Project Seraphina [LitRPG, Magitech, GL]
2.15 Mass Devastation

The next wave is far larger than the previous one. Five hundred ants lie broken and bloodied, some clinging to life, some struggling on in vain, but all thoroughly routed. The pale brown grass, slowly turning green alongside the golden leaves of the nearby trees experiencing the year’s springtime bloom, is now stained a fetid forest green from pools of spilled hemolymph. And for a brief moment, there is silence.

That silence is broken by a cacophony of buzzing, starting low and slow, slowly building in pitch and intensity. It’s joined by clamping mandibles and stomping feet, and soon after, the odd stench of their communication pheromones seeps into my nostrils. Sickeningly sweet, like overripe cantaloupe or fermenting honeydew. My entire body reflexively recoils.

And the entire horde attacks as one. No fliers this time, but the weak workers from before are joined by several larger ant variants. Some with two pairs of forearms, each towering even over the bulked-up Alexey, and with enough muscles to match him blow for blow. I doubt they have the same level or System-stats, but they’ll prove not to be pushovers, I’m sure.

Behind them are some sort of ranged fighters which spit chunks of acid like cannonballs, spraying haphazardly to hit what they can and deal splash damage to whatever avoids a direct hit. Their shots come in well-choreographed waves. A single droplet lands on my hand, causing a momentary sizzle as my [Health] drops by fifteen. Stronger than I’d expect, and a couple of direct hits would see me on death’s door.

Lindsey turns to me and gives me a nod. She draws her daggers behind me and assumes a defensive posture, while I watch the enemy movements below.

As I do, a screech rings from high above, momentarily distracting me. Alana severs the damned flier’s wings from its thorax, silencing it for good. But her Skill is running low. Her wings are starting to lose their radiant shimmer and begin to flicker out of existence. She notices as well, dropping down to the front lines.

I begin my casting, deciding on the glyphs of [Lightning], inverted [Repulsion], and [Branching] as the primary components of the ‘Arc Lightning’ spell I envision. I’d like to add some sort of intensifying glyph, but even as Chloe’s [Angelic Blessing] washes over me, strengthening my mind and body alike, I’m not confident with holding all those glyphs and the necessary linking and modifying runes in place.

The outer ring goes into place, and because I’m using three glyphs as the base instead of two, I need a dodecagram instead of an enneagram within the spell circle. This adds further to the complexity of the spell and the difficulty of casting it. However, my higher [Glyphcasting] and [Basic Glyph Manipulation] skills as compared with the last time I’ve used such complex magic, are helping to mitigate the strain on my mind.

A scream echoes from below, threatening my fragile concentration. Another weakness of [Glyphcasting] is its impracticality in solo combat. Chloe can fire off a [Restoring Light] in a couple seconds, while I need upwards of a minute to build my spell circle. If nothing else, this excursion is teaching me more and more the virtues of teamwork and the need to spread the load among so many other people.

I start with the [Lightning] glyph in the center. Already I can feel the spark of electricity in the air as I trace out the glyph’s shape. The thin blue glow of [Ether] being channeled to my left index finger grows chaotic, turning into a tempestuous purple arc that dances around haphazardly until I finally lock the glyph into place and hold it fixed with a portion of my willpower. Two more runes modify the shape of the electrical surge, concentrating the charge in the center of the circle and focusing the beam into a thin bolt once released.

Next, the two supplemental glyphs. Inverted [Repulsion] on top, and [Branching] down below. The specific [Branching] glyph is like the branching paths of a growing tree, not like the arcing twists and turns of a lightning bolt trying to find the path of least resistance from cloud to ground or vice versa. I’m not sure whether this will have a noticeable impact on the spell’s overall effect, but my [Tinkerer] and [Glyphcasting] Skills both suggest that things should work. But I’ve been wrong before, even with the guidance my Skills give.

[Branching] slots into place, but this introduces some unwanted dissonance when I try to slot in the inverted [Repulsion] opposite it. The two glyphs I have in place both are trying to invert the glyph back to the upright position, and I understand exactly why.

Both of the other two glyphs want to cause the lightning to spread outward once the concentrated surge of electrical energy is released. This one, on the other hand, is attempting to pull the lightning back within itself. It is at once contrary to the nature of lightning as a concept, which wishes to flow, and contrary to the notion of branching outward and spreading as the other glyph wants.

If I had the time, the vocabulary, and the mental acuity and [Glyphcasting] Skill, I would detail exactly how I want the lightning to flow, to generate a magnetic field around the center of the ant cluster, pull them together, and fry the whole lot of these cretins with a torrent of lightning that jumps between them, all in the span of half a second. Unfortunately, my complete ineptitude leaves me unable to properly express the idea beyond ‘concentrate first, then spread’.

With those extra runes clarifying temporal ordering in place, the three glyphs do fit together. But only barely; it’s but a metastable configuration, and I can still feel the spell’s desire to seek a lower energy state, discharging the frenetic excess energies into the most convenient target— my own body.

I don’t give the monsters a chance to disrupt my spell by waiting for the perfect moment. I eye a single large warrior-type antoid near the center of the army, and I let my spell rip. My eardrums pop from the sonic boom left in the blast’s wake. I would have gone blind—- maybe even permanently— had I not used my [Ethersight] at the last second to block out the intense light from firing off what was effectively a massive arc welder without eye protection at point-blank range.

The next instant, a rumble cracks through the air, followed by a concussive gale as my lightning connects with the ground. My target, a large warrior-type ant in the center of the mob, is completely vaporized by the attack. The seven smaller soldier ants surrounding it are fried, reduced to clumps of ash and chitin that mixes in with the soil and dirt of battle. The twenty surrounding them are cooked from within their exoskeleton, but their bodies aren’t ravaged from the intense pyrolysis and electrolysis that dissolved their sisters.

And the entire army is ravaged, all at the cost of eleven hundred [Ether]. Five hundred ants are dead before the dust settles, their kill notifications rattling in the corner of my eye. Another five hundred are so injured that short of healing magic, it’s a matter of bleeding out or waiting for the rest of their biology to catch up with the fact that they are already dead in every way that matters.

The other two thousand ants are still well enough to fight on, but Lindsey was absolutely correct about the effect on morale. The ants don’t seem to fight any less intensely. I’m not sure if they are mindless, non-sapient and driven purely by instinct, or if they are compelled to continue fighting by some higher (or lower) power.

But the soldiers defending Ft. Still fight like men and women possessed. They shake off attacks that should leave them dazed or stunned, fighting with a fierce and unbreakable resolve against overwhelming numbers and odds that should be insurmountable by all accounts. Even with the benefit of levels, terrain, defense, and intellect, a one-hundred to one numerical advantage should overcome them all. But these brave men and women don’t seem to notice the numerical disadvantage. They lure the ants into the main streets, where their numbers are less impactful, continuing to fight onward even as they allow themselves to be pushed backward.

Meanwhile, I take Lindsey’ [Large Ether Canister] and activate it. A surge of energy enters my body, the System somehow forcing this raw vitality directly into my core. For a moment, I’m in a state of complete bliss, feeling my [Ether] core recharging with aplomb. But then I get to work, forcing my [Ether] channels to do my bidding. I manipulate the contents of the canister, along with the ambient Ether without, into my core. Faster and faster it builds, like waves crashing into one another without time for gravity to pull them back to sea.

I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid the allure of drugs all my life, but if it feels half as good as this, I– I can understand why people try it, and why they get addicted. Heaven help people if it feels even better still.

My [Ether] climbs higher and higher. Including my natural regeneration of 900 points per hour while under [Angelic Blessing], or one point per four seconds, I’ve increased it by 880 points in the span of half a minute as the last vestiges of the canister are emptied and either absorbed into my being or dispersed back into the… well, the ether surrounding us.

This time around, I choose a more subtle approach, but one I expect to be no less effective. With the ant armies closing in and our forces being pushed back, the raw destructive potential of fire and lightning is ill-advised. Too many people, too much collateral damage. Best to be mindful not just of winning the fight, but of winning the hearts and minds of the people to ensure good graces and continued opportune access to activities and resources to grow stronger. But cold is an effective weapon. One which, thanks to our warm-bloodedness and the insects’ cold, has a certain degree of discretion in what it targets. An immobile ant is a soon to be dead one, just the same as if I’d fried its neurons with a bolt of lightning from my fingertip.

And so I begin my spell circle once more. Just an enneagram for two glyphs in the formation. A reversed [Heat] glyph as the base, and an glyph that intensifies, as though changing ‘Cold’ to ‘Very Cold’ or ‘Grossly Cold’ or ‘Biting Cold’. It might cause some minor frostbite to our people, but better a bit of frostbite than a trip down the River Styx.

The glyphs slot into place far too easily; my [Glyphcasting] skill likely gained at least one rank after that last exhibition, and the spell is less complicated than the last one by a good margin. All I need are some linking runes, a couple of modifications to set the range of effect and–

“Ow!” I scream as an errant winged insect buzzes near me.

It’s dead before I register the pain, knifed by Lindsey’s deadly twin daggers, themselves enchanted by me with the [Sharpness] glyph to enhance their killing potential. But I still suffer a grazing wound across my left arm, just below the shoulder. My good arm, the one I use for glyph construction. And worse, my concentration falters.

Bits of the magical energy I’ve gathered seep out, and my warm, pink hands turn the pale white of cold. My entire hand grows numb, and it's an exercise of willpower and overcoming the pain just to inscribe the final two runes and release the spell.

But not without some backlash. In my haste and recklessness to get the spell released and tend to my own wounds, I had misdrawn one rune, one line a few degrees out of alignment. This causes some of the magical energy to fall back upon me, cutting up my left arm further. Damn… Damnit all!

I scream as the pain overwhelms me. My health doesn’t fall below four hundred, meaning I’m not going to die from the injuries I sustain. But I don’t know how easily Chloe’s going to be able to patch me up. Or if she even can. My entire left arm is completely immobile, frozen solid from just below the shoulder clean down to the fingertips.

The flurry of System notifications rushes in shortly thereafter.

[Your Party has slain 2,200 Giant Soldier Ants (Levels vary from 12 to 18). You have gained a boosted 60 Experience.]

[Your Party has slain 245 Giant Warrior Ants (Levels vary from 16 to 21). You have gained a boosted 1,500 Experience.]

[Your Party has slain 155 Giant Spitter Ants (Levels vary from 14 to 20). You have gained a boosted 325 Experience.]

[Your Party has slain 25 Giant Flying Ants (Levels vary from 18 to 20). You have gained a boosted 150 Experience.]

[Your Party has slain 20 Elite Warrior Ants (Levels vary from 20 to 27). You have gained a boosted 4,000 Experience.]

[Your Party has slain 2 Giant Ant Queens (Levels 30, 31). You have gained a boosted 13,200 Experience.]

[You have gained enough Experience to reach level 25. [Vitality] +1, [Mind] +1. Please assign free stat points (Remaining: 4).]

I force all my free points into Vitality just before I conk out.

[Maximum Health increases by [Vitality] x2 + Current Level + Rand[1, 3] = 149]

[Maximum Ether increases by [Mind] + Current Level + Rand[0, 2] = 100]

[Level: 25; Experience: 120,395; To Next: 5,130]

[Current Stats: [Health]: 567 / 2,291 ; [Ether]: 186 / 1,436]

[Current Stats: [Strength]: 24 (25; -5); [Speed]: 30 (25); [Vitality]: 74 (61); [Mind]: 90 (75)]

[Your [Basic Glyph Manipulation (Rank VII)] has upgraded to [Basic Glyph Manipulation (Rank IX)].]

[Your [Glyphcasting (Rank V)] has upgraded to [Glyphcasting (Rank VII)].]

[Your [Ethersight (Rank IV)] has upgraded to [Ethersight (Rank V).]