Chapter 11: Stray Souls
Tongues of fire sprawled down through the cave in heated momentum, threads of fiery mana merging into a giant maw that made for the crowd of skeletons. It swallowed half of the flood and coughed out piles of burnt bones all across the opening. Furious flames roared in the Skeleton ranks. They leapt from one bone to another, set them aflame and slithered down to suck at the foul mana keeping the corpses animated.
Another wave splashed on the ground and stretched in a fiery blanket to lash round the Skeletons' feet. Bones melted, and a dozen of the creatures plopped down and started clawing at the earth, still trying to crawl toward the undead out in the front, refusing to die out.
“Ouch!” Nomad yelped as he caught some stray darts in his passing. His chest piece burned with a darkish blaze, draped with a half-melted liquid that glinted silver. Even then the tip of his sword blasted skulls and rib cages alike, eyes widening with what Valens thought as wicked pleasure.
And so, the world burned with glorious flames.
Valens found himself caught in a moment of deep contemplation facing this sickening picture of scorched earth and melted bones. Of elements reaping souls no longer existed. Of Warmagic showing its real face to him.
The drain from his mana pool seemed so little a price against the devastation he unleashed in a moment. He thought, with no deliberate purpose, of a different scenario in which his own people replaced the animated corpses below. The Inquisition and its dogs. The paranoid fools and their masters. Men who knew so little about magic, but feared it all the same just because they’d grown listening to a bunch of stories.
What would they have thought of him had they seen this scene? Certainly it would add to the claims raised against him as a dabbler of forbidden magic. He was beyond that line, now, having cast more than a few spells destructive in nature by his own hand, but then, there were no such lines in this world. None that he was aware of, at least.
His fingers dulled around where the fiery threads stretched forth. The numbness spread across his arms, and down his chest where it burned a painful song. Still, he pulled them high and directed the Inferno toward the running undead, washing the ranks of Skeletons still hot on his tail.
You have managed to defeat [Skeleton - lvl 16]! For killing a creature above your own level, you are granted bonus experience.
You have leveled up! 5 Stat Points granted!
You have managed to defeat [Skeleton - lvl 15]! For killing a creature above your own level, you are granted bonus experience.
You have leveled up! 5 Stat Points granted!