Balt

  Months of combat had wired him for moments like this. His staff struck stone with a brutal CRACK, the impact erupting into a rolling wave of force.

  The first Forcewave hit the spear wielder. Her momentum died instantly. The spear tore free from her grip as the Forcewave slammed into her. Balt didn’t let up; he sent a second wave a heartbeat later, slamming force into her chest and hurling her backward. She screamed in surprise as she flew.

  She tumbled across the floor in a violent roll, the spear skittering from her grip as she crashed into a support pillar hard enough to shake dust loose from the ceiling.

  Balt exhaled sharply. Of course, this would happen. They’d stumbled straight into the second most dangerous person in the entire castle. Riven had called it; they’d been Scooby?Dooed.

  Both cloaks dissolved into motes of light before snapping back into his inventory. In their absence, Balt stood revealed in his combat robes, unburdened, unrestrained, and ready to unleash hell. He pulled the crystal out and sent the signal.

  Marcilla sprinted past him from the broken doorway. She slid to Alice’s side, dagger flashing as she cut through the restraints with practiced precision. Balt brought up a barrier and quickly handed Marcilla a health potion. “Give that to her. With her being only level one, that should restore her to full health.”

  Alice gasped as the potion took effect and was able to move again, immediately reaching for Liz’s crib with trembling hands. “Balt… is that really you? Where’s my brother?” Alice asked.

  Balt turned slightly to see Alice in his peripheral vision; her hands trembled as she clutched Liz.

  Balt saw it, the fear she was trying to hide, the exhaustion she couldn’t, and the way her gaze kept slipping past him to the woman with the spear.

  Something cold settled into his chest. “You’re safe now. This woman will harm you no more,” he said quietly. “Your brother is outside, and he’s coming. And System help whoever tries to stop him.” He saw a faint smile come to Alice’s face at his words. Before he could say more, the woman began to push herself upright. She looked completely unharmed. She started to roll her shoulders as her body began to leak mana and coil protectively around her. She raised her hand, and a spear appeared.

  Balt let Identify flare.

  Balt stepped forward, planting himself between Sager and the others. “Stay behind me, all of you; do not leave my barrier,” he said, voice low and steady. “I’ll catch you up when this is over, Alice. Just know the cavalry’s here.”

  Sager cocked her head, studying him. Balt caught the brief flash in her eyes. “So you’re that guide who was with the Outlier when the Master kicked the shit out of him,” she sneered. “Where is the Outlier now?”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about Riven,” Balt said, brandishing his staff. “You’re going to die in this room, so where he is and what he is doing should not concern you in the least.”

  Sager sneered back, and it hadn’t even faded when Marcilla’s voice cut through the room.

  “Balt, don’t let her blade touch you!” she shouted. “Her venom doesn’t just poison you. It paralyzes. It slows your mana flow. One cut can be enough to induce a status condition.”

  Sager’s head tilted, eyes narrowing with cold amusement. “Well, well… the traitorous bitch speaks.”

  She rolled her shoulders, dark mana coiling tighter around her spear like living smoke.

  “I was waiting for you to crawl back this morning,” Sager said, eyes glittering. “I wanted to kill these two while you watched.”

  She tapped her lips and then snapped her fingers lightly. As if she had just thought of something. “But you know what? I can still do exactly that. So, nothing lost. After I break this wannabe hero you brought, he’ll tell me everything I need to know about the Outlier.”

  A clipped laugh escaped Sager; her smirk spread like poison. “Funny thing, Marcilla, you ended up actually doing me a favor by turning traitor.”

  Balt took another step forward. “Enough talk; we have places to be.”

  “And what exactly does a glorified guide twenty levels below me, a Faction Elite, think he’s going to do?” replied Sager coolly.

  Balt twirled his staff.

  Six spheres of lightning erupted into existence behind him, each one spinning with compressed fury. Ozone burned in the air. Dust skittered across the floor as static arced between stone tiles. Alice gasped as her hair lifted off her shoulders. Even Sager’s dark mana flickered under the sudden pressure of his mana and killing intent. “I’m about to show you.”

  Sager’s smirk faltered. She shifted her stance, spear lowering, dark mana tightening around her like armor.

  Sager’s smirk hadn’t even fully faded before Balt moved.

  Lightning cracked across his skin, his stance lowering, staff angled forward like a spear of his own. Sager’s eyes narrowed, reading him, measuring him, but Balt was already gone.

  He Blinked.

  A thunderclap split the room as he reappeared behind her, staff swinging in a brutal arc. Sager twisted aside, fast, faster than any normal Elite had a right to be, but Balt’s follow?up blast caught her shoulder and sent her skidding across the stone.

  She recovered instantly, boots grinding against the floor, spear snapping up into a guard.

  Balt exhaled through his nose. Fast… but not Jase or Riven fast. Riven was a monster of pure speed and technique when they sparred. Sager was quick, viciously so, but she didn’t bend reality around her movements the way Riven could. Balt could track her. He could read her.

  And he could punish her. He thrust his staff forward.

  Six spheres of lightning screamed past him, splitting into dozens of smaller bolts mid?flight. They ricocheted off walls, pillars, and the ceiling, turning the chamber into a storm?lit death maze.

  Sager darted between them, her movements sharp and serpentine. Each bolt that grazed the mana permeating her body sent sparks flying, each near?miss forcing her path narrower and narrower.

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  Balt pressed harder.

  He Blinked again, appearing above her this time, staff raised overhead. A lightning blast detonated downward like a falling star.

  Sager rolled, barely escaping the explosion, but Balt was already there, Blink chaining into another strike, then another. Lightning hammered her from every angle, forcing her back, forcing her to defend, forcing her to feel the pressure.

  Her breathing grew ragged. Her hair was half burned off at this point, and his lightning was causing her to twitch involuntarily.

  Her stance faltered. Her mana flickered.

  Balt saw it in her face the moment she realized she was losing.

  And that was when she snapped. “You’re a guide. A disposable tutorial relic. You don’t get to be stronger than me!

  A guttural scream tore from her throat as mana erupted around her, a violent pillar of shadow that cracked the stone beneath her feet. The air warped, the temperature dropping as the venom in her veins ignited into something feral. The surrounding mana was sucked into her body, and her pale skin pulsed with dark veins throughout her body.

  She blurred forward. Let’s see how you deal with this! “LAST EMBRACE!”

  Her spear blurred and split into five afterimages, each one aimed at one of his vital points: heart, throat, skull, kidney, and lung. Balt reacted on instinct.

  He fired four lightning?infused orbs straight into her face and torso as he backpedaled, trying to slip out of reach.

  The blasts snapped her head back, teeth cracking, blood spraying, but she refused to fall. The orbs hammered into her body, scorching and staggering her, yet she forced her way through the barrage and drove her spear forward.

  The spectral spears merged into a single, razor?sharp point just before impact.

  He felt the tip punch through his side.

  White?hot pain tore through Balt’s side as the weapon entered his body, the force driving him several steps back. Balt stayed focused. Swinging his staff with as much force as he could muster, trying to crush her exposed windpipe.

  Sager pulled out the spear tip and jumped back. He let out a pained grrrr as it left his body. His robes had stopped the blade after only a few inches. Thank the System, but something more than pain he felt pulsing through his body.

  A System Chime rang in his skull.

  He held his side and tried to send lightning to cauterize the wound, but all he felt was a throbbing in his core and no mana. The debuff was in full effect. Balt raised his staff. Taking a combat stance.

  Ten seconds was an eternity in a fight like this.

  His barrier, the one he’d been feeding mana into nonstop to keep Alice and Liz safe, flickered.

  Once. Twice. Then it shattered into drifting motes of light.

  Sager’s smile widened as the barrier collapsed. Her teeth were dark with blood as understanding lit her eyes. She’d de-buffed him and she knew it. The sound of his blood sizzling on the spear, and his ragged breathing was all he could hear for a moment as he thought furiously.

  Behind him, the two remaining lightning spheres he still had crackled. When he created them, they had to be allocated a precise amount of mana upfront. So, they were still active. He held out a small hope as he reached for them. Nothing answered. Without his mana being able to direct the orbs, they were just pretty lights for now.

  He pushed his soul to move the mana, but it was like sludge in his veins. He planted his staff and forced himself upright, keeping his shoulders squared. Keeping his orbs at his back, hoping he could bluff the Elite into thinking he could still use them and perhaps buy a few seconds.

  Sager saw the hesitation. Saw the stillness in his body. She grinned, blood running down her chin as dark mana coiled tighter around her spear. “Oh, this is going to be fun. No running out the clock now, wannabe.”

  She lunged.

  Balt barely got his staff up in time. The spear slammed against it, the impact jarring his bones. He parried, twisted, countered, but without mana, without lightning, without Blink, he was fighting with raw stats and weapon skill alone.

  But he wasn’t the uninitiated guide he once was. Balt had drilled endlessly under his Master’s eye, had traded blows with Riven in brutal sparring sessions, had survived months of real combat in the Tutorial.

  He wasn’t helpless anymore. But even though he was now competent with his staff, he quickly found out when it came to weapon skills he was outmatched by Sager.

  Sager pressed him relentlessly, each strike faster than the last. Her spear danced, venom now dripping from the tip, every thrust a killing blow. Balt blocked one, two, three; the fourth grazed his hand.

  Pain flared. Blood poured. His fingers went numb instantly, grip slipping on the staff.

  Sager laughed, wild and triumphant. “Look at you! Slowing down already!”

  Marcilla’s voice cut through the chaos. “Balt! Let me help!”

  “Keep them safe!” Balt roared back, teeth clenched. “I made a promise, and I intend to see it through to the end!” He felt the gem on his staff and knew what he had to do. He firmed his resolve.

  He didn’t have time to think about it further. Sager was already on him. She thrust, a perfect killing strike, and Balt didn’t dodge. He stepped into it.

  The spear punched into his abdomen, driving straight through him and bursting out his back. The force dragged Sager forward, her arm slamming against his stomach. He heard Alice scream his name in worry. “Even Sager froze for a heartbeat, shocked that he had stepped into the strike.

  Balt’s left arm snapped out, hooking around her lead arm and locking it against his side in a crushing vice. The spear’s blade had already punched clean through his back, but he’d gambled correctly that she needed the weapon’s edge to deliver her debuffs.

  He felt her try to trigger a Talent through the embedded spear, mana pulsing along the shaft.

  Nothing happened. No new status conditions. No venom. No paralysis. He felt pain as she tried to jerk it loose, but pain Balt could deal with.

  His eyes burned with fury. His grin was bloody, feral, triumphant. “Got you bitch,” he gritted out. She started to beat on him then, but he refused to let go. He just had to hold on for a few seconds. She screamed at him in a fury. One second passed. Then she head-butted him, breaking his nose. but he refused to fall. He just gripped her arm tighter.

  Then, what he had been waiting for finally happened. System Notification

  Sager’s eyes widened as she noticed his staff starting to glow. Balt had filled it to the brim with mana before coming here.

  Balt leaned forward, breath hot against her ear. As he pointed the staff at her torso. “Remember when I told you that you’re never leaving this room.”

  She let out a desperate NOOOOOOOO!

  He unleashed it with a whisper. “Stormbreaker Cannon.”

  The world exploded. A beam of condensed lightning and force erupted point?blank into Sager’s torso, vaporizing armor, flesh, and bone in a single catastrophic blast. He felt her hand loosen on the spear, but he held her in place, not wanting the spear in his middle to shoot out of him.

  The shockwave tore through the chamber, shattering stone pillars and sending Sager’s bottom half flying.

  Balt let her top half fall to the ground and hit his knees, blood pouring from his wounds. The spear still in his stomach and his staff humming with fading power.

  But despite the pain, he was smiling.

  What remained of Sager lay scattered across the floor, charred armor, scorched flesh, and the severed remnants of a once?terrifying foe.

  But something caught his eye. Her one remaining hand, what was left of it, was glowing.

  A faint, pulsing light throbbed from her curled fingers. Balt frowned, clutching the spear still lodged in his abdomen as he staggered toward it. Every step sent fire lancing through his torso, but curiosity, and caution pushed him forward.

  He dropped to one knee beside the ruined corpse, teeth clenched against the pain. With his free hand he pried her stiffening fingers apart.

  Nestled in her palm was a small, perfectly cut crystal, glowing with a soft inner radiance.

  Balt blinked, breath catching. “What the hell…?”

  The light pulsed again, as if answering him.