Underworld - Book 4 - Chapter 29

I reached a ridiculous speed as I dove toward the ground. Her tentacles moved just as fast, threatening to crush me against the stone beneath. Throwing my wings out, I changed directions and swooped toward her, but my momentum was so great that I landed momentarily on all fours and my chin bounced off the stone. With the strength of me wings joined with that of my arms and legs, I ripped the stone apart beneath me and drove at her.

My Warhammer appeared in my hand as I determined to test its physical damage on the side of her head. One of her tentacles appeared between us, and I threw an Artificial Sun right at her face as I diverted my course by a foot at the most and sped past it. The tentacle slammed down on the path where I’d been and squelched my Sun. It was enough to give me the opening I needed.

As flew past her, I hammered her in the middle of her upper back, and my Skeletal Tail whipped at her feet from the other side forcing them out from under her. I didn’t slow as I turned my head in time to watch her faceplant. Her appendages lifted her off the ground and her legs seemed to disappear. She was soon standing a good six feet higher than before. Only her lower tentacles that were holding her up remained in the sights of our mana cannon. That may have been a bad idea. She’d been standing in just the right place.

Diving into the pit on my left, I gained momentum before ripping the air with my wings and swooping high toward the ceiling on the other side of the room. I felt her tentacles shooting toward me from behind before I had reached the room’s heights.

I didn’t dare slow as I dived again under a series of agitated appendages. Their speed and precision were incredible considering she was over 50 meters away.

After evading them a half dozen times, they seemed to only get faster. Thankfully I’d actually taken the time to learn to fly, even if I was still far from mastering it. At my level during my battle with Waldemar I would have already been swatted out of the sky and only channeling additional mana into my form would have given me any hope. But since Fire Incubus Form had reached level 100.

Strength: 7,610

Dexterity: 7,346

Constitution: 7,178

Before, even with the form at 4x, it hadn’t been as powerful as it was now in its base state. I’d only been able to manage a maximum of approximately 6,000 in each stat. It was incredible having even higher numbers than before, and the additional 411,900 HP was unbelievable, but with each new level of power I reached it was the feeling of increased control that left me the most astonished. It always felt like an impossible leap in ability that was only conceivable by those that had also reached it. It left me literally flying circles around Mistress Nava’s attacks.

Slowly, I’d been channeling mana into Master Mind Buff, increasing my Mana Per Minute and Maximum Mana at a rate I hoped she didn’t notice. There was no good reason to televise it. It had reached 4x, giving me an additional 270,000 Mana and 2,400 Mana Per Minute. It didn’t make it so that Fire Incubus Form would last indefinitely, but for all practical purposes it would. I could now spend ten hours in the form and still have a little mana left over.

For a moment, I dared to hope that I had overestimated what Mistress Nava was capable of. Sure, she had a lot of mana, and probably a lot of tricks from the Blue Magic she had yet to use, but I was having far less trouble than I’d expected.

Dodging her appendages was almost like a game. They didn’t come one at a time, but all at once from different angles so it challenged my creativity to slip through and around them. But suddenly, they stopped and hung in the air.

Lifting her hands together, she clapped twice as if applauding. “Well done. You have proven you have the tenacity of a bug to not get squashed.”

“Can all bugs put you on your face?” I replied.

She slowly lowered her hands to reveal a smirk. Five identical tentacles rose up from behind her. It was at that moment that I felt a burning sensation in my right leg. Looking down, I saw that my leg was gone. 

-178,990 HP

571,185/750,175 HP

My leg just above the knee and still covered in thick bone armor fell toward the pit beneath me as a rogue tentacle sped under me and away. It had struck at me from behind. I quickly followed the appendage with my eyes into the depths of the pit where it had been hiding and biding its time to wiggle in from my blind spot..

The sickened feeling that filled my gut was quickly driven back by my natural regeneration. Even without my input, my limb began regrowing itself and the pain that came with it gripped a hold of what was left of my stump like a thousand electric spiders that were being birthed from my wound.

Mistress Nava wouldn’t dare let me alone to heal. She sent her eleven appendages at me all at once.

I dart up and away, only to have to squeeze between two tentacles that were waiting there to meet me. I scrambled to the side, then dived only to have to climb again. All the while I didn’t dare let Magic Sight diminish in the slightest even if doing so would have made the healing of my severed leg more bearable.

I channeled Master Mind Buff to 5x for an additional 50,000 MP and begun filling the room with a mixture of Light Orbs and Artificial Suns. The Light Orbs weren’t nearly as bright and didn’t offer the same quality of light, but they would only add to my distraction and cost less mana. As I’d hoped, she still wasn’t in a hurry to finish me, but started smacking the annoying balls of light from the sky.

It was becoming easier to dodge her constant attacks and I continued to cast even more balls of light. I didn’t dive right for her as I had at first but took a roundabout way as I dodged her appendages only to land on the stone pathway near the middle of the room only ten meters away. My leg had fully formed but it was far from healed completely. I ignored the pain and crunching sound the best I could and rose to face up her.

One of the greatest benefits of my Light Magic Forms was that the transformation time was almost instant. In the blink of an eye, my Fire Incubus Form disappeared only to be replaced with my Solar Mage Form. My hands were already out before me as I funneled 100,000 MP into each hand. Placing them wrist to wrist, a duel Laser blazed into life. One moment there was nothing and the next a beam of light pierced through the Succubi’s forehead leaving two holes side by side like one quarter stacked upon another. I could see clearly through her head.

Once against, her appendages froze in place. My insides seemed to freeze with them as I waited too see if she recovered. It was only a moment before little finger of black and red reached from one side of the opening of her wound to the other to knit her back together. A few seconds later she was whole.

I was already transformed back into Fire Incubus Form when she gave me a curious look. “As I said, you’re a bug. Your stinger is sharp, but its little more than annoying and I’ve grown bored. Now, be still and let me pull you apart.”

It was as if her power was limitless. She rose up even higher off the ground as twice the number of appendages, over twenty in all, reached up over her like tails of a scorpion ready to strike. 

I’d told Aeris that I hoped Mistress Nava liked to play with her food for it would give me an opportunity to find possible weakness. But now, after every test, I hadn’t found one. At my current level, she was as impossible to defeat as I’d feared.

I launched back and into the air, diving and spinning in a desperate attempt to escape the deadly tentacles that were after me. Though it had only grazed me, there was a deep groove in the skeletal armor at my hip and another wedge had been taken from the armor on my back. Even as I continued my attempt to flee, I replenished my armor with mana and bone. It was as if she was whittling away at me and would soon get to the juicy center that she thirsted for.

I was out of options. Seeing that I was above the pathway and there were no tentacles beneath me, I cut off the flow of mana to Fire Incubus Form and fell like a brick as my wing receded. With only my ravaged Skeleton Titan’s Defense remaining, I landed on my feet and watched her tentacles gather overhead.

They squirmed above me enthralled that their prey had seemingly given up.

Mistress Nava hesitated long enough to give me one last smile before moving to finish me off. Was it respect, or had I just humored her enough to cause the reaction? I didn’t know. It didn’t matter.

Testing her really wasn’t a waste of time regardless how I felt. It was only logical to try even if nothing had come out of it. As her tentacles moved to crush me, I pooled a sweltering amount of power that I hadn’t felt since I’d first tested what I was capable of after Mastering Light Magic. Master Mind Buff soared to unfathomable heights. 10x would have once costed me 153,600 Mana Per Minute, but now it cost half as much. The transition was smooth and quick. My Intelligence and Wisdom climbed by an additional 4,950.

Intelligence: 7,215

Wisdom: 10,134 

My concept of power changed in a moment. Magic changed. The world itself was flipped on its head and it felt like a much smaller place as my Wisdom surpassed 10,000 for only the second time. The beauty of Light Magic Buffs wasn’t just the increase in stats and power, but that they were as natural and true as my own mana. It was as if I had reached 10,000 Wisdom on my own without buffs and all the benefits of doing so changed me in a moment.

Intermediate Mana Flow, Intermediate Mana Manipulation, Natural Channeling and Mind Synergy have all been joined together into a single Mastery. 

Advanced Mana Control

The amount of total mana you possess is now calculated with a multiplier of 200 for every point of Intelligence you have.

Mana rejuvenation is calculated with a multiplier of 10 for every point of Wisdom.

All spells cost 90% less mana to cast.

All spells are 100% more powerful when cast.

Meditation is no longer necessary to reach your maximum mana.

Your channeled spells no longer have an effective cap on how powerful they can become. Your only limitation is the amount of mana you possess.

You are now able to supply a spell with less mana than is normally required to cast a lesser form of even the subtlest spells.

Your Intelligence and Wisdom have both surpassed the capability of greater beings.

Your Wisdom has reached the level of a lesser magical being.

Even though I’d spent over half of my mana already, it was as if I’d only begun. My maximum mana shot through the roof to 1,057,039 MP remaining of 1,443,000. That was a small thing compared to what happened with my Mana Rejuvenation. I’d gone from 10,268 Mana Per Minute to 101,340.  In other words, instead of rejuvenating 171 mana per second, I was now getting 1,689. Not only could I hold on to my Master Mind Buff indefinitely, but it now only cost me 90% of its original cost which cut its cost to half of what it had to reach 10,000 Wisdom. A moment ago it had cost me 76,800 Mana Per Minute but now it only cost 38,400 to keep it running, so that left me with an incredible 62,940 Mana Per Minute to play with—six times what I was capable of producing before.

This new level of power left me with the same density of mana running through me as Mistress Nava had, but I was standing before her in my human form and she had 20 massive appendages flying at me. It was a problem and it was impossible to get out of the way in time.

A dozen strand of liquid light shot out of my back and chest destroying my skeletal armor in the process. The sudden doubling of my Wisdom brought clarity to one of the numerous theories I’d been pondering about the nature of Light Magic. I compared my own mana to Mistress Nava’s and saw that her Dark Magic had too principle characteristics just as my own. One was Darkness, and the other was Undeath. Her Darkness was the opposite of Light and her Undeath was the opposite of Life. Undeath was the only word that made sense in the moment, for, even though her magic was death to me, it was life to monsters like her. It was only a theory, but it was one I was willing to gambling with.

My strands of light grew in an instant. They weren’t nearly as thick as Mistress Nava’s, but they had a thicker concentration of Life Magic than hers did Undeath. I didn’t aim for the tentacles coming at me, but at their base at her feet and behind her. It took a single united motion. My appendages lop off the scorpion’s tail. The threat that had been looming over me, the serpents of Dark Magic, sizzled into nonexistence as their supply of mana was cut off.

“Son of a bacon bit! Do you guys feel that?” Richard said to everyone in the area all at once. As much as I wanted to laugh I ignored him. He followed up his outburst when realizing what he’d done. “Sorry!”

Instead of a tantrum, Mistress Nava finally seemed to compose herself. She landed flat footed despite falling from ten feet in the air and was unaffected by it. She remained still and watched me for a long moment before breaking her silence. “You’re a bigger bug than I thought. Now you have me intrigued human. Show what you’ve got.”

My appendages were still lingering near her feet and both flanks. I was more than happy to respond.