[Book 1 Completed] Industrial Mage: Modernizing a Magical World [Kingdom Building LitRPG]
B2 | Chapter 28 – EXPLOSION!

When Theodore killed James, things went chaotic. Then Liam rushed at him. The poor guy most likely believed he could avenge James, that his sorrow would make him stronger or faster, or something equally foolish.

Theodore killed him too.

The ice struck Liam in the eye, creating a hole the size of Theodore's fist and piercing his head. Theodore let out a sigh. Although he disliked murder, he wouldn't shy away from killing.

There was silence when Liam collapsed in a heap.

The air was filled with blood and an unpleasant stench that he knew as the smell of burnt mana. James was dead. Liam as well. He had killed both of them. Yes, they had coerced his hand, but it still wasn't any easier. Around him, there was nothing to be proud of. It was evidence that he was becoming more and more unlike the person he once was.

And it didn't even bother him.

Liam's sword clattered uselessly against the stone floor, and Theodore found himself staring at another corpse he'd made in the span of about ten seconds. This was getting out of hand fast, but what else was he supposed to do when people kept trying to murder him?

That's when things got really weird.

Rufus had been fairly calm when he attacked Theodore. In fact, he hadn't appeared bothered by anything at all. Until now, that is. Theodore had anticipated that, like most people do when their entire world goes to hell, the man would either flee, give up, or perhaps just pass out from shock. Rather, Rufus began to emit something green that resembled smoke. Rufus then let forth a sound. It wasn't really a roar or a scream. It was like someone throwing up their soul—it was soggy and broken and an indescribable shriek of so many emotions mixed together.

The air around him writhed and shimmered as if it were alive, coiling off him in thick, syrupy tendrils due to the green aura. Rufus's skin took on a sickly pallor that reminded Theodore of corpses left out in the sun for too long, and his eyes changed from their usual color to something that shone like hot coals.

What was left of Rufus was hardly human.

Whatever was happening to Rufus, the strength that accompanied it was evident and instantaneous. The man's knuckles turned white as his muscles protruded beneath his clothing, and the stone floor literally cracked as he stepped forward.

Theodore's sense of danger changed from a mild prickle to a full-fledged alarm, the kind of warning that typically meant he was going to die a very unpleasant death.

Theodore had no idea what he was looking at. Rufus's skin was pulsing from beneath, throbbing akin to a heartbeat. It was mana, Theodore realized, way too much of it.

How was Rufus not dead yet?

Unbeknownst to him, Theodore's lips stretched into a smile as his heart pounded in his ribs.

This was it—

Rufus lunged.

Theodore reacted instantly. His body moved even though his brain scrambled to catch up. Rufus moved quickly, fast in a way that shouldn't have been possible. A green mana tendril trailing behind the man was the sole clue of his movement.

With a pounding heart, Theodore blocked the man's blows, dodged, rolled to the side, and sprang up to dodge again. Rufus's swings were brutal and erratic, and when the excess mana slammed into Theodore's [Mana Shield], it rippled off to the sides, leaving gouges in the dirt like plow lines.

The kinetic energy was like a delicacy. It rushed up his arm like hot steam into a pipe as he breathed it in mindlessly. He spun away and generated a javelin of thermal energy in his hand. Thin at the tip, wide at the base, barbed edges flaring like petals. It hissed through the air as he flung it.

Rufus bent inhumanly and dodged.

Superheated air mana condensed into something solid and lethal that hummed with barely restrained energy, and without conscious thinking, no less. In no time at all, the javelin had formed in his right palm. After seeing Rufus's enhanced form, Theodore decided to pump a bit more juice into this one. Over the last few hours, he had become proficient at these javelins, learning how to pack just enough thermal energy into them to smash through armor without wasting power, but given Rufus's transformation, he knew creating more powerful javelins was necessary. In his hands, the javelin flashed white-hot, emitting heat that caused the surrounding air to ripple.

He hurled it at Rufus's center mass, but the guy twisted away at the last second with unnatural speed. The javelin sailed past him and exploded against the far wall in a shower of superheated stone fragments, leaving a crater the size of Theodore's head in the wall.

Rufus laughed low and ugly, with the confidence that comes from suddenly being strong enough to avoid attacks that should have been impossible to avoid.

With a curse, Theodore made another construct. Two, four. Because of its extreme heat production, each javelin warped light around it and distorted the air as it traveled. The smell of singed mana filled Theodore's nostrils.

Even with the javelins coming his way, Rufus didn't stop. Rufus started to move more erratically, adjusting more as Theodore hurled the javelins at him. His eyes were no longer wild, those terrible burning eyes. They were clear, cold, and gleeful.

Theodore therefore began absorbing the kinetic energy of Rufus's increasingly desperate attacks. Theodore was always inches away from the man's ax, which was whistling through the air with enough energy to fracture stone. Every swing, every desperate lunge, every wild overhead chop fed more energy into Theodore's reserves, turning Rufus's enhanced strength against him in a way that would have been almost poetic if Theodore had had time to appreciate the irony.

When Rufus failed to land a hit, the green aura around him writhed and pulsed as if frustrated, and Theodore wondered what kind of power source could make a man's eyes glow so madly.

Like water finding its level, Theodore's mana reserve poured into the constructs as he created one javelin after another. Three javelins floated around him, each one with enough thermal energy to melt through steel, and he sent them streaking toward Rufus in a pattern designed to cut off the man's escape routes.

Rufus used his ax to deflect one, sending sparks flying and leaving a glowing dent in the weapon's head, but the other two threw him sideways in a roll that put him briefly at risk.

Theodore took advantage of that moment of weakness, making two more javelins and releasing them before Rufus could completely regain his balance. While the first one missed completely, punching through the ground behind him and setting it ablaze, the other one caught Rufus in the shoulder and spun him around. The man's scream was more anger than pain, and the green aura around him flared brighter as if feeding on his rage.

This was not working quickly enough. With his improved reflexes enabling him to avoid or deflect the majority of the javelins, Rufus was adjusting to Theodore's attacks, and Theodore saw that his mana reserves were beginning to diminish due to the continuous production of thermal constructs.

Theodore's mana reserves had become godly, for lack of a better term, since he had evolved his Race and, more lately, his Class. However, they weren't a limitless sea.

Compared to other people of his rank and possibly some Rank 3s, he possessed a lot more mana. Other than that, however, his mana was fairly exhaustable.

He needed something larger, something that would put an end to this fight before Theodore's mana ran out, something that the man couldn't avoid or deflect.

Well, not like I can do anything other than making javelins right now. Theodore sighed. It was imperative that he broaden his skill set and develop a fighting style that was less predictable than throwing elemental javelins.

In any case, he began to shape a new javelin, larger than the others, and filled it with mana until it glowed in his hand like a tiny sun. Constructed to the size of his forearm, it contained more mana, heat, and destructive potential than any other javelin he'd made. Theodore continued to pump power into the javelin and it became hotter and brighter, the air surrounding it started to ripple and distort from the sheer amount of energy he was packing into it.

He was aware that he was straining it and pushing it to its limits. However, he needed power. He needed something that Rufus couldn't just tank or avoid.

That's when something interesting happened.

The core of the javelin bloated, mana overflowed, and the javelin started vibrating.

Too much. There was too much mana flowing into the construct!

The javelin was at its fullest, the thermal energy packed into the construction so tightly that it would explode in his hand if he added more.

To split the load, he attempted to create another, but he had already hit his casting threshold. He needed another way.

Theodore was unable to conceive of an appropriate way to reroute the extra mana that needed to be released before it burned him from the inside out and in that split second of panic he couldn't think of a proper way to redirect it. He could feel the overflow of mana with nowhere to go. In an attempt to find a different shape for the energy to take and a means to use the excess mana as a weapon before it killed him, his thoughts raced through potentialities.

Lightning.

The thought came from nowhere like a desperate grab at the first alternative that popped into his head, and somehow the excess mana latched onto the idea and ran with it. Between his fingertips, electrical energy started to arc, creating crackling streams of power that moved around the superheated javelin.

Electricity raced through the javelin. He had no time to ponder. He simply threw it.

The atmosphere split. Thunder burst behind it, trailing like a comet's tail as the javelin streaked toward Rufus.

Despite the man's best efforts to avoid it, the electrical discharge seemed to have an independent will and reached out for him. Lightning arced from the javelin to his ax and then from the ax to his body. Rufus shuddered.

The javelin itself missed, piercing the wall behind Rufus's position and exploding in a spray of electrical discharge and superheated stone that made Theodore's ears ring. The lightning had done its work, though, and Rufus was twitching on the ground as smoke rose from his hair and clothing.

Theodore prepared to complete the job, forming three additional javelins, this time typical thermal constructs devoid of any electrical surprises. He wanted these to sink deep and boil inside and finish the job.

Rufus was down but not out, the green aura around him flickering like a candle in the wind. Theodore had learned not to assume his enemies were defeated until they stopped moving entirely. He decided that a swift death was more humane than allowing the person in question to suffer, so he targeted Rufus's head.

Wait, why was Rufus smiling? Theodore was confused for a moment. Theodore hardly noticed the man's ax rising up in a wild swing. It was a blur. Rufus had been playing dead, so Theodore was totally unprepared for the attack. He attempted to dodge and twist away from the blade. The ax bit deep into Theodore's neck, and the sharp edge slid through flesh and muscle like they were made of butter.

Except—

Theodore didn't die.

He felt a shift, a dissolution, then nausea.

As if every cell in his neck had suddenly forgotten how to be solid and had chosen to become liquid instead, the feeling was nauseous in a way that was impossible to describe. The bewilderment struck Theodore like a physical blow, and for a moment he felt his mind scatter, his awareness spreading across the gelatinous mass that had been his skull. Gagging, he stumbled backward. His eyes whirled. He put his hand to his face.

Wet and slimy.

Whatever defense mechanism had sprung into action to preserve his life, it was effective. The ax had moved innocuously through the slime that had once been his head, and then Theodore felt his flesh starting to repair itself. It was like watching a sculpture take shape backwards as solid substance condensed out of the liquid mass.

It wasn't something he'd planned. His body had decided for him.

Rufus froze.

"...What."

His voice wasn't angry. It was hollow.

With the ax still up from his swing, Rufus stood there looking at him in utter shock, his flaming eyes wide with incredulity. Theodore could almost feel the edges of the man's sanity crumbling as his jaw worked silently for a moment, opening and closing like a fish out of water.

Rufus took a step back. Then he chuckled. It wasn't joy, it was collapse. Total emotional ruin.

"Why won't you die?" He looked around, as if searching for something to explain this. "What more do I have to do? Why won't you just die? What are you? I trained harder than anyone. I destroyed myself and rebuilt with mana until nothing was left that could be called human. I gave up everything so I could win. I had to win."

Theodore's head had just finished reforming when Rufus burst out laughing. The low, resentful laugh soon turned into a wild, insane one.

Theodore noticed cracks starting to appear in Rufus's skin, as if he were made of pottery that had been fired too hot, and the green aura surrounding the man brightened, pulsing in time with his laughter.

"I killed everyone. I did everything right, followed every rule, played every game, and you still won't die. You still won't just lie down and stop making my life difficult."

Rufus's face and arms were covered in blazing green lines that resembled spider webs as more cracks formed in his flesh. Even though it made him stronger, the power source that was supplying his enhancement was having a negative effect on his body, scorching him from the inside out. Theodore could see the man practically disintegrating before his very eyes, and he appeared utterly unaware of his own deterioration.

"Do you know how long I've been doing this?" Rufus asked. "Do you know how many people I've killed, how many villages I've burned, how many families I've destroyed? All for her. All because she promised me power, promised me purpose, promised me that if I just kept killing and burning and destroying eventually I'd find what I was looking for."

Using both hands, the man lifted his ax above his head. Cracks spread across his arms, his neck, his face. Green light glowed from beneath like magma.

"Why aren't you dead?!" Rufus screamed. "Answer me, dammit! Why won't you die?! WHY?!"

Theodore didn't answer.

He let go.

He released all of the thermal energy that had accumulated inside him, crushed like a black hole in his chest. It went inward until it hit a critical point. Then he concentrated it and aimed it toward Rufus.

After all, he'd be dumb to let the madman finish whatever transformation he was going through.

A ripple of heat surged

Then—in a blast of superheated air, the thermal energy exploded forward toward Rufus, making the earlier javelins appear like birthday candles. The cave's temperature rose to such a high that the air itself appeared to catch fire. Theodore felt the energy leave him all at once, a sensation like having his soul torn out through his pores, and he knew with perfect clarity that he'd just unleashed enough heat to melt anything he could imagine.

Rufus let out one last roar before the thermal wave struck him.

Then everything went white.

***

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