Skill Hunter -Kill Monsters, Acquire Skills, Ascend to the Highest Rank!

The puppet rushed at Ike yet again, but this was unlike any previous clash. The puppet’s all was in this blow. It refused to let him escape to rest, no matter what. Wisp tried to slow its approach with spider thread, but the powerful silk snapped like it was a mortal spider’s web. Mag fired birds to harass its face, and it ran through them as though they weren’t there. Desperation flared in its eyes, and its mana burned hotter in response. It wasn’t going to let Ike get away, no matter what.

Exhausted and on the dregs of his aether, Ike barely parried as the puppet closed in. He’d been trying to back away to get a rest, and given how it hadn’t charged Mag or Wisp, he’d been totally unprepared for the mad rush. He took its initial charge on the back foot, and the puppet immediately overwhelmed him. A heavy blow swung from the left, and he lifted his sword to block, only for it to hammer its right fist toward his ribs. He jumped back, shoving off its left arm as much as the ground, and its fist swung through the air. As much as he wanted to punish its overreach, he had no footing left. He used the gap to hop back and recover. By the time his feet touched the ground, the puppet was on top of him again. The weight of its blows alone forced him back, and it was relentless, pounding him over and over so that he couldn’t find his stance, get his footing, lift his sword, nothing. Ike was purely on the defensive. He used his speed to its absolute limits, and could barely keep up with the puppet’s onslaught.

In that moment, he realized a weakness in his style, something he hadn’t encountered until now. His speed was powered by aether. All his techniques were. It was the foundation of being a mage. But in this situation, hammered within an inch of his life, backed into a corner and on the last dregs of his aether, he was in trouble. He couldn’t power his speed as much as he wanted to, because he needed to leave enough aether in his arms to handle the puppet’s blows. In a battle of attrition where he was pushed to his utmost limits, where he was running low on aether with no chance to recharge, he couldn’t burst out with his power the way he wanted to. He needed… something else. Something to recharge his aether, or something other than aether to rely on.

Unbidden, his mind flashed to the King, and the King’s ability to draw in mana and aether alike from its surroundings. If only he could master it, if only he could make those abilities his own—!

But there was no time for wondering, wishing, or hoping. The puppet swept his legs, and Ike crashed to the ground. It leaped toward him, aiming to pin him. He rolled to the side, dodging its attack. All this takes some time to describe, but had happened in an instant, and as a consequence, it was only now that Wisp reached the puppet. She jumped onto its back and gripped it with her thighs, pummeling its head and shoulders with her fists. Black chitin guarded her hands and provided spikes along her knuckles, and her hits raised little puffs of dust from its back, but it didn’t matter. Ike could see that now. If he wasn’t allowed to back off and recharge, then the puppet couldn’t be beaten through a battle of attrition. He had to do this all at once, or not at all.

Ike climbed back to his feet just as the puppet shook itself furiously and threw Wisp off. It reached for him again, once more going for the topple and pin. Ike hopped its kick and spun, putting all his aether into his leg. He kicked it back, straight across the stone arena and into a stone petal across the way. A great cloud of stone dust flew from the point of impact, temporarily blocking it from view.

“It’s not gonna let you recover, is it,” Wisp commented.

“Nope.” Ike pulled a mana potion from his storage ring and downed it, then another. His aether refilled to about half-full, the mana potions converting to aether at an unsatisfyingly low ratio. He at least had the potions, but they weren’t the same as personally recharging his aether, nor did he have an infinite stock of them. He didn’t want to spend them all on this annoyingly beatable battle against someone who couldn’t overpower him, but whom he couldn’t break through the defenses of. It was like fighting a wall. It didn’t feel satisfying to use all his resources beating on the wall, when the wall wasn’t really threatening him. But if this ‘wall’ went berserk every time he tried to back off, then he had no option.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Unless he could come up with a better plan.

He thought back to the moment he’d called the storm to him, when he’d developed Storm Clad. He’d been desperate, on the brink of death. He couldn’t exactly replicate that part, but what about the rest of it? The call? The resonance? That instance of Storm Clad had been more powerful than anything he’d activated since, and not only that, it had drawn the storm from the sky and used it as power, not unlike how the King could draw down aether. Ike looked up. Lightning crackled overhead, the storm he’d called to activate Lightning Caller not yet spent. It was there. The ingredients were before him. If he could bring forth that Storm Clad again, he might be able to outright overpower this puppet before him. But how did he pull them together? How did he activate that call to the storm once more?

It hadn’t been through the System. No, the System had nothing to do with it. In fact, Llewyn had been shocked that he could do such a thing—that he had done such a thing. It had been through something else.

His soul. His core.

He turned his gaze inward again. The puppet closed in on him, but he let it pummel him. It wasn’t important. He could heal this level of damage. What mattered, was being able to pull down the storm once more and bind it to himself. Resonating with the storm. Becoming one with it. Before… before, he failed. He failed, and that failure had bred Storm Clad. A powerful skill, but still a skill. Something the System could recognize, even if it hadn’t been System-generated.

“Ike!” Wisp shouted. She jumped in front of him, taking the blows meant for him. The puppet kept fighting, trying to punch through her to reach Ike. Wisp recovered and fought back, but angrily. “What the hell, Ike? What are you doing? Don’t space out in the middle of battle!”

She didn’t understand. This was the most important thing he’d done since the battle had begun.

He was detached. Somewhere beyond his body. His mortal shell felt alien to him. A trifling, short-lived thing, something to be used and discarded. It wasn’t him. He was something more.

His shell fell to the ground. Dimly, he was aware of Wisp screaming, and Mag swooping down to pull him away from battle. None of it mattered. All that mattered was this moment, this potential.

He was the storm. The storm was him. And immediately, in the instant before Ike winked out and became something else, something greater, he understood what he had misunderstood. He understood where he was lacking understanding, that he might fail to truly become storm in his weak, mortal shell.

Ike was gone. There was naught but storm, naught but wind, rain, the heavy pressure and the low pressure, hot air and cold, warring against one another. And where they met, where the friction was strongest, the storm was born. Lightning. Thunder. The power, the raw vitality of the storm, met where two opposing forces clashed.

A storm wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t an object, a cloud, a rainfall upon the earth with a lightshow to match. It was a battlefield, the place where two forces of nature warred to impose their future upon the earth.

And he was a thing born of that battlefield.

Lightning flashed, slamming into Ike’s prone form. He stood, slowly. His veins glowed with purple lightning. Storm clouds flickered in his wounds, closing with booming thunder and shimmering flashes of light. His blood flowed like rain, pouring back into himself.

“Ike?” Wisp asked, almost afraid.

He looked up, slowly. There was nothing human left in his eyes. Only the storm, the bruised purple cloud. His eyes were set, but rain-tears poured from them. A sense of deep loss ran through Ike, something so deep, down to his soul, that he knew he hadn’t known this loss, and yet knew he had always known this loss. Something had been taken from him. He didn’t know what. He didn’t know when. But he had lost something. Something irreplaceable, something that turned his soul from a placid sky to the battleground on which a storm raged.

The puppet stared at him, gape-jawed. It shoved Wisp aside with startling strength and closed in on him, jabbing a punch at his gut. A hidden blade popped out of its arm, closing the distance to his gut. It plunged home.

And Ike smiled.