Domr
patreon
Bk 3 Ch. 17 Wind Damage
🕑 Added 2024-10-14 20:43:36 +0000 UTC17.
A/N: going to be changing the challenge from 72 hours to 24. 72 just didn't really work and I don't know what i was thinking when i wrote it.
“How you doing, Chloe?” Santi asked as he jumped back, avoiding a crashing knot of roots and earth. Dirt scattered everywhere as the improvised maul exploded in a spray. Loose shards of razor sharp roots sprayed out in a shrapnel blast that Santi was forced to use [Air Shield] to prevent the attack from piercing him.
The dryad rustled in annoyance, its canopy shaking and releasing a rain of green walnuts to the ground. The morph blade pruned a thick limb that sent a primary branch to the ground in a loud crash. He was forced to the side, further away from Chloe, as another wild wave of magic sharpened branches sliced apart the space he had just occupied.
“I’m fine. Got the perfect weapon for this!” Chloe barked, a hint of laughter in her voice. Santi risked a look over toward her and saw her covered in bark, sap, and shredded shrubbery. She had been a force of nature in dealing with the forces of nature.
“Are the others still alive?” Santi asked, his vision blocked by the dryad that had inhabited the walnut tree.
“Most of them!”
Santi mimicked her weapon, turning his long sword into a wide axe and he stopped dodging and began to attack. The fight with the ent was so long ago that it felt like a different life, but the memories were there. He started near the base and worked his way up. The dryad died with a few swift and powerful blows, the weak Acolyte monster dying with little fanfare.
“How many of these things are there?” Maya panted out in exhaustion. The fist fighter was wreathed in small cuts and abrasions as her skill enforced fists punched apart a medium sized lime tree.
“How many plants or trees were in the city?” Santi retorted.The entire downtown region, which hadn’t been in the best of shape to begin with, was looking rather wretched. The entire area was filled with shredded shrubbery and broken trees.
“FUCK!” Maya snarled as she exerted herself. Power surged around her and her red fists cracked the sapling in half, blowing it apart in a shower of splinters.
“Oh, it’s fun and easy so far!” Chloe said, stifling laughter as she knocked down another tree. With the satyrs dead, nothing had come that could realistically challenge them. They were simply too strong, fast, and durable for the weak dryads to kill them. The amount of the dryads were concerning though.
Neither Santi or Chloe were strong and fast enough to protect all of their new citizens. The huddled masses had been hustled into the guts of the partially destroyed store and now all the strongest fighters, barring Maya and Frank, were standing guard.
“Retreat back to the store!” Santi ordered. He slashed apart a rhododendron and moved his head to the side to let rose thorns the size of his fingers fly by him. [Gust] cleared the area around him and the others, giving them a clear path towards the store. Maya and Frank ran without word, both of them tired and bloody, while Chloe took her time, slashing apart anything that got too close to them. There was finally a break in the fighting that allowed him to breathe and think.
That hunting party of satyrs wouldn’t have been it. There was likely more to them and there should be stronger dryads around the small town. Ancient trees that needed something more powerful for them to awaken. If there were more singers, and they were using the first one’s sacrifice as a distraction, then there were likely more out there working on awakening more powerful nature spirits.
He needed to go and find them, but he needed to get everyone safe before that and cutting apart every overgrown plant one at a time wasn’t working out. Frank and Maya got past the lines of guards and slumped down right past them while Chloe simply took up her place in the line near the center.
“Is everyone here?” Santi asked Zeke. The boy looked about and shrugged.
“I think so? People are missing, but they might be gone. We had to hurry everyone over here when the fucking plants came to life.”
“Good enough. Everyone, stay inside the shelter of the store.”
“Santi, what are you doing?” Chloe asked, more curious than concerned. Her forearm had stopped bleeding and for most of the fight she had taken no wounds from the weaker monsters.
“Being a real mage,” Santi said with a flash of a smile. With a quick run and jump he scaled the side of the building, fingers grabbing the cracks in the broken wall with ease to haul himself up.
Turning slowly he looked down at the world below him. Now that they had retreated the army of plants were marching in step to surround the store. A wall of vegetation that surrounded the entire block, rustling and shaking, branches whipping the air as they closed in on the thin line of defenders. He scanned them quickly while he mentally prepared himself.
Not a single Acolyte level monster in the horde, all of them having been trimmed back by Santi and Chloe. He still remembered the Night Hag, the circle around her as blows fell like rain until she had fallen to the much weaker crowd. Chloe was laughing and shrugging it off, but there was danger here.
He reached into himself, drawing on the mana that filled his body and began to draw it forth. Just like manipulating spell forms, supercharging them was something else that could be done with enough time and practice. The spell forms were like a template, you activated if you had the required resources the spell would work. A year or two into the integration people had started to play around with spells and skills by pushing more into them.
It went beyond strengthening the spell like he did with [Air Manipulation]. Santi took a deep breath as he began to cast. The familiar feel of [Gust] came to mind, the howling gale kept tame only by his iron will as he began to feed it more and more mana. Pressure built in his body, straining him at the seams as he watched below as his allies held the line.
A few moments melded into minutes. Blood ran from his nose and ears, distant wetness that he could hardly pay attention to as the entirety of his world had shrunk down to the forest that had filled the area in front of the store. [Gust] was there, aching to be released, but it had grown into a tempest, a shape of unimaginable strength, held back only by Sant’s strength.
He coughed, blood spraying out of his mouth as he finally released the mutated spell. It was like a balloon popping inside of him as he deflated, his knees buckling as he hardly caught himself on the ledge in time to prevent himself from face planting. The air pressure changed as the world warped, winds that drowned out the world as they were summoned.
The dryads dug their roots into the earth, sliding through the cracks in the concrete and asphalt to anchor themselves. It saved them for a split second as the earth below and in front of Santiago was scoured clean. Chunks of road, sidewalk, buildings, and dryads were all picked up and flung away as if by the hand of god.
Six seconds the storm lasted, a gale of such ferocity that Santi watched as buildings were shaken and broken apart, thrown away and out of town limits. As it ended, the winds disappeared like they had never been there, nothing remained of the dryads.
Hundreds of kill notifications began to rattle through Santi’s skull as he chuckled weakly at the destruction wrought before him. His strength was gone, the effects of the curse fleeing as he depleted himself in the attempt at saving themselves from a death of a half million cuts.
“Santi? You alive up there?” Chloe called to him, her voice filled with awe.
“Barely,” Santi managed to croak out.
“I’m coming up!” Chloe followed her words moments later by crawling up the side of the building and landing in a crouch. She raised her eyebrows at him laying there, propped up against the wall.
“That took a bit out of me.” Santi could already feel mana beginning to flow through him again, thin as a mountain stream at the heights of summer. In a few minutes he’d be able to be functional, but it had taken more out of him that he thought it would.
“So, didn’t know you had that in you,” Chloe said as she stood and looked down over the ruins of the town. Santi looked over at the area and had to shrug weakly.
“Lot of those buildings were already structurally compromised.”
“Ohhh, is that how you’re going to play it? I’m not strong enough to wipe away a third of a town’s downtown region unless it’s already structurally weakened?”
“I mean, it was.”
“Doth protest too much, I believe. This was impressive Santiago. Terrifying, but impressive. I can guess you needed that build up time to get the spell off? You can’t just do it off the cuff?”
“Takes a few minutes for me to get the power behind it. Won’t be doing this again for a while, I feel very wrung out.”
“I can see that,” Chloe reached into a pocket and pulled out a stained piece of cloth. She bent over and wiped at his face and ears, wiping away the blood with a faint concerned frown on her face.
“Is that the same piece of scrap fabric you use to clean your axe?” Santi asked as she leaned back, shoving the scrap back into her pocket.
“Yeah. It’s the cleanest thing I have right now and you looked like death warmed over. If you’d gone down to them looking like that you would have started a panic. They’re impressed and scared because of what you just did. You come down looking like you were bleeding out of your eyes and they’ll start thinking maybe you aren’t invincible and they don’t have to listen to you.”
“Heavy is the crown,” Santi offered her a weak smile and then his hand. She gripped his hand with a hearty smack and heaved, pulling him up so he could stare at the destruction he had wreaked.
“There might be more of the satyrs around. Trying to awaken the bigger and older vegetation around here. We need to find them. Go and ask Frank if there’s any old growth, parks, anything like that while I catch my breath. If there is, we’ll have to go and see if we can stop them from awakening those dryads.”
“You got it. Will you be strong enough to get into a fight with more of those satyrs?”
“I’ll be as strong as I need to be. Got a couple levels and I’m going to assign those points. Ohh, and an achievement. Maybe I’ll have something nice to add to the collection.”
“The collection that you always leave at home?”
“Mom will bring it up. Didn’t think this trip warranted my full war regalia for a small den.”
“Proper prior planning prevents poor performances.”
“What are you, a motivational poster?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Chloe said, throwing her head back and laughing.
“I’ll go ask Frank, you assign your levels. I got some too, we gear up, catch our breaths and then clear this town of the goats before more monsters show up.”
“I don’t think anything will be coming from that direction,” Santi said, waving his hand in the direction he had directed his spell. He had thrown enough debris that way with enough force that it would have required Acolyte level monsters to survive.
“Hana better be dragging them back here. That was a little thorny there for a moment,” Chloe said. There was a hint of mischief in her eyes as she swung a leg over the ledge.
“Thorny? That’s what you went with? Poor punning is unacceptable,” Santi said, rolling his eyes as he smiled at her. She simply laughed as she jumped down to talk to Frank. Santi stared at the ruin he had wrought and then brought up his stat sheet. The day wasn’t over yet.
