I cast Threadwork through my staff, and at first, what I intended to do was to weave a net around the legs of the Khaazim. Usually, the thread that emerged from my staff was thin like spidersilk, and the strength of this spell emerges when it is woven together.
However, what emerged from my staff was a thread that gleamed as if it were made of silver; still, I was partly expecting this transformation, and I pushed a simple lattice configuration into the thread, and the thread folded into itself multiple times before reaching the Khaazim.
I had only intended for this lattice to hold for one second; that delay would have been enough for me to blink over, but the lattice wrapped around two of its massive roof-beam legs, and the demon lurched.
Although part of the lattice snapped under the stress, it held the demon, and if not for the fact that I felt that the pressure of holding the spell would shatter the staff in my hands, I think I would have been able to demobilise this demon.
I blinked towards the demon, and before it could turn towards me, I put the staff through the gap in its plates and emptied multiple arcs into the dark inside it.
Multiple arcs of lightning from the field had entered the end of my staff, travelled through it, and emerged from the head of the staff, tearing the demon in two.
The Stormbound Fuschia Staff had lasted longer than it had any right to, and that was partly because I was just channeling my spells through it and not necessarily using its channels to manipulate my spells.
Still, the staff was beginning to smoke, and it was apparent that it would not last me for too long.
[Threadwork 52 → 56 (Acolyte)]
[Lightning Dominion 62 → 64 (Adept-Epic) — Directed Arcs: 12 → 14]
I felt the field change as the notification crossed my vision, two new arcs blooming into being, the spell ranking up off the sheer murder I was committing with it.
What was worthy of note was that when I muted the notifications from reaching me, my spells were not being upgraded until I acknowledged these changes.
Obviously, there were advantages and disadvantages to muting the notification. You do not want to be distracted by the flashing blue text across your vision in the midst of combat, and you don’t want the familiar skill that you were controlling to change into something else.
You could get away with this in the Initiate or the Acolyte Grade, but when your spells and skills begin to push into the Adept level, where growth most often leads to transformation, then that would be careless at best, and dangerous at worst.
However, I would not be suppressing these notifications, at least for this loop, because I wanted real-time feedback on what the changes in my body were doing to my spells and skills.
Now, I had fourteen arcs inside my lightning domain, snapping and re-snapping across the spread Khaazim, and the bowl was getting brighter, and I was getting better while I fought, which is the one advantage the loop had carved into me that nothing in this world could match.
I had already killed five of the fourteen Khaazim, leaving nine of these massive beasts, but that did not mean that the dangers had lessened; far from it... the danger had grown, and this was mainly because their size also worked against them when they were fighting a single target.
I imagined that multiple Khaazims were not meant for fighting one target; their strength, size, and speed meant they were supposed to be fighting against armies by their lonesome.
I blinked to the side to dodge a Khaazim that had swung its claws at me, but as I rematerialized, the shaking ground finally caught up to me, and I stumbled, and in the speed at which this battle was happening, a stumble was a great mistake.
A Khaazim swung its tail towards me, and disoriented, I held out my hands to brace for it... and I caught the tail!
The ground around my feet shattered, and I felt a harsh vibration passing through my body that shook every organ inside my body, but I had indeed caught the tail.
The head of the Khaazim bent towards me as if it was surprised, and I directed six arcs of lightning to obliterate its face, a moment before its entire head exploded.
My heart was beating faster than usual after surviving that strike, as I was coming to understand how different my body was.
Still, this moment of deliberation and delay had given the rest of the Khaazim the time to surround me, and their tails were raised in the air, covering the sky above.
I sneered. I could blink behind them and slowly kite them to death, but I did not have the time for that; hundreds of them were coming, and I could not fight them all.
Glancing at the staff in my hand, I sighed and drove the head of the staff into the earth, and the Anima inside my body rushed through my channels in a flood.
∞
The ground was wet, filled with the fluids from three thousand dead Khaaz, and the weight of every Khaazim was pressing down into the ground, crushing the bodies of their dead, and for me, this meant they had created a perfect field for lightning.
The lightning domain that had surrounded me from the beginning vanished, and with a cry, I pushed this spell through my staff into the ground.
And the earth shattered.
Fault-lines of lightning so concentrated that they resembled white fire tore out from the staff, and the ground heaved.
A loud groan as if the ground was crying out in distress echoed as the staff exploded in my hand, taking away a layer of skin, but the spell was complete, and lightning came up through the wet earth the legs of the Khaazim were planted in, and the armour that laughed at a sky-arc had nothing whatsoever to say to the ground itself, turning to current beneath them.
The Khaazim surrounding me lit up from the legs, as their bodies turned white hot, they barely had time to scream before they all turned to ash.