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Chapter 158: Causing a little Havoc
🕑 Added 2023-08-19 01:16:59 +0000 UTCChapter 158: Causing a little Havoc
Things began happening very, very rapidly. Mercury felt his fur stand on end as adrenaline flooded his body. He banished all fear from his mind.
There was maybe half a second where <Adaptable> set in, having his fur grow shorter to match the rising temperatures in the room. The air around Zyl, who Mercury was standing quite close, was beginning to warp from the heat, occasionally lighting up in bright flashes of plasma.
Mercury saw the lips of Zyl’s mother move. Before the words even had a chance to reach his ears, they were torn apart as the air, once again, ionized, in a thick sheet of white glow. When it had faded, Trinya was no longer there, just Zyl standing over yet another crater.
“Please, by the divines, stop punching people through my floor, broth-”
There was another explosion, and yet another gaping hole in the floor. Somehow, Berthorn stood next to it, avoiding the same attack Nir and Trinya had been hit by. Despite all that, the man’s mouth was open.
“H-how?” he asked. “I thought… you were supposed to be weakened! For years!!”
Zyl snorted. “You’re an idiot. A worthless sack of bricks, Berthorn. A traitor to me. Do I look stupid? I knew you were coming. I know of the “might” of all ye dragons. And I knew you wanted my spark.”
His brother’s eyes widened. “Fuck,” Berthron muttered.
“Yeah, you done fucked up, brother.” Zyl spat the last word with contempt, before lunging again, only to have his punch stopped by Nir.
Somehow, the girl had made her way back out of the hole, and held onto his arm. “Do it again,” she said, before giggling maniacally. “Kikikiki, Kahahaha!! Hey! Zyl! Do it again! Come on! Hit me! Hit me!!”
There was another flash of light, and one of the walls shattered. A few dragons were knocked to the floor, unlucky enough to have been in Nir’s path as Zyl sent her flying. It seemed like that was all it took for the dragons to properly realize what was happening, because then, anyone who already had their weapons drawn decided to participate.
Dozens of lights flashed. Lightning, poison, fire, frost, earth, wind, force, darkness, light, any kind of magic Mercury could have ever imagined burst out from the dozens of colourful people attending the ball.
And, somehow, not a single one cared for Mercury.
Well, of course they didn’t. They already hardly paid him any mind, he was a member of a “lower species” after all. So, since he activated <Veil> at the same time, the small amount of awareness they had for him all but melted away.
There were four people he found himself mainly interested in. Zyl’s mother, Trin-something, who was still in the hole her son had smashed her down. Zyl’s brother, Berthorn, who seemed like the biggest potential threat, since he was slippery and ruthless. Zyl’s father, who was a complete wildcard, and finally, the strange old lady who’d spoken to him before.
However, as he swept his eyes over the room, he could find neither Berthorn nor Irrithuriel, the old woman.
“Oh, I’m right here, Starlight,” a voice resounded from next to him, old and creaky, and when he turned his head, he saw… nothing. The confusion must have been written in his features, because an explanation came. “I use some illusions and a couple prisms of ice to hide myself. It’s a stealth skill, called <Thousand Snowflake Illusion>.”
Mercury blinked at Irrithuriel. “Right, you sure are open. How’d you find me?”
“Fehfehfehfehfeh! Ah, priceless. Truly. Starlight, your Skill makes it harder to focus on you, not impossible. I found you, because I wanted to. Like most anyone else could in this room. Well, anyone with half a brain, at least, which does severely limit the selection.”
Despite being unable to see her, Mercury could imagine the woman’s grin. It was a little hard to focus on her words though, with the constant explosions ringing out in front of him, as Zyl blasted dragon after dragon, idiot scion after idiot scion away.
At some point, Nir had returned, laughing like a completely insane person, and engaging Zyl in close combat, no longer taking any hits. Mercury got the distinct feeling it wasn’t because they’d hurt her, but because getting hit meant it would take time to get back into the fight.
Still, the mopaaw didn’t know where Berthorn was.
“I do wonder. Will you make it out alive by yourself?” Irrithuriel asked.
“What?”
“I’m saying your odds aren’t looking great, Starlight. Your bravery is amicable, but foolish.”
His head didn’t move, simply continued scanning the room. He felt <Seeker Of Secrets> hum distantly in his mind. There was something he wasn’t seeing here.
Another explosion rang out, heavy enough to shake the floor. In fact, it even tipped the couch Zyl’s father was lying on. The man ended up deposited on the floor, looking a bit like a twisted corpse with a head full of seaweed. He made no effort to right himself.
“But you know, Starlight, I truly admire bravery like yours. The ability to walk into danger so much greater than…” the woman started, then stopped when she noticed Mercury wasn’t paying her any attention at all.
In fact, his eyes were still locked on the hall. Like he was searching for something.
Mercury breathed, and his pupils dilated.
The noise in the room disappeared. It was reduced to a distant rumble, background white noise. He felt it all fall silent.
The veil of gold, of colour, fell away, and for a moment he saw everything as though it was in black and white.
Within that colourless world, he saw his target.
Berthorn was there, wielding a knife, and sneaking away. The coward wouldn’t intervene in the fight, of course he wouldn’t, but Mercury did not want to let him get away either.
Irrithuriel stared at the mopaaw as he stepped away, completely disregarding her, and smiled with a mouth full of fangs. She had seen the change in his demeanour, how his attention shifted, his eyes changed, those sparkles on his fur grew just a little more radiant. “Such a curious little creature…” she muttered to herself.
And unbeknownst to Mercury, he had just earned himself a future sponsor.
Yet, he himself did not care at all. Instead, his eyes locked in on Berthorn, and his awareness shifted. Ihn’ar felt almost natural now, easy, even, and it let him feel the presence of all kinds of grasses underneath the wooden floor.
Long stalks, untamed by any gardeners, wild and rebellious. They were different from the grass he understood until then, but they were still grasses. He asked them to reach out and ensnare Berthorn.
It was as though he simply allowed them to fulfil their own wishes.
The grass, the thing that usually bent and was stepped on, that relented and served, used Mercury’s ihn’ar. It spread, thin stalks slowly sliding through gaps in the floorboards, a shifting mass of greenery headed for Berthorn.
It was so clear. Grass didn’t always need to bend.
[Your understanding of <Grass> has increased! <Grass (lowest) -> (low)>]
Immediately, the stalks wound around Berthorns legs. They moved faster now, as though they had a goal in mind, and that goal was having the dragon fall.
Of course, simple plants would never hold down a dragon for long, but it was enough to have him hesitate and look back for a moment. There was another flash of light in Mercury’s peripheral vision, but for Berthorn, who was looking directly back at the fight, it blinded him for a moment.
The rumbling of the explosion faded to a distant quiet in Mercury’s mind. He took a deep <Breath>. Air rushed into his lungs, hot and scalding, but <Adaptable> had made him more resistant, and <Shelter>, from his cloak, also helped fend it off just that bit more.
Enough to not be cooked from the inside, at least.
… Mostly.
Despite the burning feeling in his lung, Mercury jumped forward. His strength and speed were entirely different by now, just given their base stats. The energy from <Breath> mixed with the mana and stamina coursing through him, and within moments he was on Berthorn.
Before the dragon had a chance to react, Mercury used <Claw>.
His strike fell against tough skin, the liquid metal of the Dream of Starvation already wrapped around his paws. But no matter what form Berthorn took, he was a dragon. Disguising as a humanoid would make his skin weaker, yes. It would compress parts of his form down, store them in an alternate dimension to be activated consciously, and with him currently scuttling along the floor, he wasn’t anywhere close to top form.
But the gap was still large enough to almost stop Mercury’s claws. Almost.
There was a moment where Berthorn’s skin resisted, stretched and sought to stop Mercury’s momentum, fought against the cold dark steel scraping against his face. But wherever Mercury wanted to move, there would be a path.
<Itinerant> opened up a way. The skin split before Mercury even touched it, and whenever he did, any resistance was done away with by <Unrestrained>. After his new evolution, both Skills seemed to have grown somewhat more offensively usable, letting Mercury leave five long gashes from Berthorn’s forehead, over his eyelid, and onto his cheek, leaking blood.
The man screeched, and kicked backwards. The strength that would usually be sealed because of his form was suddenly released, and the kick shattered the wood. Noxious mist seeped from his skin, causing the grass to wilt, and an explosion of splinters sent Mercury jumping backwards.
Berthorn swiftly became the image of decay. His seaweed hair was slick with hues of purple and green, his skin, now partially covered with scales, seemed sunken and unhealthily pale. The blood dripped from his face slowly, each bit of it falling to the floor with a hiss. Acrid smoke seeped from his skin, and the floor began rotting underneath his feet
Very quickly, Mercury decided to step backwards from it, the plume of noxious smoke spreading. But behind it, he could still see Berthorn’s now disfigured face twist into a snarl.
“Beast!” the dragon roared, fear replaced with fury. “I will not stand for this!”
The ground underneath him exploded again, rotten would falling away into dust as it was torn apart, and Berthorn appeared before Mercury within an instant. Then, there was another flash of light. The thin man’s frame in front of the mopaaw was replaced by Zyl, delivering a kick to his brother’s face, that set his jaw rocketing to the side.
Not a moment later, there was another explosion, as Nir’s fist slammed into Zyl’s side, sending her brother flying just like her other brother had been sent flying before.
The wiry girl turned around, grinning at Mercury with a mouth full of fangs.
“Hey. Hey, hey!” she said, the grin turning even wider. “You’re my brother’s- I mean Zyl’s- I mean, Zylnareth’s boyfriend! Lovely to meet y- agh!!”
Her surprisingly polite, if a little creepy, greeting was interrupted when Zyl’s fist slammed into her face, alongside a blinding arc of plasma.
The stench of rot in the air was replaced by that of fire. Plumes of gas were filling the room, white steam, black smoke, and purple poison. Everything had swiftly descended into chaos.
Mercury watched Berthorn hold his broken jaw in place, a white light wrapped around him as another dragon kneeled next to him with some healing.
Despite all of it, Zyl’s father still laid on the floor, completely unbothered by the explosions around him, except for just a little bit of grumbling about how loud the youth of today was.
By now, Trinyakorie had dug herself out of the hole again, stumbling a little. She looked the most shaken. Her defenses had probably hardly been up. Mercury guessed she’d not been expecting a smack from her own son.
… He wanted to capitalize on it.
Swept up in the action, he took another deep <Breath> of the hostile air, <Adaptable> working its hardest to let him breathe it. The energy coursed through his vein, and he felt mana and stamina rush into his muscles. He breathed with the flow, letting it all flood hima s he lunged.
Every point in strength and agility helped the movement. In fact, he quickly slammed another 30 points into strength, taking it over the threshold.
Strength: 83 -> 113 (+5)
[The individual's Strength has surpassed 100! Your muscle density and density control increase.]
Immediately, Mercury felt something about him change fundamentally. His mass almost doubled that very moment, each and every fibre in his body thickening and growing stupidly heavy. But he could also feel the option to shift some of that power away for greater agility, as though there was some space in himself to actually store those fibers.
He could also tell that it would take time to get used to the shifting, another skill to master. Instead, he set it aside, and put those stronger muscles to the test.
Mana and stamina flooded into his legs. It felt like pouring warm water into a towel, getting soaked up immediately, almost drinking it in. Then he lunge forward, his <Breath> in rhythm with the motion, his ihn’ar somehow unbroken and letting him feel his body move.
For a moment, he threatened to break the sound barrier.
It took less than a second before he slammed into Trinya, his heavier body smashing into her like a cannonball, hard enough to disorient Mercury. But with another <Breath>, his vision cleared, and his mind grew sharp. One rijn then another manifested, Mercury’s mind split in two, and both of them slammed into Trinya’s legs, knocking them out from under her already balanced body, and sending her crashing to the floor.
Without hesitation, Mercury set to clawing at her face. Fruitlessly.
Despite the fact that he surprised her, Trinya had increased her defenses since falling into the hole. Her entire body was covered in thick, red scales, glistening with heat. Hot enough, in fact, to burn the mopaaw’s feet.
[<Adaptable> has levelled up! <Adaptable lv. 1 -> 2>]
Well, maybe not burn them quite that badly, then.
Despite all the anger he felt at the woman below him, Mercury’s mind felt clear. He knew every Skill in his arsenal, and triggered the relevant ones.
<Thread> reached her first, dozens of tiny silken strings clinging to the woman’s clothes and scales. They weren’t enough to entangle her, but they would muddle her mind, and slow her, as more and more fell on top of her.
Then, <Bloodlust> fell against her mind like a hammer. Every single bit of rage Mercury felt flooded the Skill. Usually, the Skill was an impression of what happened to others who faced the user. Past kills made manifest. But this time, it wasn’t that.
<Bloodlust> fell upon Trinya like a promise. That Mercury would find a way, a path, to hurt her. It fell against her mind, muddled by <Thread>, and the confusion and chaos around her, and the surprise of having been tossed to the floor.
And it fell brutally.
Mercury saw her eyes widen, the anger and confusion on her face suddenly replaced with fear. She tried to hit him, clumsily, but her fist was fast enough to slam into his side and have his ribs creaking. He didn’t even get the chance to evade, <Combat Sense> only giving dim pulses while inactive.
He rolled on the floor, swiftly jumping back upright, and taking a glance at his resources. Less than two minutes had passed, and half his bars were already gone. His mana took the biggest hit, sitting a little under 300. He spat a puddle of blood, eyes trailing through the room again.
Trinya had since burst into flame, fire blazing all over her skin and erupting from the floor wherever she touched it. The wooden planks were splintered in a hundred different places, where attacks by Zyl or meant for him had struck.
The red haired dragon himself moved fast enough that Mercury had trouble keeping up, flashes of light throughout the hall indicating his position as it shifted almost randomly. Yet every time, without fail, someone was sent flying.
By now, the sound of explosions had long since made Mercury’s ears ring. He could only still make out screams and curses because of <Enhanced Hearing>. Berthorn was no longer in the hall, having disappeared, and Nir was dancing through the crowd like a drunk, laughing maniacally as she slammed her fists into anyone who crossed her path.
Actually, was she slowly making her way towards Mercury? She was.
Fuck.
He tried to turn tail and run for a moment, but the wiry girl stood in front of him only half a second later. And she laughed, loudly, in his face.
“Kikikikiki! You! Your name! Tell it to me again!” she demanded.
“Mercury,” he said, then spat a bit more blood. “You?”
“Alright Mer! I’m Nir!” She reached out a hand, grabbed one of his paws, and shook it hard enough to rattle his bones. “Lovely to meet you!”
“Take your hands off him!!” Zyl yelled from halfway across the room, the rage palpable in his voice, but he was currently buried between half a dozen dragons.
“See, I’m your boyfriend’s-” she interrupted her sentence to duck underneath a table that was flung over her head, kneeling down to suddenly be at eye level with Mercury. “Sister!” she finished. Her eyes drifted over the chaos, ice shrapnel flying everywhere since Zyl currently fought against a dragon that conjured them. “And I think we’re gonna get along great!”
Mercury hesitated for a moment, and she almost moved to punch his shoulder in camaraderie, before looking at her fist and reevaluating that decision. Instead, she simply held onto his hand, and stared into his eyes with intensity.
Fuck it, Mercury decided. “Yeah, absolutely. Great to meet you. You brother is pretty awesome!”
Her grin widened, threatening to split her cheeks. “He is! I like you!” She leaned forward, then whispered conspiratorially into his ear. “Gonna fuck some people up. You should run.”
Then, she vanished, laughing loudly as her fists slammed into random bodies and sent them flying as she made her way through the crowd.
One of them landed on Zyl’s father, Thorythenior, and the man moved for the first time. He grabbed hold of whoever fell onto him, and tossed them, through a wall, and straight off the mountain. Then he laid down again. “Stupid rascals,” he rumbled. “Don’t bother me.”
It would have sounded more threatening if his voice weren’t completely deadpan.
Trinya was back on her feet by then, now moving towards Zyl, but she found herself quickly intercepted by Nir. “Hey! Hey, mother!” the girl yelled. “Catch!” Then she threw some scion at her parent, knocking the woman back to the floor and giving her ‘ammunition’ a couple burns.
She laughed, and simply rampaged on.
Mercury was looking for a way back into the fray as he heard another voice. Irrithurial, the invisible grandma. “Starlight,” her voice creaked. “I truly admire your bravery. Get Zylnareth over here, and I might just help you escape, fehfehfeh!”
For a moment, he considered doubting her, but <Seeker Of Secrets> and <Intuition> both told him that she was telling the truth.
Fuck it, he decided yet again. “Zyl! Get over here!”
The red haired dragon, his skin also covered in scales, snapping his head around. His eyes locked onto Mercury, then his lips moved to call out a technique and he vanished with a blast of air hot enough that Mercury still felt it. The idiots who surrounded Zyl had their hair catch on fire and fell to the floor.
He reappeared next to the mopaaw, panting heavily. Five minutes had passed, but he already seemed to be running out of steam. Dozens of bruises and cuts covered his body, but he seemed to care less about those.
Mercury felt it. The heat that rolled off him in waves was shaky, sputtering like an engine running out of fuel.
“This might sting a little~,” Irrithuriel warned them, before a piercing cold invaded Mercury’s lungs, causing his breath to catch. The heat-haze around Zyl disappeared, then the air warped until he, himself, turned invisible. “<Inner Ice>,” the old woman intoned melodically, and Mercury felt the sting of cold turn into a light breeze on his skin.
The world took on a different hue, as he was shaken out of his ihn’ar and had dozens of ice crystals break the light around him.
“We leave, now,” Irrithuriel commanded, her tone tinged with humor and exhaustion. Before that, though, Mercury decided to leave just one last gift.
“Nir!” he yelled. “Cause some havoc!”
The girl’s head snapped towards the source of the noise, and her grin grew truly wide. “Understood!”
With that, she picked up a couple people from the floor, dragons who’d been knocked out, and tossed them.
At Thorythenior.
By the time they landed, Mercury had half a foot out the door, when the old dragon’s roar hit him.
It felt like a sledgehammer had smashed into each and every bone in his body, and the very building he stood in creaked.
Trusting his instinct, he leapt out the door alongside Irrithuriel, who was carrying Zyl.
Behind him, there was a screeching noise, like that of metal being torn apart, and then the entire building exploded away into splinters with a sound loud enough to make Mercury’s skeleton quiver in fear.
The three of them, heroically, ran away from the crumbling mansion.
