Chapter 69

Michael studied the man who was shouting obscenities at him. Suddenly the realization struck him like a physical blow.

“Josh?” cried Michael, “is that you?”

Josh’s face was twisted with rage, “Michael!” he said with an exaggerated tone. He clearly wasn’t as surprised as Michael was about seeing his friend here. “Fancy seeing you here. You on a hike?”

“I should say the same about you,” Michael replied, and his voice was dead serious. He covertly started casting, and a spirit appeared in the air behind him. It was translucent, barely visible, and having appeared behind the cover of his body it could float up unseen. “What are you doing in my property? Didn’t you see the signs?”

“Ah yes,” Josh shrugged, “the signs telling people to keep out of a motherfucking magical treasure trove. As if. Drop the act, man. We both know what I am doing. Guess it’s the same thing you are doing, asshole. Striking it rich with the dungeon loot, eh? To think you would want to keep such a thing all to yourself, tsk tsk.”

Michael was at a loss for words. Sure, he was restricting access to the dungeon, but there were reasons. Some of which he better not say out loud to Josh right now, lest the man react badly. He did not seem stable.

“I’m only doing this because it’s too dangerous to be left open to the public. Didn’t you see the monsters inside?”

“Monsters? Those weak things? I thought you’d know! Just resist the temptation to go down, stick to the first floor and the dungeon showers you with power. What can a weak goblin do against this?”

A fireball appeared right above Josh’s right hand, and with a blur of his hand he threw it against a nearby tree. The impact at high velocity coupled with the magical fire had the tree exploding in smoldering splinters, which in turn set fire to nearby shrubs dried by the hot summer sun.

“What the hell are you doing man?” Michael shrieked, “you want to start a forest fire?”

The spirit above expired, and he summoned another one.

Josh tsked again. “You sound like her. What do you care? What are they going to do, arrest me? No, I should be asking you what you are doing here, Michael. All the work around this place? You like rules so bad, then why are you having construction crews tear up a national park, huh?”

“It’s—”

“Don’t care. To think it was you doing all this! Weren’t you just a worthless piece of trash? You sure were last time I checked, telling me not to enter the cave, all scared and shit. The dungeon sure did a number on you.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed as his mind started to realize where this debate was going. His voice assumed a dangerous edge to it. “What if it was me, what then?”

“What then? Then I demand free access from you, and you should thank me I even allow you to walk out of here alive.”

Michael squared his shoulders, [Crude Body Enhancement] starting to cycle up. “You threatening me?”

“No threats. I’m telling you what’s going to happen, simple as that. You can’t limit access. You want to keep people like me away from here, I know that, it’s because you are scared, aren’t you? You with all your little rules. You don’t want to break the system, and you are scared of people who would gladly do it.”

“No, I want to keep people like you out because you’re unstable, Josh.”

“Unstable?” Josh’s eyes nearly bulged out of his skull, “I’ve never been better, man. I’ll show you unstable.”

“Josh—” Michael began, but did not get a chance to finish the sentence because another fireball was already forming on Josh’s hand. This time it was aimed at him.

Michael saw it coming thanks to the intel coming from his summoned spirit. He swatted it away with a ball of swirling void, [Distortion Field] mirroring his hand movements and deflecting the fireball just enough to make it miss him. He tried to reason with Josh, but the man was having none of it, instead choosing to lob more fireballs at Michael who had to scramble to dodge and redirect them.

He summoned another spirit, this one clearly corporeal. The thing rushed towards Josh, but a fireball quickly sent it back from where it came. It didn’t matter, for it gave enough time for Michael to run to cover.

“You can’t dispel the fireballs, can you?” came the crazed voice. “Good. At least not all of y’all are freaks.”

The forest was quickly catching fire around them. Josh didn’t seem to care, but Michael sure did. Since there was no way Michael could leave cover unscathed, he decided to reveal a bit more of his power set. He walked out into the open, facing his opponent.

Josh stared at him like Michael was the crazy one of the two, but recovered quickly. Just as a water bullet rushed past Josh and embedded itself in a tree, Michael was faced with more fireballs than he could deflect. One detonated right in his face.

“What the fuck is that?” asked Josh, looking at the rotting bark of the tree where the [Foul Water Bullet] had exploded. Turning around, Josh’s face twisted into horror. “And what the fuck is going on with you.”

Michael was regenerating before the other man’s very eyes. His face had been horribly burned by the fireball—which Josh had thought had missed after not hearing even a whimper from Michael. It turned out the fireball did not miss, just that Michael was a monster. His flesh was twisting, moving and flaking as his burns healed rapidly.

“You should be dead, or at least screaming your lungs out. How are you still standing?”

Michael did not reply.

“Whatever. It’s not enough!” Josh yelled at him, panic gnawing at the edges of his mad rage. He lobbed more fireballs. Some were redirected, some hit Michael, but he healed through all the damage without flinching, standing tall in the middle of the scorched field. Trees were burning all around, and even Josh was starting to feel uncomfortable, but Michael only stared at him as if he was in no pain at all.

In a desperate move, Josh summoned a dozen more fireballs by making use of his superior speed and peppered Michael with fire. He whooped when he saw his former friend double over in pain and fall to the ground, but his cheers where short-lived when he saw Michael twitch and reach out to him from the ground, flesh bubbling.

“Fuck you, asshole.” Michael muttered. Then pain exploded from Josh’s shoulder as something hit him. The pain was like liquid fire, and it was spreading a sort of numb warmth across the wound.

“Fuck YOU!”

Josh sneered, and turned into a blur. Suddenly a dozen deep wounds appeared all over Michael’s burnt body, bleeding profusely on the ground. There was another blur, and something clinked on the ground.

“See how you heal this without mana coins!” Josh sneered.

Michael realized what the clinking sound had been. His pockets had all been cut through, and the coins were spread out on the ground, dimly glowing with the reflected light of the forest fire. Another blur and all the coins were gone.

“Loose pockets?” Josh taunted him as he held his limp arm where Michael had clipped him in the shoulder, “you might have passive regeneration here, close to the dungeon, but how long can passive regeneration allow you to heal? It must cost an insane amount. It’s a weakness of us all, access to mana. Now just go and die.”

Michael was about to panic, but then clarity overtook him and he remembered. He remembered a skill that had almost become second nature to him: [Mana Manipulation]. Who said that he needed to be touching the coins to use them? The skill sure didn’t.

He had triple range on mana manipulation when replenishing his reserves, no matter where he took the mana from. He better put that perk to use right away. Even though there was more than enough mana in the air to regenerate, he couldn’t absorb it quickly enough even with his manipulation skill. Perhaps because it was naturally occurring, he didn’t know. Instead, he targeted a source of mana he knew he could immediately access: the coins.

Suddenly the mana in the air became a vortex. The coins turned to vapor while still in Josh’s hands, who was well within range of the skill. Michael’s wounds mended at a visible pace, but it wasn’t enough. He pushed, and pushed, feeling the pain of the burns and the blood loss creeping in like darkness at the edges of his vision.

Then.

The vortex turned into a hurricane of mana. All of being funneled into Michael’s body until his pool reached 100 Copper mana, threatening to explode from internal pressure. He felt as if something was about to give, but didn’t pay it any mind. He would have, had he not been in extreme pain and utterly focused on manipulating mana and healing himself. Death was all too close.

The effect of the vortex was so strong that the growing area of influence of the dungeon actually shrunk for a moment, before the dungeon redoubled its efforts to push outwards again.

Michael’s wounds disappeared in an instant.

“Impossible! Monster!” Josh immediately started to flee, moving faster than even Michael’s current top speed after he saw Michael ready another foul water bullet.

Then he was gone. Later, one of Michael’s employees would find a charred remnant of an arm, partially burnt and partially rotted through. When Josh returned to his boss, it was not only as a defeated man who had disobeyed direct orders, but he was a cripple. He could still cast magic and move fast, but something had entered his body and was causing him great pain. Every hour that passed, he felt weaker and weaker. He would feel nauseous and vomited as soon as he ate something.

Asshole. Asshole. Asshole! His rage only increased. I will kill you and your whole family!