With a wave of his Trident, the green light wrapped down his arm and into the ice below him, which started rapidly melting. Flicking my Mana sight on and off, I realized the light was a type of Mana. I’d have to figure out what kind it was. Ocean Mana didn’t seem right given the colour.

  I checked my suit’s Core status.

  [Glacium Frame (Wrought I-75)]

  Core Integrity: 100%

  Core Mana: 96.2%

  Core Cycling Net: –9.7%/min (–15.3% out / +5.6% in)

  I had just about ten minutes to finish this. Less if I started using the active abilities.

  I could work with that.

  After a moment of building up power, I lunged forward, and the ice cracked beneath my feet as I exploded into motion with a thunderous boom, breaking whatever the current sound barrier was, according to my Grace Stat. I was carried directly towards him like a small avalanche, my hammer swing aimed at where he was standing.

  I noticed he was startled when my swing connected with his ribs. Unfortunately, despite being caught off guard, he still managed to defend himself. A layer of water that covered his whole body was all that my hammer collided with, coming to a dead stop with a loud thwack. Luckily, this was a great time for me to try out my new Sigil Weave, which I reached inside the hammer to activate at the moment of impact.

  Sending a pulse of Mana through my weapon and Core at the same time, I activated my first ritual active ability.

  Winter’s Pulse

  Argent Bastion, flowing into my weapon, caused the sigil to link with my armour, and a pulse of Winter exploded outward from the end of my hammer.

  Water rapidly flowing across the Naga’s body froze all at once, and I pulled my hammer back, going in for another swing. Only for him to break out before I could land it, gliding through the water away from me. My hammer whiffed completely, slamming into the surface of the water, which cracked as it flash froze into an explosion of ice.

  I glanced up in time to see hundreds of spears of water forming in the air, aimed directly at me and with a pulse of Mana, they were released. I ignored them to advance towards my opponent and allowed my suit’s shield to absorb the impact of them. Only for one to pierce straight through the suit into my left shoulder. It was a solid green colour and was incredibly heavy. It then exploded outward, but my aura caused it to freeze before it could damage me any more than it already had.

  Depths Mana? No, that doesn’t sound right.

  He had ridden a wave upwards and was defrosting the ice dome that surrounded us. The water from it formed around his body and allowed him to ride upon it like he was surfing.

  While I ran towards the Naga, the defrosted water froze under my feet. When I was right under him, I swung my hammer upward and activated the enchantment on it. The hammer head froze in place for a moment before flying upward, dragged along by the mass of the hammer.

  My hammer hit the wall of water that was forming around it, and another pulse of Winter was released, freezing the wave. But this time my hammer didn’t stop. Now that the water had frozen, it was no longer under his control, meaning I could plow through it easily.

  Bursting through the top of the frozen wave, I belatedly realized that the Naga wasn't actually here. Locking my Core in place with [Argent Flow], I kicked off the ice below me to transition into a spin, my hammer colliding with a trident made of that green water that was aimed for my back, [Combat Simulation] barely notifying me in time to intercept the magic. Despite the weight my hammer carried, it felt like I was trying to stop a truck by parrying it with my elbow, back on Earth, with no Stats.

  With a grunt, I let go of [Argent Flow] and used the recoil from the hammer to throw myself out of the way. The green trident flew by, straight into the ice dome, carving its way through the wall and out the other side without stopping. The sensory suite on the suit I was wearing picked up what sounded like a depth charge going off wherever that ended up.

  The power of that strike was worrying, but what was worse was the fact that he had somehow moved to the other side of the frozen dome in the time it took me to swing my hammer.

  “Hey, where the fuck are you and why aren’t you helping?” I asked Novi over our connection.

  [Nah, you got this! I’d just get in the way.]

  “I swear to whatever gods are listening at the moment that if you don’t help, I will carve your borrowed soul into whatever shape I so please,” I replied both over our connection and out loud. I felt the binding chains of the Oath take effect.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  [On it, boss! Whatever you want!]

  With Novi finally overcoming her fear of getting wet, we worked in concert to try and nail the Naga down so I could land a proper blow. The asshole was slippery as fuck, seemingly able to travel several times faster than I could as long as there was a path to travel using liquid.

  The heavy green magicks it was using lessened over the course of the conflict. If this meant it was running out of Mana before I was, I wasn't going to complain. But I didn't keep my hopes up.

  In order to combat its evasive movements, I had to expand my freezing aura as much as I feasibly could in order to remove as much liquid water as possible. This was combatted by the Naga, constantly defreezing the ice, and when it realized what I was doing, it started using its own aura in targeted bursts to suppress my own. It seemed to struggle to hold its aura for more than a couple of seconds.

  This must have been some kind of fleshy problem. Aura stuttering, instant biology got involved. Pathetic. Even the Maleficarum didn’t have that issue, those filthy—

  My thought was interrupted when the Naga sprang towards me for the first time, its entire body glowing with that creepy mana. Its trident was so concentrated with the stuff that it was almost black, like the abyss at the bottom of the sea.

  Oh, wait, that's it, isn't it?

  The snake was using Abyss Mana in an attempt to bury me under the pressure of the deep. Which meant it was committing a lot of mass with its charge.

  Throwing a wall of Winter forward into the path of the creature, I dodged to the side the moment it collided with it. Once again, it freed itself quickly from the snare, but my intention hadn't been just to lock it in place.

  With the amount of Mana I put into that avalanche, the Naga flew past me. A truck full of dirt was ejected into the air as it impacted the ground. All that water weight did it no favours once momentum took over.

  Turning on a dime, I charged towards the crater, enhancing my momentum with [Argent Flow] I could feel as the Glacium Frame picked up speed. The Ritual Core Node took on the Mana altered by the Skill and reapplied the effect multiple times over. Flying like a bullet towards the Naga, I activated another one of the suit’s ritual abilities.

  The world around me froze absolutely still as a rush of Winter filled the air. The Naga had barely risen from the hole in the ground before it was locked in place. Unaffected by my own magic, I swung my hammer, and a thunderous clap exploded outward as the air shattered under the weight of my hammer. An instant later, it collided with the snake, producing a spray of blood that turned to icy mist midair as I pulverized the right half of its body.

  I received a trident to the gut in exchange for that blow, which only produced a chuckle's worth of damage. Pulling the hammer back, I went for another swing, this time activating the avalanche enchantment. I felt the earth rumble under the weight of my blow. A spray of sea snake coating the front of my visor.

  As I wiped it off and turned to look up at Autumn, my vision suddenly went dark, and the suit locked up around me. The Core Node had finally run out of Mana with that last ritual activation.

  While locked inside my verdant tomb, I checked the kill notification.

  [Killed Naga Princeling (Wrought) II-5]

  I was fairly certain several of the merfolk I had killed before were higher level than this one… was it just the fact he wasn’t untiered that carried all that power? Because he could absolutely have slaughtered all of the merfolk in the last wave without even breaking a sweat.

  The only reason I managed to kill him was the fact that I had probably drained most of his Mana before the fight, and just being near my fortress ritual was constantly freezing his flesh and draining his Life Energy.

  How big a factor would Tiers end up being later on? What was the system using to measure levels, ascension, and Tier from non-system users anyway?

  Most importantly, would the levels I gained take into account the Naga’s Tier?

  Well, there was only one way to find out.

  Class Level (Neophyte Conduit) Increased +8 (77)

  +16 Wit, +24 Spirit, +16 Fortitude, +24 Arcana

  For the fight, that was about what I expected. But it was a lot more than I thought I would from the Naga only being level one hundred and five. Which meant Tiers were incredibly important? Or was it the difficulty of the fight itself that contributed to the large amount of Eidos I gained?

  I had so many questions that I wanted to ask Eryx, I could feel the presence of his memory fragment in my ring burning away in my mind. So close that he was technically a part of me, yet inaccessible due to some kind of limitation he placed on it…

  Not that it would do me any good to worry about that at the moment.

  [Zone Event Cleared]

  Name: [Merfolk Migration]

  Description: [Merfolk have begun their migratory cycle to the Island of Broken Tales. Every day at noon, a wave of merfolk will arrive and do their best to secure the Island. Survive daily, increasingly powerful waves of merfolk until you are able to purchase passage on the Frightened Mare or find another way off the island.]

  Reward: [10000 Eidetic Coins]

  Performance Bonus: [No Deaths: five-day break before the King arrives.]

  I dumped the suit into my inventory and sprinted back towards the fort.

  “Okay! Time to get ready to leave,” I yelled up to Novi, who was peering down at my approach.

  [Why… oh, oh no. There’s no way you could handle him.]

  “I KNOW!” I calmly screeched. The Skill choices I still had to make were completely forgotten in my panic.

  Patrons voted for me to just do a timeskip to a point where I'm no longer stuck in writer's block. So I'm putting this chapter up as a sort of proof of life that I'm getting back to this story soon. A new chapter showing Ellie's full Status sheet and Skill list after the timeskip will be out within a week. Actual story content will hit Patreon first ofc, and we'll see what happens from there.

  Just have to figure out the mechanics for that. The next chapter will start at some point right before Ellie reaches Second Ascension.