I need the Mana now, need to refill the tank. Potions are slammed into my body, hypodermic needles flooding my body with Stamina and Mana potions. The cold tries to slow down the regeneration, slow my healing. I fight it back, but my body is trembling involuntarily as muscles clench and release.
Kasva doesn’t care as I ready myself. He stalks forward, his grin cracking wide. Metal, twisted and melted, regenerates around him, puddles of broken liquid flowing upward and connecting to the breastplate as it reforms. His cloak restitches itself before my eyes, flesh reforming and bones shifting back into the right position.
Above his head, his Status flashes, Mana and health climbing at an alarming rate. It’s not regeneration, because this is at least ten times the rate should be increasing from what I recall from the last little bit of our fight. Worse, he still has a quarter of his life yet.
I toss out a few Blade Strikes, but instinctual recognition of the glow around him is proven true. The attacks deflect off an invisible shield that flashes to life briefly. My eyes narrow as I read the System data that flows to me, the library filling me in on the rest.
Second Chance (Level 1) (H)
Champions do not fall that easily. There’s always another chance, another opportunity to keep going. How could a hero, a champion of the people, fall that easily, when the world believes in him? Second Chance makes that concept a universal truth.
Effect 1: Second Chance automatically activates when user has less than <1% of Health.
Effect 2: Skill User regains Health, Mana, and Stamina to maximum upon use of the Skill over the period of one (1) minute. All equipped equipment is restored to full durability. A portable second chance shield that grants invulnerability to damage is in effect during that restoration period. All Skills are reset.
Uses: 1
Recharge rate: Variable ($_championrepxhealthxManaregenxqualificationxlevelx…)
Annoying. Unlike the other second life Skill I’ve run into, this one regenerates the individual’s lifeforce. And something in the way the System information is coming to me says that the Champion has dumped multiple points in this, giving him more than one use.
I shake my head, pushing aside the idle thought of what an Evolved Skill like this would be like. As it stands, I’m pretty sure whatever he’s using to pierce my Shields is an evolved Skill, a damage multiplier effect or an evolved piercing attack or something. It combines to be a real cheat as he drives his Affinity into me.
Kasva strolls up, his body, his clothing, his weapons almost fully regenerated. He grins, cracking his knuckles, his neck. He even bounces a little on his feet as we wait for the shield to drop.
“Round two.”
The words are barely out of his mouth when he shoots forward, right at me. I drop low, pushing down hard on my Elemental Affinity, letting him hit me as I crouch. The bubble of my Penetration Skill bulges, flexes even as I adjust the angle of his strike and his momentum, the friction between himself and the world. I stabilize the ground beneath me, lock myself down with Immovable Object and heave.
He flies, arcing through the air, and even my head rings from the collision. I turn to track his flight, only to see him disappear from my sight.
Kasva reappears briefly to hit me as I twist around. I’m flying through the air, my Immovable Object Skill’s threshold exceeded. The belated feel of impact on my back arrives with a burst of pain and cold. I tumble through mid-air, spotting Kasva grinning at me. Before he disappears again.
Impact.
Cold.
Pain.
I try to block, try to defend myself with my swords. But he’s faster now, faster than ever. Another Skill, a passive that builds the longer he’s in a fight. He’s also using his equivalent of Blink Step, except his doesn’t confer momentum. So he’s teleporting, striking, and following up whenever I manage to reposition myself.
Even Blink Stepping myself—shoving past the weakened planetary Dimensional Lock around the island—is insufficient. I just damage myself porting through the sky before he is on me, smashing me around.
Fate’s Thread breaks the moment I latch it onto him, shorn apart by another Skill.
Impact.
Cold.
Pain.
The only advantage I have is that he’s taking less care around my weapons now, accumulating injuries. He’s healing around them, but each portion of damage adds to my Penetration Skill Shield. It holds, for now, as the Champion hammers at me.
But I’m realizing he doesn’t care about my shield. It’s his affinity that is doing the real damage here. My body is slowing, and no matter what I do to churn my Mana, to push against it, I feel myself freezing over. Slowing down.
Which lets him hit me more.
Which freezes me further.
Which lets him hit me more.
A vicious circle of pain as I am blasted around the island. Even Immovable Object doesn’t help, its parameters unable to stop the physical dislocation of myself or the ground I stand upon.
Trees tear, hills and cliff faces are destroyed. Sky and ground intermix in my view, nausea threatening to overtake my guts. He pummels me through the edge of a waterfall so hard that I collapse the cave behind it, crashing through the edges of an incipient dungeon, collapsing the mountain on the lair as I’m blasted out.
Blood dribbles from my chin and fills my mouth. Ribs grate, and I no longer tremble as my body stops fighting back against the encroaching cold affinity.
“Ali!” I scream for my friend, looking for help. But he’s nowhere to be found, hasn’t been anywhere since the start. I wonder what happened, a little, before I’m struck again.
My head throbs, blood leaking from my nose, my eyes. Vomit spills from my mouth. I struggle through the pain, searching for a way out. I reach for my Elemental Affinity, trying to excite my cells, to push against what he’s using. Instead, I end up injuring myself as I tear apart my very own cells.
Blood fountains from my arm as I block another attack and bones tear free of my muscle and skin. I fall down on my side, still partly protected by my shield. He’s still striking me with short, repeated jabs, hooks, and cut kicks.
Another blow and I bounce over to where one of the groups ringing us stands. My eyes widen when I notice they’ve got manacles, enchanted to capture and suppress my Mana regeneration. I push against the cold, triggering the start of Judgment for All. It starts slowly, even the Mana within me seeming to move slowly.
“No,” Kasva says and slams his hand down on the remnants of my shield.
The core of cold pierces me, and something flickers into my vision.
Mana Spike—Skill Disruption Attempted
Skill Interrupted Successful—Judgment of All
The Mana I gathered disperses and Kasva grins. “Take his shield down. I’ll make sure he doesn’t use anything.”
Another quick strike, and his affinity continues to burrow deeper into me.
I struggle.
I fail.
The cold takes me, darkness pulling at my consciousness.
And then, warmth.
Heat.
Flames everywhere. The cold affinity breaks, replaced by the heat, the warmth, the raging inferno of flame.
I scream, for it burns me. And the darkness that was approaching takes me.
Even as the world burns.
Chapter 18
I wake up, which is a surprise. I’m healed, which is less of a surprise, considering it’s the System. But as I struggle to wakefulness, as my arms shift to take me up, I find myself free of restraints. Another surprise.
Eyes crack open and I stare at the smooth white ceiling of a vessel of some form. I hear the engine running quietly in the distance, the slight shudder that is suppressed to all but the most delicate of Perceptions.
The fur blanket covering me trembles, shivering with each motion, the heated warmth of the fur bringing back flashes of my dream of rolling around in the depths of a canyon, fighting, struggling against a swarm of furred creatures that bite, chew, and claw.