Soulforged Dungeoneer

Now, look. I'm pretty good at this whole fighting thing. Not... not the best in the world. I still have never actually had sword training, neither general stuff nor specific training on the wild sword types that the Dungeons have provided. The Executioner's Blade, for example, is nobody's idea of a normal sword. I could tell pretty early on that the balance of it was weird, but I lacked the language to be specific about it. Honestly, the reformed sword I gave the former-devil would probably have been worse, because I just kind of screwed around with it and made it bigger.

The point is, I've been in a bunch of fights and came out okay. I knew immediately this wasn't going to be a fight I got out of okay. Because, first and foremost, this is the guy who saw my real fight--and he saw me put someone else through almost the same kind of fight just a short while ago. This is the guy who's seen me desperate, and if he wants "a real fight", he knows just how far he has to push me to make me desperate again.

I'd used my Telekinesis since I reforged it, but the beanpole--the Slenderman, now--managed to determine in maybe three chops with his ridiculously long arms exactly how fast I was. The first, I just barely dodged, throwing myself into my telekinesis a little late, and I noticed just how he slowed down to let me escape. When I puppeted myself out of his reach, I felt a little better, but the second chop scared me. His legs and arms moved like... well, honestly, the fact that he looked almost human probably made for an optical illusion; his reach and step range were vastly longer than I expected them to be, and again, I noticed him giving me leeway.

The third chop of his arm was down into the stone floor, and it shattered the stone blocks, revealing the same abyss below that I'd seen when the Devil's throne had broken, and the same as when the blade had shattered the floor. Whatever was below... I had to assume it was death.

Too quickly, his hand drew back, and both arms flicked forward through the debris, throwing the shattered floor blocks at me. I both danced back and threw up fields of force to deflect the blocks, and it was at almost exactly the moment that I felt like I had successfully deflected all the blocks when I realized that Slenderman's fist was coming right for my face.

From that moment on, I had barely a moment to think.

When I intervened against the undead Kensei, I felt an attack actually hurt my mind when I deflected it with my skill, and so I was a little cautious about trying to just shield against the Slenderman's attack. I won't say it saved my life, but it was certainly wise; even pushing the attacks aside instead of meeting them head-on, they stung.

His fists were fast, and if he'd kept at it, I don't think I would have had room for a counter-attack. The Slenderman wasn't a base, unintelligent dungeon creature; he was more human than most things I fought, adapting to my little quirks and patterns before I noticed that they were there.

But he was also not quite trying to kill me--that was obvious.

His choice to change tactics was deliberate, and he left an obvious hole in his pattern. He dashed back, destroying a section of wall to grab more stone blocks, and took a moment to snag them and start throwing. Since I had breathing room, and since the item wouldn't be much good to help me block anyway, took my Executioner's Sword in a telekinetic hand and threw it at him. It landed something of a glancing blow, and he smashed it away, destroying the fake item in the process--a slight waste of mana, but nothing serious.

Meanwhile, I tried to mentally sort through what I could possibly shift around in my materialized equipment to give myself a boost. I had plenty of telekinetic boosters, but I figured that most of what I needed to do right now was layer on damage to make sure that I actually did anything when I managed to land an attack. I ended up focusing on dodging as Merry used my class powers and just threw everything damage-like onto the sword, then threw some telekinesis boosters on my boots of air dash--boots I'd not really needed lately, but used nevertheless.

Putting on the boots with a thought as soon as they were ready, I almost tripped over my own feet.

Normally, the materialized equipment felt like a second skin, and I hardly noticed if they were on or off; rather than being physical items, they were basically just my own magic layered around my feet, neck, or whatever. It was a major advantage to my class; the sword didn't have weight, and the equipment was almost preternaturally flexible when I needed it to be. They still acted right when I hit someone or was hit, but they didn't tend to get in my way.

The boots did, and I discarded them immediately, confused but with no time to examine it. After all of the things I'd done lately, if something was damaged and I didn't know about it, all I could really do was accept it.

In the meantime, of course, the Slenderman was throwing rocks, casually smashing the wall to pieces when he needed more. Most of the places where he had smashed just revealed more black void, though I thought I caught, from one angle, the signs of another room visible from the outside through the gap. But, the boss fight itself was at this point mostly just me slightly deflecting rocks and moving myself out of the way, watching and waiting for a pattern I could exploit.

There wasn't much of one, honestly.

He shifted modes again after a few minutes, or hours, or seconds, whatever--I was not really watching the clock, instead paying most of my attention to my mana bar. Given that the Administrator was clearly trying to operate just at the edge of my limits, I knew that he was going to be pushing me until I had nothing left, and that meant watching my resources like a hawk. Merry, I could tell, was also juggling a couple things, though mostly she seemed to be trying to help with my telekinesis to keep the power draw down, somehow. It was already much lower than it used to be, with the ...was what I had the True version of the skill? Was that different? Wrong time to think about it, but if the point was finding an advantage, here, I would be in trouble without that skill.

I half expected a mental concurrence from Merry, but didn't really think much of it when she was busy.

Anyway, he shifted modes, this time coming in with a lot of leaping arm chops, each of which shattered the floor and exposed more of the abyss. He was fast, but I noted a lot of places where his pattern was inefficient--places where he had to turn, and was close enough to the wall that he could have used it to push off of, but didn't even try. I found myself baiting him into one of those, knowing that he was probably still too fast for me to get a good counter, but I had to try.

He went up, long suited legs pulling to his chest at the apex of his jump, and came down, one black nightmare hand karate-chopping the stone, creating a highly theatrical, anime-esque impact crator. I leaped back and catapulted off the wall, Executioner Blade snagging him just in the shoulder, Assassination triggering as I hit a joint, and the blade exploded into light and fireworks as the auras all did damage.

On his health bar, you could barely tell I'd done anything.

I'd been in this kind of situation before, but it's hard to struggle against the depression that comes from being outmatched like that. Before, it had been because of hubris, foolishness, idiocy... but here, this situation was different. He'd chosen this, to work out his own aggressions, after he basically congratulated me for accomplishing what I'd come here to do.

And I knew that his true level couldn't possibly be 250; there were people far higher level than that in this world. This was just a fighting dummy he'd thrown together, and he figured I could win against it, and I probably could.

But it was also killing me inside. It was a hell of a thing to go through a fight like this.

Any suggestions? I asked my fairy.

You've got class points to spend, skill points, forge points...

I gave her a mental wave, letting her mess around with my class stuff. I could tell, immediately, that she dumped points into my Agility and Strength, because my muscles felt off, and I felt a sick something going through me, but I didn't obsess over it like I would have if I wasn't, you know, trying not to die.

I did frown when Merry gathered my class points and asked the ether for a new feature, and frowned again, when something inside my brain shifted, the interference knocking me momentarily out of telekinesis. I'd been mid-jump, and I ended up falling and sliding on my back for a moment, which caused the Slenderman to leap at me, both arms raised for a double fist pound.

I did a backwards roll, mostly using my skill for it, into a handspring and threw myself away, but that just had me looking at the spot where I was laying as he shattered it, a smaller piece of debris hitting my face while I was in no position to block or shield it.

What--

You can imbue weapons with your skills to make them stronger or share whatever effects. It's probably just like the telekinetic edge thing, in the skill upgrade tree, but if the Class is also working with it, hopefully it will be stronger. I'm going to snag those, too...

Instead of arguing, I dodged, trying to get a grasp on my new speed given my higher agility, and found an excuse to make a swing at the Slenderman, pulling out my Executioner and trying to force Telekinesis into it. To my surprise, the combination of the two gave me the sense of immense weight behind the blade--far more weight than I could normally put behind the weapon, even when I was trying to wrap it in fields of force or enhance the edges.

The blade made another glancing blow, but it did more damage than the more solid hit to the Slenderman's shoulder earlier. I nodded to myself even as I threw myself back, trying to mentally shift my grip on the weapon.

"You're getting better," sneered the beanpole through his new black-wrapped mask. "Maybe I should step up my game,"

I let out an exaggerated sigh without really replying, waiting and watch for the Slenderman to speed up, but perhaps he was just teasing me, because as far as I could tell, he didn't do anything differently. He did, after a moment, phase shift again, back to his first phase of charging at me and making several more direct melee attacks in rapid succession.

I can't improve the Telekinesis skill while you're using it. What should I--

Assassination, I interrupted, because I hadn't really thought about it until I really needed it. Move points from TK if you have to. We need that extra damage.

In the meantime, it was all I could do to dodge and deflect punches, swipes, uppercuts, elbow sweeps, even rising knee strikes and flying roundhouse kicks from the Administrator's puppet. It was a flying roundhouse kick that almost did me in, but I doubled down on shields when I realized I couldn't dodge and he just knocked me across the room. I got the vague impression I might land in a hole, more instinct really than thought, and used the skill to extend my flight slightly, smacking instead into a dislodged floor block and almost falling back in before I caught myself.

He was back again in front of me before I was ready, and I tried to ignore my injuries and monitor my health and mana while I waited for him to change again.

When he did change, I half expected him to go back to throwing blocks, That illusion was helped along because he grabbed a pair of big rock chunks, but instead of throwing them, he charged again and tried to mosquito-clap my head in between the rocks, which--I'm going to assume, blindly--would have been fatal if I let it happen, but instead I leaned back sharply, and kept retreating as he used the large boulders as... what, really? He wasn't replicating any more advanced weapon, he was just trying to hit me with rocks. There was no swordplay here, no martial arts, just a long-limbed man trying to hit me with something large and heavy. He wasn't even moving as fast as when he was attacking bare-handed, and no doubt his bare hands would have killed me, easily.

I saw a chance and leaped upwards, Executioner blade making an underhand vertical chop straight to Slenderman's face, with as much telekinetic weight as I knew how to put into it, which wasn't a whole lot yet, but the hit to his face landed, Assassination triggered, and the damage was reasonable.

Maybe a few dozen more hits like that. Probably less than a hundred. Reasonable.

While I was in the air, he did turn and throw the rocks at me, and I had to extend my jump a little with the skill and deflect them, which in turn found me close to the hole in the wall, but I wasn't going to fall out. I mentally glanced again at my stats, deciding to top of my health with a potion since I had a moment to breathe.

The Slenderman paused for a moment as I drank. "As always," said the beanpole, again sneering, this time with a self-satisfied look in his eyes, which were the only other feature visible on his face, "your ability to survive is remarkable. And to think that when you actually use the resources you were given, you can even do damage. Truly, you are without peer."

I finished off the potion, and flicked the empty bottle at the Slenderman in protest of his lousy mid-fight banter. I mean, I'm not much for that either, but I usually have the decency to keep quiet, at least.

The Slenderman decided at around the same moment to charge at me again, and didn't actually seem to register the bottle even as it smashed into his face. I... I mean, I dodged, and looked back in confusion as the Slenderman stumbled and smacked into the wall, his hands brushing at his face as though to get glass shards off of him. Did he... honestly... not notice?

And then he turned on me and charged again, immediately switching modes to his flying karate chop form. That, at least, gave me a little time to think, as all the leaping still obeyed the laws of physics--he didn't accelerate downwards, though he did vary the height of his jumps, sometimes making very shallow horizontal jumps instead of high arching ones. And that time to think reminded me of another set of bottles that existed here, in the Devil's bone throne.

It took a little while, and Merry's help, for me to telekinetically remove the bottles while also still dodging everything, and I put them in my inventory so that Merry could identify which was the healing potion--which I definitely didn't want to feed the Administrator, given how little damage I was doing to him.

That done, I debated how exactly to best weaponize the two offensive potions, deciding after a minute that it would take some experimentation. So on the next high leap, I also jumped, charging straight at the Slenderman and using a big telekinetic push to try to throw him across the room. It didn't really help; since he was so much higher in level, he passively resisted it, but it did throw off his trajectory, and he landed on a pile of rubble that he didn't intend to, and tripped and fell.

For my part, I had thrown myself to the side when the push didn't work, and clung for a moment to the wall, watching. The Slenderman was quick to his feet, of course, but even as he glared at me, I got the impression that he really just wasn't as quick, mentally, as his actions made him seem.

Either way, he wasn't dumb. Most likely, that was just another layer to give me a small chance, or possibly an inefficiency caused by him controlling the puppet. Whichever, he leaped at me, and I measured his jump again, deciding not to try to counterattack, and let him crash into the wall, shattering it with a double-fisted smash.

...and then he mostly passed through the wall, as his double-fisted smash had shattered everything that would have stopped his upper body. Instead, he pivoted around his knees, managing to catch himself. So... maybe he's a little dumb, but not terrible.

The Slenderman yanked himself back into the arena, either using his legs or some kind of force of will, I admit I was distracted. He landed and twisted around to glare at me, a scowl showing in his mouth and eyes. "Don't say it."

I didn't actually have a witty quip prepared, and shrugged at him. "Look before you leap?" I tried, feeling like it was terrible banter. Instead, I tried to think of something to say if I did manage to do something clever with the exploding and toxic-cloud potions, but to be honest, my head just wasn't in it.

He went back into his throwing-rocks fighting style, either in protest or just to keep things moving.