The warrior let out a guttural roar as the spell struck him, stone and soil shooting up around his boots and locking him in place like a vice. He thrashed, trying to pull his legs free, and yelling at his partner to get him out. "Oi, Jasper! Get me out, you cunt!"
Deacon hit the ground in a low roll, his shoulder slamming into the grass before he came back up, now surrounded by a smog of dirt.
"Fuck," The earth mage cursed, backing up a few steps as his partner flailed and barked angry threats behind him. "From whence the earth erupted itself–!"
Deacon refused to give him the chance to finish casting his spell to free his partner. He shot forward, double-handed the hilt of Echoform Reliquary's broadsword form due to the impending head-on clash. As he rushed out of the smog of dirt, he kept the blade of the broadsword low to the ground for easy maneuverability, as the spell the newly identified Jasper had cast destabilized the surrounding earth around his spell.
Deacon's boots tore into the tall grass, launching himself like a bullet toward the axe-wielding warrior, his broadsword angled in a rising arc, aiming straight for the axe-wielding warrior's exposed neck.
Intending to end his life with a single swipe so he could focus on the earth mage.
But the plan died the moment the axe-wielding warrior's mouth twisted into a vicious-looking smirk, and he easily ripped his legs free from the earth that had entrapped his legs two and a half feet beneath the ground with raw strength. His double-handed axe was already in motion to cleave him from his shoulder to hip.
Deacon's eyes widened as time seemed to slow; he'd given up all semblance of a defensive form in favor of speed and pure offense in an attempt to quickly remove the warrior from the fight.
Shit.
From the corner of his eye, he caught the smirk of the earth mage.
The earth mage, Jasper, wasn't shocked in the slightest. He wasn't casting some counter spell to free his partner, he was casting just another similar-sounding spell to attack while Deacon was focused on trying to quickly kill his partner.
Deacon barely got his blade up in time as the warrior's axe crashed down onto his left shoulder pauldrons with what felt like the weight of a collapsing building, biting into his left shoulder, carving through leather and flesh in one vicious motion.
Only to be stopped by slamming into the upper curve of Echoform Reliquary's Broadsword form with a screech of metal.
Fuck me, Deacon mentally shouted to himself as he tried to come up with solutions to get himself out of this mess he got himself into, while doing his best to ignore the copious amount of blood that was leaking down his shoulder and splattering atop the grass below.
Deacon pursed his lips back, and the axe-wielding warrior, whose face was already slick from Deacon's spit, smirked as their target, Deacon, was about to use the same trick twice in order to escape. And so, he quickly decided his next moves would be to lean into the spit and dig his axe deeper into Deacon's shoulder and cleave through his chest.
However, as he was midway through leaning closer to Deacon, his eyes barely had the time to widen as what left Deacon's lips was not saliva, but rather they were tufts of flame.
Flame that while crossing the foot of distance between them grew into a massive inferno that blasted his face and shot past his head.
Ignis, Deacon finished casting as his left hand pressed against the flat of his broadsword's blade and used all of the power he could gather in that moment of surprise to be able to push the axe's curved blade out of his shoulder and leap away from both of them, using the massive eruption from him overloading Ignis as cover to escape the spears of earth that hovered behind Jasper.
Deacon landed roughly, going shoulder-first into the dirt and biting back a growl of pain as the last of the flames from his overcharged Ignis spell roared in front of him, creating a massive cloud of flames that covered the axe-wielding warrior's body from head to toe.
But the warrior wasn't dead; he had yet to receive a System Notification informing him that he had killed him.
His bloodied left hand shot toward his Spatial Sling Bag, and within seconds, his fingers immediately locked around a large crimson vial nearly the length of his palm.
Deacon yanked it free, bit down hard on the cork, and ripped it loose with a snap of his neck. He spat the cork away and chugged the potion in two quick gulps, ignoring the bitter, metallic aftertaste as it went down his throat.
And just like every other Health Potion Bonehead brewed, its effects were immediate.
His body shuddered momentarily as a sudden surge of vital energy overhealed his health pool and boosted his regeneration to its limits, causing the wound on his shoulder to hiss and steam violently, the potion forcing the skin to knit and the muscle to twist back into place like fast-forwarded regeneration. The torn leather of his pauldron hung loose, revealing smooth, unblemished, slightly tanned skin.
"Okay, think, Deacon, what do you do now?" he asked himself as he tossed the empty vial aside.
Deacon's instincts screamed at him to dodge as he could see something creating a somewhat shadowed shape through the cloud of flame that was beginning to fade away.
He threw himself into a sideways dive, the moment the shapes became clearer to him, that they were some sort of earth spears the mage was shooting toward him.
Barely giving a glance at the earth spears that pierced the ground, he pushed himself off from where he threw himself, and shot forward like a released spring, kicking off the earth as he charged toward the smoldering human form that took the brunt of an overloaded Ignis that took almost half of his mana reserves to give him an opportunity to escape.
The axe-wielder attempted to walk forward, dragging his weapon behind him in one hand, while the other was clutching at the scorched remains of his shoulder guard. The axe-wielding warrior's skin was raw and covered in third-degree burns, his face an ugly mess of peeling burns and swelling flesh, and the chestplate that once protected him was now half-melted slag, fusing to the skin underneath it.
"You fucker!" The axe-wielding warrior shouted as he crushed a Healing Crystal in his hands. "I'm gonna-"
Deacon gritted his teeth, gripping the hilt of Echoform Reliquary, as much as he wanted to swap to its dual short swords form, he needed to keep it hidden and only swap its form when he was 100% sure that he could kill one of them.
Flame Armament, he cast, setting the blade of his broadsword aflame.
The warrior growled, enraged, as Deacon's eyes darted away from him and to his partner, who was in the middle of casting yet another earthen spear barrage spell. As his body slowly began to heal from the effects of his Healing Crystal, he darted forward, his axe raised high and wide, abandoning defense entirely for pure offense.
Deacon internally smiled as the axe-wielding warrior fell for his bait. As he shot forward and brought his broadsword into a low stance, looking as though he was going to meet him head-on to clash their blades together like how they started their fight, Deacon surged mana beneath his right foot while ducking low under the wild arc of the double handed axe, unaware of it cutting the tips of his hair as it sailed past the back of his head.
His left and right boots dug into the dirt as with a brutal twist of his hips, he brought Echoform Reliquary's Broadsword form upward in a rising cleave, aiming straight for the exposed mess of ribs and molten armor that the fire had so kindly softened.
Echoform Reliquary flame-wreathed blade carved through the scorched steel and seared flesh like it was nothing.
"Darian!" The earthen mage shouted, accidentally ruining the spell he was in the middle of casting when he'd seen his partner get almost cleaved in two.
The molten iron-plated leather chestpiece split with a wet shriek of metal and a sound like tearing meat, exposing the red mess of muscle and bone underneath, but the axe-wielding warrior, newly identified as Darian, was still moving, and still alive after having barely been able to activate his innate skill, Grit.
Deacon's strike had gouged deep through ribs and shoulder, but Darian gripped his weapon with both hands and let his own weight carry him forward, roaring with blood frothing at the corners of his mouth.
"I'll fucking kill you!"
The axe arced back towards him, shaking in the hands of Darian.
Deacon's boots slid as he pivoted, just narrowly transforming Echoform Reliquary into its dual short sword form to easily rip it out from Darian's body and bringing them towards him to parry the axe from cleaving into his collarbone.
What the fuck are this guy's Class skills and Innate skill to be able to hit like a train, run faster than me, and still be alive after I almost cleaved him in two? Deacon shouted to himself as he ducked low and drove his shoulder into Darian's smoldering chest to get him off balance.
Darian stumbled, coughing blood into Deacon's hair as he forced his body to move through sheer hatred and grit.
Deacon feinted left, then twisted hard to the right, getting on the opposite side of where he cleaved into previously while transforming Echoform Reliquary's dual short sword from back into its broadsword form. Coming in at an oblique angle, Deacon shifted his broadsword's angle and cleaved into Darian's exposed side.
Darian's scream came out ragged and half-way out as Deacon's flame-wreathed broadsword split open his ribcage, cleaving upward through smoldering muscle and bone and into the twisted remains of his heart.
Blood sprayed in a violent arc behind Deacon as he completed the rising cut, and without pause, reversed the blade's momentum in a downward snap that cleaved through Darian's clavicle, splitting his torso into a crooked "Y."
The axe dropped from the dead man's hands with a hollow thud.
He didn't even make it to the ground before Deacon received a couple of System Notifications flashing in front of him.
*[Human Lv 11 // Warrior Lv 12] has been slain – XP has been given.*
*Your Class has reached Lv 9 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point*
*Your Race has reached Lv 9 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point*
Deacon exhaled once through his nose, not sparing Darian's corpse a glance as he shot towards the earth mage, Jasper.
"–shatter the land and rise, spear and spike–!"
Deacon surged forward, boots digging into scorched earth, as he propelled himself like a ballista bolt.
Three spikes of earth burst from the ground in front of him in an attempt to either skewer him or slow him down. It did neither.
He kicked off the ground, launching into a low roll, tucking his elbows in as the first spear missed by a hair's breadth and slammed through the spot he was previously, along with the second and third earthen spikes.
Jasper shouted the next part of his spell in panic, eyes wide as he backed up with frantic steps.
"Soil be my shield, armor me now!"
A dome of dirt and stone began to slowly surge up around him as he activated his own innate skill and used half of his mana reserves in order to supercharge his defensive spell he'd managed to get engraved at the academy.
Deacon snarled as he reached full sprint and was less than five meters away from Jasper and the growing barrier with Echoform Reliquary's flame-wreathed form parallel to his shoulder.
Echoform Reliquary struck the half-formed barrier with a howling shriek of metal-on-stone, flames exploding out from the impact. Cracks spiderwebbed through the shell in an instant. Jasper's eyes widened in shock as the spiderwebbed cracks were visible from behind his dome.
Deacon kicked off the ground, using the momentum to swing overhead in a brutal downward arc, but was met with a similar result.
Just as he was about to pull Echoform Reliquary back to strike the earth dome once more, an idea popped into his head as he thrust his hand forward and slapped his palm against the dome and cast Flame Mine, while almost bottoming out almost all of his mana reserves into it.
Jasper, inside the dome, let out a heavy exhale as he began to fumble for his mana potion in his satchel, as he believed Deacon had given up attacking his earthen dome. But that brief moment of relief was just that, brief, as a massive crimson magic circle appeared on his side of the earthen dome, parallel to his face.
Jasper barely had enough time for his eyes to widen before Flame Mine erupted.