Twisting once to dodge the small iota of bubbling lava which was sporadically popping
On the river ever so often, I worriedly glanced at my fellow enemies.
And thankfully, it seemed that besides the skeleton riders carrying bows and the wither commander who loaded over them who were way to far out of range , my only enemy was the awakened monster.
Who seemed to have taken my own sentiments and is now preoccupied with the hail of flame.
Thankfully.
'Actually that was a lie.'
Noting that an ice arrows seemed to have glanced at a fire ball in such a way that it was nearing my position only to explode into a mess of lava.
I was worried.
Oh my God.
This was literally 3 D pin ball.
Thinking of the absurdity of the situation I had suddenly found myself in.
I focused on the trial of my depth perception.
The first thing of note was the ground.
As the main thing that was keeping me from taking a very VERY hot bath I kept it back in the corner of my mind at all times.
Thankfully, without really looking much, I can use the Ice shards to just fire a linear path of ice to freeze a path in the general path I am going.
"Hooo..."
The next step was making sure that I had arrows.
Mentally making way for the arrows in my inventory to be in near reach, I looked to the skies filled with Ghast fire balls and started to pluck the strings of my bow like the harp of Apollo.
String blurring so much to the point that it was debatable whether or not it existed I eyed the skies.
Locking onto the falling red balls standing out against the black back drop, arrows flew.
Drawing arcs of orange in the air, my malaise reserves which had shown no signs of faltering so far instantly started to melt at quick speeds.
Fingers cracking from the strain, my body showed signs of wear almost instantly as my joints moved at speeds that no human beings joints should.
Firing up into the sky, my eyes darted from each individual whisker of orange and instantly redirected it.
It was as if the sky was falling with how many fireballs fell.
But instead of falling.
They were being held up by the Titan Atlas in all his orange glory.
Flaming sparks of fire flying up to the sky, I had to bite my lip as the clashing sky and pillar of fire instantly met their first complication.
The number of arrows.
Staring at the Inventory screen at the edge of my vision, I stared at the two stacks of arrows quickly melting into one even as I stared at it.
'Shit'
'Think Slade! Think!'
Biting my lip, I diligently infused malaise into my bow and arrows.
-60 arrows left
Ignoring the subtle tightening of the bow around my left hand, my shoulders continued to roll at lightning speeds all the while the falling sky slowly gained traction.
'C'mon Slade! What can you do man!?'
-54 arrows left
Eyes darting across the skies and the land for any signs of a way to solve my current predicament before it could occur, panic started to show on my face.
That is until I caught sight of the only other being that was with me on this lake of fire.
Hands dancing just like me except while mounted on top of a similarly frozen horse that was doing it's best to not melt underneath the strenuous heat, it's rider was unperturbed
If anything, the Awakened Ice bow seemed to be enjoying it strangely enough.
Skull like grin stretching across it's frozen face, it's body made of bone and ice didn't even draw arrows from their quiver and instead did something that should've been so obvious to me now.
-36 arrows left
Forming frozen arrows of ice and drawing them from the ether, every single arrow that appeared in their hands wasn't one that was previously there in the world.
'...'
'In hindsight I really should've thought about that'
Eyes dilating to focus on every single minute movement that the Awakened Ice bow made, I watched.
-33 arrows left
From the subtle twitch of the fingers to the glow of the eyes, ice blue arrows formed at their fingertips right before subsequently forming an opaque arrow of blue that would be held in its hand and thrown onto the bow.
'So... That just happened.'
-27 arrows left
Biting my lip since J didn't know how in the world that had just occurred, I instead decided to throw caution to the wind and instead do my own thing.
'I hope to hell that this works.'
-20 arrows left
Quickly separating a singular arrow for my own purposes I held it in my bow hand.
-19 arrows left
Brain running in overdrive, the world seemed to slow around me all the while I dealt with the quickly accelerating sky.
Firing at the fireballs that would overrun my modest island in the river of Lava, arrows left my hands and tracked orange paths in the air as my malaise reserves continued to fall lower and lower.
Quickly tracking them with my eyes that started to burn from the amount of energy running through them, I couldn't even blink in fear that a few fireballs would overturn the platform and toss me into the ocean of fire.
-12 arrows left
Strings of condensed malaise slowly crawled all over the arrow in my left hand, molding it and imprinting it's shape directly into my mind.
Blood unknowingly dripping from my nose, my hands blurred even faster as the vague shape of an orange arrow slowly appeared around my hand.
'Ugh'
A sharp pain struck at my mind.
-5 arrows left.
Quickly mapping the general shape of an arrow, just as quickly, rhe orange tendrils dug deep into the wooden frame and mapped out it's internals all the while the fletching was ruthlessly torn apart by the malaise quickly disassembling it in hopes of finding out what it's made of.
Eye twitching, a blood vessel burst from my right eye as more and more malaise, beyond what it could normally hold burst out of it.
Orange light leaving through my eye, I hurriedly focused on the flow of rampant malaise running through my body.
Like a rampant horse showing no signs of tiring, me, as the rider had to quickly quell the raging beast before it could do any more harm to my body.
Forcefully pinning it to the ground like some sort of WWE wrestling star, I didn't take the time to train the raging energy as I was more focused on something else.
-2 arrows left.
Holding the last two arrows in my hand and pulling back the strings right after infusing them with some order of malaise, I quickly pulled the string back and liosed the two arrows.
And just like that, it was as if some epiphany had set off fireworks in my mind.
Instantly shifting into over overdrive, fire blasted out of my left eye as Ice shards instantly formed a protective barrier around me.
One eye gleaming, my lungs which had unknowingly stopped letting in air suddenly opened my mouth and let me breathe for the first time in a while.
Taking in the scorching hot air heated up by the lava currents around me, I pulled back the strings of my near transforming bow and manifested the malaise in my hands.
---
In this world, the manifestation of any kind of energy such as mana, malaise among other things had no grounds in this world and would soon dissipate.
Maybe it would take root in the surrounding life and even rarer in naturally born minerals giving birth to magically inductive mithril, but without anh structure it would fall apart.
But when the most common energy called mana was given a structure, a spell was created.
That is called magic.
And the Wither Commander who was of the Second Commandment of the Ash Bone legion was seeing the birth of an entirely new spell.
Pitch black sockets taking place of his eyes, the black skull seemed to grin at the sight of the new orange magic that was striking a trail through the skies as it rest against the spots of white hanging out in the skies.
Now one could argue that it wasn't actually a magic spell as it's previous counterpart hadn't been counted as magic but was actually even more destructive when forced upon an arrow.
I mean, if this pillar of light which was much weaker than the pillar of orange blue that struck at the Mama Tick, why was it so that it was the weaker one that received the definition of magic?
But to the Wither Commanders knowledge.
If it could exist independently from a physical object for a brief moment of time and affect said physical object.
That was magic.
And said magic was heading straight towards it.
Staring directly at the orange trail of light that was nearing it's eyes just like the hell fire magic practiced by the Blaze Lord, it scratched the back of its neck before being engulfed in orange light.
+++
Writers block...
What was foretold in the prophecies has come to me in a way I didn't expect...
A virus that has appeared from God knows where.
Thankfully a system restart saved me and allowed access to literally everything once again.
On that note, since I've been abstinent in dropping chapters I'm going to upload two extra today.
So three in total.
Also this really looks like a generic Protagonist power up if you just take a step back and look at it.
Tree