Chapter 80

Chapter 80

Chapter 80

A lithe, snake-like figure measuring at the very least a couple dozen feet tore up through the trash and scummy water at insane speed – roaring an earth-trembling screech. The creature was covered in armored, spiked chitin, with a round mouth full of rows of teeth. It had no eyes, and two large pincers in the front of its maw with no legs.

[Infantile Spiked Wyrm, Great Beast]

Riven didn’t have time to take in the rest of the creature, not entirely sure of just how big it was considering part of its body was still submerged as he screamed at a pitch unbecoming of a fully grown man and he instantly activated Riftwalk.

A black fissure in space erupted directly behind him and swallowed him whole, ripping him inside and sending him teleporting backwards out the other end of the fissure as he barely managed to avoid a stone-crunching body slam.

*CRASH*

Riven instantaneously exited the spacial fissure in a burst of shadows ten yards down the tunnel, grinning with excitement due to the utter shock he experienced from almost dying. The pincers tore through the stone floor where the opposite end of the portal had been just a moment ago, making Riven’s heart beat fast as he realized how close to death they’d just come, and his staff lit up with crackling power with the mana he began to channel into it.

“MOTHERFUCKER!” Riven’s excitement and simultaneous rage boiled over, and with an outstretched hand he unleashed a piercing blood lance. The red projectile rocketed towards the armored creature as it squealed and screeched, ripping into the long body while it struggled to dislodge its pincers from the stone floor.

If only he had more bodies and blood to utilize. Unlike the last battlefield, he didn’t have the luxury of free resources - so he’d have to make due with his own innate mana.

Snarling with bloodlust focused on the thing that would dare attack them, Riven re-engaged with a burst of black lightning out of his staff that shredded and cooked one side of the creature. His outstretched weapon radiated an aura of malice and tore thick plates of chitin completely off, entering the creature’s head right above where the right pincer was. Immediately after that: six red ribbons of hardened webbing flew through the air up above and slammed into the creature’s side – sending bits of the snake-like insectoid’s body airborne while it screeched even louder.

*WHAM*

Athela catapulted off the ceiling with her bare shin colliding hard against the beast, cracking more chitin plates while her bladed spider legs pierced deep into the squealing creature to hold her down and her claws blurred. Each strike applied necrotic venom, and her deeply entrenched spider legs pumped it in continuously. Digging into the beast ferociously, her tongue ripped out of her abnormally widened mouth and began digging in the creature’s side - sucking it dry while it was still alive in a horrific display of carnage.

But the creature was an absolute tank, and with a screech it ripped out of the floor and yanked its head back so fast that it nearly crushed Athela up against the top of the tunnel’s ceiling. Athela barely managed to yank herself out of the beast and flip off its back, but she was caught mid air by a side-swipe of one of the pincers. She was sent sprawling head over heels down the sewer, splashing into the muck amidst a writhing, forty-foot long body that sought out its prey with avid conviction.

A rapid series of strikes tried to catch Riven off guard, each one of them tearing stone out of the sewer’s walkway with bites that’d easily cleave him in half. He jumped, dodged and rolled while desperately batting away the few strikes he couldn’t avoid with his staff. Each time his staff made contact a burst of shadows and a knockback effect would counter the monster’s massive strength, but it’d also send Riven reeling backwards because he didn’t have the sturdiness to take these hits without being thrown off his feet.

“SHIT!”

*BOOM*

Stone shrapnel scattered in all directions and a deep gash quickly displayed itself on Riven’s stomach from where he’d almost been eviscerated.

He snarled and clashed with the monster again, using his staff like a baseball bat and smacking the creature in the side of the face with all his strength and a little bit of mana-infusion for an extra effect of black lightning. The combination of the knock-back effect with the shadow explosion and the black-lightning being channeled into it was doubly effective and would have taken out any normal human like a bug under a boot.

He was on the precipice of a breakthrough, and he’d been in a constant state of enlightenment since his last vision. Here, in this moment, spurred on by his rage, the insights began to reform. Riven’s thoughts flashed with a vision of his recent dream. A blood moon, the storm, a mountain of corpses rising up out of a red ocean, the three thralls that surrounded him as they called a self proclaimed king back home, and the nova explosion to announce the king’s return. His hands blurred instinctively, without thought, rhyme, reason or practice. It was as if he’d always known how to do it, and his body just reacted. Immaculate hand gestures were intertwined with the proper intent, meaning, visualization, and a perfect understanding of what was about to happen without knowing why he knew. He tossed his staff to his left, letting it hover there of its own accord next to him. His fingers twisted and incorporated complex two-hand patterns, unlocking the seals that would allow him backdoor access to the spell he wanted to perform.

And then he had it. It was just a whisper, a voice of some long lost ancestor gently pushing thoughts into his mind, but it was certain. With all the other parts performed, he uttered the chant that would seal this monster’s fate. “NEFAJIA CRECUS BLOOD NOVA!”

[Tier 3 Blood Spell: Blood Nova, has been discovered and added to your status page.]

[Blood Nova’s mandatory 8 hour cooldown has been triggered.]

The creature lunged for him, huge pincers each the size of one of his legs open wide with rows of spiny teeth right behind them.

But it was not fast enough.

A sphere of bright crimson blood quickly began forming between Riven’s cupped hands, quicky rotating and picking up speed as a bright red glow illuminated the passageway. The sphere grew in equal stride with the rate of spinning and the brightness of the red glow until it reached the size of a bowling ball. Thrusting his hands forward to release the energy was like trying to push back a freight train, but he managed to do it - and in that instant, space shattered.

First the area immediately around him was ripped apart, sending a shockwave of crimson energy in an area-of-effect explosion centered right on top of his head. Stone melted away and the incoming monster was blown back, shattering its skull and pincers in an instant. Then the glowing, spherical crimson torpedo tore through the hallway with an aftershock as it grew to nearly the size of the entire tunnel and then broke the sound barrier. Ripples of power scattered the ambient mana in the air and left a vacuum in the passage behind it as it expanded and burst like a missile from hell.

*CRASH*

The entire tunnel shook and Riven was thrown backwards down the passage by the secondary part of the spell as the creature’s huge body just burst open like a shaken can of soda-pop that’d had a couple dozen mentos dropped into it. The huge monster just simply ceased to exist, and its remains were scattered to all sides of the tunnel - top, bottom, left and right for dozens of yards. At the end of the tunnel there was a large, gaping hole in the side of the wall where exposed earth was trickling in, and a cloud of dust quickly filled the air that caused Riven to cough.

His ears rang from the sound of the impact and his body felt incredibly weak as if he’d just sprinted five miles without a break. His head was killing him, having a headache that felt like a jackhammer had been tapping against his skull for the past week. But he remained in control, and his red eyes simmered with remnants of the power he’d just unleashed - accompanied by a confident grin underneath his runic mask.

[You have gained 1 combat level. Please visit your status page to assign stat points.]

A sack of coins dropped somewhere within the canal, splashing in the muck that hadn’t been sent flying by his spell while he continued to vomit. His world began to spin slightly, but he rested with one hand on the wall to stabilize himself for a few seconds until the dizzy spell passed.

Unfortunately the fight wasn’t over yet.

Three much smaller versions of the creature he’d just killed surfaced and lunged for him out of the murky, disgusting sewage waste like bullets out of a gun. One skewered his right shoulder, causing him to scream in anger and roll left to grapple with it as the other two overshot their mark due to the premature attack of the first.

Feeling the pincers of the three-foot-long monster sink deep into his ligaments and muscle, he snarled and grabbed it by the base of its neck. He channeled his rage, feeling mana flood his infernal pillar inside the depths of his soul and he activated Hell’s Armor. Power ripped through his mana channels with brilliant flames, exploding across the tunnel in all directions to roast the little bastards with incinerating heat.

The creatures abruptly died, withering under a torrent of hellfire that roasted them alive, but his attention was quickly diverted again with another noise just as he deactivated hell’s armor and the inferno died down.