Creation Mage 6 by Dante King (detective books to read txt) 📕

It hit the oncoming Chaos Magic missiles like a wave and flung them right back at Leah, who threw herself to the side. The projectiles ate up the area where she had just been like machine gun fire, blowing chunks out of the stone slabs and scarring the nearby statues. Bright pink sparks erupted.

The spellfire died just as I reached the spot. I ran through a cloud of dust, pelting toward the liderc.

The liderc’s eyes scanned the area for Leah. As I approached, the monster heaved itself up onto its stringy, muscular legs so it could peer around all the better.

It caught sight of me just as I reached it.

I conjured a smooth, slick magical surface between the liderc’s lanky legs using my Flame Barrier spell and threw myself under its stinking lumpy body.

Boy, I would have been in the shit if the liderc had possessed the presence of mind to just sit down and crush me. Happily, it did not. I slid through its legs, stabbed upward with my staff as I shot by, and hit the unarmored groin of the liderc with my Leech spell.

I was spat unceremoniously out the other side of the liderc’s legs, shot off the end of the slide I had created for myself, and tumbled across the tiled floor.

As the liderc let out a deep, sick-sounding moan and shook its head, I felt a renewed energy course through me. That was the Leech spell at work; it was a degenerative curse that stripped an enemy of their strength and invested it into me, the caster.

After the taxing time that I’d had against the hydrahound, a fresh shot of mana was just what the doctor ordered.

I bellowed wordlessly as the fresh power flooded my body, invigorating my limbs and setting new hope burning in my heart.

“Come on, you bastard!” I yelled and let loose almost every projectile and offensive spell I had on hand and could easily call to my buzzing mind.

Storm Bolts, Frost Shards, Blazing Bolts, and Paralyzing Zaps pummeled into the liderc. The assortment of Ice, Storm, and Fire Magics flickered and flashed off the monster’s armor. Most of the spells deflected, crashing into the stone floor and spraying up geysers of earth and stone like IEDs going off.

The liderc, despite its sheer size and bulk, was buffeted backward by the force of my spells. It growled and slathered its fury as it was forced to take steps backward, as my magic compelled it to retreat.

My pummeling continued for over ten seconds as I sought to find a chink in its armor, but to no avail. I could feel my mana reserves waning once more, and I was starting to experience that familiar sensation of maybe having bitten off more than I could chew.

Then I saw a flash of movement from my right.

Through the haze of stone dust and the thaumaturgical smoke that my reflecting spells were giving off, Leah shot toward the liderc. She was moving far too fast for her to be simply running. She was weaving in and out of statues with unnatural smoothness, like someone on a…

“Hoverboard,” I said, in dumbfounded amazement.

Leah was standing, perfectly balanced, on a hot pink and white board composed of crackling pearlescent pink Chaos Magic. The skimboard-shaped device zipped along about a foot off the ground.

“Build me a ramp will you, honeypie?” Leah cried as she boosted toward the liderc.

Pausing in my magical broadside, I constructed a gelatinous-looking orange ramp with my Flame Barrier spell and set it directly in Leah’s path.

The brief cessation I had to take in my barrage while I constructed this magical ramp allowed the beast to turn and set its sights on Leah.

Leah hit the ramp, a smile on her face and a cry of delight on her lips. She catapulted into the air, kicking herself free of the Chaos board and shifting into an elegant floating backflip.

The board, made from Chaos Magic, ignited due to its proximity to the Flame Barrier spell. It shot at the liderc like a cheerful, pink missile and slammed into its breastplate in an intense explosion of sparks and fire.

The liderc screeched angrily at the impact, rocking back on its muscly legs. Its thick armor clanged to the floor, the bonds that held it severed by the intensity of Leah’s spell.

It was a freaking fantastic move by Leah, a wonderful bit of War Mage work. However, regardless of how pretty the magic was and how cool she had looked zooming in on a goddamn magical hoverboard, it didn’t change the fact that the liderc snatched her out of the air mid-backflip.

The nightmarish creature looked pissed that the pink-haired woman had just broken its only suit of clothing. It held her up and sniffed as Leah’s hair tickled its hideous open nostrils. A rancid deep purple tongue snaked out from between the glistening black teeth and licked at the pink hair.

“No!” Leah screamed.  “I just fucking conditioned last night, you motherfucker!”

There was no time for asking questions and second-guessing answers.

With a mighty mental heave, I ripped a statue, which looked a lot like The Rock, from a nearby plinth with my Telekinesis spell. With a monumental effort, I heaved it over the back of the liderc’s head.

The liderc opened its cavernous mouth. If it dropped Leah, it would be like she’d been deposited into a mincing machine. The creature’s mouth was so full of razor-sharp higgledy-piggledy teeth that it wouldn’t even have to bite down to kill her.

I let the statue fall and, as I did, I used my Crystalize spell to encase it in a translucent crystal and increase its weight by half.

The statue plummeted down and struck the liderc on the back of its skull with a sickening cracking sound. The creature’s bulbous eyes went fixed. Its hand opened, and