How long has it been, now?”

“You should never underestimate adventurers,” Kerr said. “Any fool can take in some essences. Using them properly takes training and experience.”

“This guy must be the best adventurer ever.”

“Nope,” Kerr said. “Never seen guild adventurers in action, have you? This feller’s good, sure enough, but that’s how the good ones are. That aura’s a bit much, I’ll grant you, but it takes more than that to get the job done.”

“You’re saying that any guild adventurer could kill all these monsters?”

“Of course not. You have to match the powers to the monsters but this guy wouldn’t have saddled up if it wasn’t the right fight. These affliction types may not kill fast, but they’ll keep killing all day if you feed them enough monsters to be getting on with. I’ll admit that they normally do it from behind a wall of other fellers, but it takes all sorts.”

Jason was monitoring the monsters with his aura. Every single monster had finally been tainted and one in every seven or eight had died already, with more dropping fast. He could have vanished and left the rest to die but there were two problems with that. One was that he didn’t want the monsters resuming their attack on the fort. The other was that it was a long, slow grind to gold-rank and Jason had powers to level. This wasn’t like Earth with its monster waves and proto-spaces. He needed to make the most of the monster surge.

Jason vanished into a shadow and reappeared from another, halfway up the side of the gorge. He kicked off the rocky wall and moved through the air, his cloak unfurling into starlight wings to keep him aloft. Gordon emerged beneath him, all six orbs turning into shields as bone projectiles were flung at them.

With so many monsters, the shields would only hold for a few moments but Jason didn’t need long as he cast his spell. This time, it was the wide-area version.

From their bird’s eye viewpoint, the militia officers watched as Jason took position high in the air. With the bizarre quiet of the battlefield, he was close enough to the sensor that they could hear him chant his spell.

“Feed me your sins.”

Red life force emerged from the monsters like a sea of blood, the dark magic of Jason’s afflictions swirling within it. The black and purple taint erupted from the red sea like a giant monster, an outpouring of sinister power so thick as to obscure the monsters entirely. All that dark energy stormed up to Jason, driving into his body as he drank it all in.

“Sir, are you really sure he isn’t–”

“Don’t say it, Luis. Just don’t.”

The first thing the Feast of Absolution power did was to swap out every poison, disease and unholy affliction plaguing the monsters for the burning light of transcendent damage. As the holy afflictions annihilated the monsters from the inside out, all the original afflictions flowed into Jason and were converted into boons. One was the resistance effect that didn’t help Jason in his current fight. The other very much did.

[Integrity] (heal-over-time, mana-over-time, stamina-over-time, holy, stacking): Periodically recover a small amount of health, stamina and mana. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.

Despite the all-devouring light inside of them, the monsters didn’t let up their attacks. Gordon’s barriers shattered under a barrage of spears, arrows, needles and darts and Jason called him back. This left Jason suffering the attacks himself, although his cloak was an admirable shield. The weaker attacks were stopped dead, even in massive numbers as clusters of bone needles were flung his way. Spears punched through his cloak, although many missed as it bent space to deflect them. The remaining attacks landed on Jason’s body, but he could take the hits.

Jason already had a huge store of life force and the weapons left him unharmed. His interface ability measured his wellbeing with a small humanoid figure at the periphery of his vision that marked damage to his body with colour-coding. He rarely paid it attention, since he generally didn’t need help to know he’d been stabbed. The excess life force, beyond his normal maximum, was now indicated by a red line over the little figure’s head, like a hit point bar.

The attacks on Jason left him unharmed, his hit point bar diminishing rapidly as the attacks landed. It didn’t even hurt, a spear ramming into his torso bouncing off with no more sensation than a finger poke. The health bar climbed back even faster, though, with the absurd regeneration from more than a thousand instances of the self-healing integrity boon.

Integrity was a short-duration boon but it dropped off one instance at a time. With so many instances, it would take a long while to get through them all. His conjured robes were not as resilient and he replenished them as he dropped towards the ground.

As for the monsters, they were lighting up from the inside, burning with transcendent light. Those who had been afflicted the longest started dying even faster, their dead growing to a fifth of their original number before Jason had even descended to the ground. He dropped quickly, superhero landing amongst the largest field of dead, close to where he had first started fighting the monsters. The earliest afflicted, many had not survived to receive the holy afflictions. As the monsters surged his way, he cast a spell, still on one knee.

“As your lives were mine to reap, so your deaths are mine to harvest.”