Chapter 33: Boundaries
The Lifesurge threads squished tight between the intricate canals of the web, pushing their way across the stretch with burning ambition. Valens kept one eye over them, the other eye resting on the wriggling Wards too stubborn to quit.
They had him fixed there on the ground by several tendrils. Time and time again they lashed at him, and Valens kept them at bay with waves of lifemana. He couldn’t make a move at them without messing up his control over the Lifesurges. He couldn’t spend another thread to deal with them both. He needed them alive to reach the Necromancer’s web. He needed them alive—
But damned if it hurt. It hurt so much. His body was aflame, veins burning under his ribcage, waves of excruciating agony lancing up from his thighs. Blood pooled in the mud beneath him. Painted it a vile, brownish crimson. The air reeked of his own life seeping away, and the rot of the monsters stuck with him.
His teeth crunched against each other when he clamped his jaw shut. He focused solely on the sound vision, on the Lifesurge threads trying to find their way into the Necromancer’s dot. They bashed against the edges of the canals, lost their course mid-way, and got jerked around like mindless stones rolling down a maze of caves.
Until finally, they came across a particularly large dot blinking dangerously bright. There was no way to skirt around it. He had to pass them through it if he wanted to reach the center of the web. Clenching his teeth, Valens sent his surges drilling into the dot, paused when a surprised hiss dinned in his ears.
Is this an Oarfang?
Lifeward pushed right after the surges. Painted the creature’s frame in his mind. Heavy bones, full of waves sloshing with the Necromancer’s rot. His surges splashed into it as if Valens himself had laid a hand over its sturdy structure, and speared their way up to its core.
Untying the knots of the sourceline, he hardly had the time to check the notification before he continued his way. One source line after another, the Oarfangs hissing, the Olifants screaming in his mind, the chaos, the zest of it all, burning deep in his chest, burning him with the dangerous satisfaction.
Miles and miles of canals. An endless pursuit in which he came close to losing himself. Too much. There was just too much in this web for him to understand. How was the Necromancer doing this? How giant of a mana pool would you need to keep an army of them fed all at once?
He was a fly, a tiny insect against this terrible magus’s deep reserves. But tiny as he might be, he just needed a single hole to dig his way in. He wouldn’t even see it coming. The bastard was busy fighting off the Undead Lich and the Lightmaster both.
Resistance on the way. Valens felt his control growing weak. Felt the strength seep through his fingers. His skin prickled. Then it went cold. A sudden cold that had him shiver senseless in the din.
He was about to succumb to it. Getting too tired to continue. What was he thinking? He was no Warmagus of the old, the ancient masters who could wield any element by their will. He had no experience. Blocking the pain and acting as if he didn’t feel anything, thinking he could just do it by simply relying on Apathy.