Inflame (The Completionist Chronicles Book 6) by Dakota Krout (best romantic novels in english TXT) 📕

tried to cast a spell at the same time, but the orbs faltered. To get around the complication, he sent all four into the air above the beast and simply moved them only up and down. Then he only needed to focus on ‘hit it’ as he used both his hands to achieve the somatic portion of casting Cone of Cold again, this time with a reasonable certainty of hitting.

The four orbs bounced off the hardened shell of the beast, and Joe was pleased for the first time that they dealt blunt damage instead of anything else. His icy spray erupted from in front of his hands, this time catching the beast without issue.

Damage dealt: 457 (232 blunt + 225 cold!) Target has been inflicted with ‘Brittle’.

The dazed effect wore off just as the orbs came down once more, only three of them landing but still doing enough damage to finish off the Hammer Beast. Its shell broke as the blunt attack took advantage of the brittle effect to deal double damage to rigid objects. The orbs finished out the fight embedded in the shell in three perfectly round divots.

Joe was wheezing from the effort this fight had required, and he stumbled over to the corpse, kicking it once for catharsis before storing his orbs. He touched the body and used a burst of mana to scan it, then let his ingrained Ritual of Reduction take the creature. There was no Core left behind, and Joe would have smacked himself if he wasn’t afraid that his Retaliation of Shadows might show up and do it as well. “I really need to get better at using Corify.”

After the aftermath of the battle had been taken care of, Joe waded through the grass and started searching for his missing Ritual Orbs. It took almost ten minutes of searching, since they had been buried in the tall blades, and he resolved to assign a characteristic to them as soon as possible so that they would automatically recall in the future. “Oh, I wonder what that Hammer Beast was worth?”

Experience gained: 114

Skill increase: Assisted Ritual Orb Usage (Novice VIII).

“That’s… not much.” Joe looked at the skill increases with slight despair. “Then again… it was only a single monster. Just because it was hard for me to fight it doesn’t mean that I should get extra rewards for it… I guess.”

He continued down the road, more carefully this time. On the map, Hammer Beasts were written in as one of the weaker things that he could encounter in the area. It also said that most things tended to move in packs, so he was getting slightly nervous about his choice to set out on his own. As a Candidate, he was almost certain that he would have been able to order a team to come with him as backup. Still… Joe took in the sights of grass and stony ground with a smile on his face. It had been a while since he had adventured on his own. It was refreshing.

That is, it was refreshing, until he heard the sound of buzz saws closing in on his location. “One, two, four?”

Joe counted the incoming noises with pure nervousness. He looked around wildly, realizing with dismay that there was very little cover. The capital wasn’t overly friendly to nature, as that was the Elven domain, so trees were sparse and twisted. He had been getting closer to the Caves of Solitude, and the ground had started to shift from grassy plains to foothills and somewhat mountainous territory. There were several large boulders scattered around, and one caught his eye. It was shaped more like a pillar than anything else, reaching about twelve feet off the ground and having sheer sides.

The Hammer beasts were closing in, now visible and only… maybe sixty feet out? They were surprisingly hard to see when they were moving through grass, but Joe didn’t pay too much attention to that. He got to the side of the pillar and looked up. “It's a great defensive location, but how do I get up there?”

He looked up, and a smile appeared on his face as he remembered, “I need to stop thinking like a baseline human. I have skills and characteristics now!”

Just before the Hammer Beasts reached him, Joe jumped, putting his skill and strength to the test. He needn't have worried, as he launched up and onto the pillar with an ease that shocked him. “One hundred and thirty-three strength really makes that skill overpowered, huh?”

Joe looked down at the four Hammer Beasts that were attempting to waffle him, and his grin only got wider. Six orbs dropped out of his ring, and lightning crackled through the air at the beasts below. “I need to remember to position myself for combat better in the future. I’m a spellcaster. I’m not supposed to meet these things head on.”

It only took six minutes to finish off the beasts, and Joe jumped from the pillar with a cheerful smile on his face. Whistling, he cleaned up the battlefield and continued on his way to the Caves of Solitude. He tossed a single Uncommon Core that was glowing brightly into the air, once, twice, then stored it away with a grin.

“I remembered to use Corify this time.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“Why am I not surprised?” Joe shook his head wryly when he reached the caves. A bustling market dominated the foot of a sheer cliff that rose high into the sky, with large banners announcing the ‘best in getting away’ supplies. He walked past dozens of vendors offering food pills that would allow him not to eat for three days, people selling dehydrated water, and all sorts of things that, frankly… Joe had no idea if they were real or not. Magic made fact out of a myriad of things that used to be false.

It was a massive outpost, but clearly poorly defended. Not a single defensive wall in sight, and the buildings were barely above Trash-rank, if his