Duskbound

Chapter 15

Of course it's not over. This thing is a champion. Why would it be so easy that I could solo kill it in a few minutes?

Velik had no idea how agile a living wave of fire was, but he didn't have a lot of room to run away, so he tried a different strategy instead. He charged at it, spear leveled and leading the way. Then, with only a few feet between them, he planted the weapon hard in the ground and vaulted straight up. A twist of his midsection reoriented him to get his feet facing the ground again, and he saw what looked like phantom arms made of fire reaching out of the top of the wave.

They weren't fast enough to extend to his height in time, and he passed cleanly by them. As he flew overhead, he swiped his spear through one of the hands at the end, just to see if he could actually hurt Balzarith. The fiery hand parted from the arm and disappeared in a flash of light, which proved the weapon did… something. Whether or not that actually hurt the living inferno was still open to debate.

Velik hit the ground hard and rolled twice before coming to his feet. Some part of [Predator's Visage] warned him of an incoming attack, maybe the crackling sound of approaching flames or the smell of scorched dirt, though both those things were all around him. Whatever it was, he trusted the skill.

He threw himself forward in a spin, his feet leaving the ground so that his whole body could twist and his spear could slash through whatever was behind him. A huge, fiery hand, each finger over two feet long, had been just about to close around his head. The entire mass of flame surged behind it, no more than fifteen feet, and his spear did nothing to slow it down. It did shear off three of the massive fingers, all of which met the same fate as that first, smaller hand he'd cut.

Is this how I hurt this thing – just cut it away, one sliver at a time? That seems too simple for a champion elite.

Even if he was right, there was no telling how long it would take to carve enough fire off the main body. It was getting hotter in the field with each passing second, and he was pretty sure the twenty-foot-tall wall that kept him trapped was actually tightening around him. One way or another, Velik was going to cook if he didn't end the battle in the next few minutes.

The only good thing about his enemy's new form was that, while it was just as fast as the original one, it was considerably easier to cut through. He could whip his spear through a dozen of those reaching hands in a second, dispersing them all while he backpedaled away from the main body. The problem was that it didn't seem to slow Balzarith down at all. He'd stabbed that flame when it was still in its glass box and had seen its flickering countenance grimace in pain, but this fire now was something else.

That probably means there's a central core I need to find inside the inferno, maybe linked to those strands of red tissue. Wait… Where are those now? Are they hidden in the fire?

Someone with a low mental stat would have lacked the capability to discern that kind of detail in the inferno, but now that Velik had thought to look for them, it was easy enough to pick them out. They were deep in the fire, well past the reach of his spear, but now they were packed into a sphere that looked like nothing so much as a ball of raw muscle fiber.

He hadn't been able to cut through them before. Now might not be any different. If those were protecting the monster's core—and he didn't see any good reason to assume they weren't—he was in trouble.

Okay, just think it through. You know how to get maximum penetrating power out of a strike, and you know that these things can be bypassed with a thin enough tip. How do you set yourself up to win?

It was hard to think while he frantically avoided flailing whips of flame that grew hands as they lashed at him. In a footrace, he thought he probably had the advantage of speed, but in an arena only two hundred feet wide, it was more about how well he could dodge. And an opponent that didn't need to do things like turn around to face him had an advantage when it came to this game.

Balzarith didn't seem to be getting tired, either. Or, if it was, Velik had no way to tell. Maybe the flames were a bit smaller from all the limbs he'd lopped off. Maybe not. Either way, he wasn't going to win by just defending. He was going to have to brave the heat and land a definitive strike on the champion's core.

Well, no time like the present.

Amateurs thought the heaviest hits came from above, when gravity and weight could help them. That was a strategy for people with a low physical stat. Gravity had nothing on Velik's muscles. He could drive his spear harder and faster on his own than with a helping hand from physics, so that was what he did.

First, he needed an opening. There was no way he could cut through a dozen feet of living fire to strike at Balzarith's core directly, but he could give himself enough of an opening to maybe not completely walk into the flames. His spear came up overhead, then he turned it sideways and brought it down like a fan, the blade as wide and flat as he could make it. Wind rushed between the spear and the fire like a titan's breath, beating it back temporarily.

Velik lunged forward off his right foot, the spear already reforming its head into its long, needle-thin configuration. Three steps was all it took before he was surrounded by flames. Anything that wasn't magical or thick leather started smoldering, and already he could feel the intense heat working to scorch his flesh through his high physical.

Two more steps brought him directly into the fire, and his world turned to pain. Velik ignored it, planted himself, and heaved the spear forward with both hands. His arms reached their maximum extension and he launched the weapon, its tip only eight inches away when the shaft left his hands. It penetrated the red fibers, all the way down to the stubby cross guard Velik had placed at the base of the blade, and the core and spear both were flung away.

Velik hadn't expected the core to actually move. Much like when he'd stabbed into the glass chest during the first portion of their fight, he'd thought to meet resistance, but he supposed it was just floating in the air now, suspended in a formless mass of living fire.

Regardless of an only vaguely understood 'why' of the situation, the simple fact of the matter was that the instant Velik's spear hit the core, they both went flying away from him. And with the amount of strength he'd put into that stab, the spear carried the red fibrous blob a good fifty feet before it tumbled to the ground.

More important was that the instant the core was ripped out of the fire, it all went out. Even the ring circling the field seemed to flicker and dim, perhaps because Balzarith was truly injured for the first time. Velik didn't have any answers, and he was too hurt to care. It was just a relief that he was no longer actively on fire.

He watched the core warily as he approached to reclaim his spear. He hadn't struck it at enough of an angle to pin it to the ground, nor was the spearhead long enough to reach through the other side. Right now, it looked like a red ball of muscle on the end of a stick, just lying in the dirt – gross, but ultimately harmless.

Velik knew better than to relax. He hadn't received a kill notification, which meant no matter how he might have hurt the monster, it wasn't dead. Living monsters were a threat, always. That was why he grabbed the spear by the very back end of the shaft and held it at arm's length while he studied his foe.

Liquid fire dribbled out from between the muscle fibers and splattered against the ground with a soft hiss, where it remained burning despite having nothing to consume. I bet some water mage would have eaten you alive. Being melee was a bad matchup, but this still feels too easy. It's supposed to take whole groups to kill a champion.

He whipped his spear straight down, sliding the mass off the end to smack hard into the dirt. It impacted with a heavy thud, then sat there, quivering gently as it wept more fire. Frowning, Velik stabbed down again, and again, each strike puncturing something unseen. Was it really just a trick of finding an almost invisible core amidst the living flames? I suppose getting a shot at it was difficult. An arrow would have burned up before it ever reached the core even if the archer could spot it.

Another minute of brutalizing the fleshy orb finally yielded the notification Velik was hoping for, along with a few unexpected ones.

[You have slain Balzarith the Living Inferno (champion elite, level 35.]

[You have taken a champion seed from its former owner, Chalin.]

[Champion seed's current reserves: 0/175.]

"Chalin," Velik gasped. The memory of his childhood friend's quirky smile flashed through his mind. Velik hadn't seen him since the day he'd become a [Duskbound]. "You're still alive?"