LIGHTNOVELONLINE (Vol 5) Chapter 20: The Culmination of Archery
The fireball that went off around them was something like a connected-together nuke and there was no avoiding it. All was blasted and scorched, and the ambush precluded Sammy from attempting absorption.
Fortunately, it was over in an instant, which for Sammy and Ozra, meant only a wound negation taken out, Sammy’s shield being damaged, and getting knocked to the ground — Sammy might’ve even avoided the last if not for a detonation right on her shield. The golems, however, were blown to smithereens and entirely disabled.
The area looked quite blasted-out, even some trees disintegrated on the edges, forming a clear circle around the black tower in the center.
Ugh! Now what?
Sammy’s dart stores were depleted by the attack, but she still had some that had cleared the height of the AoE, so she programmed them to automatically fire at the target with three separate [Independence] layers, whenever he showed himself. The tower was ridiculously high, some fifty meters, smooth, and perhaps impermeable to harm.
Tall, but not much diameter, being a tower.
Scrambling up, Sammy dropped a radial light bomb with [Pneumanic Empowerment] added for maximum lethality, right at the top of the tower — at a diameter of 9 meters, it did not quite fill the whole space, so she had to guess where he would be and cant the zone in that direction.
But I’m good at guessing, right?
The blast of plasmatic light went off in a sphere, just engulfing the crenelations left of her perspective. She had no sign of whether she’d been effective, such was the distance and the nature of the barrier. The black walls remained entirely untouched by the effect, however — something she largely expected.
Ozra was of course brewing something up, too. She had not bothered getting up from the ground, being a waste of valuable time — instead, she pulled something out of her pocket, jammed it into the barrel of a pistol, and fired. The bullet seemed to carry a larger square thing up and over the tower top…
It exploded and formed into something like a big hammer head, which momentarily dropped onto the tower top. It was clearly another Pillar of Force modification, this time trading all power for apparently greater physicality — but moreover radius. It was huge and fit nice and snug into the gap of the tower top between the lip of the crenelated walls, making any dodging or escape entirely impossible.
The customization queen does it again!
The slam of the hammer came down and this time, there was an audible crunch as to armor being damaged and a muted yelp.
“Score!” Ozra cried victoriously from the ground as she began trying to finally scramble up.
As the hammer came back up, something like a sparkling firework burst up through it, which made it disappear in a twinkle of light Sammy instantly recognized as a dispel. Rather than ending there, however, the firework was a great fountain arcing up, then down, down, down in a cascade sweeping all directions, the sparkling light engulfing everything.
Sammy and Ozra tried evading it, but it was a radial spell effect with stylization, ultimately, and passed effortlessly through them.
She felt literally everything persistent just end right there. Ozra vanished, her ‘phantasmal ammo’ vanished, and every spell and ability effect on Sammy went, too. [Sheath of Light] was forced on cooldown, [Create Phantasms] would need to be recast for expansions and range, and her wound negations through Armor of Light were gone. The spell Shield of Light was also gone.
And there’s the issue with an otherwise superior shield spell. Fuck my life.
She had only one thing that survived beyond her magic items: the Twist Up the Sleeve spell she hadn’t bothered with yet. It wasn’t much, but something to help get defenses up. Because of her enemy’s predilection for surprises, she planned to activate it preemptively.
Right after the dispel, Sammy decided to play defensive and cast Armor of Light for the wound negations. She stacked the held-back buff immediately onto this, wasting no more time on that. Otherwise, she spawned what free benefit she had from [Create Phantasms] without an activation, which was largely whatever was desired within seven meters of her.
She made a bunch of clones and then a few floating walls of opaque metal, all virtual, likely irrelevant substances but perhaps could gain her some minor benefit in terms of targeting her. Always worth a shot, at least.
A brief flash of baleful red eyes could be seen above and Sammy felt a similar baleful aura surround her.
You have been afflicted with the curse ‘Mark of the Mark’ — You are at -2 Effective Levels to defend against the caster’s next attack, direct or indirect, if it occurs in the next 30 seconds. You cannot modify the contest via [Luck], [Fortune], [Fate], or any other similar, temporary boosts, and wound negations will be bypassed. This status cannot be dispelled.
Sammy felt dread spike through her like needles. He just set me up for a coup de grace.
The most obvious thing it seemed to suggest was to run or hide, but he had too much advantage there, and she had very little cover anywhere near. Mirror Walking away was out. Invisibility was out. He seemingly had eyes in the sky and every advantage imaginable in his own realm. The true way out of such a place normally, she believed, was enduring it. But she didn’t have the time for that. She couldn’t afford even weeks lost in a series of ordeals.
Her options as she saw it were to attack for the gamble of a disable, debuff of injury, possibly even a stun… or to boost defense to soak the hit.
She had line-of-sight in that trade-off needed to curse her. She automatically tried [The Unseen Animus] just to test… no dice. Seeming immunity. It didn’t matter — she was restricted on her [Fate] use for the defense, but not on offense.
She cast Telekinetic Thrust, utilizing Quicken from [Tweak Spell] to do it nigh-instantly, keeping him from taking cover and invalidating her spell. She forced failure with [Alter Fate], locking him in to get hit and hopefully knocked right off the tower due to the strength levels. At the least, she’d buy time…
But [Alter Fate] returned invalid, with the same seeming immunity.
What?! No! How?!
The fist-like hammer of force passed right through his armored chest. He then waved with a free hand as the red light in his eyes went out.
From around the far side of the tower, the black-armored figure came gliding around, horn-helmeted head with red glowing eyes, slowly falling in a controlled, graceful glide from a cloud of smoke he seemed to be riding down. His armor looked a bit smashed and damaged.
Sammy was both amazed and mortified. He gave up the whole fucking tower top for this. Not even an AoE would’ve worked. A double — how did I not see it?
But that was how illusions were always dangerous, and how she’d sometimes still tricked foes when they were previously ‘hip’ to the lies. When the mark saw what they wanted to see there was no hope for them. Besides that… the damn thing was far enough away that she could’ve hidden it behind two or three fingers. It was all too easy to pull bullshit at that distance.
“You think you can beat me at this?” the god taunted as he floated down. “I was the god of [Trickery], the god of [Traps]! The god of… [Play].” He accentuated the last with abject misery and melancholy, like a childhood lost. With a choked snarl he finally said, “Now let me show you — who took it all away — the culmination of [Archery]!”
An arrow pulsing with power and sheer, baleful destruction appeared in his hand, gleaming silver on the inside of the aura. The tip was, somehow abominably, the endpoint of a heart shape. Silver and gold met as his bow was pulled back and fired in a smooth motion.
The arrow came like a speeding beam of light, where even her predictive capacity was not up to the task of dodging it, and she was inhibited as the curse dragged and slowed her. It forced her into more of a split-moment realization of futility, as her body didn’t quite move as fast as her observation deduced that she was stuck.
The silver arrow struck her dead-on in the chest. It punched right through her armor, into her heart, and out through the back, lodging itself.
Sammy felt an agony in the core of her being she’d never known to that point, many times the multiple of the psychic wound she’d taken in the underworld dive. It was a piercing pain, as if preserving what it would physically feel like to have something stabbing into one’s human heart and lodging there, translating into the equivalent of the psychic.
A brief, choked-off scream came from her lips as she seized in place and dropped to her knees. Barely, she kept herself from passing out by a monumental effort of will. A near thing and such small bonuses adding up as from [Ascendant] were the difference.
You have suffered a full Mortal Wound in the heart. You have resisted unconsciousness but are incapacitated. You cannot take any actions or conscious movement for 1 minute. Attacks may perform coup de grace upon you to cause Lethal Wounds subject only to armor penetration and toughness of body.
The curse ‘Mark of the Mark’ has been removed.
She flopped sideways into the dirt, paralyzed and seizing as her muscles refused to work right.
A shadow of dread cast over her — somehow, she understood she was slipping down a cliff that would ruin The Plan regardless of how unkillable she was there. Time. Time was always the thing she could not afford to lose, and the promise of Too Much Lost was beckoning.
The Fortuneteller was sad as she spoke faintly, seemingly further away than ever, ‘A game is played and a game is lost. All goes black and you become us. Come and flicker out as we error to nothing, and all — perhaps — resets to the death of all memory. Be glad at least you never had to contribute.’
“No! No, I refuse!” It was a simple, feral sort of clenched-teeth intention in the state she was in, but she meant it. She refused.
Sammy quickly lost track of time. She was unsure just how long she writhed in twisted pain in the dirt, but somehow she fought her way back to kneeling by miraculous subconscious will, one bloody hand clutched around an arrow through her heart.
And there he was as her eyes flashed upward. Her vision even unblurred to give her a good look.
The giant had landed, the impressive god in his slightly damaged, evil-looking armor. He seemed an elf turned demon, something a bit shy of three meters tall if one discounted the horns.
Standing across some meters, he laughed at her. “Oh, how you fight, oh how you defy your punishment! But come it will — and deny it you won’t — not for a long time to come. You’ll be worn down to nothing, like me. I’ll savor every moment, whatever lies you try to tell.”
The words were certainly no balm. Her vision blurred, and she felt herself come close to giving in once more. She was right on the edge and she couldn’t falter. Not for one second or it would be over.
Focus, focus… focus… our enemy… the demon…
She did the only thing she could. Dangerous, but necessary. She focused with her extrasensory powers of the spirit, and closed her eyes, to see more.
Time slipped again. She almost didn’t come back to the waking world. She had to pull herself up from a slump, her eyelids dragging and dragging wanting to finally close for good. But she flung her head up and swayed to upright, to see him again. He was very important. Necessity. She refused! Vaguely, she recalled that she’d closed her eyes to learn something about him.
What was it? No! I refuse, damn it — I refuse to give up!
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