113: Some Things Never Go As Planned

Van’s chest hammered after seeing the incredible power put off by the two combatants fighting for the relic. He believed Aidan would just steamroll him like he did so many other times, against all the monsters he had fought before. Even against an entire gang of dangerous criminals, Aidan pushed through all of that to save his sister with apparent ease.

But seeing them disappear into the caverns after breaking through the dome made him doubt for just a second. That second stretched even longer than he liked as explosions shook the floor of the dungeon. They had a wide view from their vantage, seeing the wide structure of the floor getting pummeled by the onslaught of the fight.

Still, he kept himself at bay, ensuring that he did his job of protecting his sister and boss. Haley looked on with concern, her fingers curling tightly against her palms whenever she got nervous. Nina appeared stoic, her expression saying that she expected this to end in her favor as usual. Van couldn’t hold himself back and glanced over at their supposed enemy.

They stood by just like them, watching the scene ongoing. For a moment, he thought they were all going to fight, but it didn’t appear that they would start fighting them when their own bodyguard was fighting Aidan. Selene had the same smile she always had, which unnerved Van a little. She was so different from Nina, yet so familiar at the same time.

What gave him worry was the regal-looking wolf man standing straight with perfect posture. His level was higher than his and Van knew that the man had experience in fights. While he didn’t see the tiny girl beside the wolfman as a threat, he knew well enough that looks can be deceiving. For all he knew, that girl could be the most dangerous of the group after that cloaked man.

Despite his nervousness, he didn’t put his hand on the hilt of his sheathed sword. He felt that it would make him look weak, instantly wanting to have his weapon on hand to appear intimidating. He didn’t want Selene’s posse to think that Aidan was their only fighter.

“Aidan will be fine, right?” Haley asked, her voice as soft as a whisper. She obviously knew that saying that type of stuff out loud would only make them look worse with Selene’s group standing there.

“It’s Aidan–he’ll be fine,” He said, not allowing his own hesitation to reach his words. Haley nodded in understanding, accepting the words as a matter of fact.

Silence took over then, which made the entire situation even more awkward. While he was more than glad to just leave it like this and preferred not to fight if he could help it, seeing the fight going on outside was making him jittery, like he should be doing something.

Nina’s voice pierced the silence. “Where did you find him, Selene?”

Van looked over to Nina who in turn gazed at her sister in the distance. Selene replied with a smile like usual as she replied.

“Curious? He’s quite the find, if I do say so myself. As for where… Does that really matter?”

“I suppose not,” Nina said in return. “I just find it odd that you would befriend a dark mage.”

“I’m afraid there’s a little misunderstanding here,” Selene said. “He’s not a dark mage.”

“Any mage that deals with cursed relics is a dark mage. Isn’t that the case?”

“But he is not,” Selene replied, as though delighted to answer in such a way. “But I take it your little hero there can see the energy for himself? Is that why you assumed he was a dark mage?”

Nina stayed silent for a moment. Van recognized that saying anything more might reveal Aidan’s abilities, just as how Nina was trying to unveil more of the abilities of that cloaked man. He was honestly fine with this sort of mental warfare, as long as he doesn’t have to partake in it himself.

But the wolfman intervened when his head suddenly turned to the side. His right ear twitched and flopped, and his eyes thinned. Selene instantly noticed this and frowned for once.

“My lady, we are not alone,” The wolf man said, pulling out what looked like iron knuckles from his bag and placing them into his fingers.

“Wuaaa…” The girl beside him squeaked, and pulled out a comically large axe out of nowhere with ease. Van fucking knew that chick was stronger than she looked.

“Well now, that’s a bit inconvenient,” Selene said, shifting her gaze back to Nina’s group. “Do you mind not going for our backs while we deal with this?”

It was clear that they sensed enemies approaching, forcing both Van and Haley to ready their weapons. Nina glared as she pulled out her daggers.

“The structure has been damaged, so the monsters are now approaching the new entrances here. Stay focused.”

Van readied himself as he also felt it now. Rumbling echoed as several footsteps could be heard running towards them. As it grew louder, he braced himself as a small army of monsters ran their way through to their dome.

Were they perhaps being called to the relic now that it was revealed? And since they were at the focal point, all the monsters were now heading their way. Van readied himself for combat as he knew that if any monster were to take the relic, only chaos awaited.

…..

In every tense situation where his life was on the line, Aidan always referred to going back to his video game days when he constantly fought against a difficult boss in combat.

However, now he referred to the days when he faced an opponent in a PVP match. Unlike facing a computer-generated monster that followed certain attack patterns and movement guidelines, which the player could exploit once they learn how it functions, facing a human player was an entirely different ballgame.

After all, the human mind could think up various ways to handle a situation. One moment, you think you have the upper hand, only to get outplayed by an opponent who read you like a book. On the other hand, you get attacked by annoying methods they thought up once they learned how to play the game in a way that the developers didn’t mean to implement, forcing you to lose due to not thinking outside the box.

There were hundreds, if not thousands of ways to handle a human opponent, especially in a game that had a lot of elements to put into the equation. This was a lot like then, only this time it was ten times worse.

He was dealing with a tricky bastard. Rather than actually fighting him head on, he would use tools that offset the balance of combat, forcing Aidan to give up his momentum to avoid being dealt with a fatal blow. It was a lot like Nicky’s way of fighting, except the guy’s tools were, ironically enough, out of this world.

In fact, one such thing was coming at him now.

Aidan swerved in the air, seeing a literal rocket fly straight at him and barely grazed his shoulder. The metal rocket that flew past him suddenly exploded, unveiling a rain of thorns that showered in a large radius. He brushed them aside with crafted air before creating air shots and shooting straight at the guy a few miles away.

The cloaked man flew past the air shots, his boots roaring in pressurised flames like rocket boots, before throwing three metal balls into the air.

Each of the balls also exploded into wide electrified nets, trying to capture him whole. Aidan willed the air to burn and flames soon erupted out from him, reducing the nets to ash and making them dissipate into the air. Aidan roared, unleashing a volley of fireballs straight towards the cloaked man.

They kept going about this way for a while, keeping a steady lock on each other in the air while throwing any projectiles they could. Sometimes, the cloaked man would unleash a torrent of black chains to try and capture him, but Aidan knew well enough how they worked and avoided them like the plague. Whenever the cloaked man gets close enough to a cavern wall, Aidan would summon earth spikes to get him in the back, only for the man’s cloak to harden into steel and block the attacks like a shield.

“You sure got a lot of tricks up your sleeve, huh?” The man snarled, unleashing another rain of metal balls that soon exploded into actual flying metal fish that chomped the air, wishing to bite into Aidan’s flesh.

“Who’s talking?!”

Aidan roared as he burned the metal fish away, but some of them were tough enough to blast right through the flames and land on his arm and shoulder. Their heated fangs dug deep into his flesh, forcing Aidan to batter them away and heal back up.

He was really, really starting to hate this guy. He knew that while Aidan’s mana was drying up when dealing with all of his crap, the man’s mana remained untouched due to only using tools throughout this fight. Worse yet, he couldn’t tell what this man was feeling due to the cloud of demonic energy hiding his soul away, forcing Aidan to rely more on his instincts and intuition, which he was ashamed to admit were a little lacking.

But he wasn’t going to back down from this. So far, his best bet was to use fire rather than air or ground, as one lacked destructive power and the other required careful positioning. Even if it did drain his mana more due to constantly forcing fire to spark, it did more area-of-effect damage.

Carefully, he crafted mana to create tiny balls of burning flames, summoning them in droves all around him. With Split Mind and Area Field, he boosted them all with a dash of Infuse and the combo of Boost and Focus, then shot them all straight at the cloaked man.

The Artificer noticed the fireballs coming and summoned an array of dark chains that appeared from his hands. The chains coiled like snakes and snapped at each of the fireballs, their end points exploding in contact and creating a plume of smoke that covered the surroundings.

The smoke devoured everything in its wake, covering the entire airspace above the caverns. They even covered the glittering light of the gemstones above, covering the floor with a false night. Taking his chance, Aidan willed his mana.

He crafted the smoke around the Artificer, thinking that he was done with the attack, curling around the man and wrapping him in smoky trails. The Artificer barked out a surprised yelp from the sudden obstruction, the strange script riding across the surface of the goggles possibly telling him more information.

Aidan was ready to swoop in with his venom sword, the smoky wrappings around the man constricting him hard enough to give him the leverage, but something happened that made Aidan pause.

The wrappings around the Artificer suddenly lost the will controlling it, and soon the smoke dispersed into nothingness. He didn’t even feel something amiss when that occurred, no spell or strange tool that the man used to do it. He was still able to see the man through the smoke thanks to his senses, but even then, he didn’t feel any form of energy being passed like when he used the chains.

It was as if the smoke was drained or changed into something else, which only brought more confusion as the Artificer smiled wickedly at Aidan. Then he flung his hand forward.

There, he sensed the mana churn, creating something new as metal sprouted from his hand. It shifted and changed shape, turning the malformed metal into some construct that he truly recognized.

He made a fucking gun. From the looks of it, it was a classic revolver that looked unstable as hell, mana sparking and causing the surface to show cracks and splits that glowed. But it looked like the Artificer didn’t care at all as he pulled the trigger of the gun, aiming straight at Aidan.

A plume of smoke, more powerful and unrestrained, shot out like a torrent straight at Aidan. He immediately weaved an air barrier around him, only barely getting by as the smoke almost burned the clean air around him, trying to wear him down.

The air barrier held, though only barely as the smoke contained some serious demonic energy that could’ve affected him as badly as the Matriarch once did. He looked up at the Artificer making a huge grin, the gun in his hand cracking apart and turning into dust the next few seconds.

“Like it? I call it ‘eat your own dust’,” The man remarked, clapping his hands together to get rid of the bits left behind.

“Nice trick,” Aidan grinned back. “How about mine?”

The Artificer quickly frowned, understanding what Aidan was implying as he turned back around.

Fiery explosions bloomed, covering the air again in its smoky tendrils. In the midst of the flames, the Artificer flew himself out, his arms covering his body as flames covered the cloak and torso.

The explosions were done by the still remaining fire balls Aidan created earlier. During his earlier casting, he actually cast Vanish on some of his fireballs, making them disappear and having them wait around this entire time. It was only possible thanks to pushing his Split Mind even further, keeping them at bay while handling the situation with the smoke gun he created.

But now he had enough time to use them in action, so before the Artificer could recover, Aidan boosted himself with nearly half his mana and flung himself straight at him.

He swept past the man, almost getting countered by a sudden dagger that aimed right for him. The Artificer knew it was coming, and was prepared beforehand. What the Artificer was expecting was a powerful hit that could disable him, so he managed to disrupt the blade Aidan wielded enough to twist it aside.

What he got instead was a small nick across his left pec, forcing Aidan to quickly back away before the Artificer could respond again.

But that was all that Aidan needed. He smiled at the Artificer who looked confused as to why Aidan looked so pleased, then looked back down at the nick he gave him.

The nick he gave with the venom sword.

“Ugh… you son of a bitch!” The Artificer cursed and moaned as poison mana corroded the surface and plunged deep into his insides.

Aidan only smiled wider as a result.