Lex was fighting a soldier rank mosquito, its wings were made of glass, and its mouthpart was made of glass too. It reached 12 feet and was flying few feets above ground, occasionally swooping down and trying to pull Alex onto its needle.
On the other hand, Ketovan was fighting with 5 commander ranked slugs. Each was linked to some king of element or, as they call it in Eternia, affinity. He pulled his heel and protection domain over himself and was swinging his long blue great sword with such precision that Alex could see the wind getting cut over its razor-sharp edge.
Alex was ducking, parrying and even trying to ambush the mosquito whenever it swooped down for him. His cutlass was just short of speed. If he were a rank higher or the insect were a rank lower, then the insect would have had its grave inside Alex's cutlass. The glass of the insect's mouth classes with the cutlass as Alex blocked it. The metal on glass sound was not at all helping Alex to concentrate. He was going to decide his fighting style with emperor this night, but as he entered the warped space, the only rest he got was when he and Ketovan were travelling to the tree.
Alex tried to concentrate on the insect. His eyes turned a swirl of black, gold and silver. His skill 'all seeing eyes' activated unconsciously as he fought the insect. Its body appeared all black except for a golden light at its center and some tiny cracks over its body that were previously unseen as they were on glass like material.
The mosquito flapped its wings once, and a flood of glass shards came for Alex, in an instant, his sword glowed a black light, but it did nothing. He tried to block as many as possible. But few got in deep, and blood started to flow out of his legs and arms, but luckily, they were only shallow slashes over his chest.
Seeing its prey diverted, the insect did not waste any time in swooping down for the ultimate time. Ales moved his cutlass towards its neck. Its needles dug deep into his left side of the stomach, but he never leaved his grip on the cutlass, earlier he saw a slightly larger crack on its neck. He knew this was his only chance, he twisted his cutlass, and the head of Mosquito came down and crashed at his feet into millions of glass fragments. Its body went limp as it followed the head and crashed down. He touched one of the larger glass shards, and a screen appeared before him.
NAME: GLASS CULICIDAE
RANK: SOLDIER RANK LV 2
AFFINITY: GLASS
MANA POINTS GAINED ON CONSUMPTION: 1130
Alex clicked on the loot option in the far corner of the screen. And the body before him disappeared. Leaving nothing behind but few larger chunks of glass, which gave off some kind of mana.
His inventory screen appeared, and two more slots were filled with new items.
ITEM: GLASS LANCE (legendary)
ITEM:
Ketovan wondered why he did not get the bag Ketovan got. He turned towards Ketovan to ask his doubt.
"Ketovan, I did not ge-" Alex stopped as he saw the battle before him.
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Ketovan was moving constantly, his commander rank opponents rarely lost their mark, covering him with all kinds of elemental attacks Alex could think of. One second Ketovan was coved in hard mud that was then covered in flames, once in ice and veins, once pressed between two boulderer that really made the glass mosquito a mosquito.
But every time Alex broke through them, but not without a coat, his dark blue domain boundary that Alex came to know as his shield domain was flickering and shaking. It looked weaker than before every time Ketovan broke through the traps.
He swung his sword towards the incoming attacks. They were 5 slugs circling him from all sides. They wear slow but large, the smallest was 6 feet and the largest reaching 10. They each had one unique affinity. Fire, ice, mud, stone and plant.
The smallest, a fearsome six-foot creature, was the Fire Slug. Its body was not merely orange, but a deep, smoldering obsidian color with rivulets of molten material glowing beneath a thin, glassy outer layer. It moved with a subtle shimmer in the air around it, and its trail was a thin, hissing line of superheated, crackling ash. It didn't need to spit fire; the sheer heat radiating from it was its weapon, capable of wilting foliage and raising blisters on exposed skin from ten feet away. Where its body touched the ground, the moss and dirt instantly turned to charcoal.
The Ice Slug was a chilling contrast, a seven-foot mass of pale, translucent white and crystalline blue. Its body looked less like flesh and more like a compacted glacier, with faint, sharp edges visible just beneath its surface. As it slid forward, it didn't just leave a slime trail; it extruded a slick layer of instantaneous, black ice. The air around it felt heavy and sharp, and with every inch it covered, it dropped the ambient temperature, causing Ketovan's breath to mist violently in the sudden cold. The true danger lay in the tiny ice shards that continually sloughed off its mass, sharp as glass and spinning with every shudder of its movement.
Reaching a formidable eight feet, the Mud Slug was a dull, mottled brown, perpetually dripping a thick, viscous goo. Its surface looked like churning, saturated earth, and its movement was the slowest and most labored of the five. Its defining trait was its density; it seemed to absorb all light and sound. Its trail was a deep furrow of quicksand-like mud, a mire that immediately began to suck down and impede anything that stepped into it. Furthermore, every movement sent heavy, dolloping clumps of caustic, heavy mud splashing outward, designed not to harm with heat or cold, but to blind, weigh down, and utterly immobilize its target.
The terrifying nine-foot creature was the Stone Slug. It was not smooth and slimy, but rough and segmented, its entire body a fortress of gray, granite-like armor. Its movement was accompanied by a grinding, rattling sound, as if miniature boulders were being crushed beneath its mass. It was the toughest to cut, its hide deflecting all but the most powerful blows. As it moved, it subtly raised and hardened the earth directly in front of it, creating low, jutting barricades and uneven terrain intended to trip and delay the swordsman. Its trail was a compressed, unnaturally solid line of cracked bedrock.
The largest, a monstrous ten-foot leviathan, was the Plant Slug. Its color was a vivid, unsettling emerald green, and its body was woven through with thick, vine-like structures that seemed to be actively growing and receding beneath its glistening slime. Its surface smelled strongly of rich earth and bitter sap. It's true threat was speed and entanglement; from its massive form, barbed, whip-like tendrils of hardened plant matter shot out, their tips coated in a paralyzing sap. The trail it left behind was a mass of rapidly sprouting, woody roots that immediately began to knit together, threatening to snare Ketovan's ankles and hold him fast for the other elements to converge.
The Fire Slug pushed him back with heat of it fire balls, the Ice Slug threatened to freeze his footing and slice him in half with its frost blades, the Mud Slug sought to bog him down with its drack boggy water that acted as its tentacles, the Stone Slug aimed to trip and barricade him with its huge boulders that it produced out of it body, and the Plant Slug tried to bind him in place. Its veins grabbing his legs and hands trying to twist him into two different parts. His swords would have to be wielded with blinding speed, not just to attack, but to keep the elements at bay.
Ketovan moved in one fluid motion cutting the veins of the plant slug and breaking the boulder thrown at him by the stone one. He carried on and parried the rest of the incoming attacks and jumped out of the circle of slugs.
Ketovan didn't hesitate. Out of the five slow, encircling threats, the massive nine-foot Stone Slug represented the most immediate structural problem. Its power to shape and harden the ground was a slow death sentence; once the terrain was fully uneven and barricaded, the speed required to dodge the Fire, Ice, and Plant attacks would be impossible.
He drove forward; a blur of motion compared to the slugs' crawl. The swords, twin arcs of polished blue metal, were aimed not at its thick center, but at the edges of its form.
The Stone Slug reacted to the incoming threat with a ponderous rumble. The grinding noise intensified as its segmented, granite-like body hunched. Its elemental affinity surged, and a section of the damp, mossy ground directly between it and the swordsman spiked up in a low, jagged wall of compressed earth and stone, nearly knee-high. It wasn't meant to impale, but to halt Ketovan's momentum, forcing him into a split-second skip or pause.
Ketovan didn't pause. Instead of trying to leap the barrier, he used the obstacle itself. He hit the stone ridge with the side of his boot, kicking off the newly formed wall to launch himself sideways, converting the horizontal stop into a vertical boost over the slug's hardened back.
His target was the mantle, the soft, vulnerable ring of tissue where the slug's tough, armored shell met the ground. He brought his right sword down in a whistling arc, aiming to exploit that narrow weakness.
But the Stone Slug was ready. Before the blade could connect, its granite shell shuddered, and a patch of the rock on its back, right where the sword was descending, detonated outward in a shower of heavy gravel and sharp fragments. It was an act of pure, kinetic defense—using its own stony armor as shrapnel.
Ketovan had to twist his weapon mid-swing, using the flat of his blade to deflect the stinging volley of stones that would have shredded his face and hands. The distraction was enough. His intended lethal strike was deflected into a mere grazing blow that scraped across the slug's hard carapace, sending sparks flying but drawing no vital fluid.
The Stone Slug bellowed a low, grinding roar of pain and effort. Even the grazing blow had caused a hairline fracture in its armor. In retaliation, it slammed its entire massive front down. The ground beneath it violently rippled and cracked, and a wave of compacted earth shot outward toward Ketovan's feet, a powerful subterranean trip designed to knock him flat.
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