Wizardly Dude
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[TEA] 46. The End?
🕑 Added 2025-06-09 16:00:16 +0000 UTCNow that he knew where he was going, it didn’t take Asher long to navigate the maze-like corridors and make his way toward the source of the quakes. It turned out the secret room Loratta was most likely fighting within was actually located underneath the rest of the compound, which explained why he couldn’t find it. He didn’t doubt Moxy’s directions in the slightest as he rushed down a hidden stairwell and felt the shaking gradually grew more and more powerful the further he descended.
Finally, he reached the bottom of the stairs and spotted the source of the quakes.
He found himself standing at the entrance to a massive cavern that had to be at least four or five times the size of the arena he’d practiced fighting Moxy in. There were gigantic support pillars of hardened stone located every few dozen feet, and the walls looked like they could take a serious beating. Even so, there were shattered rock fragments and cracks running everywhere throughout the cavern.
Standing in the dead center of the cavern was Loratta, looking no worse for wear compared to the last time he’d seen her. Courtesy of his new skill, he could easily make out the almost sickly red aura flickering around her form, giving him the distinct sense that Loratta had been the cause for massive amounts of pain and suffering throughout her life. She currently faced off against the two Earth element users from Draken’s coalition, and while Asher knew their names from his conversation with Draken, he didn’t know which one was which.
It wasn’t all that hard to figure out however.
Similar to the strange, feral looking dog-man Asher had seen back near the entrance, one of the Earth element users clearly had some sort of beast-related element. He was covered in fur and had massive claws, and Asher was beginning to suspect that his moniker of The Mole was perhaps more literal than he’d originally thought. His aura was a splotchy brown. Asher could tell he’d killed before and didn’t regret it, but he didn’t take pleasure in hurting others.
The other member was a tall woman wearing what looked like solid stone armor of all things that covered her from head to toe. The only portion of her body Asher could see were her black eyes through a slit in her stone helm, and he felt rather confident assuming she had to be Tombstone. Her aura was a sturdy, unwavering grey just like her armor, and Asher knew from a glance that she followed her own unique code similarly to Moxy.
While Tombstone’s armor was cracked and chipped here and there, she didn’t look too badly damaged. The Mole however was currently panting and bleeding from a few dozen lacerations scattered about his body, and he looked like he didn’t have much left in the tank.
Seeing him approach, The Mole’s eyes widened, and he jerked his head toward him. “Get out of here! She’s trying to bring the entire-”
The Mole’s warning was cut off as he was body checked by Tombstone, who was then sent stumbling backwards by a javelin of hardened stone that had been fired from Loratta’s hand. While such an attack would have killed The Mole easily, Tombstone merely looked shaken, her armor sporting a fresh new series of cracks across her chest.
Clicking her tongue in frustration, Loratta finally spotted Asher standing at the cavern entrance. Her eyes widened in surprise, but her shock was quickly replaced with devilish hunger.
“Oh, I am very glad to see you decided to stick around. I don’t fault you for turning on me with Draken seeing as I’d sent you to him to die in the first place, but taking Knick’s life right in front of me? That, you’ll pay for.”
“She never intended to stand and fight against the coalition,” The Mole continued, snarling at Loratta. “She designed this compound to be one giant booby trap. As soon as we were inside, she was going to collapse the whole thing and take us all with it! We’ve been fighting to stop her from doing so this entire time, but I don’t know how much longer we can hold out!”
“It’s okay, your fight has been sending quakes all throughout the compound, and it’s slowly coming apart,” Asher said, pulling out his enchanted dagger and preparing himself now that he’d finally found his target. “Crush made the call to evacuate, so you don’t have to worry about the compound collapsing on anyone!”
“Well thank God for that,” The Mole said, grinning wickedly as he thrust a clawed hand toward Loratta. “You hear that you slimy bastard?! Looks like all your planning isn’t gonna do squat!”
“While I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t annoyed by this, the compound will still serve its purpose,” Loratta said, gesturing to the many pillars holding everything together. “Nobody will be able to follow me, and any evidence of what I’ve been doing these past few years will be erased along with the compound. I’ll just have to pick a new city and start over from scratch.”
“Bold of you to think Draken’s letting you escape the city alive!” The Mole shouted, scooping a chunk of stone out of the ground as easily as if he were grabbing a handful of snow before hurling the rock chunk at Loratta with incredible force.
Loratta didn’t even bother moving out of the way, and the stone projectile shot straight through her stomach, blasting bits of slime everywhere. Sighing, she shook her head as her body instantly reformed before their very eyes.
“Surely the two of you must have realized by now how futile your efforts are. Without Draken, you have no chance of stopping me, and seeing as he clearly knew about my hidden element, I have no reason to believe the man would ever risk coming into my compound. The Death element wouldn’t do him any good if I buried him under a few dozen feet of rock.”
“Bold talk seeing as you haven’t managed to take down either one of us in all the time we’ve been fighting,” The Mole sneered, lobbing two more hunks of stone at her that were both just as ineffective as the first.
“I’ll admit, you ended up having a stronger fortitude than I expected,” Loratta nodded, matching The Mole’s sneer with one of her own. “Tell me, however. Did you ever stop to wonder what my third element might be?”
Before he could answer, Loratta raised her open palm, before clenching her fist. At the same time, The Mole doubled over in pain, hacking up what looked like an entire lungful of blood all over the ground.
“Wha… What the hell did you do?” He coughed, groaning as he coughed up a second lungful of blood. “You have the Blood element?!”
“Not blood,” Tombstone finally spoke, her voice echoing from within her armor. “Poison. I thought the air smelled off. I have evolved poison resistance,” she added almost as an afterthought, as if to explain why she wasn’t doubled over coughing up blood as well.
“Yes, your stony friend there is correct. The poison I can conjure isn’t very deadly at first, but the more of it you breathe in, the worse it is when I finally use Compound Toxicity,” Loratta explained, looking down on the struggling man. “How fitting that a rat such as yourself would die via poison.”
“You… bastard…” The Mole managed, before his limbs finally gave out and he fell face-first into his own pool of blood. If the man’s aura winking out wasn’t indication enough, the glowing orb of shards that rose out of his body was proof that he was dead and gone.
At this point, Asher had seen enough. Not giving Loratta a chance to use any more of her tricks, he sprinted forward, liberally using Distortion to close the distance between them in an instant. He only had one idea, and he hoped beyond hope it would work. The moment he reached her, Asher thrust out with his enchanted dagger, feeding it a small handful of shards and watching it erupt into flame. Loratta’s eyes widened slightly as he rammed the flaming dagger into her head, and the two of them stood there, staring into one another’s eyes.
The flames burned for a split second, before being snuffed out by the heavy slime wrapped around the blade. Loratta offered him a heavy sigh, grinning up at him as she raised an eyebrow. “That was your big plan? I thought I already told you there was nothing you can do.”
Ignoring her, Asher whipped out his cold iron dagger and plunged that one into her side. The strange material capable of burning a demon’s skin seemed to have no effect, and Loratta chuckled and she watched his pitiful display.
“Ahh, that look of hope burning away will never grow old,” she said, licking her lips as she watched his face. “Go on, I’ll give you one more shot before I kill you and Tombstone over there. Make it count.”
Returning his two daggers to his bandolier, Asher withdrew the only other daggers that might do something. With his silver dagger in his left hand and his living wood dagger in his right, he slashed forward, cleaving Loratta’s head from her body. The moment her head disconnected from her shoulders, her features vanished and the entire head turned into a rough ball of slime, splatting against the ground.
For a split second, he felt a tingle of hope that he might have actually done it.
Right before her neck wavered and a new head formed within seconds.
“Tough luck,” she tutted, giving him an apologetic look. “My turn.”
Asher gasped as something long and hard pierced him through the stomach. Glancing down, he realized Loratta’s hand had morphed into a thin, hardened blade of slime. With a sigh, she yanked her bladed hand out of him, watching him stumble backwards and do his best not to collapse.
“I suppose the only question now is if I allow you to die from blood loss or from being buried alive,” she said, seeming to give the question some serious thought. “Though it has been some time since I killed anyone from the inside out. What do you think, hmm?”
Before he could answer, a gigantic slab of stone erupted out of the ground behind Loratta, falling forward and splattering her all over the ground as the impact shook the very cavern. While Asher stared at the bits of smile rapidly pooling together again around the edge of the fallen slab, he felt a rough hand hoist him up to his feet.
“Get out of here,” Tombstone said, her gaze going from Loratta’s reforming body to his as she gave him instructions. “Tell Draken-”
A needle-thin blade of slime shot out from one of the larger clumps of Loratta’s body, piercing straight through Tombstone’s eye slit and stopping the woman mid-sentence. Asher stared in horror as the slime blade pulled back with a sickening ‘pop’, and Tombstone’s heavily armorer body dropped to the ground with a bang.
“I never understood why people seem to think I can’t use my skills while I’m like this,” Loratta’s voice rang out, coming from the ball of slime no larger than two feet tall. “Oh well. It makes my job far easier at the very least.”
Asher’s Secret Seeker notified him of the slight vibrations coming from the ball of slime, and Comprehend was just fast enough to warn him of what was coming. Thanks to his combination of skills, he managed to flicker into the astral a split second before another needle-thin blade of slime rocketed out of Loratta, stabbing straight through where his head had been a moment earlier.
“Damn you and your strange skills,” Loratta huffed, slowly rebuilding her human body as she waited for him to reappear. “This is why I sent you to Draken in the first place. The good for nothing noble couldn’t even do this one thing for me.”
Ignoring the pain in his gutted stomach, Asher stumbled back a few more feet before his skill ran out and he was dumped before Loratta once more. The moment it did, he lurched another few feet back, using Distortion to dodge another blade and put some distance between them. Stumbling over The Mole’s corpse, Asher crashed to the ground, quickly turning to keep Loratta in his sight.
“Even if you run, you won’t get out of here before I bring this place down,” Loratta smirked, glancing at his open wound. “Or you’ll die from blood loss. Either way, your time is at an end. I don’t suppose you’ll let me in on what strange element you have, would you? Just to satisfy my curiosity? Wouldn’t telling somebody be better than taking it to the grave?”
Ignoring her taunts, Asher’s mind raced as he tried to come up with some sort of plan. While annoying and incredibly painful, the stab through his gut wouldn’t do him in thanks to Eternal Regeneration. He could potentially keep himself from getting buried alive with Spatial Lock, but he had a feeling there was a limit to the amount of weight he could keep from entering his small domain. No, despite everything, he just couldn’t see a way out of this. Not a way to kill Loratta, and not a way to save his own hide either.
A strange, serene feeling came over him as he realized he was about to die. Ever since he’d been summoned to this strange world, he’d known that death was a very real possibility. Even so, to finally find himself staring his own death right in the face was a surreal experience.
Part of Asher wanted to give in. To accept that he’d done all that he could and to finally take a break from all the fighting and killing. He’d managed to rescue Rosh, and he’d even saved a good number of Draken’s men on the way out. All in all, there were certainly worse ways to die.
But even as he had the thought, a face flickered through his head.
Samantha’s expression when she found out he’d gotten himself killed in something as stupid as a gang turf war.
As though he’d been doused by a bucket of cold water, Asher gasped, shaking his head clear of self-defeatist thoughts. He could practically picture the hunter’s crying eyes as she heard the news. He imagined Samantha having to break the news to Brian. How Brian would be utterly devastated to learn that his newest hero wouldn’t be coming back to visit like he promised.
There might be nothing he could do. He might be mere moments away from death.
But by God was he going to go down fighting.
Steeling his resolve, a flicker of violet light caught his eye, and Asher couldn’t help but grin as he realized the universe just might have given him a chance. While Loratta busied herself with her taunts, certain of her inevitable victory, Asher forced himself back to his feet.
As he stood up, he grabbed the bright violet orb of shards floating above The Mole’s corpse.
And immediately purchased his final skill for his Eternity element.
Shards: 12,692
Sever the Thread (passive) - Lvl 1 - Your attacks are Eternal.
Comments
Tom C
Finally! The eternal ticket to death is achieved! TFTC!
Stephen Swanson
And in that moment, Asher made enemies of just about every powerful person in existence haha
Bakerbob
There it is!!!! a skill with subtext of "let's test how immortal you are"
Cosmoros Subs
What a cliffhanger
