They sat around for another hour before one of the other mercenaries stood up and spoke to him. "I'm tired of sitting here. We should clear the hall and make sure things are all good." He said.
The rest of the mercenaries voiced similar feelings about being cooped up and how they should do something. Jaycee glanced around the room. "Sure. You and you." He pointed to two of the weakest looking mercenaries.
It was important to know that levels many times did not correlate to strength. There was a reason he was so much stronger than other people who could be at the same level as him. Levels did contribute a lot, but it rarely measured total strength. Despite each of these mercenaries being nearly 10 levels ahead of him, he predicted they were only an average opponent for him.
They didn't have any powerful skills and were outfitted in cheap gear. This was also the difference Records made. They didn't get any powerful class evolutions that gave them increased stats, and they didn't get any interesting skills as they scraped the bottom of the barrel for jobs.
Of course if every one of them decided to jump on Jaycee at once he would be very dead. Numbers were still important, and Jaycee didn't want to lose these effective soldiers. "Clear this hall and it's corners. If you don't return in 3 minutes we're locking the door." Jaycee said as he walked over to the entrance.
He peeped through the hole to see nothing and backed up. "Go ahead." He said. One was a tall lanky man with a dagger and the other was a smaller, more stout man with a short sword. They rolled their shoulders as they swung the door open and watched every angle.
Jaycee watched carefully as the two left into the hall and began walking down one side. He could hear their footsteps until they progressed farther down the hall. About 30 seconds after he stopped hearing their footsteps, he heard them again. As they neared he readied his magic just in case. The two men walked past the door. "All good on that side." They said as they started on the other side.
Similar events happened on the other side as well. Except, after 30 seconds of him not hearing their footsteps they didn't return. That in itself wasn't a huge deal. Maybe he had misjudged how far one of the halls was when he was out there before. It was possible seeing as he didn't pay any particular attention to it. But both sides looked similar enough.
As each second passed tension grew in the room as no one heard footsteps. So far 2 minutes had passed. Jaycee began to inch forward as they still couldn't be heard. They only had one minute to return, but what was the reason they hadn't yet? "Be ready." He whispered to one of the soldiers by the door. As he crept forward still he could hear nothing down the hall.
Raising his hands he created floating shields that were to come between him and the suspected hall. And as the 2:45 mark came Jaycee swung his torso into the hall. Just as his vision cleared the doorframe he saw a bloodied hand and head of one of the soldiers being dragged around the corner. The other soldier also lay on the ground dead but had not yet been dragged around the corner.
Jaycee lunged backward as a flight reaction to the sight. He shouted, "They're down! Get ready to close these doors." His curiosity got the better of him and he looked outside the door again. All he saw was a shadowy figure at the end of the hall shooting an arrow. Nearly immediately the arrow was at Jaycee's shields.
It smashed against the repellant shields, and didn't stop. It broke through his first layer easily, cut through his second layer like butter, smashed through the third layer, and managed to break through his final fourth layer.
But still, the skill he had replicated and expanded on, Mana Skin, managed to stop the arrow from piercing straight through his skull. Still the blunt force made his head snap back giving him whiplash. He lost ⅓ of his health points in this one attack that was almost entirely stopped. He suffered such major damage even in the best case scenario.
The life of a mage. His vitality and toughness stats being so low were the main culprits. His weaknesses were more clear in these moments. He fell backward into the room and wildly ordered for them to close the door. He crawled backward as he regained his composure from the head injury.
He watched his HP drain even more to heal his whiplash. He stood and readied his magic. The door was slammed shut by the soldiers as tensions were about to explode in the room. But even so, nothing happened. They didn't hear anything other than the pinging of the arrow off of Jaycee's Mana Skin.
Most of the room had the angle on the door where they could see Jaycee survive the powerful projectile. Jaycee returned to the Priestess' side and beckoned Kara and Jim. Still minutes passed as nothing happened. There was no knocking or walking or any sound. "This room is enchanted so it would take a while to get in if you were locked out." The priestess said shakily.
Jaycee decided to drink a health potion which restored all of his hit points. Now with full HP he stopped the shaking he was experiencing. 'Embarrassing.' He thought. He shot a look to the priestess to see if she saw. "Everybody watch out. I don't think that's it. Weapons ready!" He shouted as strings began to come into view.
His world was shaking as the strings flexed and slackened and flashed all kinds of different colors. Shields appeared between the door and everyone as Jaycee began to pour out his mana at an alarming rate. His brain ran on overdrive as instinct took control. Creating such massive complex shields and layering them on eachother was a task.
And then he had to stabilize each shield at the same time continuously. He grit his teeth as he felt the peak of the foreign energy in the room. A large purple flash destroyed the wooden door in one fell swoop. It crashed directly into his shield. Jaycee was forced a step back but maintained his intense focus on the shields as they fought with the purple figure.
Jaycee could get a better look at it now that it was in the room and currently clashing with his shields. It had a wispy purple smoky nature to it that seemed neither human or animal like. It was humanoid and had dark, branch-like limbs and a smoke torso. Its head had a wooden mask.
Jaycee shouted for the priestess to go into the bathroom. Jim and Kara took the priestess to the room and were followed by a few soldiers. The rest of the soldiers charged forward as the creature was stopped by the shields.
Jaycee quickly dropped his shields and began walking backwards preparing a vast array of magic. He identified the creature as well seeing that it was level 26. It was a prime showcase of a creature that was much much stronger than its level implied. Jaycee was like that, his real strength being somewhere 14 levels higher than him stronger. And yet this creature was similar to its own peers.
It dismantled the soldiers that charged. It blocked the first blow on its hard branch limbs and shot its fist forward, punching a hole through the woman's neck. Its legs pushed it back slightly, avoiding a devastating blow from an ax. Tendrils of shadow energy shot forward grabbing another charging soldier and placing him right in front of the path of the ax.
An arrow was shot from a soldier on the side that was caught and used to be shoved deep in the eye of a man with daggers. They had begun to surround it and a blast of ice from one of the soldiers threatened to hit it full on. Suddenly it turned to a shadowy smoke that flew through their waving weapons and reformed behind the mage slashing her neck open and throwing itself back into the exchanges.
Jaycees fire spears began to assault the creature with deadly accuracy as his eyes glowed purple from all the mana he was manipulating. He held his hands out in front of him as each spear attacked from a different direction. His eyes were wide as his decently high perception stat allowed him to analyze the beings movements and predict them.
It was stronger than him by a good bit, but maybe with all the mediocre threats it was possible to be beaten. Still it avoided the spears of flame that Jaycee had to shrink from their normal size in order to fit them through the soldiers. Each time Jaycee missed he still had to control the spear back in order to not inflict any friendly fire.
His attention and intelligence were tested as he managed to restrain the being enough to allow one of the soldiers with a longsword to make solid contact with its arm cutting into the wood decently. It hissed and retaliated so quickly the man couldn't protect his throat. Jaycee only had 5 soldiers left and the three who had gone to the bathroom as well.
His attacks increased in ferocity and with intent to damage instead of restrain. Several spears of flame made contact and damaged it. Yet still it dropped the remaining soldiers despite Jaycees best attempts. Jaycee had been slowly backing up to the bathroom door as had all the soldiers. The second it had killed the last soldier it was on top of Jaycee. He simply couldn't compete with its physical stats in any way.
He was smashed into the ground as shields came up around his neck and deflected its sharp wooden like claws. Flames surrounded him as he triggered another skill he had mimicked, and even added onto just now. Firestorm.
He had created the firestorm skill through great effort over the course of the week. And just now he was adding the air magic of the staff into the fire storm creating an incredibly powerful storm inside the room that tore it to shreds. The pretty priestess' room was torn to shreds beneath his assault. It was incredibly powerful, but sucked so much mana out of him.
He could only maintain it for 20 or so seconds before running completely dry. The creature was roasted and thrown to the front of the room. The firestorm berated it heavily as it took on damage. Yet Jaycee's flames weren't strong enough to force it to leave his field.
It held its arms up bracing itself and pushed through the storm toward Jaycee. Hopelessly, his fire storm berated the creature back and forth but it trudged forward. Its hit point pool was much higher than anything even on its own level. As the last drops of mana were used up Jaycee stumbled backward.
The creature stood up slowly as cracking pieces of wood fell off. It was charred and pretty damaged, but still it remained strong and could nearly use its full power. Jaycee grimaced and smiled slightly as he thought of the brutal death about to fall on him.