Tyrants of Earth - The Legend of Artigan

"Fundamentally all skills from the humblest of Commons to the most powerful of Epics defy reality itself. Make mockery of basic logic, and, I believe, it was always available to us. Even to regular humans. I wish to forge a new skill with my own will, while being a mere ordinary human. I believe there is something there worth searching for."

-Zahiru, the Settler Swordfront.

——

Ryan remembered a quote from his favorite swordmaster. Not [Swordmaster] in class because he had remained on Earth after losing his safety life, but swordmaster because he was respected by all.

He had a vague feeling that quote was relevant here.

It was like Luneia was warping the world around her with fairly simple and low rarity skills.

Throwing away her helmet and shield, dodging knives at the last second, all of it to maximize the output of her [Reckless Charge]. Ryan could see the logic, he’d done it himself with his skills—it was only that he had never felt like the world itself was reacting to his skills.

[Face Me] was an Uncommon skill. It was also supposed to be something he should’ve been able to shrug off with his [Rebellious] title.

But it was like the world was holding his head in place to stare at her.

She had made a mental skill into a physical one and demanded it to hold his damned head in place.

This was something that some dragonslayers were supposed to be able to do. Where a common [Double Stab] could stab someone from a mile away. But that was more reasonable than this… this was as if she got to define the skill herself.

How? This is beyond max leveled skills.

But that was all he had time for. Ryan ducked a swing and stopped himself from going for the knife throw.

Hesitation because she might use his own attacks to buff herself with [Reckless Charge]. Unless he was certain he could kill her with one hit, all he was doing by throwing a knife was buffing his opponent.

What kind of crazy person fights like this?

Naturally, it was someone who died in the fifth realm despite their talent.

Once again he felt the pull of her skill take away his own speed and maneuverability.

Ryan pulled on the concepts of [The Rogue Adventurer] to make his skills work better against hers. He dashed away as [The Knight] tried to use her own class to counter his concepts.

The Knight shines a light in the dark, a [Rogue] could do nothing to her but—

But the outpost was an urban ground where The Rogue Adventurer was in his element. You tried to catch him once, good luck trying to catch him again.

Luneia clenched her teeth in frustration.

“Damn, how the hell did you get so good at that?”

“What did you expect? I’m [The Rogue Adventurer! Escaping from authority is my specialty.”

“More like being a damned weasel.”

Ryan sprinted around and leaped into a building. He immediately threw his aura at the window across from him, shattering it and leapt upstairs. [The Knight] smashed through both walls right after him—only to realize that [The Rogue Adventurer] hadn’t actually left the building. He was—

Ryan leapt out of the second storey and threw three knives with volatile mana imbued into them. [The Knight] swept all three of them away with a surprisingly dextrous maneuver with her lance and—leapt right into the air like a very angry pointy bullet.

[Instant Dodge]

Ryan zipped away as [The Knight] shot high into the sky.

He was getting better at understanding her speed now. Luneia was staggeringly fast when she wanted to be and it was something she held back on using until she thought she had an opening.

Ryan still had to use his damned skill before she moved or risk getting impaled. The timing had been precise there considering she was far, far faster than he was.

No fear to build momentum, her aura for some reason countered his—but why?

Ryan didn’t even realize different auras could counter others. It wasn’t like Luneia’s aura was of higher quality or had more quantity than him. It just didn’t seem to matter.

Like a conceptual counter?

He was still thinking about her entire skillset while he continued his plan. [The Knight] was high, high in the air still, lacking any real aerial maneuverability skills to move around.

A perfect sitting duck. Only this one was glaring at him and was encased in armor and aura he couldn’t overwhelm.

Ryan started pulling more knives out of his straps, highly crafted knives courtesy from the Kingdom of Valmere littered the sky as he threw them at her.

He had some good practice throwing things at silly [Warriors] back on Earth.

This was by far a faster volley.

“Tch! [Recall Armament]!”

There’s that Rare skill.

Her enchanted shield appeared on her other arm, blocking all the knives imbued with [Volatile Antimagic Throw] that exploded around her. The shield was a little too well enchanted for his volatile mana to explode her enchantments—though the explosions and the flying metal did give just enough distraction for her to miss him jumping up.

Ryan leapt high, high into the air. His sword expanded, twenty feet in length.

He held it past his shoulder, almost like a baseball pitcher if they were in midair. A ridiculous stance that would have the Settler Swordfront shaking his head.

But style mattered for The Rogue Adventurer.

And Ryan swung down.

[Aura Condensation: Sword] + [Arcane Volatility]

“Hmph!”

[The Knight] met the enormous red sword in the air with the tip of her lance. It cut through his red aura like a hot knife through butter once again. Her shield taking whatever was left over from hitting her face.

Though her aura couldn’t quite counter the [Arcane Volatility] that he imbued into his shattersword fragments.

They exploded on [The Knight’s] shield, the explosion sending her plummeting to the ground, smashing into a completely different building, collapsing it entirely around her and sending debris into the air.

Ryan landed lightly on the dirt ground and started to walk calmly and casually towards the collapsed building.

This was normally where he would start to get a trickle of fear back into him for it.

Nothing from [The Knight].

Unlike Tar’el, she was a true master of her own aura. Or she just never got afraid.

Well, he wanted to check that of course. Was it possible for someone to be in so much control of their own aura that he could never feel fear from them?

“I think I get it.”

[The Knight] walked out from the ruined building, completely unharmed and unscratched. [Reckless Charge] had come off cooldown and she was completely unamused.

“What did you get?”

“Why you’re so strong. It’s not just a mastery of all your skills, aura and class is it?”

For the first time, Luneia stayed silent.

“You’ve mastered every aspect you could and then made them all work together. Your aura, your class, your skills.” Ryan shook his head. “And here I was told that aura and class mastery was something you worked on after mastering your skills.”

It was said that if lower realm adventurers used their skills like finishing moves then higher realm adventurers used skills like they didn’t have resources and it was just another part of their body they moved.

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Ryan was realizing there was a level above that.

Where skills forced reality to conform to their concepts.

Then you combined everything together so they flowed in one. Luneia’s aura was completely saturated in the concepts of a [Knight], so were his skills, and then everything vice versa. A perfect unity between skills, soul and class.

Luneia spat.

“It isn’t that easy, you know. Class resonance and aura isn’t something people just pick up. It’s easier to level up skills first.”

It was like she was trying to convince him not to go for it. As if she knew he would figure out how to do it.

“Well, they don’t have the advantages I do.”

It sounded obvious now that he thought about it. His auras were always tinged with his class but never had he truly tried to imbue concepts into them explicitly. It was the same with skills. Was this the next level? Skills that demanded reality to conform to its concepts because the concepts were so heavy?

It was indeed as Zahiru once mentioned about skills.

Now a different master stood in front of him that had understood that fact and pushed skills beyond what lower realms should have been capable of.

The way she used her skills reminded him of when he tried to force the world to conform to his will.

He had failed then.

But now he saw the way forward.

I want that.

And all of his classes began to stir.

——

Sector Ten…

Pinkie’s body changed before she even hit the water. A streamlined teardrop shape mixed in with two giant arms. If you looked from afar, then you could uncharitably say that Pinkie might look like a giant tuna fish with arms.

It sounded funny until you realized both arms were the same mantis shrimp design she had just used to punch the Passive Tyrant out of the air.

Underwater, that had been the next stage in her plan. No matter how well the Passive Tyrant could control her body and was superior in power, the drag under water could add… small percentages back in her favor.

All minor advantages she desperately needed now that the Passive Tyrant was actively trying to hit her.

She stomped through the water like she had on air and reached Pinkie’s position in seconds. Pinkie barely had time to angle her arm to collide with the Passive Tyrant’s fist. A vacuum filled the space around them as the collision happened, collapsing almost immediately as both [Shapeshifter] and Tyrant went flying in opposite ends of the water.

Pinkie’s other arm broke out of its spurs and released another explosion prematurely in the water.

The damned shockwaves from the first collision had broken the latches on her other mantis arms. Pinkie readjusted, there was no point having two mantis fists if this was going to happen again.

She dove deep, chasing the form of a rapidly sinking human in the waters.

The Passive Tyrant launched forward as Pinkie ducked and dove instead of facing her head on. The fist grazed her tail and blew a hole straight through.

Pinkie killed her pain receptors and formed another arm as she kept diving, the Passive Tyrant hot on her fins.

While Pinkie might be able to punch harder, it took time to contract the muscles for the mantis punch. Time and delicate conditions that she didn’t have if a punch actually hit her.

Meanwhile the Passive Tyrant could just keep throwing haymakers after haymakers.

This wasn’t like what she had hoped at all.

The Passive Tyrant was the one on the hunt and Pinkie was quickly finding out that whatever dynamics of the water she had been counting on wasn’t enough to make a difference in total physical capability.

They had long past ten thousand feet under sea level too. Not only that the density of this ocean was considered at least twice as much as Earth’s. At this point it was equivalent to being at the deepest point of the Mariana Trench.

Or the equivalent of an elephant standing on every single square inch on your body.

Pinkie’s body had been specially crafted for this environment. A teardrop shape with tentacles in place of her tail fins. A sonar style organ fitted between her eyes seeing everything around her.

The Passive Tyrant acted like she was still operating on air. It just meant that Pinkie was at a disadvantage considering she herself was more comfortable in the air.

Or it was just that the Passive Tyrant that was actually starting to flex her muscles.

She turned around at the dark incessant humanoid outline that was hounding her from behind.

Her mantis shrimp arm was finally ready again, and she let it launch. A curved ivory fang hidden where her ‘fist’ was tucked inside.

The Passive Tyrant didn’t back down. She launched a straight punch. Not a haymaker like before but one with perfect form that started with a kick and rotation. An underwater fighting style she had developed just to fight the monsters in the deep.

The clash between Pinkie and the Passive Tyrant lit up the darkness. A vacuum bubble swallowing them up as water turned to superheated plasma and both of them went flying once again.

Though this time Pinkie was the one that had lost the exchange in physical strength. She went soaring through the deep once more.

With a smile on her face.

The Passive Tyrant regained her bearings first and grimaced. She pulled a thick bone out of her arm and flexed it. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen the hidden blade, the Passive Tyrant simply didn’t expect whatever Pinkie had hidden to have pierced through her muscles. When she tried to crush the bone fang with her hand she was surprised to realize she couldn’t crack it easily.

[Spatial Displacement] + [Rapid Transformation]

Pinkie appeared in the spreading pool of the Passive Tyrant’s blood. Swallowing it up eagerly.

‘Yes, I made that out of your own bone.’

Pinkie sent that telepathic message in an attempt to shock and horrify. She had readied a fist.

The Passive Tyrant just grinned, she held an unnatural design fang of her bone and used it—

Like a knife.

Slash.

Pinkie’s launching hand was cut, her body was cut, the water was cut, space itself was cut before it repaired itself.

Pinkie hovered there bisected, realizing her mistake. She had accidentally given the Passive Tyrant a weapon she could use and it was the dumbest thing anyone could have done.

The [Shapeshifter] did not hesitate to leave the lower half of her body behind, her Epics activating in full

[Mass Regeneration] + [Remote Shapeshift: Draconic]

[Remote Shapeshift: Deep Sea Jelly Octoloid]

The Passive Tyrant had been mid swing when the bone in her hand shifted into an electric draconic sac, one that couldn’t withstand the crushing force she was using. It exploded into an electric flash that burnt the skin and the eyes.

Eyes that Pinkie wasn’t using.

A human fist flew out from her body and punched the Passive Tyrant in the chest, making her go flying deeper into the depths. Pinkie turned towards the other half of her body that had turned into a wide net octopus, taking in as much of the Passive Tyrant’s blood from the ocean as it could. She reached out and absorbed it into herself.

So much blood, it accepted her almost completely. Pinkie had faced an impossible creature hunting her and had even managed to take her pound of flesh.

Already, most of her bones had been replaced with the Passive Tyrant’s. Her marrow started to produced more of that precious impossible blood that carried the essence of the Passive Tyrant.

Pinkie threw away the tuna shape as she turned back into a humanoid. She was still fifty percent bigger than the Passive Tyrant—which was more than enough to trigger a true Legend Manifestation.

[Mystical Shapeshifting…]