Sacrifice Mage

Maybe I should have tested beforehand whether or not Reverence Everlife was as much of a cheat code as I kept thinking it was. It definitely wasn’t granting me blanket immortality, though I had suspected it was beyond a simple fancy shield too.

Which was exactly what it proved to be.

As my golden defence broke under the immense stress of Yulien’s Opal-ranked Aspect, its power didn’t completely disappear. Sure, I suffered a terrific, heated blast that started cooking me alive as well as flinging me across the battlefield. But that was it. I was aware of being burned alive, of achieving liftoff and flying away from my opponent.

I was intensely, acutely present in the moment.

Immolation burst to life in the next heartbeat. I didn’t even need a second to come up with it. A miniature inferno burned to life on and around me, completely nullifying the incinerating power of Yulien’s draconic breath. I was even able to regain my footing, having been forced backwards by only half a dozen feet or so.

The stream of molten magma ended soon after. Yulien seemed to realize that heat wasn’t working against me any longer. He was going to switch tactics.

I was still hurting all over, still half-cooked because it had taken me a second or two to remember that Flare’s Ignition Charge made me completely immune to heat from the get-go, way better than Absorption could.

But I blessed Reverence Everlife. Somehow, it had granted me that moment of clarity even in the middle of being blasted by so much firepower. It had let me retain my awareness, my ability to think clearly, even when I was burning up. Reverence Everlife had come in clutch in its own way.

If only Vital Mana would have worked too. But the heat from the lava was coming as a continuous beam, the one kind of damage that my Vitality Augmentation wouldn’t work against.

“Interesting,” Yulien murmured. “I see why they speak so highly of you. You are extremely adaptable.”

I breathed in and out, trying to get a hold of the pain ricocheting all over my body. Bastard had burned me good. I was even a little afraid of looking down and seeing the extent of the damage. But despite the torturous agony, it didn’t feel like I was terribly impaired. My limbs were intact, my reasoning clear. I could still do this.

So I rushed in.

Yulien’s eyes widened at seeing the frontal charge. His Aspect was changing form again, the purplish red mana creating a sleeker design over him. It reminded me of what I experienced when I used Essence with Sacrifice.

A mass of writhing tentacles burst off Yulien’s form, several firing straight at me. Reflexive Mana had me dodging them all, then trapping them on casts of Field Manipulation left behind at every step I took. At one point, when several of the crushing tendrils fell in from above and lashed in from both sides, I used Empowered Deflection to take care of the ones I couldn’t evade.

And then I was nearly on him, reaching my opponent so quickly that his eyes had widened in surprised. I was buoyed by the cheers of the Zairgonites at my back, driven forward with the realization that this was an enemy I couldn’t mess around with.

Before I reached him for real, I Sacrificed the Ignition Charge burning around me.

[ Sacrifice

You have Sacrificed 1 [Moderate] Cast of 1 Core Property: Ignition Charge. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward: Ignition Charge duration reset. Caster can now manifest and manipulate Ignition Charge at will within a radius of 6 meters. ]

Yulien blinked at seeing the wreath of flames around me disappear. Then it reappeared a second later on my mace, a rush of overheated energy flowing through me thanks to Sacrifice. With Concentration, Capacity, and Massless Interaction, I intensified the heat on, in, and around my mace to an obliterating degree. One hit, and Yulien was done. Tit for fucking tat.

My mace swung in. At the same instant, Yulien’s Aspect burgeoned explosively.

The detonation that rocked through the area had me hurtling backwards for about twenty feet, though I was careful to make sure I maintained my footing and my attention on my enemy.

Everyone had gone quiet, wondering if that was it. But it was not to be. The smoke cleared quickly, revealing that the Claderov noble’s Aspect had taken on the form of a much bigger creature, one whose head I had now turned to mush with that blow. Drat.

“You seem intent on injuring me for real, Mage Moreland,” Yulien said, his mouth slashing up. “One would think you had it in for me.”

“I’d have died less than a minute ago if I hadn’t been able to stop you.”

He actually had the audacity to look offended, like I had flung a baseless accusation. “Oh please. They say you’re high Gold. Surely you wouldn’t have died from just a single blow. Unless Zairgon mages are that weak. Or maybe that’s just specific to Ring Four…”

I knew this jackass was winding me up on purpose, and I was still falling for it because my blood pressure was rising with every word that came out of his horseshit mouth.

So I answered my shooting an orb of manifested Gravity at him. He dodged pretty easily. His Aspect was reshaping itself once again, this time breaking from his body entirely to create strange flying creatures. A mix between a bird and a flying reptile with too many teeth.

Airborne piranhas. What a nightmare.

I was a little overwhelmed with how many he sent my way, though. They weren’t difficult to take care of. Cast after cast of Repulsion Burst had them stopping mid-air where my net of Sacrifice threads easily took care of them. I was gaining the ability to absorb their essence, according to the reward, while also gaining increased resistance with every Sacrifice.

“Behind you!”

The loud shout pierced through the battle a heartbeat before my own instincts kicked in. I whirled just in time to see the rapier flashing in with a powerful stab. Despite managing to deflect the first blow, I was still sent careening off to one side.

Once again, Reflexive Mana saved me. I was jerked away from the subsequent stabs by my Augmentation. I considered using Drain to bring us to a more level playing field, but I’d need to hit the guy with my mana first, and that was looking to be a challenge… until I cast Field Manipulation in a wide circle.

I didn’t know how he had gotten behind me. Some sort of teleportation-based Augmentation or Affix probably, because I was sure I’d have seen him move otherwise.

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“Mighty fine trick you’ve got there,” Yulien said, gritting his teeth a little.

I scowled a bit at trick.

His Aspect flared. I still wanted to ask what in the world it even was. Those tendrils were back, thicker and larger than before, erupting straight form beneath the ground around him to completely ruin the arena and thereby cause Field Manipulation to dissipate.

This guy… it was like he had performed his homework and knew exactly how to counter me.

The tendrils shot in again, and I responded the same way. Once more, I rushed forward to meet my opponent. Quick blows to either side helped deflect any that got close. When they still managed to bypass my guard to strike me, I tanked right through and kept charging, only slowing the barest amount.

I grinned at the flash of surprise on Yulien’s face. Right. Whatever impressions and ideas he already had, he couldn’t know that my Sacrifice of his Aspects was making me increasingly resistant to them.

This time, he fought me head on, rapier vs mace. His reach was a lot greater than mine, so soon enough, I was the one who had to be careful about getting hit, despite the fact that I had charged in.

“You’re far too good with that mace, Mage Moreland,” he said, talking as if he wasn’t one mistake away from getting his skull bashed in by a spiky hammer.

I, unfortunately, needed a tiny break in the fighting to reply. Otherwise, I was sure I’d bite my tongue off accidentally. “And you’re no mage at all, are you, Lord Yulien?”

“Please, your mockery falls flat. I’d suggest you focus on not dying.”

He was adding his Aspect to the play again. More tendrils lashed out. A manifestation somewhere behind him created a wolflike creature that rushed me down. I was nearly overwhelmed again, forced to rely on Reflexive Mana and Empowered Deflection to get away.

Right. Fighting someone who was Opal-ranked—an entire rank tier ahead of me—head on was only going to be to my detriment.

I needed power. I needed to make use of my real advantages in this fight.

So, I focused on my Aspects. Orbs of Gravity came to life around me as I retreated. It hurt to fall back a bit like that, but this was all contributing towards my eventual victory.

Yulien tried to have his wolf follow me, but one quick shot of a gravity orb shattered right through its body, stopping it in its tracks. That gave me more than enough time to get into position.

And to pull the remainder of the wolf into my clutches, Sacrificing it a second later.

[ Sacrifice

You have Sacrificed 1 [Moderate] Opposing Cast of 1 Opal-ranked Aspect [1] / 1 [Moderate] Opal-ranked Essence [2]. Windfall bonus activated.

Reward [1]: Damage of next opposing cast is reduced by 1.5x. Essence of cast element has now crossed threshold for manifest. Essence manifesting…

Reward [2]: Opal-ranked Essence of a Menagerie Tamer now manifests around your body with tangible prowess for 3 hours and 5 minutes. All Iron-ranked Attributes raised by 15 Ranks, all Silver-ranked Attributes raised by 10 Ranks, and all Gold-ranked Attributes raised by 5 ranks for every battle encountered for the next 3 hours and 5 minutes. ]

There. I finally had it. The manifestation of the Essence I was gathering. I had wondered what would happen once I collected enough Essence. The answer to that appeared to be something akin to when I Sacrificed monster parts.

It wasn’t perfect. I was pretty sure the rank boosts and their duration was shorter than if I had Sacrificed a similarly-ranked physical part of my opponent.

But I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Yulien seemed to be getting the same idea as I was. At least, that was the impression I got as he began manifesting the true heights of his Aspect. Lavender and crimson mana whipped around him in a storm, different chunks of it solidifying into different forms.

I watched as a full-fledged dragon came to life centred on his body. It had multiple heads too, each one brimming with a different secondary Aspect in its maw. Then there were the oversized flowerlike creations farther back, their buds bursting open to unleash mortars of green energy arcing through the air. More tendrils were there too. They were encased in gleaming mana as they came at me like a ravenous tidal wave.

Of course, I wasn’t just gawking. The primary function of the distance was to create enough space for me to cast everything I needed. Everything I was capable of.

Dozens of Gravity Orbs floated around me, pulling in the ripped ground and the heat I was manifesting everywhere courtesy of Flare. I was directing a lot of it near Yulien. He wouldn’t feel it that easily, not when he was floating way up in the air while all my manifested energy was being stuffed underground with Concentration.

Moments later, the mortaring blasts reached me at the same time that the dragon fired.

The exchange of our powers was everything I was hoping for. It would have been great if I could have empowered myself beyond what the manifestation of the Claderov lord’s Aspect was giving me, but what I had was enough.

My outer ring of orbiting gravity collided with the bulldozing wave of tendrils, the orbs shattering apart to throw their gathered debris like cannon shots in every direction, ripping through the tendrils entirely. Then came the mortars from the strange flowers, plus the multicoloured beams from the dragon heads. They interacted weirdly with the spinning orbs of Gravity, but ultimately, every single one was thrown off course.

I was safe. Safe enough to continue gathering power in my hands just like I had been doing for a while now, while Sacrificing cast after cast of Flare to empower it up higher.

I compressed the mana harder and harder while channelling Gravity, Flare, and Illumination. Concentration and Capacity condensed the energy, Gravity wrapping them up further with Massless Interaction and Granular Control, while Imbuement turned the mixture into a chaotic, blade-shaped blitz, barely remaining steady in my hands.

But I didn’t unleash Starburst. Not yet. Not until the opening I was seeking appeared.

Yulien wasn’t going to be stopped so easily, of course. His Aspect grew again, more of his creations forming to life even as the others were torn apart or exhausted.

A battle of attrition might have favoured me if I could last that long. The problem was that even if I could exhaust his capacity to channel mana, I could very well be terribly injured or incapacitated before reaching that point. If not outright killed.

Which was why passivity wasn’t going to work. I needed them to take the fight to him. I needed to carve out my own opportunity.

That led me to finally unleashing all the Flare I had concentrated into the ground around the location my opponent was standing—well, floating. Pillars of eradicating heat erupted from just beneath the first layer of earth, shooting skywards like geysers from the Pits itself.

The sheer intensity of the series of blasts tore through all the Aspects that the Claderov lord had called on. Wolves were ripped apart, hulking dinosaurs melted and burst, the huge dragon falling apart as chunks of it simply vaporized under the immense heated pressure I had unleashed.

However Yulien might have sought to attack me, the tables had turned completely. He was the one on the defensive now.

Of course, my sudden earth-shattering detonations didn’t reach Yulien. He was powerful and fast. Having already taken to the air when channelling his Aspect, he had now climbed even higher, floating safe from the mess I was causing on the ground.

Now, he was the one free enough to start casting, to potentially start raining destruction upon me from above.

Or so he thought.

Starburst burned bright in my hands as I started to release the compressed pressure and energy. My arm swung, ready to obliterate everything in the air above me—

Only to freeze. Planes of crystalline power had caught me, quickly materializing across my body to petrify me in place. Panic rose hard and fast like bile before vomit, but it lessened greatly when I saw my opponent was afflicted with the same issue. He couldn’t wail on me while I was immobilized.

“I think we’ve seen enough,” Guildmaster Lancko said.

The rush of blood in my ears finally started slowing down. That was when the world came back to me.

I had been focusing so hard on the battle itself that it was only now I heard how much the crowd was yelling and cheering. The fenceposts had taken a hefty beating, their boundaries strewn with the remains of our Aspects and the destruction we had caused.

Ascelkos picked up where the Guildmaster had left off. “What a wonderful showing of the greatness we can all achieve with the power of the Weave!” he shouted, which was answered by a raucous cacophony from the spectators. “Please praise our glorious combatants who embody the true heights of magic!”

More cheers. More applause. I was hardly paying attention, my heart still thundering and adrenaline still singing in my veins and arteries.

My eyes were still on my opponent. The Claderov lord was descending onto the ground. He looked like he was about to contest the Guildmaster’s interference, but then, a woman in white robes and armour came into view, and his expression changed entirely.

Where he had been brimming with ferocity and aggression, his face was now a carefully-maintained mask of neutrality. Even his aura was reduced now.

“I think we’ve had enough fun for one day,” she said in strangely accented New Zair. Her glimmering violet eyes turned to me. “Thank you for the excellent showing, Mage Moreland.”

“Yes,” Yulien said stiffly. “Thank you for the enlightening spectacle.” Then he turned to the Guildmaster. “And thank you for the opportunity, Guildmaster.”

With a short nod, the woman led Yulien away more or less like he was an unruly puppy.

I tried not to glare at Lancko. Had he had a hand in setting it all up? All I could tell that whatever was going on with the Claderov noble wasn’t over yet.

At least I got some nice rank ups for my efforts.