Bog Standard Isekai

Brin thrilled in the sheer power he could draw from [Commune with the Elements], amplified by what might be the best area of resonance for his Light and Glass magic. This fight wouldn’t have much of a limit on the amount of Mana he could draw upon. No, his biggest limiter here would be mental space. He wasn’t going to drive himself into insanity for this, so he refused to split his mind into more than four equal pieces. One of those minds was completely occupied in the Mana-regenerating cloud. Another was busy with moving Invisible Eyes all around the Tower.

That left two to work with. One mind would summon all the directed threads he needed for all the spells he wanted to cast, and the last mind would be free of any threads that would slow down his perception of time. He couldn’t afford to sacrifice his reaction time against someone like Fowler.

He used his main mind to pilot a Mirror Man made from his Morphic Shield, and followed his friends into the white domed room in Chaos’ private suite.

“Where is he?” asked Bia.

“He disappeared the moment after he arrived in here. I think he saw something that spooked him. Some kind of trap or hidden defense? Try not to touch anything.”

“There’s nothing here to touch!” said Vitor.

Brin shrugged. “Be ready for a fight. I expect him to get back any second now,” said Brin.

He took his own advice and started assigning directed threads to forming spells. He’d cast them the moment Fowler showed his face again.

“I don’t think that’s it,” said Bia.

“What do you mean?” asked Brin.

“I mean, now that we’re in here, I can sense the rest of his rooms. There’s no big powerful gemstone in here,” said Bia.

“We’ll find it after we… oh, here we go,” said Brin.

The one weakness of the Easterling’s dimensional travel ability was in its predictability. They always arrived from the east. Which meant that when the enemy arrived, Brin was already aiming the right direction.

There’d been a little moment of panic as all of the spells took longer than normal to prepare. Using so many threads with one split mind had slowed them all down, but even so, they were all primed and ready the moment that Fowler and a new gang of Easterlings approached from the east.

“<Fire!>” Brin fired a full forty-two lasers. He filled the space, giving them no room to dodge, if they were even quick enough to do that.

The [Knight of the Green Mother] was back, all four of her arms fully regrown. She grabbed Fowler and turned her back, using her hard carapace to shield them both. The other Easterlings weren’t so lucky.

Two black-clad casters threw up some kind of shield, and Brin could sense the struggle in the Wyrd. The shields increased the distance between projectiles and their targets. It was the exact worst thing to try to use against a laser. At the speed of light, the difference between a few feet and ten miles was nothing at all. The lasers burned through the space-shields and then through the carapace of the Easterlings. All except for the [Knight] whose strong shell held firm, even when Brin pushed more Mana in to increase the intensity.

From behind the [Knight], Fowler broke open an Eveladis, tossing the open bottle under her legs and towards Brin.

Brin’s friends were primed to launch themselves into action the moment he let down the lasers, so he said, “Hang back for a sec!”

He turned the lasers off before the Eveladis could dispel them and quickly put up a\ wall of glass, surrounding his friends with a thin dome of the material. He kind of liked how badass he looked, standing outside the dome and shielding all of his friends, but he didn’t get to see if for long. He had to dismiss all Light and Sound magic in the area to avoid being infected with the potion’s authority poison.

Some of the Eveladis light was already inside the dome with them, but that was fine, since the dome wasn’t to protect them from that. It was to protect them from his next spell.

“<Fire!>” Brin shouted, and this time, he summoned a fountain of actual fire. It landed like a bomb blast, and he heard it with his physical ears from the next floor down. It didn’t burn as long as he hoped; he felt his magic fall apart after he used up all the available oxygen and there was nothing left to ignite. That wasn’t supposed to be a flaw of Fire magic, but he was still new with it. All he really had was the Skill and a ton of Mana to pour into it.

Between those two spells, the lasers and the flame, he’d drained his entire Mana pool. He felt his Mana mind take in a deep, mentally-attuned breath, and already a quarter of it was back.

It wasn’t without consequence. He felt a strange radioactive feeling that he recognized from long ago, and his nose started to bleed. This was Mana Burn. His body wasn’t used to going through Mana this quickly.

Vitor didn’t wait for Brin to give the all-clear. He crashed through the glass and charged at the [Knight], Bia, Bedelia, Marksi, Rhun and Calixtum close behind him.

Brin was only vaguely aware of the fight from the sound of steel against claw and their shouts of anger. He quickly summoned more Invisible Eyes and sent into the room. He doubted the fire would’ve killed any of the enemies, but it should’ve been enough to destroy the Eveladis in the air. Just in case he put an orb of burning flame around each of them, including the two that he put into the eye-sockets of his Mirror Man.

Now with hazy, burning vision, he saw the four of them pressing the [Knight] back against the wall. Calixtum had already fallen, a splash of water on the floor, but Bia, Vitor, and Bedelia lashed out with ferocious attacks that the [Knight] struggled to parry with her claws, and Rhun covered them every time she tried to counter attack.

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Marksi was momentarily distracting Fowler. The little dragonling was the one thing that seemed to be quicker than the [Pirate], and Fowler wasted precious seconds swiping at the empty air trying to hit him.

Brin couldn’t let that continue. He cast Marksi’s Glass Dragon spell, and in moments, Marksi appeared to grow to monstrous heights. He swiped at Fowler, directing the very real glass claws, and Brin imbued them with a wasteful amount of Mana to allow Marksi to bring out some of his natural speed.

Fowler parried a few strikes, shattered one of the claws, and frowned when it reformed in an instant. He wasn’t fooled–he reached one hand into his bag, still fighting with the other, and broke another Eveladis.

[Punishing Blow]. Brin felt the Skill in the Wyrd before he even knew what was happening. It was a testament to the Skill’s power that he felt anything at all–[Wyrdic Inspect] gave him practically nothing from the Easterlings.

The [Knight] punched Rhun. She obliterated his greatshield and flung him across the room. Rhun’s defensive Skills deflected the blow rather than negating it completely, and the punch broke a hole in the Tower wall, letting in light from outside.

She punched again, a regular punch, and this one broke open Vitor’s sand shroud and knocked him back into a far wall. This left Bia open. Bedelia jumped in front of her to slow the [Knight]. A sharpened claw took her through the stomach, giving Hogg the chance to show off again with the ugly bloody mess.

Brin threw his Mirror Man at Rhun, transforming the Morphic Shield back into a shield. Rhun caught it and burned a [Knight’s Charge] to defend a stunned Vitor.

He dismissed all the illusion magic inside the chamber before the newest Eveladis could touch it. Burning it out was one of the potion’s weaknesses, but it wasn’t the only tactic that Nunno had given him. The other counter to the Eveladis was the fact that it only stopped light from being summoned. It didn’t cancel the light that was summoned from outside its proximity. And now there was a big hole in the side of the Tower for Brin to cast from.

He dared to gather his Mana for three breaths.

Marksi held on. Without the cover of illusion, was just a tiny dragon piloting a pair of comically oversized glass claws and a pair of glass jaws, but even so, he was quick and wily and managed to distract Fowler for just barely long enough.

Rhun, Bia, Vitor, and Bedelia held on, with Bedelia wielding her hammer with one hand while holding in her guts with the other. It was clear that the [Knight of the Green Mother] was massively stronger than any one of them, but numbers were the counter to [Knights], and four against one were good odds.

Three breaths, and Brin’s Mana was half-full. He pushed it all into one more laser. “<Fire!>”

For once, Fowler couldn’t dodge, and Brin took him right in the eye. Fowler reflexively bent his head out of the way, but even that one moment was enough. Brin had burned him bad enough that some of the superheated goo in his eye was vulnerable to Brin’s magic. He said the Skill name aloud with his real body at the same time he activated it. “[Transmute to Glass].”

Hearing Fowler’s scream, the [Knight of the Green Mother] turned and ran to him. She accepted deep, carving blows from Vitor’s sword as she powered through him to get to Fowler’s side. She hefted him up with one hand, and then plucked up her other fallen comrades as she ran towards the west.

Vitor shot spears of sand, Brin launched bullets of glass, and Marksi shouted, <Laser>, but she was out of view before they could stop her.

Alert! You have defeated an Easterling raiding party!

Click Rider (25)

Click Rider (23)

Considerer of Emptiness (13)

Considerer of Emptiness (16)

Fowler (50)

It also worried him that it didn’t show the [Knight of the Green Mother] as defeated. And he wasn’t totally sure if Fowler was dead–you could get full experience by incapacitating someone in battle rather than killing them. Either way, he was certain he wasn’t going to see that man again today. Marksi had grabbed something from his pocket when he fell. It was one of those orbs that he'd seen the leader Easterlings use back in Arcaena.

He got another message before he could take a closer look.

Alert! You have leveled up! 49 -> 50

+5 Strength +1 Dexterity, +2 Vitality, +2 Magic, +3 Mental Control, +1 Will, +2 free attributes.

You have earned a new Skill! Please select from the following options:

Merge

You may merge all your “Summon” Skills. All current Skill upgrades will be applied to the new Skill, where applicable.

Upgrade [Multithreading]

Choose: Increase the processing speed of Directed Threads OR increase the mental flexibility of Directed Threads

Upgrade [Transmute to Glass]

Decreases the heat requirements. Increases the attribute resonance of transmuted glass.

He was sure he looked quite mad back in his real body, because he was grinning like a loon.

“Who else just leveled up?” Bia said with a whoop and held up one hand. Brin transmuted Rhun’s shield back into a Mirror Man so that he could give her a high-five. Rhun just groaned and sank to the ground breathing heavily.

Vitor also wanted a high-five, but missed the first two tries and bonked Brin on his glass nose.

Speaking was tricky with all the Eveladis in the air, so Brin summoned a ball of flame and projected his voice from there. Traveling through the Eveladis distorted the sound a bit. Even with this workaround, it was affecting the sound and making it sound just a bit off so that you could tell it wasn’t natural, but at least it got through. “I really wish I could talk to Hogg right now.”

He would bet his tenuously connected right hand that Lumina was going to want him to take the Merge, but Hogg always saw the dark horse Skill that everyone else would overlook. He might have a good argument for one of the others.

“T…too bad he’s not h-h-here, then,” said Bedelia. She was leaning against the wall, her black blood dribbling through her fingers on her stomach and pooling on the white floor.

“Oh! Oh, gods! Are you ok? What do we do?” Bia rushed over to Bedelia’s side, but then paused, hands hovering, not sure how to help.

Brin shrugged. “I don’t see why we have to do anything. Bedelia, if we give you the Grand Focus, will you be able to get it down to the ground floor?”

“Of course!” she said.

“Will you be able to carry it down, in your hands, and not just chuck it off the side to let it shatter on the ground in a million pieces?”

Bedelia laughed, but it turned into a coughing fit that spat black flecks all over the white portions of her costume. “In that case. Not sure. I… I’d need to see it first.”

“Brin, I think she’s really hurt! How do we help her?” asked Bia.

“She’ll be fine,” Brin insisted. “Let’s find that Grand Focus.”

Tower Message. Area clear. Opening secure storage.

Since he’d miraculously kept all the Eveladis flying around from infecting his illusion magic, Brin still had his Invisible Eyes throughout the Tower, including in the Gallery of Exotic Art.

He saw the one ordinary, unspectacular painting of a woman swing open, and reveal a secret door on the wall. Inside, in an alcove barely large enough to fit it, lay the Grand Focus of Keetes.

He gave Rhun the Morphic Shield back, and then moved his awareness back to his real body. “We’ve found it. Let’s go fetch it, and we can finally be done with this mess.”