Mage Tank

Chapter 207: Buffs, Cooldowns, Consumables. Burn Them All.

You have observed the Consecration spell!

Consecration

Divine

Cost: 25 Mana

Requirements: CHA 40, Divine Magic 40

You consecrate the ground in a radius around you equal to your Divine Magic skill level in feet. You, your allies, and sacred entities receive a bonus to all DR equal to your CHA while inside the consecrated ground. Hostile and profane entities receive additional Righteous damage equal to your CHA whenever they are hit by an attack while within the consecrated ground.

Buster’s spell didn’t say anything about cleansing hostile magic, but it wiped out Xim’s inferno all the same. The entire enemy party got a huge boost to their damage reduction, and a hefty boost to their damage on top.

Righteous damage was devastating against entities profane to the wielder’s god, and I had no idea what god Buster worshipped. There was no good way to know whether we would be considered abhorrent to the tenets of its faith unless Buster decided to drop us an obvious hint.

Among the things I would consider an obvious hint would be religious symbols, identifiable prayers, or a man’s skeleton tearing its way outside of his own body.

While Consecration banished Xim’s flames and buffed the Hyrachon’s allies, Buster’s skin bulged and split. Viscera-covered bone dislodged from its fleshy confines, taking the paladin’s armor and massive sword with it.

I’d seen some nasty shit during my time as a Delver, but that one made my throat tense. I had to force my stomach to keep its contents to itself. I only had an instant to grapple with my rebelling guts before the skeleton exploded from the body, spraying me with hot blood as it charged the short distance between us.

Its sword glowed with divine light, drawing power from the consecrated ground. I blocked with Gracorvus, stopping the sword without trouble, but a hateful presence invaded my body. I felt it claw through me, disgusted by my sense of mercy, and enraged by any memory where I submitted to authorities greater than myself. This time, the divine judgment did burn.

HP: 1042 -> 897

What the skeleton left behind reformed into a boneless mass of muscles and skin that somehow remained upright, dressed in small clothes and several items of jewelry. It drew a staff from its inventory.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

On the bright side, Veil and Blue were both still Stunned.

“Curse in Solitude

Your love died, not once but thrice

Wife, bug, phantom, corpse!”

Explosion! continued to build as I chanted profound phrases, and Fluffy abandoned their pursuit of Xim in favor of flanking me and pummeling my kidneys while I dealt with Buster’s skeleton. I burned through Blessed stacks to offset the damage, unable to block the Yeti without abandoning my defense against the bloody skeleton. Fluffy’s fists pounded through my armor, injecting Righteous damage with each hit.

HP: 897 -> 667

I was taking the heat off of Xim, and my reward was blunt-force organ removal. Even though my kidneys were reduced to quivering chunks, I wouldn’t bleed to death, which was nice. I considered a change in tactics since Xim’s self-heal was absolutely insane. Before I could suggest that we start juggling aggro, our backup arrived.

The ceiling over the enemy mages exploded as an enormous Atrocidile maw crashed down through it.

Nottagator unleashed Titan’s Roar, indiscriminately blasting everyone with a wave of sound and pressure that momentarily overwhelmed Cloaky’s thumping music.

HP: 667 -> 602

You have resisted Fear!

“An Atrocidile berserker isn’t ideal backup!”

[True, but a Ravvenblaq berserker is.]

As Nottagator collapsed through the ceiling, Varrin dove off the monster’s back. His helm was no longer a featureless mask. Azure eyes burned furiously, the back of the helm adorned with sharp, spectral wings. He carved through the blue Giant as he landed, the enemy caster still Stunned from Xim’s attack. The slash opened the man up in a diagonal from shoulder to hip.

The Giant fell to his knees, blood and bowels pouring out of him.

“Arrow, Wishborn’s charge

A cricket with legs torn off

Leapt into her grave!”

My lyrical artistry struck me with the desire to stroke my beard in mysterious contemplation, but I suppressed the urge. My helmet would just get in the way. Instead, I used Shortcut to reposition myself away from Buster and Fluffy, tired of being the meat in their beatdown sandwich.

The immense Atrocidile had finished smashing through the roof, collapsing the entire wall Buster had originally cut through. My drawing room was now expanded to include the ballroom next to it, which was perhaps taking open-concept a touch too far. I took advantage of the space and appeared behind Varrin, unceremoniously appointing him and Nottagator as my new meat shields while I appraised targets.

Blue was down, but not dead. Still, the Giant would bleed out in a matter of seconds. Veil was starting to recover from Xim’s wallop, but was dazed. The Wishborn archer was hidden, and I didn’t have time to do a deep scan of our surroundings to find him. If we were lucky, the man had been hit by Nottagator’s Fear effect and bolted. Third Layer denizens were generally resistant to Fear, though, so I didn’t get my hopes up.

Fluffy’s entire body looked to have become encased in metal, which was probably bad, and the Yeti was rushing toward me. Buster’s skeleton was moving to pursue as well, and his flesh bag was working up a new spell. Nottagator looked like it was ready to kill everyone, but I knew the Atrocidile’s tricks. We just needed to make sure one of the wastelanders was closer to Nottagator than we were. Then again, the Atrocidile was sort of straddling the whole fight. We just needed to stay clear of its face, probably.

I spent my stack of Potency on Funnel to double the damage of Oblivion Orb for one attack, then threw Somncres with my Void Hammer combo. Somncres transferred all effects on the hammer to any copies I made with it, which included the double damage, so I made four of them. I assigned one hammer to the Giant in accordance with our standard team philosophy of “they’re not dead until they’re dead.” I sent the other three hammers, along with the original Somncres, at Veil, maneuvering them along four different trajectories.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

The Chovali had AoE control and damage over time effects, the ability to teleport his entire team, and the capacity to lock down someone’s magic. I was dumping a lot of mana into Explosion! and committing myself to a lengthy cooldown. I was apprehensive of a counterspell, but with Blue out of the picture, the next most likely person to cause my big bang to fizzle was the runeweaver. After Blue, they were the next best target.

My first hammer slammed into the downed Giant, collapsing what was left of their rib cage and delivering the contents of their chest cavity to the void. Buster’s flesh bag swung their staff at Veil, surrounding the Chovali in a golden shield. Their skeleton disappeared in a spray of blood, reappearing in front of my second hammer. The skeleton defended with its sword but lost a chunk of armor and bone to the Orb as it bypassed the block. I took a smattering of thorns damage in return.

The third hammer struck the glowing shield, which shattered and sent more thorns damage my way. The fourth got tangled in several layers of the runework fabric that surrounded Veil. It burned bright and destroyed the copy. The original Somncres made it through the web of defenses and struck home into the Chovali’s back, shattering their spine and then doing them the service of removing the pesky bone fragments, along with all the nearby muscles and organs.

Both enemy mages were down. Despite this current state of dead-ness, both enemy mages pulled a move that I’d always known was a valid strategy.

Corpse explosion.

Blue’s body swelled, tissues expanding and filling with chaotic mana, followed swiftly by Veil’s. I barely had time to get my shield up before both detonated in a hail of Holy damage, catching my entire group–including Nottagator–in the blast.

HP: 577 -> 391

Xim and Varrin both lost 20% of their health. Normally, I would have found that trade acceptable. I was deep into the zone of hurt, but Varrin was mostly fresh and Xim was above half. With two members of the enemy party dead, we’d probably be able to turn this shitshow around.

Both enemy mages respawned.

The chunks of their bodies turned to swirling clouds of ash, and rivers of blood poured from Buster’s flesh bag. It began to deflate, but not nearly as much as it should have, given the volume of liquid it was pumping out. The blood gathered into the shapes of the recently deceased, and both Veil and Blue were reborn; naked, and thoroughly displeased.

The exchange wasn’t without a cost. The mages were both thin and sickly looking, and Buster’s flesh suit had lost a third of its mass. Further, the philosophers among us could argue over whether they’d truly been resurrected, or merely replaced with blood clones who shared their memories.

Nah, put the existential dilemmas away, it was really them. They had the same souls and everything.

Fluffy dove through the cloud of ash into the ballroom, drawn to me by my emotive, poetic chanting, and the ever-growing ball of destruction hovering above my head. Unfortunately for the Yeti, her dive took her in front of Nottagator’s face, and the Atrocidile was more than happy to play with the shiny moving object.

Nottagator snapped forward at Fluffy, nearly catching me and Varrin as well. The Yeti broke out of her fixation with my dangerous allure and threw a fist at one of Nottagator’s teeth. The hit cracked the tooth and pushed the Yeti away from the attack.

Nottagator’s arm blurred as it swept its claws, and I was forced to leap back to avoid becoming collateral damage while Fluffy placed a hand on Nottagator’s finger and flipped over the attack. Varrin spun around the foot-long talons and vanished. The big guy reappeared near Nottagator’s tail, placing him in the drawing room next to Veil and Buster’s skeleton.

Buster immediately swung for the Ravvenblaq, who matched the hulking, armored skeleton for size. Varrin’s blade swept through the air, catching the massive weapon and turning it an inch off course as he stepped aside and avoided the blow. Kazandak flashed upward, tearing a gash through the skeleton’s armor. He stepped around the skeleton, Kazandak extending and aiming for Veil, but was forced to abandon the strike and duck down low as Buster spun with superhuman speed, sweeping his massive sword in a 270-degree arc.

Veil snarled and drove his hands into the ground. Runes ran along his arms and legs into the floor, spreading out around us in a blur. The Chovali’s gravity weave had continued to expand over time, and the new runes slotted into the original.

Xim flew toward Veil, weaving between Nottagator’s back legs as the Atrocidile rampaged. It roared in frustration, unable to hit the evasive Yeti. Fluffy could do little more than dodge, hitting Nottagator with the occasional glancing blow that only further enraged the Atrocidile.

Xim drew in close to Veil while Varrin distracted the skeleton, but the flesh suit drove its staff toward her, encasing her in a golden sphere. Spears of light skewered into Xim. The cleric swung her scepter into the barrier, filling it with crimson flame until it burst, her body lighting up as she healed the damage she’d suffered.

The wounds diminished but refused to close. Blood poured out from the cleric’s extra holes, streaming through the air to the flesh suit, which absorbed the liquid to regain the mass it lost resurrecting the mages. Xim was forced to pull back and use Cleanse, staunching the flow. I teleported to the meat bag and dropped Elemental Barrier, catching the boneless one, the Giant, and the Chovali in the AoE.

The air shook violently, knocking the mages to the ground and interrupting the flesh bag’s telekinetic vampirism. Blue pulled out an orb and crushed it, sending out a pulse of countermagic and dispelling my attack. The Chovali threw a talisman, which thunked onto my armor and stuck like a magnet.

You are Immobilized!

I mean, you were already Immobilized by your own skill, but now you’re Immobilized again!

I felt the familiar pull of a hostile teleport, which attempted to sling me into Nottagator’s face. My resistance to non-consensual Dimensional effects kicked in, ending the teleport early. I wound up beneath the Atrocidile, between its legs, and I brought up Gracorvus to knock aside a bucking set of talons.

Throughout it all, I kept chanting.

“Roach with hardened shell

Still ran from my boot in fear

Satisfying crunch!”

Veil resumed pumping runes into the ground, staring at me with murder in his eyes.

The Chovali’s weaves were insufferable. They weren’t skills that could be easily Dispelled, instead having the feel of prepared items like Nuralie’s poisons. I’d need time and focus to unravel them, which I didn’t have. They still drew mana from the Chovali to power them, which made them less robust than a traditional weave. Regardless, they were a lot more durable than a normal spell.

Veil’s weave pulsed, twisting space and delivering a piercing pain to my skull, like someone had driven a railroad spike through my temple. Varrin and Xim were caught in the gravity effect, being yanked to the opposite side of the drawing room, away from Veil. Gravity Anchor once again kept me in place against the first effect’s pull, but it didn’t help with the second.

HP: 392 -> 204

You have been Paralyzed!

While the Chovali locked us down, Blue raised his arms to the sky. I couldn’t look above me–both because I was physically incapable of it and because there was a wall of Nottagator in the way–but the dark rooms lit up like it was high noon on a cloudless day. A withering heat began to build until it was hot enough to make the rubble smolder.

Being Paralyzed kept me from doing anything physical, but it wouldn’t stop me from utilizing skills that didn’t require me to move my body. I could still channel Explosion!, although I couldn’t snap my fingers to activate it. I could also maintain my Shielding aura.

And I could still use Reverse Card.

I seized the Giant’s spell as he finished his cast. At first, I thought the redirect had failed. It cost zero mana to take control of it, which didn’t make sense. Reverse Card’s cost was equal to the mana spent by the caster. However, Reverse Card did work, which meant the spell had cost… nothing?

A 20-foot-wide beam of scorching light descended from above, centered on the Giant. Blue’s eyes went wide, and the wastelanders abandoned him to his fate.

Veil teleported deep into the ballroom. Buster’s flesh bag tore off its amulet and held it aloft. The pendant disintegrated, surrounding both the skeleton and its calcium-deprived brother in a thick layer of blood. Xim hunkered down behind her shield and Varrin stood in front of her with blade ready, both having resisted the paralysis with one of their evolutions. I clenched and hoped for the best.

The Giant didn’t react in time.

The beam struck like the hand of God, tearing everything within fifty feet of Blue to pieces and then igniting it. The bloody barrier around Buster’s two halves boiled. Varrin rended the air with his blade, splitting the apocalyptic attack and driving it to either side, creating a narrow wedge of calm for himself and Xim. The wooden floor became smoke, the stone beneath the wood turned molten, and the liquid rock bubbled, spitting noxious fumes. Blue’s skin peeled away and the flesh beneath blackened.

Nottagator roared as its entire back half was soaked in flame. The Atrocidile’s body protected me from the worst of the attack, but my eyes were flash-dried and my gambeson began to burn as my armor turned into a furnace. Spell-based elemental fire was nearly my highest defense, however, and despite being deeply uncomfortable, I avoided taking damage.

The beam terminated when the life of its caster was spent, and Blue’s smoking body fell into the slag.