Chapter 4: Wicked and Absurd
Valens turned with his bones groaning and joints cracking, already preparing another Fireball to deal with the bunch. A pair of them shambling forward. Clacking their jaws in a way that sounded like a sort of twisted laughter. Hissing through rotten teeth with their eye sockets shining painfully empty.
It seemed this quest was physical in nature just as it was magical. Having a Magus play the warrior could be an amusing notion had the subject of it not been Valens. He’d pay to see a fellow disciple of arcane have a go at a group of soldiers.
Himself, not much.
But he’d grown accustomed to a degree of bad luck lately, and he’d learned how to respond.
He raised his head and gave them a weighing look, remembering how the last pair reacted to his spell. One of them had lost a leg to the fire while the other proved a touch more resilient, and if he had to guess it must be something about the difference between the numbers that hovered over their heads. One of them was Level 8, and the other Level 6.
“So you’re helping me out by letting me know about it, eh?” Valens muttered. “I suppose I must appreciate the gesture.”
So then, these new ones were stronger. A Level 11 and a Level 10. Didn’t look much different except they had fancied a pair of rusted swords rather than spears. That was good. Ask any soldier worth his training about the ancient weapons, then likely he’d say a spear is a better weapon than a sword. Easier to use, for one. Had more reach and a nasty, sharp tip.
There was one thing that made him pause. The mana well in his chest had dwindled somewhat with the use of Fireballs, and it wasn’t renewing fast enough to keep up with the output. By the size of it, if he were to deplete all the source, it would take about an hour and a half for it to get back to full.
He had to pay attention to the amount he was using for his spells, as for some reason he couldn’t reach out to the ambient mana around him to replenish the source — or rather, he couldn’t use the ambient mana at all. He couldn’t accelerate the speed at which it spilled into his own mana source, which boggled his mind.
That wasn’t how magic worked. The notion that he was limited as to how he could use mana didn’t quite sit with the fact that he had his own mana source now. What was the reason for it, exactly, when you had all the mana in the world?
Questions for later, he presumed, as the skeleton pair came stumbling closer. He lifted the Fireball, and was about to fling it when he caught something strange in his sound vision. Resonance showed him other outlines, cadavers that followed the first pair… a dozen of them.
Trouble was, these ones seemed faster and stronger.