Elysium's Multiverse

Chapter 12

The words Riven’s opponent spoke were rough and filled with intent to kill, though Riven thought the choice of insult rather odd. Still, the look of disgust on his enemy’s countenance illuminated by moonlight was more than enough to let Riven know he wouldn’t be given any mercy…which again only made the things he had to do easier for Riven to go through with.

But the bald man wasn’t done speaking. Or rather, the man was shouting due to the distance between them. He stepped forward to point at Riven with an accusatory posturing while chill winds rustled both men’s robes. “You probably have no idea what’s really going on here, do you? To think that I would be paired with these worthless fools. How was it that any of you got through the labyrinth to begin with? Has Chalgathi become complacent in who he admits into his chosen? Was it not supposed to be us true cultists who received his graces?”

Riven gave his opponent across the grass a blank stare in return, only shifting slightly when the crisp night breeze blew hard enough to whip his cloak about. This…wasn’t going as Riven had expected. It appeared Baldy knew who Chalgathi was? That was weird. And a cult?

Riven knew he had cultist’s robes on, but he didn’t think that qualified as being a cult member. This guy, though—he was actually claiming to be part of one? How intriguing.

The larger man angrily spat in Riven’s direction at the lack of reply and then scoffed in utter disgust. “You probably haven’t even figured out how to bring up your status page yet, have you? You probably never even experienced real magic before this; you’re probably one of those people who concentrated on your nine-to-five desk job instead of truly living and thriving in the gift that Elysium sent us as a divine sign of things to come. Pathetic. Utterly pathetic that I spent so much time learning the ins and outs of it all, to be only one of a mere ten within the cult’s ranks to make it to the last round. The rest of you are not deserving of this gift, are not deserving of such power in this new world. You all deserve nothing but death, and after having prepared for this moment with years of study to completely master both of my chosen spells, I am confident in my ability to send you into the afterlife. I doubt you were able to master even a fraction of a single ability in the minimal time granted to learn, so perhaps I’ll grant you a final gift before your death and allow you to see what a real sorcerer can truly do! Say your last prayers, worm, and balk before my majesty!”

Riven raised a skeptical eyebrow, thoroughly unimpressed with the rambling. It really hadn’t been that hard to learn those two spells. But a head start? That was rather unfair, though Riven could see no reason why the man would lie to him. Had this guy really taken a years-long head start to learn just two of them? Hmm. That’s what it sounded like. Was it supposed to be bragging? Was that some kind of great feat? Riven cocked his head to the side in confusion, briefly opening his mouth to reply but not finding the words. Regardless, now things were definitely on an entirely different level of weird with the monologue. This guy was basically telling him in some insanity-driven speech that he was part of a cult and had been preparing for this weird-ass situation? Upon studying the man’s words and attitude, Riven definitely could make out that he was genuinely angry…and the venting seemed more directed to the world around them.

So Riven said the only thing that came to mind and opened his mouth to speak again. “Your potato head shines in the moonlight. There, I said it.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me, you bald old fuck.”

There was a long silence after that as the other man considered Riven’s words with a confused glare, but he then shook his head with a snarl and began to summon magics to his bidding. “I’m only thirty-six! I am nowhere near old, you fucking idiot!”

“More’s the pity for your baldness then, you poor, cursed man.”

“Silence! I have perfected both spells given to me by Chalgathi far in advance of this trial! You will succumb to my power, and I will bathe in your blood!”

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“Well, that’s not very nice.” Riven frowned to consider the mental image of a literal bloodbath just when shadows began erupting from the man’s staff and the brief monologue ended. Condensing and reforming into one another, the shadows quickly created two skulking, terrier-sized quadrupeds from shadow mana. Their bodies flickered in and out of existence, each with two red eyes glaring at him and claws extending as they hissed his way.

Was that the Create Shadowling spell?

Then, remembering how he’d acquired his own first unique ability from the second phase of the quest, Riven grew just slightly more confident.

It was his only movement ability. Hopefully this would give him a mobility advantage that he could utilize, especially with Athela’s new trait imbuing his body with even further speed.

Red sparks of electricity began to flicker to life across his clothes and skin when he mentally activated the blessing. The power began pulsing and shifting to light up the area around him in a sinister shade of crimson, and his body felt invigorated beyond what any stimulant could have done for him back on Earth. The boost empowered Riven with immense amounts of stamina regeneration, speed, and agility—his muscles were literally electrified with might beyond natural human boundaries—and he glared back at the man he’d have to kill just when the shadowlings stopped halfway between them.

The bald man, not recognizing the ability, gave Riven a confused frown, and his features became even angrier as fights began to break out all around them on other floating islands nearby. Blue, red, black, orange, teal, and purple energies began lighting up the night sky around them as screams, explosions, and bestial roars echoed around the chasm between land masses.

The fights had finally begun.

“DIE!” the shiny, hairless man screeched with an angry roar as he finally went on the offensive. Pulsing, neon-teal mana was conjured and then condensed into the size and spherical shape of a baseball, then was flung at a shrieking speed past the two shadow beasts and in Riven’s direction.

Riven was rather surprised at just how fucking fast the attack was going, startled even, but he had expected the attack and instinctively pushed mana into the ability of his blessing to empower it further. His mana channels surged with warmth, the crimson lightning arcing about his body radiated outward beyond its stabilized form, and he blurred left.

Thus his body flashed out of the way just in time, and his opponent’s spell crashed into the ground a couple feet to the left of where Riven now stood. It was also where Riven had just been. His strained movements emphasized the red lightning trickling along his skin, though the mana pull started to decrease as he calmed down. But he was definitely surprised at the result; he’d never pushed that amount of mana through his channels before, and his knee-jerk reaction to force mana into his activated ability far outweighed his previous sprint through the maze.

The earth and grass exploded and withered right where he’d been a moment before, five feet to his right, and the neon-teal glow faded away to leave a moderately sized hole in the ground that smoked with the remnants of his enemy’s mana.

Riven spared the impact site a very brief glance. Was that the miasmic bolt spell? If not, it was at least something similar.

The bald man hissed in disbelief, now sporting a bulging vein across his forehead and focused eyes. “You should not be able to move that fast!”

Athela began to chitter and screech, rushing forward only to be stopped with a hand gesture by Riven. The demon did stop, though she gave him a confused sideways glance. Yet another two miasmic bolts rocketed toward Riven as he tested the waters of his enemy’s strength and let him whittle down his mana reserves. Both miasmic bolts left smoking holes in the ground behind him, both of them were dodged even more easily than the first, and then yet another bolt soared past into the air to make impact with another island far off.

It truly was a long-range attack, but this time it was a little too close for comfort. His spells didn’t go nearly that far, with the Wretched Snare traveling maybe a dozen or so yards accurately while his Bloody Razors went about three times that length. The distance between the two casters, though? It was farther than that.

Still, if Riven hadn’t activated his blessing, he was utterly sure he’d have been unable to dodge these attacks. Riven dodged yet another magical bolt while he got a handle on adjusting the power output for his blessing, and meanwhile he considered his enemy. What the man had said was right—he normally shouldn’t be able to move that fast—and even now Riven wasn’t 100 percent confident in his ability to continue dodging if they kept on coming or if he was caught up fighting the summoned shadow beasts. Even if it did mean whittling down his enemy’s mana, Riven didn’t know just how much mana his enemy actually had. It would pose a problem if the man had more mana than Riven did, and although Blessing of the Crow didn’t use any mana at a base level, it did utilize a lot of it if he pushed himself to elevate his speed further. So he quickly decided to switch tactics and stopped experimenting. In large part he also attributed his success at dodging the shots to the very animated way the crazed caster would prepare the attacks, basically broadcasting it every time he made a move before he even started channeling the spell.

Not only that, but the combatants were a good ways away from each other—giving Riven time to dodge that he wouldn’t have had up close. That being said, his spells were both shorter range than the one this caster was flinging at him, so he’d have to bridge the gap.

With a grunt Riven pushed off—vaulting ahead in a burst of speed and then keeping his blessing at a base level to preserve mana. His Blood Weaver, who’d been watching him curiously after he’d activated the crow’s blessing, screeched and raced ahead with him—far outstripping him in speed even when utilizing his boost and passing him by with excitement in her eyes. The fun little Blood Weaver was gone, and in its place was a feral hunter—silver fangs flashing.

“SHRREEEEEEE!”

Panicking at the speed at which the arachnid was gaining ground, the other caster fired off another miasmic bolt that was easily and expertly dodged by the creature. Athela’s alien screech hit a higher pitch as the large zombie wolf lunged forward with a roar—trying to snap at the arachnid’s legs only to find empty air. Glinting crimson strands of blood silk wrapped around its neck, and the undead creature was yanked back hard to flip over violently when the spider’s threads met an end.

Immediately, the spider demon was on top of the wolf’s back—and the two monsters were at each other’s throats with hisses, roars, shrieks, and flashing teeth in a tumble over the dirt and grass.

Despite the battle going on to Riven’s right, he focused on his own opponent. He pushed onward, sprinting faster and faster ahead. He dodged another projectile of glowing miasmic power that seared his cheek, rolled to duck under another, and fired off two Bloody Razors that whipped forward through the air with arcs of crimson flowing out behind them. The caster cursed and, to Riven’s amazement, launched an intercepting attack that took one of his razors out midair before getting nicked by the second attack. The caster roared in outrage, and blood started leaking from a deep cut where he’d managed to turn his body at the last second, though the wound in his arm was certainly ugly to look at.

Riven took that opportunity to close the gap even farther and summoned the spell Wretched Snare. Black magic erupted from Riven’s outstretched hand as a small globe of black that quickly expanded into a net of cruel needles. It was only partially dodged when the other man frantically kicked off to the left, his trailing leg being hooked by the net’s edge. The man screamed as the sharp pieces dug through his pants into his leg, and both his body and mind were assaulted with waves of unholy pain.

The rest of the net slammed into the ground, sticking to both the man and the dirt below like glue as Riven’s enemy repeatedly shrieked and tried to fling it off him, to no avail. The black magic was burning the target like acid, and smoke billowed up where the needles of the net had buried themselves. Riven grinned victoriously amid his sprint forward, focused on ending the fight as fast as possible, and his mana channels expanded with another surge of power. He leaned left, kicking off to bypass one of the small shadow beasts, and prepared to cast Bloody Razors when the two black shadow beasts he’d been trying to get around lunged. Their sharp fangs and claws wrapped around his legs, and the power he’d been building up across his fingertips fizzled out in an instant.

*WHAM*

He slammed face-first into the ground, dropping his scythe and screaming in horrified pain as the temporarily summoned little minions clawed at his ankles and bit into his feet.

“SON OF A BITCH!”

Cursing and kicking at them, he managed to get one off just as he saw another miasmic bolt being shot his way. Unfortunately he didn’t have time to dodge and took it to the shoulder, screaming even more loudly as a chunk of his deltoid was ripped out and fried in a spray of blood.