[Ashborn-B1] 75. Combat Growth (Patreon)

LXXV

Combat Growth

Judith could activate and deactivate her new lens with a thought.

The muscles around her eye socket contracted, then her world lit up, figuratively and literally. Light essence pushed out of her core. It snaked out of her palm and threaded into a cord, which hovered over her hand and connected into a circle.

When she peered, folds in the light appeared where the essence had strung together.

‘Incredible.’

Never before had either her control or sensory world of the element been this developed.

‘It’s like I spent twenty years meditating in a cave and reached a new level of enlightenment.’

And the increase in power merely required giving up part of her body to Dorothy…and more.

“You ready?” Scar said.

Judith regarded the sprite. He was lounging on the cross-guard of a blade that was not his own.

The room they were in now was normally sealed off from the rest of the shrine. Like the chamber housing his daughters, it resembled an area deep in a forest. Birds chirped in the distance though Judith hadn’t spotted a single one, and the sound of gushing waterfalls rushed over them despite no water being around.

This place was a graveyard. So Judith had come to understand.

Blades of all sizes jutted out the ground. Essence lingered around some, but the energy was dormant. Shapeless. They wouldn’t stay like that for much longer.

‘You ready?’ Judith asked.

Dorothy nodded in her mind.

Scar placed his tiny palm on the pommel after Judith mimicked the motion. “The manifestation of a weapon spirit doesn’t go away after they die. Can you guess why that is?”

She blinked. “Because you’re born from the weapon? You dying makes it revert back to how it was before.”

Unless your name was Dorothy, she supposed.

Her new companion smothered a grin at her thoughts.

Scar shook his head. “After we’re born, the manifestation is as much us as we are it. If the weapon is destroyed, so are we, and the other way around.”

Judith hummed. If that wasn’t it, then she had no guesses…

‘It’s our soul,’ Dorothy whispered to her, causing Judith to frown.

Their souls? He said the weapon died when they did.

Scar huffed. “You’re not skilled enough yet to hide Dorothy’s presence. I can feel when she’s talking to you.”

Dorothy stuck out her tongue and metaphorically rushed behind Judith for cover.

Scar waved her away. “It’s simple. When you humans die, you don’t disappear instantly either. Your corpse remains. But you degrade over time and, only after a while, you’re gone entirely.” He patted the blade he was standing on. “This is the same. Though the sprites attached to these weapons have departed, their bodies remain. A cultivator with the right amount of skill can use that to their advantage. Like so.”

A pulse of power spread with him at the centre. Scar removed his hand from the hilt, crossed his tiny arms, and watched as a thousand glittering stars rose from the weapons and filled the air.

Judith’s forehead widened. Was he doing what she thought he was?

Tendrils of transparent energy leeched from the blades, joined the spectacle overhead, and wrapped around the stars so the celestial bodies rested in their centres.

Scar’s wings folded. The spiky ends of his mane fluttered.

“Reflection,” he whispered.

Stars flared. Formless energy condensed, twisted into more defined shapes, and elongated. The wings formed first. From there, the face and body appeared at the same time.

Judith gaped at the number of sprites.

Scar smiled. “Gawking won’t do you any good. They will not go easy on you.”

“What—”

One of the sprites giggled and pointed a finger at Judith.

‘Dodge!’ Dorothy yelled.

Judith didn’t need the warning to throw herself to the side. Judith rolled to her feet.

The column of light had crashed into the earth. So much dirt and debris rained on her face that she had to shield her eyes.

A wave of heat roiled over her in the wake of the attack. Where she’d been standing previously was a crater the width of a grown adult.

Wide-eyed, Judith turned towards the sprite. The revived spirit held a hand over her mouth as she continued to giggle. Her brethren joined in on the laugh and twirled.

Then as an entire collective, they aimed at her.

Ashwing zipped over the horde of golems while I cycled her energy and amplified the force behind her blasts.

[Frost Golem - lvl. 41] x 2 slain. Extra experience awarded for slaying a higher level enemy.

[Frost Golem - lvl. 43] x 3 slain. Extra experience awarded for slaying a higher level enemy.

[Frost Golem - lvl. 42]…

The shrine was rising in difficulty, but one thing was certain: no one could say the experience wasn’t good. A shame we couldn’t take a break to consolidate our gains.

Skul lunged through the edge of my sight across the battlefield and clawed beasts in two left and right. Multiple swirls of soul energy entered his body. His tail was as long as I was tall. The scales on his back were so defined they reflected the light. With how many golems he was draining, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was close to activating his Souleater trait against them.

‘Would he get a different ability than against the bronze drakes?’ I looked forward to finding out.

Still, whatever buff he received, it’d proof useful against our opposition.

Despite killing as many as I could, the many golems assaulting the central pillar blotted out every inch of the grass field around us. But that wasn’t all. Another scream had ruptured forth from the frost golem king. Already, new golems were shaping at the front of the chamber.

Alongside the regular monsters, five of what I thought of as ‘elite golems’ spawned.

‘I need to close the distance.’ If I wanted to identify them, at least.

Even from a distance, the elites had a different pressure to them. However, their level couldn’t be that far removed from what we’d already seen.

Two of the five golems continued in our direction. Of the remainder, one went towards Aurille, while the last two headed towards in Jake.

I turned to Erri, who slithered through our enemies with the finesse and grace of a serpent. ‘Doesn’t look like she’s going back.’

The force fighting Jake was already quite substantial. That said, we couldn’t leave the central pillar undefended.

Whenever one of the golems reached the divine Beast’s pillar, they’d smash into the base of the pillar with everything they had. Nothing happened. But I could imagine the tower cracking or even crumbling if we gave too many of the monsters time alone with the tower.

That was the whole reason I couldn’t leave this place to go help the others. As far as I knew, it was only the central pillar that they were trying to break.

And they had a good reason for wanting to do so.

More shockwaves released from the pillar past the first. Though the initial flare had caught me off-guard and caused my shard to flare, the subsequent activations weren’t as hard on me. As a matter of fact, in its passing, air rushed through my lungs more easily, and the ache in my muscles from all the running and fighting we’d done today lessened.

‘It’s strengthening us.’

Looking at the Snow Moons, the effect wasn’t only for fire cultivators either. It must be a selective process that only targeted our allies.

‘Who’s doing the selecting though?’

I glanced up at the roosting Divine Beast, but quickly spun back to the fight.

Ashwing zoomed towards our enemies’s rear, where the boulder throwing golems stayed. Their projectiles were no match for Ashwing’s upgraded mobility. Her talons buried deep into one’s chest and gouged out their core before she launched back into the air. A crafty golem swung the rock in its hands to stop her from ascending, but Skul blurred and carried the both of them into the ground, kicking up a mound of grass and dirt as they went. His ghost guardians teamed up on another golem and gave it the same treatment.

I surveyed the battlefield. The elite golems weren’t here yet, but dozens of regular golems remained.

‘We’ll run out of energy before they run out of bodies to throw at us.’

The pillar may be buffing us, but it wasn’t magically replenishing our essence reserves. Making our moves more powerful didn’t matter if we lacked the energy to use our abilities. So I stopped Ashwing from firing another barrage of cutters. The summon was still mostly using her own essence, but that was momentary. She’d start drawing on my energy soon enough.

She continued to swerve and weave between projectiles while I watched Skul dismantle whichever poor golem managed to find itself in his path.

‘You’re not the main force behind them, remember?’

Each one of my summons had a speciality. Ashwing’s was defence and recovery. Saber strengthened armies and was strong enough to take on high-level monsters by himself. Skul was a killing machine. The best way to use him was against a swathe of enemies that couldn’t kill him outright, then he’d eventually run over them, grow, and reach a point where nothing could deal with him.

In that way, every one of my summons had a role…but what about me?

How could I best contribute to a fight?

My hair whipped back as Ashwing took a sharp turn and shot towards the ground out of the way of a missile. We soared over Skul’s guardians, which chased after a spider-like golem with too many stiletto feet. The golem was faster than them and about to waste their time on a wild goose chase.

Eyelids narrowed. ‘If attacking isn’t my priority…’

I whipped out my hand and aimed. In my mind, I envisioned a bundle of vines. The image exited together with the branch shooting from my palm.

The spider-like golem jumped away from one of the lunging guardians, whose jaw swallowed a clump full of earth instead. With unexpected grace, the spider landed, whirled, and changed direction, which saw it pass underneath the second guardian. The beast had no true face outside a hexagon shape at the front of its body, but when it turned, I could imagine it smiling and sticking out its tongue.

Its mirth lasted until the cluster of roots slammed into it. The moment my attack hit the beast, the roots spun and wrapped around the creature as if I was still controlling them.

The guardians made quick work of the golem after it crashed.

I rotated my hand palm-up. ‘I can give them a command before firing.’

Interesting. That gave me many more avenues to try out.

Another bundle shaped in my palm. This time—while compressing them as much as I could—I kept an image of roots expanding and bursting out of the ground in mind.

Ashwing flew towards the thick of the enemy forces, where I released the compact ball. The roots carved through the air with the speed and acceleration of an arrow, then burrowed through the ground.

The golems around the impact zone discarded it as a missed attack.

My vision became reality. Wood punctured out the earth and latched onto anything remotely in range. Most of the golems were strong enough to break the hold after a few tugs. Some were so tightly bound they couldn’t move at all. Either way, all of them remained immobile for a few seconds.

Those seconds were all Skull and his guardians needed. They cleaved through the opposition and reduced their superior numbers to a mere afterthought.

I exhaled. ‘Creating them doesn’t take a lot of essence.’ Even with the extra commands I was weaving into them.

This…was good. The more I thought about it, the more options entered my head.

‘It’s too versatile.’ Almost made me feel cheap for using it. But use it I would.

The elites and their small army of golems were drawing ear.

I smiled. There were enough enemies to try techniques on.