I walked towards the bubbling ground with slow, steady steps. The creature seemed to be taking its sweet time manifesting, and I wondered for a moment what attacking the bubbling ground and semi-solid mound that had formed would do. Might as well try it out. Maybe I can eliminate it before it spawns.
I used a similar trick as when I created Fire orbs to target the Malefic Residue, except instead of small marble-sized orbs, I created a proper beach ball-sized Fireball. I had completely drained my Fire battery circuit dry to make it so, and I really hoped it would work. The process of refilling the circuit was only really viable when I was at full Mana and needed a use for my extra regeneration; otherwise, the loss ratio during conversion made it just not worth it.
Holding the Fire Mana together, I compressed it as much as I could, introduced enough instability to begin a manifestation chain reaction, and flung it at the black mound. The ball of Mana travelled slower than expected. Instead of moving at the speed of a bullet, it was more like I had tossed a cannonball with an underhanded throw. Possibly something relating to the amount of Mana? I wasn’t sure. More testing was required.
This was fine, though, because I may have made the initial manifestation reaction too slow compared to the size of the ball. Overall, the two errors cancelled each other out, which was obviously my original intention.
As the ball closed in on the rapidly forming writhing pile of goo, it seemed to notice that there was a mass of Mana heading towards it and lunged towards it, then paused just before it left the ground and changed course abruptly in the opposite direction. So this one wasn’t brain-dead like the Wretches, that’s a pity. Hopefully, I was about to have reduced it to ashes either way.
The ball detonated the moment it hit the ground, as the impact jolted the unstable Mana. My normal vision was replaced with a blown-out white image as the light caused my sensors to peak. I really need to add an auto-adjustment feature as soon as possible. I'm gonna put that on the list—right after ‘kill the bitch whose friends hurt Autumn.’
I could have just lowered the power going to my eyes for a moment to see if I had vaporized it, but in the time it would have taken to do that, my vision had cleared. There was no goo blob in my sight. Autumn was still fine. I checked my kill notifications to see if a “Maliform” was listed there.
[Killed Malefic Residue Lvl 3]
x37
All thirty-seven of those were exactly level three? That doesn’t seem right. Wait, no, that’s not important. Where the hell did that thing go if it isn’t dead?
I turned around to check that it hadn’t gotten behind me somehow, but there wasn’t anything there. It has to be in this room, but it isn’t anywhere out in the open… Is it hiding under a desk or something?
Autumn wheezed something in a strained tone. I didn't quite catch what it was, but as I was about to ask for clarification, my train of thought was rudely interrupted. Something had slammed down on me from above. It caught me off guard and forced me to my knees.
I immediately felt a wave of embarrassment. I had forgotten the number one rule of dungeon crawling, 'always look up,' and was delivered the punishment I had been due. Every dungeon master whose campaign I’d played in during my past life would be disappointed in me.
I felt my cloak slowly dissolve as the ooze consumed my body, and I was glad I had dedicated a bit of Biomass to it. Luckily, the Maliform was struggling to break it down for some reason, and the rate of loss was negligible. At least until it began battering me with precise strikes of its aura. Whenever my defence was prodded, I lost a chunk of material.
The Maliform had landed on my back, so I channelled [Natural Enhancement] with a reasonable amount of Mana for the situation and threw myself backwards against the ground. A loud crack sounded out as my back hit the metal floor, and the ooze that had been between the two surfaces was blown to pieces. Slapping a hand on the ground, I tossed myself back up to standing height to observe the black smear left on the ground. I assumed what I had just done hadn't accomplished much against the creature since it hadn’t been whole in the first place.
That assumption was quickly proven correct as the droplets began to coalesce in the centre of the ritual circle again. This time, much faster, like a sprinkler in reverse. I hoped it wasn’t the kind of creature that would revive as long as the circle remained or something, because my current plan was to do everything in my power to avoid damaging it until I knew what I was working with.
Instead of taking the shape of a formless lump, it started out looking a lot more humanoid this time. Then the outside suddenly snapped to an exact copy of myself in a world where I had decided to use only black material for my body. I didn’t like the implications that came with it taking that form. Its aura also completely vanished, likely having been pulled back into itself. Which meant it was a lot more clever than any of the abominations on the surface.
The form shift seemed to have taken a lot out of it, or it had completely frozen where it was standing for some other reason. So I decided to test what I could do with Nature Mana on the ooze. I created thorns made of Mana that were charged with intent to change as much as possible on impact.
I didn’t specify what to change because I had no idea how to hurt the thing so the random element would actually be a benefit. Then I released a volley of a dozen thorns, similarly to how I had sent out fire marbles. Except I completely finished manifesting the thorns the moment before they left my aura because thorns were physical objects and wouldn’t dissipate like fire would while flying through the air.
A moment before the volley struck, the Maliform seemed to regain awareness and barely dodged, taking four of the thorns along the side of its body. The goo at the impact points changed into a spattering of seemingly random colours that fizzed at the edges. Otherwise, it was completely undamaged, which wasn’t a great sign. The colours were also quickly shifting back to black, so it wasn’t even permanent damage.
My mind registered a loud bang, and suddenly my doppelganger was only a few feet away, swinging a clawed hand at me. A burst of [Natural Enhancement] allowed me to slap the hand away on time, at a speed that should have torn its arm off, and mine as well, to be fair, but didn’t. It looked like I was finally getting benefits from my high Fortitude, and whatever had been done when copying my body had copied more than just my appearance. This meant my slap did little more than splatter the goo slightly before it almost immediately reformed. I tried to check if it had a root I could pull to banish it, but there was nothing like I figured; it had probably been born in this ritual room through whatever had happened. I was going to enjoy dissecting the ritual to learn how the hell they fucked up this badly.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
I hadn’t ever really been in a fist fight before. Luckily, I didn’t think the other guy had either. My other self was displaying a similar level of incompetence, going for wide claw tears that I was able to knock aside fairly easily. Both of our footwork was complete trash as well.
I think the doppelganger had taken some multiplier of my stats as its own because its blows felt a few times heavier than mine, but a short burst of enhancement was enough to bridge the gap and then some. But neither of us was actually making any ground on ending the fight. At one point, I tried to shove a Bloodroot Seed I’d made into it, but the seed was just eaten. I was pretty sure it was just Mana pool against weird freaky Mana substitute pool until one of us runs out.
Or I find out how Autumn was slapping the floating balls out of existence.
Glancing over at them, they were still propped against the console behind me, a relatively safe location, all things considered, as long as I was dealing with this thing in the middle of the room. Let’s hope it remains that way.
My double lurched forward, and I leaned back to dodge a swipe, realizing I was in an okay position to get some room that I needed. I performed a side kick with as much power put into [Natural Enhancement] as possible; the wave of energy passing through my leg made it audibly hum. The kick landed centre mass as it was literally standing over me, and enough momentum was thrown into it that I had knocked the Maliform into the air. It flailed as it flew into a wall.
While my lookalike was busy discovering the joys of flight, I built a miniaturized microphone and speaker, connected it to my Network, then turned around, and threw it towards Autumn.
“Hey, Autumn, you should be able to hear me, right?” I asked over the connection the moment it was up. “Also, are you doing okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine, focus on what you’re doing… You’re not going to be able to hurt it like that,” they replied in a shaky voice, then picked up the device and examined it. Then their eyes snapped to me—no wait, to a point behind me.
I spun around and took a claw to the chest. The claws seemed to have travelled through my shell’s flesh as if they didn’t exist, leaving long gashes. I think it ate the material as it travelled through me, which meant those claws had really tightly packed Authority within them. The fucker then had the audacity to smirk at me. I responded by punching it in the face, which caved in and repaired itself almost instantly, and also sent it tumbling across the ground, then pounced after it, delivering a kick as it attempted to rise from the ground. While I was making the fruitless attempt to beat it to death and burning my Mana way too quickly, I continued my conversation with Autumn.“I know I’m not going to hurt it like this. I want to know how you did what you did to the floating spheres.” I said, while redirecting the Maliform as it lunged at me from the ground. It felt like it had gotten faster at some point, which was slightly concerning.
“Okay, so about that thing I was trying to teach you before we entered the room—” Autumn began before I cut them off almost immediately.
“The one you interrupted by yelling a war cry and running in here all macho-like.”There was an exasperated sigh over the connection before they spoke again, “Yes… Sorry, I know that wasn’t the brightest decision, it’s just… I was around during The Season of Loss, and the memories were… It doesn’t matter, let me see if I can explain it quickly before that monster finishes its adaptation period.” When ‘The Season of Loss’ was mentioned, the emotions and meaning that were buried within the name made me flinch. There was a lot of baggage there, and I understood why they wouldn’t want to get into it, either now or later. The near systematic annihilation of almost your entire species is probably a bit of a grim topic to most people, I think.
“Okay, so the most effective way to deal with the weaker agents of the Maleficarum, assuming you only have access to Nature Mana, is to abuse the fact that they are creatures whose only purpose seems to be the complete destruction of everything that isn’t themselves. They are the opposite of the Natural order. When they absorb an entire world and kill every inhabitant, they have subsumed Nature and taken its place. So, what do you think happens when you force them to take on properties of the thing that is their exact opposite?” Autumn said. While they were explaining this, I was learning what they had meant by the Maliform having an ‘adaptation period’ because it was definitely growing faster, and was no longer only using obviously telegraphed wide strikes like some kind of beast. Every time it scratched me or, at one point, bit my fingers off, fighting it would grow a little bit more difficult. It was like it was consuming something from me to empower itself.“Okay, so that means that I need to what? Hit it with something filled with intent to change its makeup towards aligning with the natural order?” I asked while deflecting a roundhouse kick and grabbing its leg, after I had shown it kicking, it seemed to have gained an interest in doing them itself. But it didn’t really know when or why to kick me; it was just doing it whenever possible. This gave me plenty of opportunities to do something like this—it tried to rip its leg from my grip. Unfortunately for it, I was already pulling on its leg with [Natural Enhancement], tugging it off the ground into a spin as I slingshotted it into a wall. Its entire body had splattered across the surface at the force of the blow, but it was rapidly coming together again.“Effectively, yes, though I should note it is the Natural order, not ‘natural’ order like you said. Try to make attempts as rapidly as possible. Finding the exact feeling that works for you is difficult. I’ve noticed you are already skilled at corruptive intent, but that would be considered a novice aspect of Nature; the Natural order is a foundational aspect that will be a lot more difficult to pull upon.“ Autumn said. Thinking back for a moment, I realized that yes, they had said the word in a ‘capitalized’ form or at least what Rootspeech would quantify as capitalization.The Maliform had finished reforming on the wall and used the surface as a jump-off point to dash directly at me. I had to dodge backwards to avoid it landing on me again, but this was the wrong move, apparently. As it used its momentum to bounce off the ground and fly past me at a speed I couldn’t track, one of its claws completely carved one of my arms off.Ah, fuck that’s not good. It hadn’t gotten a piece that large yet.
I began regrowing my arm and pulled the Maliform into one of my [Mana Simulations]. It was time to see if I could figure out exactly how to kill it. Turning to face it, I noticed it was just walking slowly towards me, and the smirk hadn’t left its face.