Stella rushed over. Joseph was a little light headed. So much mana was rushing through him at the moment. The area was full of mana, but he wasn"t able to absorb it until now, or at least certainly not at this level. He vaguely wondered if this would be the mana toxicity thing that was prevented from harming him by mana control. He suddenly loved that skill."Master Joseph, are you ok?"
Joseph could only giggle. He knew she was upset, but all he could see was her twitching her little bunny nose.
"Never better, though, I think I may be drunk."
"You"re weird," she said with a sigh.
That only made him laugh even harder.
"I think I may need a break."
Stella muttered under her breath, but he couldn"t catch what she said. She was cute when she did it though.
"You"re cute, even when you"re mad. Did you know that?"
"It would be best if you stopped talking now."
"Oh, ok. Should I do interpretive dance instead?"
"NO! SIT!"
Joseph sat.
"Wow, so much mana is pouring through me, all my magical abilities are working at top form. Wow. Your aura is awesome."
For some reason Stella sighed. He went to make funny little shapes with mana. His normal magic was a mix of blue and gold, but using the dead mana, it was a mix of green and red.
"Hey Stella, watch this."
He cast CREATE FIRE as a line as far as he could into the distance. Joseph felt something moving the mana around in the fog. The fog instantly dispersed, revealing a translucent milky figure. Winter wights.
Stella screamed and jumped up.
"Huh, I wonder if it burns?" Joseph squinted to try and get a better look before the fog closed in around it again. It probably shouldn"t burn, but he had enough mana running through him, it was worth a try.
IGNITE FIRE.
The ghost caught fire and burned up, still floating in the air without a sound.
"Hey! It worked! That was neat."
Stella was giving him a look, so he made a funny face back at her and laughed.
"Sorry, did you want to kill it? I"ll let you take the others."
"No, that"s okay. You can do it," she quickly answered.
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
Was her voice getting squeaky? He giggled again, because it was funny. Trying to stand was a bad idea, so he decided to stay sitting. It was probably a much more n.o.ble posture anyway.
Turning his head to feel where the mana in the fog was disturbed, he got a fantastic idea.
"Stella, should I try detonate instead? I could just "splode "em all at once, or do you like the candles instead?" For some reason, candles seemed like a really funny word.
"I like the candles instead. The candles are pretty," she answered quickly.
"Ooh. Now I"m motivated. Let"s make them different colors then. Shoot. I made almost a dozen candles but they were all green. I"m sorry Stella. I kept trying to get different colors but they only seem to burn green."
"That"s ok I like green. Green is a good color."
"Ok then, as long as you"re happy." He made a ring of fire around them, because he was getting cold sitting on the ground. "Stella, I think I need a little nap. Is that ok?"
She didn"t get a chance to respond before he fell over asleep. When he woke up, the CREATE FIRE was still going. Fortunately, he didn"t feel drunk anymore.
"System, can I maintain spells in my sleep now?"
(NORMALLY YOU WOULD NEED INTERMEDIATE COMPREHENSION, BUT SOMEHOW THE COMBINATION OF MANA CONTROL, MAGERY 3, AND YOUR HIGH INTELLIGENCE AND WILLPOWER IS ALLOWING YOU TO BE ABLE TO CURRENTLY. AT FIRST, I THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE AN EFFECT OF THE HIGH MANA IN THE AREA BUT I RULED THAT OUT WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING.)
He looked around and saw Stella standing not far from him, with her daggers out.
"Stella?"
"Yes, Master Joseph?"
"Drugs are bad. I"m hungry."
"Here you go," she said, pulling a piece of meat out of thin air. Probably from her purse, when he thought about it.
"Thanks, Stella."
They started walking again, after he ate. Joseph decided to keep a small CREATE FIRE going above his head, because the fog was finally blocking all of the light, and it was pitch black.
He could feel the movement of the mana around him, and knew that it wasn"t a creature. Even the winter wights were leaving them alone. He wasn"t sure what Stella did while he was out to scare them off, but at least they weren"t still coming at them. Following the mana, he could feel the swirl it created, like the eye of a storm.
Suddenly, the fog parted and they were standing in the barbarian camp. Sunlight was streaming down, showing the frozen corpses of those overcome by the fog. It must have been in the night, as many were still in their tents and sleeping blankets. Only a few looked like they fell when they were running.
The mana in the air was so thick here, Joseph could almost see it without his mage sight. It was radiating out from a form moving behind one of the tents. As it stood up and turned towards them, he sucked in a sharp breath in fear.
Shaped like a man, but 20 feet tall, the monster had a thick armor of black ice spikes. Red blood was frozen around its mouth of jagged icicles, and as Joseph looked at it, he could see an energy pulsing just under its skin of ice, almost like the pulse of its heartbeat.
Throwing the remains of a child larger than him into its mouth, it stared at them with murky blue eyes as it crushed it and chewed. Then it smiled, opening its mouth wide, and Joseph"s eyes went big, fast.
"Breath weapon! Stella the powder!" he screamed.
Breaking free of the hold it had on them, he formed the rune DETONATE with all of the mana he could use, right in front of its head. 4 bags of charcoal powder immediately flew towards the rune.
BOOM!
He immediately started pulling mana from around him, into him to replace his depleted stores, until he was at full capacity.
Was it hurt? Did they stop the attack? Joseph didn"t feel or see the mana still collecting. As the dust cleared, they could see the head and neck of the creature was gone. Hundreds of black ice crystals were scattered around.
"Did we kill it?" whispered Stella.
"Never ask that!" Joseph responded, looking around for something else to attack them out of the fog.
"Why?" she asked in confusion.
"It"s a bad omen." There was no movement from the monster. "Stella, in my last life, an online friend of mine had a saying. After playing a scary game, set in a s.p.a.ce station, it"s not dead until you get experience."
"What?" she asked, even more confused.
He started forming DETONATE again. "Keep throwing the bags. I don"t care if it can regenerate, has a second form, or an extra life. I"m killing it."
27 bags of charcoal powder later, the thing was reduced to piles of black ice shards. Making the biggest, hottest CREATE FIRE he could sustain, he started to burn the thing until the ground started to glow. There was a lot of mana in the area.
Some of the crystals were still there. So, he pulled the mana out of them, let them finish melting, and started turning to steam. Raking the ashes into a pile, he threw some chunks of meat Stella had in her purse on top of them, then used PURIFY FOOD to erase the residue from existence, then burned the food past the point it was nothing but ashes.
There was nothing left. The entire camp had burned and disappeared by this point. There was a glowing molten puddle of ground where the creature had been standing. Then he finally got a notification from the system.
(WOW.)
(CTHUL-SKRET, WHICH WAS RELEASED FROM ITS MILLENNIA LONG IMPRISONMENT, HAS BEEN COMPLETELY ERASED FROM EXISTENCE. ITS DARK AND TAINTED POWER HAS BEEN FOREVER ERASED, NURKONG, THE G.o.d OF ICE, DEATH, AND DESTRUCTION, HAS BEEN SERIOUSLY INJURED FROM HAVING A LOW-LEVEL AVATAR DESTROYED IN SUCH A MANNER.)
(PURIFY FOOD HAS NEVER BEFORE BEEN USED TO ERASE THE SPIRIT CLONE OF A LESSER G.o.d.)
(ENACRA, THE G.o.d OF MAGIC, HAS TAKEN AN INTEREST IN YOU. YOU HAVE BEEN GRANTED A BLESSING FROM ENACRA: AUTONOMOUS MAGICAL CALCULATION CENTER. AN AUTONOMOUS MAGICAL CALCULATION CENTER HAS BEEN GRAFTED ONTO YOUR SOUL. WHILE CONSCIOUS, THE AUTONOMOUS MAGICAL CALCULATION CENTER WILL REMAIN ACTIVE AND CONTINUOUSLY PRACTICE MAGICAL TECHNIQUES OR RUNES OF YOUR CHOICE AND TRANSFER THE EXPERIENCE TO YOUR MIND.)
(YOU HAVE BEEN TASKED WITH A GREAT DESTINY BY ENACRA. RESTORE THE WORLD TREE IN ORDER TO RESTORE THE FLOW OF MAGIC IN THIS REALM.)
(WOW. I CAN"T GRANT SOMETHING LIKE THAT WITHOUT A LOT OF LIFE POINTS. GOOD JOB HOST. I THINK YOU NEED TO REBOOT TO COMPLETE THE INSTALLATION.)
"Haha," Joseph laughed as everything went dark.