Chapter 120: Tricked

How the FUCK does he fight like that!?

-          Orev Harti, level 57 Trickster Raven’s thoughts

Time to switch up the game of tag, Will thought, using the springy earth underneath him to propel himself out of the bloody woman’s reach, aiming for the feathered man.

The ranger’s eyes widened, and he vanished in a cloud of feathers long before Will even got close.

Will felt a surge of Charge attempting to link him to someone, so he interposed Phantom Hand and scattered the Ability before it could firmly link the two.

Will heard someone mutter ‘shit’ under their breath in the distance and sent Phantom Hand to keep pressure on him while he continued to dance away from the blood-soaked woman’s wild swings.

Some kind of berserker? Will thought.

She’d demonstrated an ability to fall back and approach him cautiously earlier, but her approach to combat was gradually becoming less methodical and more unhinged.

I think her stats are increasing over time as her tactics dwindle, Will thought. It wasn’t immediately obvious, because getting hit even at the beginning of the fight would’ve turned him inside out, and nothing had really changed about that, but her attacks and movements were slowly getting faster, and staying away from her was getting harder and harder.

If her whole build increases in power with more exposure to blood over time, it might no longer be a viable option to try and steal the rest of my set back. There was a possibility that her Focus was also being raised, or that her Build was able to substitute or bolster Focus with another stat.

Or she may simply be so fast that the momentary distraction of trying to pry a Relic away from her could get him killed.

There is a silver lining though…

It was common knowledge: Builds that puffed themselves up like this had a…downswing, where the berserker, or magic self-buffer, or drug abuser, or whatever, eventually ran out of their self-buff and suffered from a diminished amount of power.

The Tower did not allow infinite accumulation of power. Sooner or later something exploded.

 In most cases, the downswing meant they had less power than they had before, for a period of time that could be a few minutes to a few days. Sometimes it was simply a return to their baseline.

In either case, that was a perfect time for Will to take advantage.

This can’t last forever.

The real trick was surviving until the downswing happened.

And that meant-

SSSSS

Will leaned out of the way as an arrow hissed past him, curving mid-flight to try and follow him before burying itself into the ground.

A second and third arrow angled towards him and Will could already see what was going to happen.

The second arrow was aimed at his lower midsection, and since he was already leaning the wrong way, he would be forced to use Aspect to shift his legs under him, putting him totally off balance at a roughly 45 degree angle to the ground.

The third arrow would explode into a feather-man with a raised weapon ready to stab him while he was off-balance.

Will moved his feet out of the way of the second arrow, and added an extra ripple to the ground, aiming at the area ahead of him.

POOF

Will heard the explosion of feathers behind him, from where the first arrow landed.

Damn.

Will leapt off the ground, his awkward angle causing his entire body to go horizontal four feet above the ground, legs flailing awkwardly up in the air.

He caught the third arrow with his toes and guided it down into the feather-wearing ranger’s shoulder, deflecting the brutal thrust from the man’s hooked spear with his handless arm, incurring a long thin wound as he did so.

Does he have backup spears or what?

The ranger pulled his spear back, gazing at the arrow sticking out of his shoulder with an alarmed expression.

Stop shooting yourself, Will thought smugly. Wait…That reaction…The oil on that spears smells... Poison? Poison on all of his weapons? Poison in me!?

The ranger POOF’d away just as a tingling began to manifest in Will’s wounded arm. Whatever it was it had to be mean to manifest any kind of effect on someone with over a hundred Resistance.

Will caught his balance and sprinted towards the bloody woman charging him.

Coiled Strike

48->43 Charge remaining.

Will arrived directly in front of her, but rather than attack or try to take any of his Set back, he leapt straight up and over. She swung ferally upward, and Will caught the haft on his bare feet, giving him a perfect springboard to launch himself a dozen feet in the air.

Coiled Strike

43->38

Will appeared another fourteen feet straight up, still rising, scanning the surroundings nearly thirty feet in the air.

There.

Far, far away, half a mountainside over and tucked behind a large rock, Will could see the ranger fumbling a vial of antidote out of his satchel.

Yoink.

Dimensional Storage

38->37

Phantom Hand shot forward at blazing speed, snagging the contents of the vial as the ranger raised it to his lips.

In another heartbeat, the Phantom Hand returned and Will dumped the contents into his mouth.

Kinda bitter.

Beneath him, the berserker lunged off the ground, blasting upward. He couldn’t see her expression under the mask, but he was pretty sure she was pissed.

Nobody likes being casually used as a springboard.

Will stood on the palm of Phantom Hand and lifted himself up further.

I should’ve done that to get the visibility I wanted, but I forgot about it.

Will mentally chastised the costly mistake as he raised his body another ten feet, lifting himself out of her reach. Will hung tantalizingly above as the berserker’s inertia dwindled, leaving her flailing against the air, trying to pull herself up further to grab him.

He watched in fascination as the blood scales covering her body flapped back and forth like oars, trying to squeeze a bit of extra speed out, but failing to significantly impact her jump.

As she fell, she corrected her posture and aimed to land feet-first.

Well that won’t do.

Will flung himself down to match her speed before sending the Phantom Hand down with her.

Rather than grab her directly with the hand and risk her damaging it again, Will decided to try out the first Set bonus: Using Aspect of the Serpent with Phantom Hand.

Mirroring his foot tricks, the Phantom Hand hovered behind her calf and summoned a pillar of stone diagonally towards itself.

Of course, there was a thin piece of bone between the pillar and the hand, but that didn’t matter to the Ability. In rapid succession, pillars of stone jutted out of the ground and slammed her legs out from under her just as she hit the ground.

Will straightened his legs and landed directly on the hand holding his tomahawk, transferring all the momentum in his body directly into her fingers while stabilizing the ground beneath, preventing her harder-than-stone fingers from simply squishing harmlessly through the ground beneath her.

“Gah!”

Will didn’t feel the telltale sensation of little bones breaking through his heel, but there was a cry of pain and there might be bruising to weaken her grip for when the time came to take his tomahawk back.

He bounced away, scanning the surrounding area for the other combatant.

POOF!

One of the many feathered weapons scattered around them disappeared in an explosion of feathers, revealing the ranger, bow slung over his shoulder, giving Will a victorious grin.

“I’ll be the first to admit it, You’ve got a knack for combat and you’re clever, but you’re too naive!” the ranger said with a throaty cackle.

Will glanced past him, noting that Jason had long since disappeared.

Loth would be back in a moment.

“What do you mean?” Will asked, giving himself some distance as the blood-covered woman levered herself back to her feet. He already knew what the man meant, but the longer he kept talking, the longer Will didn’t have to spend his stamina fighting.

“I tricked you! I tricked you into drinking a deadly poison, carefully concentrated over several months through complex alchemical processes, such that it could kill an entire town of Climbers your level!”

Will let out a belch that the other kids at the orphanage would be proud of.

“…So?”

“So, you’re as good as dead! You’re a walking corpse! Unless…”

Will plucked one of the ranger’s arrows out of the ground and studied it for a moment before eating it, smacking his lips thoughtfully.

“…” the feathered ranger watched Will with a critical eye, his expression souring.

“Sonofabitch,” The ranger muttered, unslinging his bow.

Will’s left arm was fully numb now, but he wasn’t using it for much anyway.

Will sent Phantom Hand at the ranger, making sure it was intangible so it didn’t cut through the air, aiming to sucker-punch the man in the back of the head while he played keepaway from the berserker.

The ranger ducked, seemingly able to detect the general position of the Phantom Hand..

Or maybe he’s reading my gaze…

Will did need to see what he wanted to send the Phantom hand at. If his opponent’s Acuity was high enough he could treat Will’s gaze as an analogue for where the Phantom Hand was directed.

Add a vague sense of approaching danger and it would be enough to make some sloppy dodges.

I need to tighten that up, Will mused.

Phantom Eye

37->36 Charge remaining.

Will mentally bound the two Abilities together, keeping the eye hovering just over the hand’s wrist so that he could see what the Phantom Hand was doing without looking, keeping his real eyes fixed on the berserker chasing him.

She leapt forward, forcing Will to duck and swerve.

He took that opportunity of apparent disorientation to direct the Phantom Hand to punch the ranger in the ankle, watching as if he were there, whipping straight towards the man’s ankle before impacting violently against it, jutting stone up from the other direction to hold it in place for maximum damage.

SNAP.

“AGH!”

POOF! Sounded in the distance as the ranger retreated.

Ssss-

A hastily released arrow went wide, curving towards Will with no hope of actually hitting him.

Will bounced off the earth and whipped his head back, inches away from the tomahawk.

Will spun the Phantom Eye, scanning the surroundings, spotting the feathered Ranger hovering silently in midair directly behind Will, using one of his Abilities to throw the sound of his teleportation somewhere distant, attempting to trick Will into thinking he was somewhere else.

He’d also seemingly learned about Will’s exceptional relationship with the earth, so he was going to spend the fraction of a second before he hit the ground stabbing Will in the heart.

Will slid out of the way of the thrust, whipping the Phantom Hand back to them.

The palm of the Phantom Hand caught the ranger center of mass and shoved him directly between Will and the berserker.

“GAH!”

POOF!

The ranger disappeared in a cloud of feathers before the berserker tore him in half, but it gave Will the cover he needed to gain some distance.

As Will was dancing backwards, the earth opened up and swallowed the berserker, her frustrated scream muffled as stone collapsed in around her.

“What do you need!?” Loth’s voice sounded from underground.

“Five seconds!” Will shouted.

“Got it!”

Will released the boots from his Dimensional Storage and began shoving the first one on.

Will heard the sound of an arrow flying towards him, followed by a shout of effort, the sound of crushing stone and twanging traps.

From his Phantom Eye hovering above, he could see Loth’s insects and traps warding off the ranger desperately trying to keep pressure on Will, teleporting from spot to spot trying to find a way to get to him.

Will ignored it all, shoving the second boot onto his foot, which magically resized itself to him in the space of a breath.

Electric Serpentine Stompers*

+6 Strength

+11 Kinesthetics

+13 resistance

+6 Focus

+6 Acuity

Increased movement speed, increased footing on all terrain. Scales with Resistance.

+20% Ranger Archetype Ability potency

Coiled Lightning:

5 Charges: Eidolons controlled by the User gain a short-range electric aura which may paralyze enemies. Duration and potency scale with Resistance.

Will suppressed a shudder as Phantom Hand’s fingers viscerally swelled and elongated, squirming forward, the palm unravelling into the tails of five snakes as each finger began swimming lazily through the air, spacing itself far away from each other finger.

Freaky, Will thought…But it’ll get shit done.

Wait, I’m only wearing three pieces of the set? Boots, cloak, and amulet in the hand…

Oh…these guys are screwed.