[287] 4.8 Cheating Death
The demon floats triumphantly above Chloe and me as it continues to gather a quite frankly excessive amount of [Ether] into its ultimate attack. I told Chloe that I had this, but in truth, I wasn’t quite sure what my Skill would do. Keep me alive, yes, but there were a lot of degrees of ‘technically alive’, from ‘intense pain’ to ‘comatose and vegetative’ to ‘turned to paste in that moment before biology fully gives way to physics’.
Magic is, well, it defies the very idea of laws of nature and physics. Not five minutes ago, I took a punch that could have flattened a skyscraper and still I have the strength to fight. Not to mention that I’m flying under my own power, can summon a swordstaff out of a subspace [Inventory], and am looking at an eight-foot tall demon straight out of Milton. Then again, my own class has a distinctly Luciferian aesthetic, so maybe it’s fate that the two of us are destined to fight.
I close my eyes and center myself. All my [Ether] circulating through the channels alongside my blood vessels is being called up from my core, ready to help me overcome this assault.
I won’t be able to push the attack back. I can deflect it slightly, but not to the extent needed to keep the attack’s blast radius from taking out half of campus and who knows how many people. Neither of those is acceptable. What I can do, though, is concentrate the blast inward, direct it straight down like an apple corer, where my body will absorb the brunt of the blast. There’ll be the mother of all sinkholes in the middle of the practice field, but I’m sure some [Earth Elementalists] will be able to handle it.
As long as this attack doesn’t do more than about 30,000 damage to me, I should be able to survive it. Note to self if I survive: it is most unwise to field-test a brand new Skill, especially when it’s so qualitatively different from every other one I’ve had to this point. Something I will make sure to teach my students if I make it out of this alive. Ah well. We live, and if we don’t die first, we learn.
“No more words?” the demon asks. “No final remarks, no trite quips, not even a goodbye kiss for your little girlfriend? Just going to stand there in defiance of the end?”
I float silently, my eyes filled with resolve. Chloe’s father’s words echo in my mind. ‘I have to survive’, he said. ‘Even at the cost of others, for the sake of the universe’. I know my mission is important, but I refuse to forsake those I can save now just for the potential to save others who may never exist in sixteen thousand years. And besides, he wrote himself: I have the power to protect us. Chloe and I together have the power to protect ourselves, each other, and those we care about. I’m choosing to rely on that power, and trust in my own strength.
Glyphs start forming in my mind as I mentally start building the runic configuration for my spell to take effect. A few shielding glyphs and a lot of movement and deflection glyphs. All in all, a complicated array that would have broken my mind to try to Manifest and been impossible to construct in the first place just a few weeks ago, yet fully within my power now.
“You’re sure about this?” my swordstaff asks. “There’s still time to seek another plan.”
“And what? Let fifty thousand people die? I’d– I wouldn’t be worthy of my name if I were so cowardly.”
“Very well, Seraphina. I– If this is the end, then know that it has been an honor.”
“It won’t be the end. I swear it.” With these words, I deposit Filia back into my [Inventory]. A quick clench of my fists and rotation of my shoulders and elbows to get myself perfectly limber, and I’m floating there, waiting to pit my full strength against my latest and greatest adversary.
“Whenever you’re ready,” I say.
“Hah! It really is a shame, girl. Not a speck of fear in your eyes, even in the face of certain death. Credit where credit is due, you stand as a paragon of your otherwise pathetic race. May your death be as swift and painless as I can grant it.” Those two abyssal eyes narrow upon me as the sphere of black energy condenses down from the size of a large bedroom down to a large beach ball.
“Now die. [Abyssal Nexus].”
The attack doesn’t move as quickly as I had expected, but it moves with a certain degree of weight and energy, enough concentrated power that I thought I could vaguely make out the barest hint of gravitational lensing for just a moment. The next instant, it’s upon me. My [Ether] declines precipitously as the final glyphs lock into place and I begin Manifesting the effect into reality.
Meanwhile, my left arm is already showing signs of degradation as I attempt to hold back the attack. There’s no physical mass to it that I can tell, but the force upon me is as though I were trying to bench press a mountain. The Nexus, as the demon called it, moves slowly and implacably. I push at it with every fiber of my being, and I’m quite sure I’m doing all of jack and shit as it continues its descent toward the campus and city below.
“Sera, I can–”
“I know you want to help, Chloe,” I mentally force out between grunts. “But right now, I need you to protect yourself and everyone else. I– I don’t know how bad I’m going to be after this blast has its way with me, and I need you to protect yourself. If we both fall here, it’s all over.”
“I understand, Sera. I don’t like it, but I understand.”
“Keep us all healed. We’re all depending on you.”
“And you, Sera.”
The force of [Abyssal Nexus] tears at my hands just by touching them. It’s small enough that I feel like I should be able to crush the thing in a giant hug, but instead it tears at me, resisting every attempt I make at distorting or tearing it.
I can feel the energy trying to rip my skin from my flesh and my flesh from my bones and the bone from the marrow buried within. Pain sears through me. I feel it and acknowledge it, but refuse to let it deter me from the path I set for myself.
Even though I fly with all my might forward, resisting the implacable attack threatening my home, my family, my students, if I’ve even so much as slowed the damn thing down, I’d be shocked. But I won’t be deterred. With each passing moment, I can also feel new power welling up from within me. My primal need to protect myself, to survive, coupled with my desire to protect and even a little bit of my nascent battle junkie nature.
[Your [Valkyrion’s Defense (Rank I)] has upgraded to [Valkyrion’s Defense (Rank II)].]
[Your [Morningstar’s Triumph (Rank II)] has upgraded to [Morningstar’s Triumph (Rank III)].]
[Your [Valkyrion’s Defense (Rank II)] has upgraded to [Valkyrion’s Defense (Rank III)].]
Individually, each Skill rank doesn’t account to much. Marginal improvements to my combat parameters. A percent here, half a percent there. But all of them together add up.
Fifteen levels of stats, more equipment provided by the System. Stronger weapons, a more powerful form, innate demonic magic enhanced by rituals and formations I’d need months to fully decipher. Those are just some of the disadvantages I’m up against. But this is just practice. Practice for the final fight, the one for all the marbles. To go against the System itself, just as I was created to do.
I won’t die here.
I touch down on the ground below, buckling my knees to resist the strain placed upon me. I am Atlas herself, the weight of a world upon my shoulders. That weight intensifies further, dropping me to one knee. But the pressure only builds further, taxing my bones and tendons, making the titanium and aluminum in my left arm and my wings crumple and then return to normal multiple times each second.
With what tiny bit of energy I can still generate and concentration I can still spare, I fire a [Light]-aligned [Elemental Ether Strike] to provide a bit more upward momentum to buttress myself. I think it might have dissolved the tiniest bit of the Nexus, but the weight returns in an instant, the demon’s own willpower keeping the attack burrowing down upon me, and my friends and family below.
I’m barely holding the attack back even as the ground starts compressing and breaking apart under the enormity of the strain. Mud and dirt and roots and soil begin to craterize from the pressure below me. The process is unrelenting in its cyclical repetition. [Abyssal Nexus] pushes me down, then the ground absorbs the blow for a brief moment. The ground breaks, and I’m pushed down further.
It takes every strand of concentration to withstand the forces of chaos trying to rend my mind and flesh asunder. Combined with the strain of maintaining the glyph network barely keeping the sphere from expanding outward and taking out everything from here to downtown, maybe further? I’m honestly impressed that I’m holding together as well as I am.
“Again you impress me,” the demon taunts. “I never would have imagined that a feeble girl like you would withstand my attack for so long. It is a shame that you did not choose to serve me.”
“No masters.” I spat. “No kings. No surrender. So give me your best, you overgrown hellspawn! And then I’ll send you back there where you belong!”
“Hmph. Now die.”
The weight triples in an instant. My body had barely been keeping pace before, but now I find myself well and truly powerless. My [Etheric Armor] is cracking, exposing my physical wyvernscale armor underneath. I’m being flattened like a pancake, despite my best attempts to resist. If I could tap into my [Overlimit], I’d be able to pop this attack like a bubble. As it is, I’m about to be the one popped, even as my body continues to eke out tiny improvements.
[Your [Etheric Armor (Rank V)] has upgraded to [Etheric Armor (Rank VI)].]
[Your [Valkyrion’s Defense (Rank III)] has upgraded to [Valkyrion’s Defense (Rank IV)].]
[Your [Morningstar’s Triumph (Rank III)] has upgraded to [Morningstar’s Triumph (Rank IV)].]
My [Etheric Armor] has shattered, and my bones aren’t far behind. They’re being reinforced by 64 levels of System-generated stats and no fewer than three different Skills and spells to enhance my stats far beyond what I should be capable of. Still, the tyranny of levels is no joke; each subsequent level is worth more than the one before it. More [Health] and [Ether], greater stat increases, more and more powerful Skills and ranks.
And while I only have my own knowledge and those fragments from my past life, this creature, borne of human nightmares given tangible form by the System, has a fully-optimized combination of Skills, stats, and equipment, not to mention that grotesque body. All designed to kill me.
My body is falling apart. The attack has completely overwhelmed my final defenses. My [Cloister], my girlfriend’s saintly protection, is only just barely holding on. There it goes. Now it’s my own body absorbing the attack as it condenses around me. Bones break and muscle tears. My own brain feels like it’s being assailed from every direction by thousands of blasts of pure chaos.
And yet, through it all, I remain defiant right up until the end, as I must. My body screams in all-encompassing agony, yet I still remain calm, focused, biding my way until the attack has had its way with me. Maybe I’m mad, to remain so sane despite the enormity of the pain shooting through me. But I think I have to be. After all, after facing demigods and now demons, I still seek to battle the undisputed master of the universe. And I’ll do so, no matter what I have to endure to get there.
[Current Stats: [Health]: –2,679 / 12,098; [Ether]: 3,519 / 8,912]
[Current Stats: [Strength]: 322 (Base: 109); [Speed]: 322 (Base: 109); [Vitality]: 391 (Base: 132); [Mind]: 529 (Base: 179)]