Mage Tank

Chapter 206: No Avatar Flesh After Midnight

Holy Water of Yara’s Favor

Time Remaining: 1 minute

HP: 1087 -> 1317

“Thanks,” I thought Xim.

“Hurry up and regen faster.”

“I’ve healed myself for almost as much as you have. I was mostly dead twenty minutes ago.”

“Those are rookie numbers.”

I shrugged and drank one of Nuralie’s most potent healing potions, bringing my regen up another 947 health per hour to a total of 2,229. I swapped to health per minute, which showed 37. It didn’t look nearly as impressive, but it was more manageable.

Etja’s skin had become glinting crystal covered in thousands of facets, replicating the material she’d absorbed from the Prismatic Mask across her entire body. Swirls of color swam beneath its surface. She cast hundreds of points of light around the darkened room, illuminating the large table and comfy furniture of my drawing room. I had no idea what the mage had gotten from absorbing a piece of Hysteria. Her soul still felt like Etja, but dozens of new connections were forming within it every second.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Hysteria looked dumbfounded. Their intrusion on the Zenithar’s will was still progressing but momentarily slowed. Nuralie shook off her daze and threw Zura over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. I was glad to see the loson had a practical enough mindset not to worry about hauling one of Eschendur’s pope-queens like a sack of potatoes. The Eschens were a down-to-earth kind of people.

Nuralie disappeared with the Zenithar.

“For fuck’s sake!” shouted Hysteria. Before the avatar could make a move, however, Etja swung her staff and a meter-wide beam of potent magical energy slammed into Hysteria’s skeletal frame.

The wall behind the avatar collapsed. The beam annihilated all the ambient mana before it, suppressing the avatar’s aura, and Hysteria tumbled through the hole like they’d been sucked away. The countermagic was so potent that the small amount radiating from the beam flooded the room, playing hell with the mana weaves on all my equipment and causing my own auras to shudder.

The wall was reduced to dust, along with a console and a lovely landscape painting that I was sure somebody would miss. Motes of light flooded from the destruction, captured in Etja’s insatiable palm.

Divine mana blossomed to fill the mana vacuum, and I felt energy swell up through my legs.

You’ve gained Celerity!

Your movement speed is doubled.

Etja had just combined all six of her spells into a single attack.

“Neat!” she said, then sent four more beams of annihilation through the wall at the avatar, each one smaller and more concentrated than the first.

“You alright?” I shouted over the music. Etja turned to me, her eyes empty pits. She looked confused for a second, then recognition bloomed on her features.

“Nope!” she said, voice easily carrying over the racket, seeming to command the sound waves to bend. She turned back to the massive hole. “I can’t get a good bite. It’s like they’re an overcooked steak wrapped in caramel. The kind that’s sticky, but still too hard somehow. I dunno. Still tastes sweet. I’m gonna go eat them now.”

Etja shot through the hole after Hysteria. The air didn’t even stir.

“Should we try to help?” Xim thought to me.

[You have other problems,] Grotto answered on my behalf.

A massive sword shattered the wall opposite from Etja’s hole.

Etja’s… tunnel?

Etja’s magical corridor.

Fucking, they knocked down the wall on the other side of the room from where Etja broke my house. I’d learned the names of the wastelanders, but they’d already earned titles in my head, so that’s what I stuck with.

Buster crashed through, screaming at us.

“Have another god to throw at us, little man?!” A well of anger surged in my chest, but it sputtered out after a second.

You have resisted becoming Distracted!

The Hyrachon trampled over the sturdy table that dominated the center of the room, crushing it under a heavy boot and the force of his charge. His thousand-pound blade swung for my neck. I brought Gracorvus up, then locked myself down with Gravity Anchor, trying to keep his attack from sending me flying. Buster’s sword glowed with golden mana, and it duplicated, crashing down on both Xim and myself. My bones rattled and I felt the burn of divine judgment pierce through me.

At least, it tried to pierce through me.

HP: 1335 -> 1330

I wasn’t impressed.

Still, I’d misjudged this man. He wasn’t a bruiser, he was a fucking paladin.

My Divine defense was among my lowest, my Kinetic damage from my hammers would struggle to get through heavy armor reinforced by defensive buffs, and Dimensional damage would be offset by the man’s Fortitude. If he successfully Distracted me, I’d be forced to tie myself up fighting him. Even if he didn’t have any powerful Divine abilities, we’d probably end up beating on each other with little hope of dealing any proper damage. It was a bad matchup.

One of my oldest achievements stepped in to help me out.

Stolen story; please report.

I Don’t Attack You, You Attack Me: So long as you did not attack first, an enemy becomes stunned for one second the first time they deal damage to you with either a melee weapon or a part of their body.

It was easy to forget I had that one since I so rarely sat around and waited for my enemies to hit me first.

Buster’s body locked up, his expression going slack as magic rebooted his brain. My eyes darted to Xim for an instant, but the cleric was crouched behind the seven-foot-tall behemoth of a shield she’d looted from Blood Scour. She recovered from the hit without issue but was already under assault by the Yeti monk, heretofore known as Fluffy.

Fluffy’s hands blurred with two rapid strikes, and Xim maneuvered the wall of metal in front of the hits like it weighed nothing. Waves of force traveled through the massive slab, halted by the Shielding granted by her Level 40 Fortitude evolution. Xim gritted her teeth as the second strike broke through both the Scutum of Blood Scour and her Shielding, thumping into her armor and robes. Fluffy’s strikes left bloody marks on the scutum, her furry knuckles dripping from the shield’s bleed effect.

Xim’s tower shield glowed red and shot forward, but Fluffy spun and darted around the shield’s edge, laying a kick into the side of Xim’s leg. Xim angled her knee to keep it from being swept out from under her, but the crack of the collision made me wince.

As soon as Xim’s leg turned outward from the Yeti’s kick, an arrow pierced through her chainmail and buried itself in her thigh. Despite the abuse, Xim was extremely durable. A quarter of the cleric’s health was gone. That was substantial, but those hits would have killed her a few months ago.

The wastelanders had clearly read the same kill priority manual I had. They knew Xim could heal, and they were trying to burn her down as fast as possible. I needed to grab their attention, but I could also help the cleric out in other ways.

I activated Aura of Persistence, granting myself and all allies 74 Shielding that would constantly regenerate over time. Xim’s own Shielding would come back in six seconds, but my aura granted more in the short term, and if one source was exhausted the other would take up the slack. It hit everyone in the party, granting Nuralie, Varrin, Etja, and even Grotto some extra defense while they were separated from us.

I had a choice with Life Warden. At the moment, it was on Etja, who was my default target. The problem was that the mage was currently hopped up on a drink of godly soul juice and fighting an avatar. I was reluctant to leave her unguarded, but any damage that got transferred might be more than I could handle. Normally, the max was half of Etja’s total health pool, so a little under 250 damage. In her current form, I had no idea what her max health looked like.

I decided to keep it on her. It was a risk, but if she died because I pulled Life Warden, I’d have a hard time living with that.

Instead, I split my focus to activate Therianthropy and begin channeling Explosion!. Colorful wings unfolded on my back as downy tentacles wrapped around my sides, reaching into my inventory to pull out more hammers. A point of eye-catching mana appeared above my head, which began to grow and condense every second.

So long as I chanted something ominous, my enemies would be drawn to the light unless they resisted its call. Since the wastelanders had 8 Levels over me, my This is Bullshit! achievement would make the effect more difficult to ignore. They had to actually hear me, though, so I strained to shout over the thumping music.

I got a bit personal, and I also drew some inspiration from the Dread Star.

“Boundless Night, your child

Raised dead, but can’t raise herself

A fly with wings plucked!”

Maybe it was a bit villainous to start reciting haikus about killing people’s family members to their faces, but they were trying to murder me, so fuck ‘em. Their relatives had probably been hired assassins, as well. I knew they’d at least killed poor lonely Langhrey.

In other words, fornicate about and become learned.

While I moved into my second form, I felt the entire room shift slightly.

[I believe we can move this to more comfortable surroundings.]

The entire room–and probably the entire mansion–started migrating toward the opposite side of the Closet. Before I could ask Grotto for more details, the veil-wearing runeweaver showed himself.

A stream of gossamer runework streamed from Veil’s cloud of thread, forming into a ball between me and Xim. It shot into the ground and sigils spread out across the floor and walls in every direction. The runes pulsed with power, and space twisted as an incredible force pulled me toward the center of the formation. Gravity Anchor kept me in place, but the pull tore at my muscles while my Shielding ate most of the damage.

HP: 1331 -> 1303

The attack also caught Xim, but her muscles swelled and her Shielding glowed brightly over her skin. Her feet sank into the floor, shattering boards and pressing into the stone below. The attack broke through the extra layer of defense, but she overwhelmed the spell’s pull with overwhelming force. Another chunk of her health was gone.

Behind Veil, the Giant’s body became a beacon in the dark. The patterns tattooed onto his blue skin burned white, and static filled the air. I felt elemental mana gather for a fraction of a second before it reached out to connect with Xim. I immediately hit it with a Dispel, disrupting the skill.

The counter barely drained any of my mana and it earned me a stack of Potency, granting me a free mana shape. I’d likely come out net positive on mana, and for a moment I wondered if it had been worth the time it took to Dispel the skill.

The spell instantly fired again, but with me as the target. The world flashed white as a thick bolt of lightning seized my body, searing flesh and tensing my muscles so tightly they began to tear. The bolt arced from me to Xim, treating the cleric to the same.

HP: 1303 -> 995

While my health plummeted, half the damage I took was sent to Xim as healing. After eating her own bolt of lightning, we were both down to half health. She’d have been nearly dead had I not Dispelled the first bolt.

Buster had shown at least one Divine ability and the power behind his words signaled a strong Charisma score. He was the only wastelander that looked like a good candidate for being a healer, but he was also clearly built for tanking. His build was a split, which meant his heals probably weren’t as strong as they could be. Rather than waste our time trying to dig through his defenses while he healed himself, we would be better off bursting down someone a lot squishier.

Fluffy was flighty and could punch through some of our armor, but she relied on rapid-fire strikes. That could still be offset by solid damage reduction, which Xim and I both had. I had no idea where the Wishborn archer was hiding, so they weren’t a great opening target. Veil looked like support, with damage as a secondary. That was annoying, but Blue was a bigger threat. The Giant hit hard and stood out like a beacon. I mentally assigned him priority and sent that along to the group through Grotto.

The wastelanders had stormed in, layering their abilities over top of one another and giving us little room to respond. Their opening salvo had hurt, that was for sure, but the frustration on Blue’s face told me he’d expected his spell to boil our innards. It had, Xim and I just didn’t care too much.

“Our lives are fun,” Xim thought to me.

Her armor was scorched and smoke rose from her hair. At some point, her dark locks had turned to molten blood. Crimson flames curled up from the cleric’s eye sockets, and a 6-foot-wide halo of fire erupted behind her. The ring’s center pulsed white-hot as she rose a foot off the ground.

Veil’s runes continued to press down and pull on us, but Xim rushed forward, enhanced by the buff she’d earned from Sam’lia and the Celerity granted by Etja’s lingering zone of Divine power. She darted around Fluffy and rocketed to Veil, swinging her scepter at the Chovali’s chest.

Before I could question her choice of targets, the air around the Chovali burst into bloody flame and erupted into a cone of death that swallowed both Veil and the Giant.

Xim’s wall of fire was imbued with the full force of her scepter strike, and it hit Veil and Blue like a solid object before crashing into the back wall, turning half the room into a roaring bonfire. Their bodies were swallowed by the flames, but the pair could only stumble drunkenly, too rattled to react properly to the fire beginning to blacken their skin.

At the same time, Xim’s body glowed golden and the arrow in her thigh forced itself out as the wound began to close. Her health shot up by a third, replenishing most of what she’d lost. An aura bathed the room, and a trickle of constant healing began working on my injuries.

HP: 995 -> 1041

Sam’lia’s Warmth

You heal 46 health and gain 1 stack of Blessed every six seconds.

It was an impressive display. I was already capped on Blessed but now felt comfortable starting to burn through them for defense.

Buster roared as he shook off his stun, and a circle of holy light enveloped the battle, extinguishing the fire and empowering his allies. It looked like the wastelanders were ready to start playing their trump cards.

The roof trembled as something enormous slammed into it.

[Prepare to receive backup.]