System Change

Derek’s void attacks were great, especially against people who didn’t have high endurance and vitality. From what he could see from the way the elven commander reacted to his attack—and how long it took the area where the ice had penetrated his abdomen to heal before—the elven man didn’t have a high focus in either of those two stats. His defense might have been very high, but that was only because of his barriers. Without those—or against someone who could ignore them—he was a sitting duck.

If Derek had to guess, he would say that the man had a decent amount of stat points dumped in his wisdom and intelligence stats. Why wouldn’t he if he had multiple kinds of barriers that could block just about any kind of damage from reaching him? Intelligence and wisdom would be the prime stats. Intelligence to increase the skills power—whether defensive or attack power—and wisdom to increase the length at which he could maintain the skills, and how well he could control them.

It really wasn’t a bad build for someone. Unfortunately, the man ran into Derek, who happened to be a pretty big counter to him, if that really was how he built around his skills. And that was why Ryven, the Duke of Indria, was sprawled out on the ground, breathing heavily with his eyes unfocused. But fortunately for the man, Derek’s attack hadn’t straight up killed him. Well, whether he’s fortunate or not isn’t decided yet.

With that thought, Derek flashed down to the ground next to the reeling man, and opened a rip in the void—revealing his Time Prison. Derek grabbed the man by the top of his chest armor and lifted him up.

“I… I…” the man tried to say something, but didn’t quite have enough focus or breath left in him to talk.

“You… you…” Derek said, imitating the man. “Were wrong. And now you’re really sorry, and hope I won’t kill you, and also hope that we won’t take everything out on your kingdom or the rest of your family? That’s usually the normal spiel that comes out of the mouth of someone like you who’s just gotten his ass kicked, right?”

Derek didn’t wait for the man to gather himself enough for a reply. Instead, he did a quick search and grabbed what storage rings he could find on his body—which turned out to be two, but he doubted that was all the man had, however, he didn’t have enough time to do a thorough search—then pushed the door to his Time Prison open.

As soon as the door opened, and before Derek even threw Ryven inside, he saw the corpse of the turkey-like creature he had thrown in before. It hadn’t completely disintegrated like the previous one, but it hadn’t fared much better. It was missing multiple parts of itself, and also looked old on some parts of its body, yet young on others.

Two experiments, and only one inside his Time Prison, weren’t enough for him to know if the Time Prison had actually shielded the beast somewhat from the space in time, or if it had just gotten ‘lucky.’ He would definitely have to run more tests later. It was all pretty interesting. What if I used Void Creation and created a layer of void around something, then tried to take it through the tunnel? It was a very interesting idea, and he made a mental note to find some more beasts. Using the cells may work, too. I’ll try that sometime, as well.

Finally, Derek tossed the wounded man inside the prison. “Try your best not to die,” he said. “I’m sure Edgar would like to have a word with you if you’re still alive once we finish here.” After that, he closed the door and pulled the void back together. He didn’t have enough time to go inside himself and arrange a nice room for the man to stay in—he’d have to make do without the status effects the cells have built into them, and try to survive on his own. Also, he should be cut off from any relevant healing skills that he might have.

Okay… what’s next? Derek thought as he looked back up at the battle going on. His little interference with Spatial Rend was enough to give Alanah a pretty good advantage by taking one of the annoying flies off her for some time, it seemed. The armored person wasn’t looking so hot, and just couldn’t keep up with Alanah’s rapid fire attacks.

In fact, Alanah’s rapier must have found multiple gaps in the person’s armor, as there was now a lot of blood flowing out of it from the waist down. The man who Derek hit with his skill looked like he still hadn’t been able to heal the wound he caused. That seems really promising, he thought. He still couldn’t see the wound well, but by the black ice pushed into the gap in his armor and his hand resting on its location, he could tell that the man was still hurting.

The other royal continued to attack Alanah as she ignored him and focused most of her energy on the armored guy. As for the wounded one, while his hand was focused on his injury, his eyes were wide and focused on Derek. Derek grinned at him and gave him a quick wave as he hopped into the air once again.

“We’ve got to retreat!” the wounded man yelled at his two companions, causing the one that was focused so hard on Alanah to falter in one of his casts and turn to look at the other man. Unfortunately, the armored man didn’t have such a luxury—he had to put every bit of his own focus and energy into not allowing Alanah to kill him.

“What?” the man said as Derek rapidly closed in with Void Steps. Then he noticed something, too. He was speaking out loud and everyone could hear him.

Derek was able to see the exact moment when the realization flashed through the long-haired royal’s eyes. If everyone could hear them, then that meant that everyone could also hear Alanah. Alanah, for her part, seemed to have noticed before everyone else—probably as soon as Derek knocked the commander down.

She had kept her calm and didn’t reveal anything—though the sounds of swords colliding and metal on metal should have caused everyone to realize it earlier, everyone was probably used to fighting with sounds that they hadn’t thought twice about the battle noises.

“Oh, no!” the long-haired man continued. “Let’s go, now!” The small ice wings on the back of the two royals sprouted and grew even bigger than before as they both turned to flee.

“Stop!” Alanah’s command came the instant they decided to escape.

Derek felt the command and even faltered for a moment. But it was nothing like what happened to everyone else. The person in the armor had immediately gone still, and before he was able to break out of Alanah’s command, her rapier had penetrated the gap between his helmet and body armor. With a flick of her wrist, the man’s head separated from his body and flew higher into the air as the rest of the body began its freefall to the ground.

The two royals must have had pretty high wisdom, or at least a strong will, as they were only frozen from her command for a short second or two. By the time the body of the general hit the ground, they were already fleeing and had traveled a decent distance away from Alanah and Derek.

Alanah and Derek locked eyes and nodded at one another. Derek was now much closer than before to her, and could see that she was looking very fatigued. The light in her eyes and the thick aura she had when he first moved next to her were both fading.

‘Which one’s the king?’ Derek asked Alanah before he made any actions.

‘The one with the long hair,’ she replied.

‘I’ll get him. If the other one escapes for now, it won’t matter. I can always find him later,’ he sent. Quite easily, too. He was thinking about Void Travel. He was basically a wolf that had picked up the other person’s scent, and since he had focused on it, it would be even easier to find it if he looked for it with his Void Sense.

Alanah nodded, and Derek stored Harbinger before he used Void Shift. He opted to go with his regular Void Shift rather than Silvi’s Active Void Shift this time for a couple of reasons. First, his Void Shift still needed to level quite a bit, and no matter how much he used Silvi’s skill, it wouldn’t go any higher. Also, he could gauge what he needed to do easier from within his shifted state, and he doubted the two royals would have enough stats to break him out of it when he got close.

They would probably be able to detect him if they focused enough while trying to escape—maybe somewhere within the realm of how Shae had when they first sparred—but he doubted they would be able to do much else. Though, you never know, he thought. If nothing else, he would learn more about his skill. He hadn’t really given it much use since he increased both his intelligence and wisdom to their 1500 point breakthrough.

Derek pulled himself through void ripple after void ripple with his focus on the fleeing pair the whole time. They were still moving, but their speed wasn’t as fast as Edgar’s was back when they were racing to save Edward and capture Torith back in the capital. The young prince was built for speed, but the two ice users were not. If they continued to flee side by side, though, he would have a much easier time getting to both of them instead of just one.

Derek looked behind him to see how Alanah was doing, and to his surprise, she was moving even faster than Edgar had. She was crazy fast—Derek thought it may have just been her dexterity and coordination that made her movements so fast during her battle, but she clearly had fantastic straight-line speed as well.

Luckily for Derek, though, the two royals weren’t anywhere near the distance that he and Edgar had to travel from the teleporter to the castle back then. He’d had to come out of his Void Shift and gulp down some mana potions to keep going back then. But now, even with his current reduced mana pool, he still shouldn’t have any problem getting to them in time.

He continued to pull himself toward the duo. During his time shifted, they had looked behind themselves and saw Alanah—and maybe him—charging forth, and had chosen to split up. Derek clicked his tongue and focused on only chasing the one with the long hair—the King of Astrus. He’d have to find out the man’s name later. He didn’t really like just thinking of him as a king.

Soon, Derek was behind the man. He quickly pulled himself through another ripple and found himself in front of him by ten or so feet. The man’s eyes fell onto Derek, and his face slowly fell into a confused look. He definitely can see, or at least sense, me, Derek thought. He did a quick look at his mana pool after that. That took a little less mana than using Active Void Shift would have. But that’s only if I don’t stay in here any longer.

With that, Derek deactivated his skill and appeared in front of the king. In an instant, the man came to a halt to avoid running into him. Who would want to run straight into a person that had basically tanked everything the elven commander had to throw at him? Well, that’s if he was watching at all. He definitely looked over when I hit his brother with Spatial Rend.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Derek asked.

“Move out of the way,” the king yelled back and a giant wing made of ice came forward to hit Derek.

It reminded him a bit of his fight with the wyverns. He’d been hit by a wing before, and that was another attack that he found out he wasn’t a big fan of. However, even though the wing was big and, while it wasn’t exactly slow, Derek was able to easily dodge it by increasing his elevation with his Void Steps. And if it came to it, he could still Void Shift.

“That was your one shot,” Derek said, and Harbinger appeared in his hand before he struck down with it. “You better hope you’re more tanky than the duke was. You’re going to need to be.”