Mage Tank

Chapter 215: God Wranglin'

All of us were experienced enough to wait for the kill notification. Predictably, we didn’t get one.

“I’ll be honest,” I said. “I’m not sure how to double-tap a puddle of burning goo.”

“More fire,” Nuralie offered. “I have some acid, as well.”

“I can keep using Disintegrate,” said Etja. “And you can send it to the void?”

I decided that plan was as good as any and threw an experimental hammer at the pile of meat. An orb of blood snapped out from the gore and surrounded the hammer, stopping it in its tracks. I immediately banished and resummoned Somncres, happy to see I could extract it this time. The minor victory was spoiled when I realized that I was also trapped inside a bubble of blood, along with everyone else in the party.

Sharp tendrils lanced out from the orb’s edges, trying to dig their way past my armor and through my skin. The blood seared my flesh where it made contact, but the damage was trivial. The real hazard of the bubble was its debuffs.

You are Immobilized!

Bleeding negated by immunity!

I recognized the skill from our earlier fight with Buster, and knew that the effect needed to be cancelled as soon as possible. The spikes buried themselves into the others and began extracting thick lines of blood from Xim, Varrin, and Nuralie. Fortunately, Etja shared my exemption from exsanguination, given that she didn’t have blood at all.

I looked at the mess and shot it an identify.

Malformed Icon of Instruction: Constructed Aberration, Grade 30

I wondered what Grade the entity would have started out at if it had been well-formed, rather than denied its final victim and pumped full of liquid death, compliments of Nuralie. I put the thought out of my mind and worked on a solution instead.

Nuralie was the first to act. The Delve was still dark, and the Geulon used Shadow Walk to teleport outside of her bubble. Her wounds continued to leak, and the blood continued to flow toward the Icon, but she was able to move and act. Her hands blurred as she pulled a dozen arrows from her inventory and fired them as a single batch over the Icon’s head. The arrows pulled a hard turn back toward the ground and launched down at the Icon, forming a ring around it. As soon as the arrows were released, Nuralie swallowed a potion and stepped back to disappear into the dark.

Varrin let out a fierce shout and his helmet began to glow with burning eyes. His body became ethereal and he shot forward, disappearing from sight completely the moment he passed through the bubble. He appeared behind the still-forming Icon and cut down with his blade, wreathed in Spiritual energy.

The Icon’s body let the blade pass through it, cleaving it in half, only for the Icon to reform immediately after.

Etja exploded with a wave of mana, washing the bubbles away with Nullify. She combined it with Repulsion, boiling the outer layer of the Icon’s liquid body with Holy damage and blessing the ground to grant us Celerity.

I used Shortcut to appear directly in front of the Icon, flanking it with Varrin. It was difficult to tell if any of our attacks had hurt it, and the blood it siphoned quickly went to reform any mass it had lost. Its emerging body was twisted and distorted, like it was trying to imitate a person, but had only ever seen them through a series of increasingly warped funhouse mirrors. Nuralie’s poisons still ran through the Icon, clouding its form with dark-green necrosis, but the entity didn’t seem to suffer for it.

“Immune to Physical!” shouted Varrin, sounding like the factoid was about to drive him to commit murder, which it was.

“Resistant to everything else,” said Nuralie. “Its health is only going up.” Her voice echoed around the chamber when she spoke, making it impossible to tell where she was.

So, the Icon’s body was difficult to destroy. I took Etja’s advice and started trying to send it somewhere it couldn’t hurt us.

I went back to basics and tossed Somncres to my offhand, holding out my palm and thrusting it deep into the Icon’s body. If it was immune to Physical damage, there was no reason to waste time throwing hammers. I used Funnel to double the power behind Oblivion Orb and fired it off in the middle of the creature’s chest.

A bucket’s worth of liquid disappeared, forming a vacuum in the Icon’s torso that collapsed in on itself. The construct shuddered as its body became a few percent smaller. A pair of eyes condensed within its head and floated out to the creature’s face, followed by lips, teeth, and tongue. It smiled at me, and the new organs drifted around lazily as it spoke.

“Arrrlllloooooooo Xoooorrrrr’Dreeeelllll,” it said. The sound didn’t come from its mouth, but pressed in from all around me. It made me wonder why it had bothered with a mouth at all, other than to grin at me like a fucking creep.

“That’s me,” I said, casting another Oblivion Orb.

The Icon frowned as its body shrank ever so slightly. Varrin was cutting into its back with Soul Strike again and again, careful to avoid my hand. Muscle and bone started to form within the Icon, but each slice of Varrin’s blade delayed the structures from finalizing. Still, whatever the big guy was getting done didn’t seem to bother the creature.

Aside from the two of us, no one else was attacking the Icon. Nuralie was probably charging another Hunger Shot with the best ammo she had, while Etja built her spell combo for a mega-Disintegrate.

Meanwhile, Xim had shed her armor and the bone trinket in her hair glowed fiercely. Her body elongated, arms extending to the ground even as her head rose nearly fifteen feet into the air. Both hands were eighty percent claw, each claw half as long as my body, and her face split to reveal a jagged row of uneven fangs. A pair of black, twisting horns sprouted from just ahead of her temples, and her eyes burned wide with a hint of madness. Waves of dark-red flame rolled along her back.

I assumed that was what a Wraithclaw looked like, and hoped that our Cleric hadn’t totally lost her shit somehow.

Fluffy’s bubble had been destroyed by Etja’s Nullify, but the Yeti was still being pulled toward the Icon with the strands of muscle. The pugilist’s body had taken on a metallic sheen again, which kept the groping flesh from digging in and pulling out more blood.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Varrin swapped targets to sever the strands, and Fluffy ran the fuck away to the back of the chamber. That was optimal. I didn’t want to see what happened once this thing absorbed its final sacrifice.

The moment Varrin cut Fluffy free, a blazing portal opened over Varrin’s head. A scorching beam launched down at the big guy. Varrin pivoted and brought his sword overhead, parrying the spell with his blade and sending it pounding into a wall. The beam fractured rock and the room trembled as a powerful pressure wave went through it, even as the stone was turned molten. The moment Varrin had dealt with the first beam, another portal opened. Each beam was a miniaturized version of the Giant’s spell, called Lance of Dawn.

“Arrrrllllooooooo,” said the Icon. “I jusssst want to talk, Arrrlooooooo.”

“Sub-el, take control of the Delve,” I said, casting another Orb.

There were about a hundred questions I wanted to ask Sub-el about what it meant for them to temporarily take control, but without Grotto’s psychic relay, my communication speed was limited by the spoken word. Hopefully, I’d stay in charge of the place, but either way, the System wanted the interlopers dealt with as much as we did.

Assuming temporary administrative control of Delve 1156-B.

Restoring mana flows to Delve structures.

Evaluating non-System entities.

Primary decision-making authority assigned to Arlo Xor’Drel.

Friendly status assigned to members of Fortune’s Folly.

The intruder has been classified as Vampiric. The use of flesh-and-blood Delve resources is not advised. You have Core-designed golems in your inventory. Would you like me to take command and deploy them?

“Do it!” I said.

Optimizing golem loadout based on available assets.

My inventory screen opened and closed so fast it was barely a flicker. Two of Grotto’s Etja-clone golems appeared, decked head to toe in the equipment of fallen Delvers. They each held a weapon with the distinctive dark ornamentation of the King’s Guard, one with a spiked mace, and the other with a battle staff.

They were Grade 20.

Space twisted around the staff-wielding golem and it shot across the room, leaving a cylindrical hole in the Icon as it passed. The second charged in and struck the Icon with its mace, and I watched as small whirlpools tore out mana from the Icon and sucked it into the weapon’s spikes. Of the two attacks, the Icon only paid attention to the second.

A circle of runes appeared beneath the mace-wielding golem’s feet and it fell to the ground like its strings had been cut.

“Why talk?” I asked. “Is that part of the instruction you’re supposed to be handing out?”

I knocked out another two Oblivion Orbs while engaging the Icon in banter. Its floaty eyes looked down at the arm embedded in its chest, and I felt my hair rise as static filled the air. I tried to extract my limb, but the Icon seized my wrist, keeping it embedded.

Lightning poured through the Icon’s body and hit me like I’d grabbed an exposed powerline. My muscles and teeth clenched, my entire body locking up as the electricity completely paralyzed me. It continued to surge, keeping me from pulling away. I fought to try and cast Shortcut, but my consciousness stuttered, keeping me from finishing the spell.

“Felgar was one of my favorites on this plane,” said the Icon. A golden spear formed in the Icon’s hand and it launched itself at Varrin, throwing the man off balance as he tried to parry another sun-beam. The spell drove Varrin into the ground, spreading more cracks through the inventory slots. The plants within wriggled harder.

“His workings were interrupted, though,” the Icon continued. Despite my fluttering consciousness, I could understand its words with perfect clarity. “His soul will see the forge without the instruction he sought, but it was enough power to let me take a peek at those my sister has taken a liking to.”

The lightning stopped, and I teleported back before the Icon could get off another spell. My health had once again regenerated back to full while Hysteria mind-fucked us, and the lightning had taken me down to half. I was really rubber-banding today.

“Sam’lia has a good eye.” The icon chuckled as its own eyes drifted wide, and its body exploded into a fibrous net of tissue.

It connected itself to the walls and ceiling, looking like a giant spider had spun a web from something’s cardiovascular system. Arrows shot out from the ring Nuralie had fired into the ground. At nearly the same moment, six more arrows fired from the dark, barely clipping a few strands as the tissue twisted out of the way, and burying the shafts deep into the walls.

The strands vibrated and continued to produce speech. “I’m jealous. Why follow the path of the Seven Organs? The path of Blood and Steel suits your violence better.”

A thousand tiny marbles of deadly mana formed along the strands like morning dew, and the Icon tried to collapse back into its humanoid form. Before it could, the marbles detonated, taking a huge chunk of the Icon’s mass and reducing it to dust. The dust swirled in the air and flowed into Etja’s outstretched hand.

The Icon had reformed on the ceiling, standing upside down and a good eighteen inches shorter than it had been before. Xim leaped up, easily reaching the forty-foot ceiling with her massive Wraithclaw body. The Icon tried to catch the cleric in a blood bubble, but she tore it apart mid-air with one swipe of her claws. It didn’t even slow her down.

The Icon stepped aside, avoiding Xim’s landing. She dug into the ceiling with her claws and crawled across it like a fucking poltergeist, giving chase to the fleeing Icon. Her throat bulged and the flames on her back disappeared. She unhinged her jaw and a massive gout of unholy fire blasted out at the Icon.

The Abomination frowned slightly and the ceiling beneath its feet glowed with Consecration. The outer layer of its bloody form hardened as the fire engulfed it.

Xim’s head snapped back as a golden spear skewered through the flames and jammed itself down her throat. The cleric’s breath died and she let out a gurgling snarl, reaching forward to pull the weapon free. Her body burned golden as she healed the damage, when a burning portal opened at her belly. A lance of heat blasted her from the ceiling, crushing her into the ground until her form was lost in the blinding beam. I hit the beam with a Dispel, keeping it from persisting.

The Icon did another quick conversion from exposed nervous system to man-shaped, appearing beside the Yeti. The Icon now only had a foot on the little pugilist. Two holes appeared in its body to let arrows sail through it, and a glob of blood floated away from it to intercept Etja’s next death beam.

“You can follow both paths if you want,” said the Icon, strands reaching for the Yeti.

I quickly checked to see if Explosion! was back up. The eighteen-second charge had resulted in a 36-minute cooldown. My Physical Magic skill dropped that to 27 minutes and change. The spell was good to go, and I eyed a spot right between the Icon and the Yeti.

I snapped my fingers and the air detonated, releasing a shockwave that sent dust and debris scattering for more than forty feet in all directions. Fluffy was sent tumbling away from the Icon, while the god-infested construct staggered back, tendrils latching onto the wall behind it to hold itself steady.

“My followers are weak,” the Icon spat. “I want you. I want all of you.”

“I can’t keep this up!” shouted Varrin. He’d created a Spiritual clone of himself to deal with the spear while he parried spells. The man was hemorrhaging stamina. Xim struggled onto all fours, her vaporized skin and muscle having trouble knitting themselves together. Another rune circle appeared beneath Etja, dragging her from the air and interrupting her next spell. Nuralie was absent, hopefully prepping something good.

“Sub-el, is the Dominion Ivy plant considered a Delve resource?” I asked.

All Dominion Ivy Plants of the Endless within Delve 1156-B are considered Delve resources.

All of them? How many were there? Was Sub-el counting the immature ones?n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

It wasn’t time for those types of questions.

“Will they attack us?”

Delve resources are managed so that they will not harm any entity marked as friendly, but the Dominion Ivy plants were raised in an atypical manner.

Estimated chance of hostility: Low Moderate.

“Fuck it. They know where the gravy comes from.”

I said it with confidence, because I really wanted it to be true.

I activated my second use of Therianthropy and jumped up, caught myself in the air with my wings, and then started unassigning inventory slots.