Advent of Eternity - Chapter 50 (Patreon)

“I’ll be fine,” the thin man snarled, keeping pressure on his stomach wound. “They’re dealt with.”

The charred husk that had been Cyll twitched. He rose up, ash cascading from his body as it reformed. A snarl stretched across his skill-skinless lips. “That hurt, you bastards.”

“Gods above,” one of the men muttered. “He’s immortal.”

“Nobody is immortal,” the thin man said, his lips pressed together. He raised his hand again, preparing another spell. Knell grimaced. There were at least thirty more seconds until Stix came back, and he wasn’t sure what dying and reviving constantly did to someone. He wasn’t about to try to test it out, which meant it was time to move.

Knell stepped out from behind the tent, pointing his staff at the thin man and casting slow. The spell leapt through the air and struck him mid-cast, slowing it to a crawl. Cyll got the idea and reared back, whipping his sword through the air.

The man’s guards clearly hadn’t been trained to block a huge hunk of deadly metal hurtling through the air toward them. They both dove to the side and the weapon slammed into the mage’s chest.

He slid back into normal time, blood bubbling from his lips as he staggered, his eyes latching onto Knell before he fell. Knell paced toward the fallen men, pushing back the weariness encroaching on him and casting slow on the nearest one.

Cyll ran toward the other, jumping onto him before he could stand. Knell’s slow wasn’t quite enough to get him in range, so he sent another one at the man, who was halfway through standing back up.

Pain shot through Knell’s leg as he hobbled, but he ignored it. He drew the sword from his staff and cast slow on the man again. This time, the difficulty of the spell felt nearly ten times as hard as it had before.

The effort from casting it nearly brought Knell to his knees, but he’d suffered through pain before. With a snarl, he drove his sword into the bandit’s chest, then flopped onto his back with a groan.

To the side, he heard Cyll kill the final bandit. The immortal man walked over to Knell, his reforming features appearing above him.

“You okay, Cap?”

“I’ve been better,” Knell said with a groan. His hair felt like it had lengthened again, and there were more gray strands in it.

Magical energy rose up from the men’s bodies and slipped into his body as his mental clock clicked to a stop.

The gods have granted you Experience for besting your foe. You have leveled up.

You have defeated an entity more powerful than you. Experience Granted. Your level has been adjusted accordingly. New skill gained.

Knell dismissed the messages and brought up his status screen. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Stix’s body vanish from the ground and appear next to the tent where he’d cast Anchor on her.

Name: Knell Coda [Age: 0]

Path: Scion [Rank Zero]

Magical Energy Level: 14

Attunement A: Foresight of the Vulture

Attunement B: Empty

Attunement C: Empty

Attunement D: Empty

Attunement E: Empty

Bloodline: Eternal Body [Epic]– Time magic bends around you, modifying your lifespan and granting you resistance to spatial magics.

Abilities:

Tax the Living – Death magic erupts from a wound you have inflicted on a target, inflicting the same damage once more.

Path: Epoch

Magical Energy Level: 10

Abilities:

Mental Clock – Use time magic to keep time or set an alarm audible only to you.

Slow – Impede the movement of a single creature by warping the time around them for a brief instant.

Haste – Increase the movement of a single creature by warping time around them for a brief instant.

Anchor – Lock a target’s current state in the timeline, returning it to that state after 1 minute passes, reverting any changes to the target that have happened under the duration of Anchor.

Advent of Eternity (Passive)- You do not fall under the jurisdiction of time. With sufficient strength, it will bend to your will, and your existence is absolute. You were never born, and you will never die.

Knell flicked the screens away, a small smile tugging at his lips despite the exhausting threatening to consume him. Another skill had entered his repertoire, although it just felt like the exact opposite of slow. He forced himself into a seated position and Cyll flopped down beside him. He was completely naked, and the only thing sparing their eyes was the long white beard that tastefully covered a significant portion of the immortal man’s body.

“That sucked,” Cyll said. “I lost again.”

“Well, I died!” Stix snapped, shuddering as she walked to join them. “Shit, I hate that.”

“Sorry,” Knell said. A spasm rocked his body and he clenched his teeth. “I might be pushing you too hard.”

“It’s my fault, not yours,” Stix said. “Your magic is keeping me alive. My damn Path just levels too slowly. The gods must hate me.”

“Trust me, that’s better than them liking you,” Knell said grimly. Cyll nodded in agreement.

“Cyll, if you find literally anything to wear, we’ll wave the punishment for you losing again,” Stix said, averting her eyes. “I’ve yet to see someone fully naked, and I absolutely do not want you to be my first.”

“Why not?” Cyll asked. “I’m a fantastic specimen. I mean, I’ve got a h–”

“Cyll,” Knell said. “Put on some clothes. Rob one of the bandits. And Twelve Gods, find something that actually fits you.”

“Spoilsport,” Cyll grumbled, shuffling over to a dead bandit and starting to strip the man.

“Was it worth it, at least?” Stix asked, sitting beside Knell. “And are you okay? You don’t look so great.”

“Backlash from my magic,” Knell replied with a yawn. “It’s going away. I’ll be fine. And I don’t know if it was worth it. They were pretty powerful, though. Particularly the mage. If he’d been even slightly prepared for an attack, we might have had some serious difficulty. Even still, a few more seconds or a misstep and we were done.”

“You didn’t account for any of that?” Stix’s tone wasn’t as accusatory as it was surprised.

Knell grunted. “I didn’t know our opponents. How can you account for a complete unknown?”

“Fair enough,” Stix said. “But… what about the villagers?”

“Hopefully the Path user had something that’ll help us there,” Knell said. “Help me up. I want to check what he had.”