Knives & Levels - Chapter 109

A gale of cold and ice pinned Colt against the wall. The phantom in front of him swayed forward, its feet not moving, but it advanced. It had legs, and it even had arms—one still stretched outward where that gale of wind came from. On its back was an odd billowing cloak that looked like an ancient academy uniform.

It looked more like this person was training to be a magician than a student. Colt's muscles resisted against the sheer air pressure, pressing against the wind as he tried to break through it. But the gale pressing him against the wall was too much. The stone groaned behind him as his skin flushed from the cold.

Impossible to break out of.

Colt did the next thing that came naturally: using an Inspect to see the level of the enemy he was dealing with. 

———

Frozen Academy Professor - Level 94

Description: A former Professor of the renowned Frozentis Academy, known for its deep research into the nature of frost and cold. Considered a bastion of knowledge for Order, the staff of this fine establishment… Strayed from their original ambitions. As a result, the Academy and its former inhabitants are as you see them now.

Noteworthy Skills: 

Water Magic [Uncommon] - Level 23

Air Magic [Uncommon] - Level 27

Ethereal Mana Well [Rare] - Level 32

Soul Devour [Rare] - Level 18

Edicts:

Leech (Lesser)

Decay (Minor)

Inspect (Advanced) has gained a level!

———

The information was fascinating, but Colt had to focus on the here and now. The monster on display here was of a different grade than those that lived on the glacial slopes, and it had with it a vast arsenal of magic.

He just knew that the monster was stepping closer. Its gaping jaw opened wider, detaching from the joints and unhinging as the gaping void that was its mouth enlarged and stretched no doubt related to that nasty ‘Soul Devour’ ability it had.

The monster would swallow him whole if he couldn’t escape the wind pinning him to the wall.

Which took invention. If muscles didn’t cut it, Colt had to be clever, and he found his answer in Momentum.

All of the wind pushing him back was exerting a vector of force on his body, directly at the wall. To escape, he just needed to shift the direction of the force his body was exerting. Colt grasped momentum for a second. Then, using it, suddenly, the entirety of that force was upward.

In a split second, despite the wind tearing at his skin, he broke free of the gale. He twisted as he soared into the air, landing with his foot on the ceiling. For a brief second, he had the odd rush of seeing the world upside down as he could walk on the ceiling.

It wasn't a lasting position. He could already feel the Momentum pushing him back against the wall fading away. Once it went, he’d fall to the ground.

So instead, he jumped, adding Momentum and once more altering the vector of the force. Making a line directly toward the Frozen Academy professor.

In a sudden rush, he was there and lashed out with his Edict-infused knife, relying on the trusty Skysteel dagger Nate crafted for him.

All of his speed passed in a sudden rush, and the knife cleaved through the enemy with no resistance at all. Colt spun on the other side of the Professor—and saw that he’d bisected the thing completely.

Two halves remained floating there.

Then, they drifted together again, stitched by mist, leaving the phantom back in one complete whole… Though now, it was more transparent than before.

Annoying.

 It was just like those phantoms he’d defeated outside of New Nashville. A single cut that divided and weakened it, but did not kill it. It had something to do with the way their bodies were formed, without a doubt. Once again, this damned dungeon had given him a bad matchup. 

One answer to the problem was like he'd handled the Phantom outside of Nashville. Throw loads of power at the thing, and dice it up too many times, and it's gone.

There was an issue with that.

The cold leeched into his skin. Even the blast of the cold air had stolen another chunk of him away.

So the idea of blowing his whole power on a rush of his Cut Edict on a single foe was a recipe for disaster. God knows how many more of these things were hidden in the Academy.

Colt might retreat and meditate again… But he'd need something in reserve to guarantee he even found a safe spot to do that.

Colt spun his new knife, though it wasn’t technically a ‘knife.’  Since it was the stolen claw of that Yeti, within it, he felt the lingering edicts of cold that had formed the yeti's raw strength.

And it gave him a theory.

Colt gathered his Edict thick on the edge of the weapon as the phantom turned and began to approach. Its jaw was still unnaturally gaping as it drew closer. The wind picked up as its two arms outstretched; books flew off the shelves, and desks tumbled over with clangs.

In an instant, the room was rife with a miniature tornado, with torn sheets of paper, pencils, and books flying about with wild abandon.

Ignore it.

Instead, Colt became one with the Edict on the Yeti claw; he felt the way the Edicts existed dormant within it, and how they responded to the swirling force around it. The edge was becoming finer as it condensed down.

His opponent closed the distance, and the rapidly swirling tornado condensed into a sphere above its head, violently shredding the books within as it gained strength.

No doubt a ball like that would tear him limb from limb…

Colt acted, his knife powerful enough. This time, he pulled on Movement for a quick burst of speed that put him right in front of the enemy and then through it.

His knife made a clean slice.

Colt arrived at the other side of the room and turned.  Like before, he cut the thing in half. Like before, both halves simply hung there. Defying physics.

This monster, not made out of real flesh and bones, continued to live, its odd ethereal form still able to sustain itself even when torn in half.

But unlike before, a golden shimmer remained on the two halves that he had Cut. The shimmer expanded like an infection, dissolving upward and downward as it stripped the ghost from either side of the wound.

The ghost screeched as a blaze of cold flooded the room; for Colt, it felt as if he’d been dunked into a pool of ice.

The golden shimmer came to a complete stop and then vanished.

So it can stop it.

With the gold gone, the monster reformed. Finishing out the rest of its healing, this time, it was apparent that the monster was vastly more translucent. Its presence vanishes even further. It was all that Colt needed to know. The Yeti’s claw could deal much better damage than his other knife.

The dormant Ice Edicts in the weapon made it far more effective to combat whatever physicality or Edicts these creatures used to survive. With that knowledge, he simply spun his knife in his hand again, formed a Cut along the edge, and went back in.

Each cut slowed the monster.

After three, there wasn't much left of it at all. The last blow—the fourth—and it vanished away to nothing

———

You have leveled up!

You have leveled up!

You have 12 Stat points to spend. You have gained 2 points of Dexterity and 2 points of Soul.

Thread Weaver (Intermediate) has gained a level!

———

Colt blinked as he tried to make sense of the notification… 12 points?

Then he recalled that after finishing off those wolves, the Yeti immediately attacked him. He’d never actually spent the points from the additional levels.

Cursing himself, he fixed that problem immediately, investing eight into dexterity and four into endurance. With the conditions of this place, having both boosted even further could only help.

Colt tucked the Yeti claw away.

“Thanks,” he said, shaking his head as he did.

To think, if the Yeti hadn’t tried to murder him up on the slopes and he’d walked away with this weapon… All of this would’ve been much harder, if not impossible. But thanks to that chance encounter, he had an effective tool against these phantoms.

Maybe they were natural foes? It seemed like this Academy was at war with the landscape and the harsh tundra. The two couldn’t have a peaceful coexistence.

Or maybe Colt was just ascribing dynamics to the dungeon to force it to make sense in his head. His attempt to find reason in a world that maybe didn’t need it to begin with. How these dungeons formed, their purposes, or what they even were, were still one of the greatest mysteries.

Colt dusted himself off and looked at the room. A mess. All the documents thrown about by the wind were now populating the room in a giant graveyard of torn pages and books. Half of their ancient contents were now destroyed thanks to his fighting.

But what were they to begin with? The best he could figure was that this place was real in some capacity. A pocket dimension that they then dived into. But why was it filled with monsters? And what did that have to do with all of this Academy?

The description of the Frozen Professor added to the mystery, saying it was a place of knowledge for 'Order.'

What happened here? Colt thought as he left the mess of an office and began to wander the halls.

He kept the dagger in his hand as he went, knowing that if the time came, it was his go-to weapon. He kept the Skysteel dagger tucked away and dived right into the mystery of the Academy.

His first impression was that the halls were creepy. 

The dark wood and obsidian slate stone everywhere around him brought a morbid, abyss-like feel, as if he were wandering through some shadowy hall of hell rather than a school. But then there were moments of beauty. The architecture was divinely sculpted and curated, and the artwork even incorporated colors and paintings of strange, majestic vistas.

There were relics that looked familiar to him. For example, he found a whole plate of armor simply put up as a statue, looking like it strode right out of medieval England. He also saw pencils on the desks inside some of the classrooms.

Here, too, was another confusing aspect to this place. Everywhere he looked, he saw proof of the ghosts that haunted it. The rooms were full of half-used things, books open, pencils on tables, chalkboards with theorems and strange shapes written on them. The writing was illegible to him, though he could see a consistency in it.

The common thread was that it looked like a place frozen in time.

It was as if, in an instant, all the people here had vanished in the middle of what they were doing. Backpacks—though not the backpacks he was used to back on Earth, these looked more vintage style, made of leather and cloth—were filled with books near desks. 

At one time, this place was full of people. Now it has none.

And now, as he worked through his theory, roaming through the deserted haunted halls, he realized something had happened. Something tragically horrible had happened that had vanished all of the people within. He couldn't tell what it was. He wasn't even sure if that was the point of this place as he wandered from hall to hall, searching for phantoms.

But it left him with a desolate, hopeless feeling as if wandering through a vast graveyard rather than the prestigious academic place of learning it had been before. Colt didn't know what to make of this revelation.

It had barely been two hours, and there was a lot of ground to cover. At the end of it, and after not running across another phantom, he took a moment for himself.

Colt found a strange study room, with a ceiling painted with constellations that didn't match his own. He sat in the middle of the room, laid out his knives, and then began to meditate.

Now that he was sure the chances of him being stumbled upon were low enough to risk it, summoning another burst of power felt worth it.

Thankfully, he recovered in peace, for the most part. Until, at the end of the meditation, he heard a giggle out in the hall. 

Colt froze, his eyes snapped open, and his hand flew to the Yeti claw on the ground. The door of his room was closed, although he wasn't sure if that would stop a phantom or not.

He heard steps outside, along with more laughter, and then hands smashing against the door’s surface—many hands.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

Pounding away on the door, running across it. Colt stood up as his heart raced; the laughter picked up, going from a giggle to a chorus of mocking jeering. Roaring in his ears.

The door itself shook, threatening to come off at the hinges and implode inward. Colt braced for just that, gathering his Edict on his knife. Waiting for the monster to step through and to slay it.

The pounding stopped.

Then there was… Nothing. Another moment passed, and then, cautiously, Colt moved to the door and swung it open, throwing out a loose Cut and slashing into the hallway, intending to take down whatever monster had dared to track him down.

It hit nothing. As he looked up and down the hall, there were no phantoms.

"I hate this place," Colt said, his tired eyes darting left and right. Were he the him from before, he'd have felt terrified right now in these dark halls, alone with his friends far away.

As he was now, he just felt annoyed to think that one of those phantoms had tracked him down, messed with him, and disappeared instead of offering him free levels in a fight.

Well, it was downright insulting. Colt raised a middle finger to either side of the halls, unsure where the creature had gone.

Wherever that creep went, he’d track it down. With a slight frown, he stalked out of his room and began to hunt. There were things to kill here and there were levels to gain. He intended to do as much as possible as soon as possible to get himself ready for whatever actual challenges lay ahead.

Now that he had the Yeti knife, he felt more confident taking on these monsters. It was a blessing—one that he had almost paid dearly for—and he'd make every single use of the opportunity that had been given to him.