Chapter 236: Resurgent Illusionist (Patreon)

This sucks, Travis thought, scratching himself as he stared out into the empty void. It’s not like I could possibly watch all the directions at once. I’m too important.

They should station like, a hundred people around the edges of the stronghold and have them report to me when they see something. This is just ridiculous.

Travis should be inside the palace right now eating honeyed ham and drinking constellation milk…assuming that was a thing.

At least Mabel is here with me. Travis thought, idly patting Mabel, his absolutely-real girlfriend who he had met during his Establishing Quest, like normal people did.

Travis remembered those times fondly. She’d wound up covered in monster guts, grinning back at him after a successful mission where they’d both nearly died.

“I can rest easy knowing you’re here with me, Mabel.” Travis said.

“That’s right!” Mabel said flexing her bicep. “Nobody’s gonna touch my baby while I’m around.”

Travis was chuckling at her cute pose when something caught his eye.

Eight orange comets were lancing through the sky, on a collision course with the Stronghold.

“Oh. Oh! Oh shit!”

Other lookouts must’ve seen it too, because the sound of ringing bells began to echo through the entire Stronghold.

Sounding the alarm wasn’t Travis’s job, though. Travis’s job was to kick some necromancer ass.

Travis leapt off the roof of the building and sprouted illusionary wings from his back, propelling himself forward beside Mabel, who was able to jump between platforms of air she created with the Stance passive from her Advanced Class.

It wasn’t copying William Oh, it was a different thing entirely. Seriously.

In any case, the two of them shot forward and intercepted the eight points of orange-ish light before they could smash into the stronghold.

“Stop right there!” Travis shouted, hands raised as the emaciated necromancer and his six flaming fae ghosts halted in midair.

Damn I’m brave.

Vincent Duncan looked kinda goofy in that royal bling. A skeletal man wearing a big crown and oversized jewelery matched with a skintight black torso and leg pieces that gave him an unbalanced look, like his head was too big and he was going to topple over at any second.

“You shall go no further! My hot girlfriend and I will-“

Vincent Duncan snapped his fingers.

“EEP!” Travis went invisible and dodged left, shooting a bolt of lightning from the right to interfere with whatever effect Vincent was trying to use on the air around him.

Thank the gods I can see that, Travis thought with a sigh.

“RAH!” two of the burning fae charged the location his lightning had come from, passing through thin air a moment before Mabel caught one of them in the side of the head with a vicious flying kick.

As a level 56 Iron Fist, she was more than capable to dealing lethal damage to these bastards on her own.

“Babe? They’ve got some kind of fire aura.” Mabel said, wincing as she retreated from the burning ghost whose neck had been bent at a ninety degree angle.

An instant later, the fae exploded, knocking Mabel backwards.

“Kyaaa!”

“Mabel!” Travis rushed forward and caught Mabel as she spun through the void. Her body was lightly smoking, and she gave a pathetic cough in his arms.

“Hold on,” Travis muttered as he proceeded to heal her…It wasn’t taking. It was as if some unknown effect was interfering with his Ability.

He’s got some kind of corrosive effect in those flames…

“I’m okay, just a little singed, more importantly, WATCH OUT!”

Travis made an explosion beside them that tumbled the two of them backwards an instant before three more fae swept their weapons through where they had just been.

Since they were clustered nicely together like that, Travis might as well oblige them.

“FIREBALL!” Travis shouted, creating an explosion between the three of them. The flames didn’t do much, but the kinetic force surely dealt some major damage…

Or not?

The flaming undead tumbled for a moment, but seemed to shake it off quickly, reorienting on Travis and giving chase.

But I hit them harder than she did with her foot, didn’t I?

There was a strange disconnect here.

Travis unleashed a dizzying amount of lighting on the undead, who dove right through it, one by one joining the fight until every single one of them was engaged in battle with them.

No matter how hard he swung his conjured blades or what kind of elemental force he created from nothing, it seemed to have little effect.

Were they caught off guard or was that one strangely weak, or…what?

All the while, the necromancer paced around their fight, waiting for his opportunity. The man only had a scepter and a dagger, and he seemed to keep the scepter tucked in his belt, so it was really just the dagger.

His personal offensive capacity is limited. He must have to wear all the set items at once to get the bonus, and they’re consuming all his slots, so no good weapons. oops!

Travis juked out of the way of another one of the mysterious attacks by Vincent, Miasma arcing nearly as fast as Travis’s lightning.

I’m curious to see what this does, Travis thought, dodging out of the way and waiting for the Ability to take effect.

To his surprise it just sat there in a donut of miasma encircling the spot he had just been.

Travis made a goose and threw it through the donut, honking and hissing as it flapped its wings, trying to stabilize itself.

BOOM!

Travis’s goose was cooked as faefire exploded around it, rendering the illusion back to glittering fragments of light and miasma.

So he’s setting traps?

Is he not confident in a straight-up fight?

Mabel and Travis seemed to reach that conclusion at the same time, sharing the plan with a mere glance at each other.

The two of them split up then swept past each other in a pretzel-like flight pattern, each trailing three fae. Travis grabbed Mabel by the ankle as she flew past and flung her straight towards the necromancer before creating a massive wall of steel in front of the ones chasing her.

Mabel shot forward at dizzying speed, hooking her leg around the dagger the necromancer tried to block with and kicking him in the ribs.

Crack!

Mabel let out a cry of pain as her foot flopped on the end of her leg, the toes and ankle seemingly shattered by the force of the kick, which had no outward effect on Vincent.

How the Abyss is he so – oh shit!

Travis didn’t have time to think about it, as all six undead dogpiled him at once, forcing him to retreat as quickly as he could or get worn down by their furious attacks.

He barely managed to slip past the undead’s attacks, their blades slicing his shirt to shreds, which where flung away by their frantic combat, exposing his rippling abs.

Now that it’s come to this, I’ll have to-

Travis’s heart stopped as he heard Mabel’s cry of pain, and spotted her flying away from Vincent, her body smoking as she flew.

“MABEL!” Travis shouted, enclosing the undead in steel coffins before rushing to catch her. She was even more burned than before, and her injuries continued to rebuff his attempts to heal her.

The steel coffins deformed outward with deadened thuds as the undead seemingly exploded inside them, reforming beside the necromancer an instant later.

“You’ve gotta run away!” Travis said to Mabel. “I can’t lose you, Mabel!”

Mabel let out a pathetic cough.

“I…Can’t. that last hit was too much for me. I’m…slipping away.”

“No, NOOOO!!!” Travis screamed as Mabel went limp in his arms, her head lolling back, eyes wide and staring.

“Stay with me!” Travis shouted, clutching her to his chest as she dissolved into motes of light and miasma.

“M-Mabel?” Travis said, stunned beyond words at the glittering light flowing through his fingers.

“Mabel…wasn’t real?” Travis thought aloud. “But I remember meeting her! We climbed the Tower together!” How could all that be fake? Travis would surely know if he’d created a fake girlfriend. That would be a pathetic admission of-

….Wait a second.

That son of a bitch!

“You ASSHOLE!” Travis shouted, shaking his fist at the Sky. “My life is not your plaything! I swear to all the gods, I’ll have my vengeance on you for this cruel joke! In this life or the next!”

“This is stupid.” Vincent said, arriving next to him, necrotic wings beating the air to stop his forward momentum. “You’re stupid.”

“Some people just don’t appreciate good drama,” Travis said, crossing his arms, shaking his head and clicking his tongue at the necromancer an instant before a blazing sword bisected him from shoulder to hip.

Meanwhile, Travis was munching on honeyed ham and sipping constellation milk, watching the fight progress from the palace balcony through the observation telecsopes.

“Looks like I figured out I’m a decoy. Good for me.”

Amazing what you can do with 10 Charge These days.

“The Norworm’s done something to it’s body, along with those of the undead. It seems as though their Resistance is somewhere in the low 900’s. How on earth did your illusion kill one of them?

“You see those wings coming out of his back?” Travis said.

“Mmm.” Zodiac grunted, his face scrunched up as he peered through the scope.

“I think he can do some minor shapeshifting, and he can probably extend that to his minions. I think he deliberately twisted the fae’s neck to make it look like we could actually damage them, then detonated it manually. It got ‘me’ pretty good.”

“What now, then?”

Travis reached into his pocket and pulled out a small glass rod with a narrow section in the center seemingly the width of a hair.

He snapped it in half. The powerful illusion broke into motes of light as its energy was released.

The decoy, everything he’d created, and the decoy’s Mabel, sprang back into existence, along with an explosion and several bursts of lightning.

Wish there was a way to only resuscitate the illusions I want.

Travis consulted the ring he’d gotten from Will a few years ago.

Ring of the Resurgent Illusionist

+25 Acuity

+25 Focus

Eidolons created by the user gain Strength and Resistance. Scales with Focus.

User may spend more Charge on an Eidolon Ability to increase its power.

When an illusion is destroyed, the user is healed based on the Charge spent.

Excess healing on the user will be consumed to re-create damaged or dispelled Illusions, starting from the least potent to the most.

4% lifesteal on damage dealt by Eidolons

Nope, still lowest to highest, including the instantaneous effects like fireballs and lightning bolts.

The piece of glass was both an illusion and an eidolon, which he had spent an entire week’s Charge on, making its destruction able to revive a huge number of lower-cost illusions simply by snapping it between his fingers.

“Ooh, he looks pissed.” Zodiac mused, stroking his beard.

“Because pissing people off is my specialty.” Travis replied.

Zodiac glanced over at him, scanning him from top to bottom.

“…Why does your decoy have abs?” He asked.

“It’s a stylistic choice, a’ight?”

Zodiac snorted.

“He’s coming.” Zodiac said. “And he’s not buying the decoy this time.”

Travis shoved ham in his mouth, wiped the juices on his priceless silk vest and then grabbed his own telescope, peering out into the void, where he spotted Vincent Duncan flying towards them at full speed, with his decoy and Mabel in hot pursuit.

“You’re right. He does look pissed.” Travis mused.

Step one. Get ‘em good and mad.

“Something felt off about one of those fae. It seemed just a bit sluggish compared to the others.” Zodiac said.

“What does that mean?” Travis asked.

“You’re the master of deception. You tell me.” Zodiac replied.