River water has been splashing onto me this entire time, so the chill isn’t unexpected, but the sheer force of the Ravendale river throws me off, threatening to send me tumbling downriver.
The forty-foot barbed tentacle slicing through the water faster than I can sprint on land doesn’t help matters either. I have no proper way to propel myself through the water, no skill to aid in swimming apart from raw muscle memory, and that’s not nearly enough to push me out of the way of the sweeping spiked chain of a limb.
But Relentless is active now, flooding my body with enervating power, and the increase it provides me is enough that I’m able to use Bloodstep long before the skill should’ve been available.
The water is dark and heavy around me, and when my world tints red, the force of the river’s movement nearly blasts me apart. I wish I could say the sensation is unfamiliar to me, but I felt this happen to a much greater extent when the dream-Evelyn tore me to pieces again and again.
While it’s nowhere near as powerful as that, it’s enough that instinct screams at me to drop it immediately.
Sweeping barbs that are ever so slightly darker than the lightless, bloody water around them glide through water, deathly silent. It disrupts my blood-form as it passes through me, a spike the size of my arm piercing straight through where my chest would have been, but it doesn’t have the same skill-ending effect that its forceful exhalation did.
Still, the raw force is enough that it sends me tumbling away from the demon, spiraling out into the water end over end as the scarlet fades back into the blackness of the river. Around me, the river churns with blood, the demon’s movement splitting apart everything in its path. I don’t know if any of the humans in Noren’s party die, but I catch sight of a dozen demons getting eviscerated as the tentacle passes through them.
I resurface closer to the whale-demon than I’d like. Being sent head over heels through nearly-freezing water has disoriented me enough that I feel like I was sent hurtling hundreds of feet away.
Instead, when my head pops out of the water, I realize that I’m less than fifty feet from the whale.
A domed roof whistles over me and smashes itself into pieces against the whale’s chitinous skin. Black blood spurts forth where it makes contact, but while that might’ve been a crushing, decisive blow against someone like me, the whale is large enough that the attack only lacerates it.
Thankfully, Noren doesn’t seem to be actively trying to kill me right now. The demon isn’t actively attacking me either, for that matter. The tentacle would’ve killed me sure as anything, yes, but given that another strike hasn’t landed yet, I’m not sure I’m its number one priority.
That’ll be cold comfort if an errant strike hits me, though. I need to get out of this area.
Time remaining: 4:41
Am I getting closer to the demon? The whale is large enough that the flow of the river can’t be affecting it that much, and I don’t see it swimming towards me. I’m not a world-class swimmer, but the soul amalgam grants me the ability to do so proficiently, at least. Why is it gaining on me?
It’s not until a dozen muddy geysers erupt under Noren’s influence that I see what the whale’s doing.
Earth explodes upwards as the level 37 mage tears the riverbed apart. I think it’s meant to be a pincer as he throws more ruined buildings at the whale, something that shatters it from above and pierces it from below, but the twisted streams of muddy water start bending towards the whale as they appear.
I can’t see Noren from my current location, but I see his attack flow towards the same orifices that the whale initially exhaled through.
And then I realize the river around me is flooding towards it as well.
The whale is inhaling.
As soon as I realize what’s happening, I start acting on countermeasures. With a thought, Relentless energy fuels my Phantom Shape. Rather than the spiderlike scythe-limbs I’ve come to favor, I try something a little different. Something like the massive spiked appendages that laid waste to half the living things in the water. Fins, of a sort.
When that’s not enough, I add Shape Self to it too, sprouting a new set of limbs from my shoulderblades to assist.
Shape Self advanced to level 4!
On top of that, I make use of Shape Blood. While the blood in here is diluted by the agitated waters, there’s enough that I can draw it to me and physically push myself away.
Ever so slowly, I start to make progress. It helps that the whale truly doesn’t seem to care that I’m here now that there’s tastier prey in sight.
I just need to survive for a few minutes, then I’ll level up. I hope that my soul damage has healed enough that I’ll still get a skill of some kind. I get the idea that level 10 is a significant milestone whether or not I get a new set of skills, though, and given that I’m stuck between a rock that wants to kill me and a hard place that might end up eating me, I’ll take anything I can get.
Once I’ve put another hundred feet between me and the whale, propelling myself laterally with blood and a half-dozen fins, the effect of the makeshift whirlpool starts to lessen. I didn’t notice before, but there’s nothing solid remaining in the radius of the whirlpool—any piece of the bridge or the land nearby large enough to cling to has been broken down into its component parts.
Further away, though, there’s pieces of flotsam that have gone largely unmolested by the demons still in the water. Relentless has died down some now that I’m not in immediate danger of death, but it provides me with enough power to manage a third Bloodstep, landing me on an errant man-sized chunk of steel that looks like it might’ve been a tower’s bell at some point.
I really do wish I had a way to make that skill cost less. Traveling a couple of feet with it costs the same as transporting myself to its maximum twenty-seven. Maybe that’s what the Magic (Meta) category is for.
Now that I’m on the broken floating bell, I’m able to take a breather and examine the scene.
Time remaining: 3:51
I’m a solid hundred feet from the fighting right now. Five people—Noren included, of course—are fighting the whale-demon, which barely seems to be moving.
Five. That either means that one of them is a corpse in this watery graveyard or that they’re hidden from my sight. I think it’s safe to assume the former, but I can never be too cautious.
For once, I think I might not partake in this fight. A tactical retreat might be better, especially since my current objective is just to survive.
I’ve just about resolved to leave when an arrow sprouts out of my shoulder.
Shit. The last wisps of the sun are gone, and with the chaos of the wraithfire on the riverbank and the demon-whale inhaling half the river in its immediate radius, I didn’t see the shot.
It’s a glancing hit—not threatening at all, especially with Demonic Heritage—but it’s a reminder that I need to get out of here.
I’m halfway through pulling it out when the entire shaft glows bright blue, magic suffusing it, and I realize I have a bigger problem. Before I can Siphon it away, the world twists.
My stomach lurches and my vision narrows, darkness pressing against everything in sight, growing tighter and tighter and tighter and then—suddenly, my surroundings have changed.
I lose my balance, dropping to one knee on a dangerously swaying chunk of brick, and I look around me to see five soaking wet people clad in the livery of the Baron.
Time remaining: 3:14
Teleportation. It has to be.
Alright, it could be worse. They’re spread out, Noren’s occupied with the whale, and
The Archer who shot me is the level 15 in the party. I recognize her—she’s the second most talkative person, just behind Noren himself.
She already has another arrow nocked and aimed at where a human heart would be. As I draw on Blood Surge, she fires, and the sudden impact of the shaft penetrating straight through my chest nearly stuns me out of using a skill.
Unfortunately for her, my heart isn’t located there.
The Archer woman’s smug grin drops when my Blood Echo surges forward, propelled by the sudden resurgence of my Relentless trait.
She clearly wasn’t expecting me to be able to move, which starts to make sense when the arrow starts scorching me from the inside out.
I’ve dealt with wraithfire consuming my soul for fuel. Compared to that, basic magical flame is nothing. I Siphon the fire away, directing its uncontrolled fury into my echo instead.
My first foe manages to scream. “I got the demon back!”
“Poor choice of last words,” I tell her.
She shoots my Blood Echo, but it’s rather hard to make a blood being bleed in a way that matters, and she doesn’t accomplish it. My echo dashes forward, unencumbered by the water that still washes over us every time the demon-whale thrashes.
Every last one of them is armored, but their equipment isn’t. Sharp blood limbs become solid just long enough to tear through her bowstring. The tension in the bow makes the string snap back into the Archer’s face as it breaks. She yelps in pain as my echo starts to fall to the ground, and I dash forward over unstable ground to follow up.
Time remaining: 2:49
Shape Blood creates a wall of blood for me to charge through. Despite my disorientation in the river, I still have a pair of daggers on me, and I draw on Knifefighting—just barely too slow to realize that another one of the Baron’s men has turned towards me. This one has a blowgun raised to his lips already.
Pain sprouts in my side as a dart or a bolt presumably strikes me, but it’s minor enough that it doesn’t stop me from continuing.
The Archer might be level 15, but she’s an archer. Specialization hurts when the allies around you aren’t strong enough to make up for your weaknesses.
As I direct the blood-wall in front of me to explode around us, giving me cover to throw off the others’ aim, the archer meets me with twin knives.
The arrow still impaling me slows me down ever so slightly, but it’s not enough to make a significant difference. The archer’s competent, but with Silver-tier Knifefighting, I can predict her every move before she makes it.
I turn aside an overhead blow, then feint towards her throat. When she raises both of her knives to block, I hit the slippery floor in a roll, slipping through her defensive stance. The arrow snaps inside me as I do, but it’s not going to kill me immediately.
I stab her in the leg, then her lower back. Using the knives as leverage, I pull myself up high enough to stab her again between the shoulderblades and once more in the back of her neck. Woundshape and Enhance Bleed accompany each attack, though the former skill does encounter some resistance when I try to move the copied injuries to more lethal places like her eyes or heart.
Woundshape advanced to level 5!
Enhance Bleed advanced to level 5!
Not that it matters. Partway through my flurry of blows, I feel the fight go out of the archer, and she gasps out a choked gurgle before falling.
Objective: Reap the night
Targets killed: [4/10]
Trait earned: Killer II
Requirements: Kill 25 beings that possess levels.
Increases damage against living beings by 1%.
No time to Devour. There are other enemies in the area, and they’re all coming for me. The archer was overconfident and terrible at close range, but the others are varied. I’m level 9, yes, but I don’t know if I can take all of them on at the same time, even with Relentless. The fact that Noren is occupied fighting the whale is probably the only reason I’m even alive right now.
I’m about to reorient myself to face my remaining targets and assess whether I need to retreat when the dart in my side explodes.
Time remaining: 1:54
Pain that would be crippling in a normal person explodes through me as a chunk of flesh the size of both of my fists put together simply disappears and shrapnel slices through my insides. Blood gushes forth from the gaping wound that’s taken out half of my abdomen, my death slowed only by heavy usage of Shape Blood.
I grit my teeth. That means slowed function, internal injuries that’ll only get worse as I fight, and death if I don’t level up soon.
I hate to leave a perfectly Devourable body behind, but it looks like I’ll have to.
As two men bring their blowguns up again and another woman draws a mace half again her size, I let myself fall into the water, Acting assisting me in looking like this is my death.
The chill of the water is twice as bad now that I’m bleeding out, so I set on fixing that. I can’t regenerate my torso with Shape Self, but I can try something else.
I activate the skill and form a set of broad, spiked tentacles just like the whale has, just on a much smaller scale. It helps stem the bleeding some, the flesh around the wound reshaping itself to form my new lethal appendages.
Demons swim by me as I heal, neither caring to assist me nor to kill me.
Time remaining: 1:43
Barely ten seconds have gone by before attacks start raining down into the water. I’ve submerged myself and given into the flow of the river, but with all the earth that Noren’s set down in this area, the river’s pace has settled from its frantic frothing into a beaten-down calm. I’m not drifting away fast enough.
Arrows drop into the water and explode into light and darkness and everything in between. Another set of magical explosives land in the center of a group of fish-demons, turning them into a bloody mist.
But they’re not aiming in the right place. With my fins both Phantom Shaped and added to my back and the tentacles I’ve newly created, I’m able to swim away faster than they think I can. I latch onto a fish-demon with the barbed tentacles, though that proves to be a mistake when it tries to bite back. I drag it towards me, keen on killing the fish and finally leveling up.
Time remaining: 1:13
It struggles in my hands, but this demon has very little power beyond the sharpness of its own body. By keeping it at a distance with my own new appendages, there’s not much it can do.
I Shape Blood, intent on creating a blade out of it to kill it, and then the ground beneath me erupts.
I lose hold of the fish-demon nearly immediately as the riverbed itself rises to meet me. With my added limbs, I swim far faster than I did with just a human body, but I’m not nearly fast enough to escape the radius of the skill that engulfs me.
A flurry of small river rocks eroded by time and water hit me at speeds rivaling the UCC guards’ bullets, penetrating my flesh and drawing blood.
The ground slams into me a moment later, and then I’m out of the water and rising.
Siphon makes the ground rise slower and provides me more power to use my own skills, but I don’t have anything that can deal with this.
I Bloodstep, shifting into an uninjured form that can move freely, and Noren’s distant figure responds by shaping the earth around me into a solid sphere devoid of any single opening I can use to get through.
All at once, the sphere moves, nearly throwing me off my balance. I can’t see outside of it, and none of my attacks are scratching it.
“Did you think I would forget you?” Noren says, his voice muffled by the layer of rocks and dirt between us. “I remember my debts. You would do well to remember yours.”
The sphere around me starts closing in on me, lowering the amount of space I have.
Spikes rise from the ground and walls, stabbing me straight through my chest, arms, and legs. I gasp as one of them manages to puncture a lung, forcing the breath out of me.
Stupid of me. I should’ve started running the moment Noren was distracted.
Time remaining: 0:21
“Goodbye, demon,” Noren says. “I sentence you to death by your own hand.”
The sphere moves once more, and this time my movement is so impaired by the earth impaling me that I can do nothing to hold my balance. Every little jostle creates a spark of pain, and the sudden speed of the sphere is far more than just a tiny shake.
Still, I keep a clear mind, counting down the seconds.
Time remaining: 0:15
Outside, I hear the distinct sound of airflow.
I have a bad feeling that I know where this is going.
Time remaining: 0:10
The outside layer of the sphere shears off, torn away by the raw force of the whale’s inhalation.
Time remaining: 0:08
As it turns out, I can’t Bloodstep when I have thirty-four spikes impaling me, preventing me from moving entirely.
Time remaining: 0:04
I’m in the air, I realize. Noren’s sent me flying, and now I fall, forceful suction guiding me towards one of the whales’ breathing orifices.
No, I realize. I’m close enough that I can see the one sucking me in, a hole as long as I am tall.
They’re not just for breathing.
There are teeth in there.
Time remaining: 0:01
The whale’s inhalation consumes me, my vision turning black for a brief second before it becomes painfully bright.
Time remaining: 0:00
Objective: Survive [COMPLETE]
You have survived.
100 XP rewarded!
You have advanced to level 10!
All stats increased by 1.
You have gained 5 stat points.
Soul damage detected.
No general skills will be awarded for this level.
Due to your class and actions, you may gain 1 Gold-tier special skill from the following list.
Demonic Call
Corrupt
Undying
Wraithfire
River water has been splashing onto me this entire time, so the chill isn’t unexpected, but the sheer force of the Ravendale river throws me off, threatening to send me tumbling downriver.
The forty-foot barbed tentacle slicing through the water faster than I can sprint on land doesn’t help matters either. I have no proper way to propel myself through the water, no skill to aid in swimming apart from raw muscle memory, and that’s not nearly enough to push me out of the way of the sweeping spiked chain of a limb.
But Relentless is active now, flooding my body with enervating power, and the increase it provides me is enough that I’m able to use Bloodstep long before the skill should’ve been available.
The water is dark and heavy around me, and when my world tints red, the force of the river’s movement nearly blasts me apart. I wish I could say the sensation is unfamiliar to me, but I felt this happen to a much greater extent when the dream-Evelyn tore me to pieces again and again.
While it’s nowhere near as powerful as that, it’s enough that instinct screams at me to drop it immediately.
Sweeping barbs that are ever so slightly darker than the lightless, bloody water around them glide through water, deathly silent. It disrupts my blood-form as it passes through me, a spike the size of my arm piercing straight through where my chest would have been, but it doesn’t have the same skill-ending effect that its forceful exhalation did.
Still, the raw force is enough that it sends me tumbling away from the demon, spiraling out into the water end over end as the scarlet fades back into the blackness of the river. Around me, the river churns with blood, the demon’s movement splitting apart everything in its path. I don’t know if any of the humans in Noren’s party die, but I catch sight of a dozen demons getting eviscerated as the tentacle passes through them.
I resurface closer to the whale-demon than I’d like. Being sent head over heels through nearly-freezing water has disoriented me enough that I feel like I was sent hurtling hundreds of feet away.
Instead, when my head pops out of the water, I realize that I’m less than fifty feet from the whale.
A domed roof whistles over me and smashes itself into pieces against the whale’s chitinous skin. Black blood spurts forth where it makes contact, but while that might’ve been a crushing, decisive blow against someone like me, the whale is large enough that the attack only lacerates it.
Thankfully, Noren doesn’t seem to be actively trying to kill me right now. The demon isn’t actively attacking me either, for that matter. The tentacle would’ve killed me sure as anything, yes, but given that another strike hasn’t landed yet, I’m not sure I’m its number one priority.
That’ll be cold comfort if an errant strike hits me, though. I need to get out of this area.
Time remaining: 4:41
Am I getting closer to the demon? The whale is large enough that the flow of the river can’t be affecting it that much, and I don’t see it swimming towards me. I’m not a world-class swimmer, but the soul amalgam grants me the ability to do so proficiently, at least. Why is it gaining on me?
It’s not until a dozen muddy geysers erupt under Noren’s influence that I see what the whale’s doing.
Earth explodes upwards as the level 37 mage tears the riverbed apart. I think it’s meant to be a pincer as he throws more ruined buildings at the whale, something that shatters it from above and pierces it from below, but the twisted streams of muddy water start bending towards the whale as they appear.
I can’t see Noren from my current location, but I see his attack flow towards the same orifices that the whale initially exhaled through.
And then I realize the river around me is flooding towards it as well.
The whale is inhaling.
As soon as I realize what’s happening, I start acting on countermeasures. With a thought, Relentless energy fuels my Phantom Shape. Rather than the spiderlike scythe-limbs I’ve come to favor, I try something a little different. Something like the massive spiked appendages that laid waste to half the living things in the water. Fins, of a sort.
When that’s not enough, I add Shape Self to it too, sprouting a new set of limbs from my shoulderblades to assist.
Shape Self advanced to level 4!
On top of that, I make use of Shape Blood. While the blood in here is diluted by the agitated waters, there’s enough that I can draw it to me and physically push myself away.
Ever so slowly, I start to make progress. It helps that the whale truly doesn’t seem to care that I’m here now that there’s tastier prey in sight.
I just need to survive for a few minutes, then I’ll level up. I hope that my soul damage has healed enough that I’ll still get a skill of some kind. I get the idea that level 10 is a significant milestone whether or not I get a new set of skills, though, and given that I’m stuck between a rock that wants to kill me and a hard place that might end up eating me, I’ll take anything I can get.
Once I’ve put another hundred feet between me and the whale, propelling myself laterally with blood and a half-dozen fins, the effect of the makeshift whirlpool starts to lessen. I didn’t notice before, but there’s nothing solid remaining in the radius of the whirlpool—any piece of the bridge or the land nearby large enough to cling to has been broken down into its component parts.
Further away, though, there’s pieces of flotsam that have gone largely unmolested by the demons still in the water. Relentless has died down some now that I’m not in immediate danger of death, but it provides me with enough power to manage a third Bloodstep, landing me on an errant man-sized chunk of steel that looks like it might’ve been a tower’s bell at some point.
I really do wish I had a way to make that skill cost less. Traveling a couple of feet with it costs the same as transporting myself to its maximum twenty-seven. Maybe that’s what the Magic (Meta) category is for.
Now that I’m on the broken floating bell, I’m able to take a breather and examine the scene.
Time remaining: 3:51
I’m a solid hundred feet from the fighting right now. Five people—Noren included, of course—are fighting the whale-demon, which barely seems to be moving.
Five. That either means that one of them is a corpse in this watery graveyard or that they’re hidden from my sight. I think it’s safe to assume the former, but I can never be too cautious.
For once, I think I might not partake in this fight. A tactical retreat might be better, especially since my current objective is just to survive.
I’ve just about resolved to leave when an arrow sprouts out of my shoulder.
Shit. The last wisps of the sun are gone, and with the chaos of the wraithfire on the riverbank and the demon-whale inhaling half the river in its immediate radius, I didn’t see the shot.
It’s a glancing hit—not threatening at all, especially with Demonic Heritage—but it’s a reminder that I need to get out of here.
I’m halfway through pulling it out when the entire shaft glows bright blue, magic suffusing it, and I realize I have a bigger problem. Before I can Siphon it away, the world twists.
My stomach lurches and my vision narrows, darkness pressing against everything in sight, growing tighter and tighter and tighter and then—suddenly, my surroundings have changed.
I lose my balance, dropping to one knee on a dangerously swaying chunk of brick, and I look around me to see five soaking wet people clad in the livery of the Baron.
Time remaining: 3:14
Teleportation. It has to be.
Alright, it could be worse. They’re spread out, Noren’s occupied with the whale, and
The Archer who shot me is the level 15 in the party. I recognize her—she’s the second most talkative person, just behind Noren himself.
She already has another arrow nocked and aimed at where a human heart would be. As I draw on Blood Surge, she fires, and the sudden impact of the shaft penetrating straight through my chest nearly stuns me out of using a skill.
Unfortunately for her, my heart isn’t located there.
The Archer woman’s smug grin drops when my Blood Echo surges forward, propelled by the sudden resurgence of my Relentless trait.
She clearly wasn’t expecting me to be able to move, which starts to make sense when the arrow starts scorching me from the inside out.
I’ve dealt with wraithfire consuming my soul for fuel. Compared to that, basic magical flame is nothing. I Siphon the fire away, directing its uncontrolled fury into my echo instead.
My first foe manages to scream. “I got the demon back!”
“Poor choice of last words,” I tell her.
She shoots my Blood Echo, but it’s rather hard to make a blood being bleed in a way that matters, and she doesn’t accomplish it. My echo dashes forward, unencumbered by the water that still washes over us every time the demon-whale thrashes.
Every last one of them is armored, but their equipment isn’t. Sharp blood limbs become solid just long enough to tear through her bowstring. The tension in the bow makes the string snap back into the Archer’s face as it breaks. She yelps in pain as my echo starts to fall to the ground, and I dash forward over unstable ground to follow up.
Time remaining: 2:49
Shape Blood creates a wall of blood for me to charge through. Despite my disorientation in the river, I still have a pair of daggers on me, and I draw on Knifefighting—just barely too slow to realize that another one of the Baron’s men has turned towards me. This one has a blowgun raised to his lips already.
Pain sprouts in my side as a dart or a bolt presumably strikes me, but it’s minor enough that it doesn’t stop me from continuing.
The Archer might be level 15, but she’s an archer. Specialization hurts when the allies around you aren’t strong enough to make up for your weaknesses.
As I direct the blood-wall in front of me to explode around us, giving me cover to throw off the others’ aim, the archer meets me with twin knives.
The arrow still impaling me slows me down ever so slightly, but it’s not enough to make a significant difference. The archer’s competent, but with Silver-tier Knifefighting, I can predict her every move before she makes it.
I turn aside an overhead blow, then feint towards her throat. When she raises both of her knives to block, I hit the slippery floor in a roll, slipping through her defensive stance. The arrow snaps inside me as I do, but it’s not going to kill me immediately.
I stab her in the leg, then her lower back. Using the knives as leverage, I pull myself up high enough to stab her again between the shoulderblades and once more in the back of her neck. Woundshape and Enhance Bleed accompany each attack, though the former skill does encounter some resistance when I try to move the copied injuries to more lethal places like her eyes or heart.
Woundshape advanced to level 5!
Enhance Bleed advanced to level 5!
Not that it matters. Partway through my flurry of blows, I feel the fight go out of the archer, and she gasps out a choked gurgle before falling.
Objective: Reap the night
Targets killed: [4/10]
Trait earned: Killer II
Requirements: Kill 25 beings that possess levels.
Increases damage against living beings by 1%.
No time to Devour. There are other enemies in the area, and they’re all coming for me. The archer was overconfident and terrible at close range, but the others are varied. I’m level 9, yes, but I don’t know if I can take all of them on at the same time, even with Relentless. The fact that Noren is occupied fighting the whale is probably the only reason I’m even alive right now.
I’m about to reorient myself to face my remaining targets and assess whether I need to retreat when the dart in my side explodes.
Time remaining: 1:54
Pain that would be crippling in a normal person explodes through me as a chunk of flesh the size of both of my fists put together simply disappears and shrapnel slices through my insides. Blood gushes forth from the gaping wound that’s taken out half of my abdomen, my death slowed only by heavy usage of Shape Blood.
I grit my teeth. That means slowed function, internal injuries that’ll only get worse as I fight, and death if I don’t level up soon.
I hate to leave a perfectly Devourable body behind, but it looks like I’ll have to.
As two men bring their blowguns up again and another woman draws a mace half again her size, I let myself fall into the water, Acting assisting me in looking like this is my death.
The chill of the water is twice as bad now that I’m bleeding out, so I set on fixing that. I can’t regenerate my torso with Shape Self, but I can try something else.
I activate the skill and form a set of broad, spiked tentacles just like the whale has, just on a much smaller scale. It helps stem the bleeding some, the flesh around the wound reshaping itself to form my new lethal appendages.
Demons swim by me as I heal, neither caring to assist me nor to kill me.
Time remaining: 1:43
Barely ten seconds have gone by before attacks start raining down into the water. I’ve submerged myself and given into the flow of the river, but with all the earth that Noren’s set down in this area, the river’s pace has settled from its frantic frothing into a beaten-down calm. I’m not drifting away fast enough.
Arrows drop into the water and explode into light and darkness and everything in between. Another set of magical explosives land in the center of a group of fish-demons, turning them into a bloody mist.
But they’re not aiming in the right place. With my fins both Phantom Shaped and added to my back and the tentacles I’ve newly created, I’m able to swim away faster than they think I can. I latch onto a fish-demon with the barbed tentacles, though that proves to be a mistake when it tries to bite back. I drag it towards me, keen on killing the fish and finally leveling up.
Time remaining: 1:13
It struggles in my hands, but this demon has very little power beyond the sharpness of its own body. By keeping it at a distance with my own new appendages, there’s not much it can do.
I Shape Blood, intent on creating a blade out of it to kill it, and then the ground beneath me erupts.
I lose hold of the fish-demon nearly immediately as the riverbed itself rises to meet me. With my added limbs, I swim far faster than I did with just a human body, but I’m not nearly fast enough to escape the radius of the skill that engulfs me.
A flurry of small river rocks eroded by time and water hit me at speeds rivaling the UCC guards’ bullets, penetrating my flesh and drawing blood.
The ground slams into me a moment later, and then I’m out of the water and rising.
Siphon makes the ground rise slower and provides me more power to use my own skills, but I don’t have anything that can deal with this.
I Bloodstep, shifting into an uninjured form that can move freely, and Noren’s distant figure responds by shaping the earth around me into a solid sphere devoid of any single opening I can use to get through.
All at once, the sphere moves, nearly throwing me off my balance. I can’t see outside of it, and none of my attacks are scratching it.
“Did you think I would forget you?” Noren says, his voice muffled by the layer of rocks and dirt between us. “I remember my debts. You would do well to remember yours.”
The sphere around me starts closing in on me, lowering the amount of space I have.
Spikes rise from the ground and walls, stabbing me straight through my chest, arms, and legs. I gasp as one of them manages to puncture a lung, forcing the breath out of me.
Stupid of me. I should’ve started running the moment Noren was distracted.
Time remaining: 0:21
“Goodbye, demon,” Noren says. “I sentence you to death by your own hand.”
The sphere moves once more, and this time my movement is so impaired by the earth impaling me that I can do nothing to hold my balance. Every little jostle creates a spark of pain, and the sudden speed of the sphere is far more than just a tiny shake.
Still, I keep a clear mind, counting down the seconds.
Time remaining: 0:15
Outside, I hear the distinct sound of airflow.
I have a bad feeling that I know where this is going.
Time remaining: 0:10
The outside layer of the sphere shears off, torn away by the raw force of the whale’s inhalation.
Time remaining: 0:08
As it turns out, I can’t Bloodstep when I have thirty-four spikes impaling me, preventing me from moving entirely.
Time remaining: 0:04
I’m in the air, I realize. Noren’s sent me flying, and now I fall, forceful suction guiding me towards one of the whales’ breathing orifices.
No, I realize. I’m close enough that I can see the one sucking me in, a hole as long as I am tall.
They’re not just for breathing.
There are teeth in there.
Time remaining: 0:01
The whale’s inhalation consumes me, my vision turning black for a brief second before it becomes painfully bright.
Time remaining: 0:00
Objective: Survive [COMPLETE]
You have survived.
100 XP rewarded!
You have advanced to level 10!
All stats increased by 1.
You have gained 5 stat points.
Soul damage detected.
No general skills will be awarded for this level.
Due to your class and actions, you may gain 1 Gold-tier special skill from the following list.
Demonic Call
Corrupt
Undying
Wraithfire
