Arcane Apocalypse

25 – A Glimpse

I hate him so much. Mia swore in her mind, throwing every single curse word she know at Brent’s dumb head as the goblin she was elbow deep in let out another disgusting squelch. 

Why was Mia elbow deep in monster guts, you ask? Well, that was a splendid question and one Mia had been asking herself every few seconds. The answer was, though, that Brent refused to dismantle the corpses for their cores himself other than showing how it’s done once.

Healing ring. You’ll get a healing ring after this. Mia repeated the mantra that kept her from just Blasting the ugly green fucker to bits, or turning that Blast one Brent for that matter. She needed that ring, and she needed it dearly since she and her group had no other way of healing besides the single Elixir of Regeneration everyone of them had. Ring. It’ll be a nice ring. Magical ring. Totally worth smelling like monster guts and dumpster fire for the rest of your life. 

Her fingers brushed against something solid and she froze, gingerly feeling out its shape with her fingertips. She knew the feeling of bone by now intimately, so she was certain it wasn’t that. Keeping her fingers around it, she gently cut into the green flesh with her dagger and opened up the section even as another bout of vomit-inducing fumes assaulted her nostrils.

Mia blinked away tears. The smell was awful enough that even her eyes felt offended by it, and that spoke of the willpower she needed to not vomit all over the corpse like poor Sam had.

A few cuts later, the thing between her fingertips entered her blurry sight and she let out the slightest smirks as she saw the blood coated, uneven little crystal the size of her nails. Got it. 

Ever so carefully, she cut off the flesh and ligaments still holding onto the core and then rose to her feet with a tired, but satisfied smile on her face. She stepped away from the pile of repulsive gore, then stepped away some more until it was out of her sight. 

Unfortunately, the stench would stay with her for a while. She had the presence of mind to get her jacket off and roll her sleeves up, but the smell stuck to her clothes like a lamprey and was not letting go.

Could that trick work? Mia wondered, staring down at her bloody hands. Well, she’ll try it right after she turned the quest in.

[{Newcomer} Introductory (10)] is Complete!

Turn in ‘Rank 0 monster core’ and
Claim reward now? 

Yes / No

Selecting yes, Mia let out a gasp as instead of the core disappearing and a ring falling on her head, the core sizzled and morphed. Blood evaporated off of it as its shape and colour shifted, and over the span of a few seconds it turned into a simple silvery ring just the perfect size to fit onto her dainty ring-finger.

Mia gulped, squinting as she saw the miniature runic script flash and flow in its surface. She caught pink, white, yellow and golden runes before it all disappeared and left behind a ring she wouldn’t have been able to tell had anything special about it.

Instead of putting it on though, she dropped it on her discarded jacked though and took a deep breath. She didn’t want to soil that pretty ring with goblin blood, so she really hoped the trick she had in mind would work as she expected it to.

Mana flowed to her right hand first, and unlike when she was casting a spell, she didn’t try to impress a spell-circle upon it. Instead, she just pushed it through those open-ended mana channels in her fingers and clamped down on the mana with a vice-like grip as it passed over her skin.

The mana that had been almost effortless to control before writhed in her grasp, somehow both kicking back against her control like a bull and gaining the slipperiness of an oiled up snake. Mia gritted her teeth, and guided it back over her hand to wash over her skin.

She hissed, feeling like a thousand ants were biting at her skin as the crackling arcane mana flowed over her hand. It worked though, since while her body enjoyed the protection of her Archon Body Constitution, the blood covering it did not. It evaporated, or rather, got obliterated by the vicious energy.

Once she was done with her right hand, she repeated the exercise for her left hand. Only sighing in relief once both were clean. The skin might have been left a bit tender and sensitive, but it beat spending another moment looking like an amateur butcher. 

Smiling still, Mia was entirely unprepared for the feeling of her Spirit expanding and deepening with a thunderous crash.

[Base Control: 4 -> 5]

[Main Spirit: 9 -> 10]

For a single moment, she saw it. She saw everything from the tiniest cell in her body to the flash of neurons in her brain; the air flowing by her skin; the earth crunching under her boots, and she saw the veil. It was but a glimpse, lasting for the briefest instant, but she saw underneath the veil for just that infinitesimal flash and she stumbled.

She saw storms of mana the size of stars, with powers enough to wipe away Earth in a blink, she saw worlds distant and close by, made of nothing but flames or light, and a city glimmering with every colour of the rainbow, built of nothing but crystals and marble. At the center of it all was a brilliant star, made up of all the colours she could name and a thousand more she could not.

“Mia?!” Lina was next to her, her bloody hands hovering inches away from the pink-haired girl’s shoulder as she wobbled on her feet. The moment of insight was gone, and her reality dimmed back down to what it was before. 

Mia blinked, shaking her head like a wet dog as the echoes of dizziness slowly faded.

“I’m good,” she mumbled. “That was … an experience.”

“What?” Lina asked, visibly relieved, and Mia saw the rest of her group, aside from Sam also sending worried looks at her, even Brent.

“My Spirit reached ten,” Mia whispered, trying to recall what she’d seen. All that lingered in her mind were flashes of colour and the sheer awe she felt seeing them. There was a … city? I think? 

“Oh,” said Lina, blinking. “Okay? I guess attributes going up can be … trippy.”

“It sure was,” Mia shrugged, then practically pounced on her ring and slid it over her finger as she caressed it gently. 

“Is that the ring?” Lina asked, squinting at it and Mia was more than happy to show it off. “Does it work?”

“I’m not going to cut myself to check.” Mia rolled her eyes, though she too was curious. Still, she hasn’t quite lost her mind enough to cut herself just to check whether a magical ring worked or not.

“Looks pretty,” Lina murmured. “Alright, if you’re fine I’m going back to monster diving.”

“Have fun,” Mia said with a slight quirk of her lips, earning an eye roll from the blonde as she descended on her own corpse.

[{Newcomer} Introductory (11)]

Objective:

• Kill a monster at, or above, your own level in one-on-one combat.

Reward: A System generated casting focus (Wand of Arcane Focus).

Should be pretty doable. Mia thought, tilting her head at the next quest. The most challenging part of completing the quest would be finding a monster of the appropriate level and then convincing her group to let her face it alone. She had little doubt her Arcane Blast could finish off a Level 7 Goblin. 

Checking through her Combat Logs, she found that all the goblins in the last group were Level 4 at most, with three of them even being of the juvenile variant. This might take a while to do, shame. It would be pretty cool to have a want to throw spells with … plus it’s probably useful for casting in some way. Maybe it empowers the spells, or perhaps it even helps with casting more powerful spells?

Both would be extremely useful, especially since some of her spells were a pain to cast. Mia realised each spell-circle had a weight that was directly proportional to its complexity, and this complexity roughly equalled the number of runes the circle used. 

Now, to cast a spell, she had to lift that weight and in that metaphor, her Will was the strength of her muscles and Manifestation the grip she had on the spell. If the focus somehow enhanced either stat, or assisted her in lifting the weight of the spell, it would be a godsent. Especially since her latest spell, Mana Familiar, was the most complex spell in her Spell Tome to date with almost 50 runes used in its construction, with even Mage Hand only using 40.

Comparatively, Arcane Bolt had a measly 8 runes spread around a simple circular spell boundary while Blast had three times that 24. This was also the reason she could shoot off Bolts effortlessly while casting Mage Hand one time exhausted her brain like doing calculus for an hour.

Sniffing her fingers, Mia determined them to be clean enough for now and quickly wrapped the jacked around her shoulders again after rolling her shirt down to her wrist. She still smelled foul, her clothes having absorbed the odour of the corpse even if they hadn’t directly touched it, but she couldn’t do much about that other than burning the whole set.

Which would be moronic. This is the only set of full-cover clothing I have on hand. She sighed, regretting not having packed a body spray. Suck it up, Mia. You’ll stink much worse by the end of this outing.

Somehow, that didn’t make her feel any better. Instead, she reached into her bag and decided to get some reading done while the others extracted their own cores.

“Door-girl, since you’re done you can take over watch,” said Brent, making Mia’s fingers freeze on the zipper of her bag with a groan. “Make use of that super sense of yours.”

“Okay,” Mia said grumpily, getting up and walking over to the window Brent perched himself on.

They took temporary refuge in an old pastry shop, having dragged the four mostly intact goblin corpses into the front of it. 

“You take my spot,” said Brent, hopping down from the windowsill with far too much ease for someone wearing that much armour. “I’ll make sure the back exit is clear.”

The back exit, the reason why they chose this shop as their refuge. It was just a simple hallway leading to an alley cutting through the building block and connecting a set of parallel roads, but it would be just what they needed if a horde of goblins swarmed them and they had to skedaddle.

Mia gave Brent a nod, watching the man disappear in the back before hopping up on the sill and taking up watch. She had to get used to this, considering the whole city enemy territory and expecting a monster ambush at every moment.

Mark’s deterrent would work somewhat, but the fact those goblins attack despite it — even if only after Mia killed one of them — meant it was hardly a perfect defence against the greenskin. Plus, there were much more dangerous monsters gunning for them than the green critters.

Birds and rabbits. Mia would have laughed if the sight of those monsters slaughtering goblins wasn’t still crystal clear in her mind. And whatever else. We still have two more Rifts unaccounted for.

She glanced down at her new ring, squinting at it as an idea popped into her mind. Maybe that identification thing worked on the ring, since the system generated it?

She’d tried the same with system-made books before, and even with the magical apple — ‘Natural Treasure’ — with little success, but surprisingly enough, the effect triggered now.

***

[{Newcomer} Title’s effect triggered]

[Generating Description … ]

[Ring of Lesser Healing (Common/White): Making use of Positive Magic enchantments, this ring vastly amplifies the natural healing effect of the Positive energy in the wearer’s body by resonating with it for a short duration.]

• Activates on command, or when detecting a significant enough injury.

• Recharges by draining mana from the wearer. Incompatible with Darkness, and Darkness derivative mana types. 

• The closer your mana type is to pure Light your mana is, the more efficient the enchantment’s recharge rate is.

• Current cooldown: ~2 hours.

***

That gave her more questions than it answered. Still, the most important things she needed to know to use it, she now did. 

So Positive energy naturally gives us some passive healing? I wonder what Negative energy gives us, if anything. I should have my ‘inner energy’ be split down in the middle between the two, so I should have some benefits from both.

With a start Mia returned her attention to the street, and her job: keeping watch. Her ears twitched, having caught ... something.

She squinted out the window, her gaze roaming over the dilapidated street. Soon, the whole thing would smell of death and decay with the harsh midday sun shining down on the rotting corpses.

Mia had to thank her Thermal Assimilation secondary skill for keeping her at a livable temperature. Without it, she wouldn’t have been able to function under so many layers of clothing.

She listened and watched, forgetting to even breathe. Nothing. Did she mishear? She shouldn’t have. She never had since becoming a Halvyr.

Maybe something was hiding behind one of the cars? 

Then she heard it again and her eyes snapped to the source: a manhole. The cover twitched, letting out that tortured metallic sound that caught her attention in the first place.

“Monsters,” Mia hissed under her breath, her voice easily travelling to every member of her group in the silent room. 

“I’ll get Brent,” said Sam, dashing off towards the back entrance while the other two got to their feet and approached the window.

Just as they did, and Mia heard the hurried pair of footsteps from the hallway, the cover of the sewer entrance flew off. It spun through the air, reaching an apex at almost three metres up before it came crashing back down with a loud thud.

Mia didn’t care though, her gaze transfixed by the dark form crawling out of the manhole. It had a mangy coat of fur, a pair of beady black eyes and a long fuzzy nose that twitched and pointed right at the pastry shop they hid in.

That’s one big rat. Mia found herself thinking, freezing for a second as she realised just how big it was. Those teeth are as long as my fingers. 

Mia gulped, belatedly starting to form a spell circle and rousing her mana as the rat fully exited the manhole and rose to its back feet. It stood at around one and a half metre tall that way, though Mia dearly wished her estimation to be wrong.

It fell back on four legs, sniffed, then screeched as its eyes found a mangled goblin corpse the group left behind.

As the first rat descended upon the corpse, tearing into it with its teeth as its clawed feet held it down, another rat crawled out of the manhole, quickly followed by another, and another, and another. 

“We need to leave,” said Brent, startling the trio as his urgent voice sounded from right behind them. “Now. Get your things and move, we are running away through the back entrance.”

Mia gulped, then shot off towards her bag and quickly shouldered it. She glanced back at the window, a shiver running down her spine as she counted more than a dozen rats with more still exiting the manhole every second.

“Move, move, move,” Brent hissed under his breath. “They’ll smell the corpses in here. Move your fucking feet.”

Mia thought she was the first out in the alley as she burst through the back door, gasping for breath and her heartbeat thundering in her ears, but Sam was already there.

Line was only a step behind Mia, looking only slightly put off by everything as she came out and gave way to Mark behind him.

Last came Brent, who kicked the door shut and grabbed a garbage bin next to it without a second thought. He heaved, and the bin screeched across the pavement until it was up against the door.

“Move your brats, they heard that,” he said, sword in hand as he gazed towards the opening of the alley. 

Mia didn’t need to be told twice, bolting for the opposite end of the alley with Lina and Mark hot on her heels and Sam easily overtaking her as he bounced over closed bins and kicked off the wall to fly over her head.

Squeaks and the sound of chattering teeth tearing into flesh grew distant, and while the run felt like an hour, the group exited onto the next street only a half a minute later. 

“Everyone’s good?” Brent asked, not looking the slightest bit winded as he kept his gaze locked on the alley as the rest of the group caught their breath. After he received an affirmative answer from everyone, he continued. “Take up formation, keep your eyes peeled and let’s move. I want to get as much distance put between us and those ugly fuckers as possible. Rocky, shield up and forward. Scratch, you’re on scout duty this time and I take rearguard. Move.”

*****

Somewhere far, far away, beneath the veil of reality and in the deepest depths of the Astral Sea, a titanic being of pure Arcane might stirred, rising from its prismatic throne.

His attention swept over his realm, pressing down on all of his subjects like a physical weight. Men, women and children, elves and dwarves, spirits and elementals all fell on their knees in deference to their ancient ruler.

The being’s form slowly manifested, changing from a chaotic storm of pink energy into a crystalline humanoid form before it too disappeared beneath a veneer of mortal skin and fake flesh.

There he stood, the Great Spirit King of the Astral Sea, waves of brilliant pinkish hair flowing around an ethereal face and a set of crystalline azure eyes that stared into the distance and pierced through both space and the veil of reality effortlessly.

“Lost daughter of mine,” the being spoke, his voice sounding like a thousand chimes echoing together. “At last, the time has come.”

She saw me. A Halvyr. One of mine, fully manifested bloodline. Rank 0, still fragile. Only three generations removed from my dear Serielle.

For the first time in millennia, the sole Avatar of the Archon was awake and active. The news spread like wildfire through the six Realms of the System. Many trembled in fear, thinking this to be the beginning of another age of chaos and anarchy.

They were right to do so. The last time Anachreon walked the Realms was the final day of the last Demon Emperor.

Only the stars and the Spirit King himself knew what horror prompted the mighty being to stir from his long slumber. Only them, the masses whispered in fear.