Portals

One final portal opened again, Sinistra took a single step forward before Zeeth leaped at the portal and pushed her through. He tore off the hood at the same time and saw short black hair, long eyelashes, and the face of a woman.

"So you are a girl. Why do you want to hide that."

"Tsk. so people won't use me as eye candy. Now eat this!" she had ten portals lined up behind her. She pierced them all together to make a large orb and finally compressed it into a tiny orb. "An untouchable, unstoppable attack. How do you like that?"

"How much mana and concentration does that take? How long can you hold onto this attack? How fast can you even make it go? It was a good idea, but not good enough."

"Fast enough!" she yelled. She swung her hand, and the ten-sided shape moved with it, lagging a little behind like a flexible wire was attached to it. But just like a flexible wire, it sped up toward the end and grazed an icicle he made. The top was cut cleanly off. He threw a massive black tornado at her at the same time Black fired a sharp black laser. A portal was made to block the laser, but only a portion of the tornado was teleported away and the rest hit her like a bomb, exploding into the wind.

She fell down from the air bruised and torn up, possibly broken bones. Her portals were blasted to bits and the remaining magic she was using to hold it all together exploded, turning the condensed magic that made ten portals into basic magic particles with portal properties again. He swung out another slime, the same one he used to bash the others, but he saw the slime getting darker. It was sucking in the magic from the air just like God said, it was soaking magic in like a sponge.

"Portal slime?" the slime looked at him and the portal particles it soaked up inside swirled around. Nothing was happening yet so he locked her hands together with greystone. Cuddles came down and pecked at her head hard and knocked her unconscious. He wanted to get on Cuddles and fly away but he remembered his slimes making him way too heavy for Cuddles.

He suddenly remembered, 'Dragon slime!'

He had a slime that was growing like a dragon, having absorbed magic from the fight. He decompressed Meda and revealed a large slime bounced out of his sleeves. It had grown much larger by now, the wings were each twice as large as the slime's body, shiny scales of purple and blue covered the slime.

"Cool…", something both he and Cuddles seemed to think. Cuddles inspected it from all around and Zeeth felt its cool hard scales. Its leathery feathers were longer than he was now and a single flap cast gusts of wind all around them.

"That dragon was WAY too powerful. We weren't even around it that long and my slime is already this powerful, what in the world. I would've died for sure along with Page and the rest within a minute without that potion. What about Mel?"

The second slime to have been affected by the Chaos Dragon they almost died from. Mel gained much more than a stronger tornado, its natural affinity to black magic allowed her to take a lot more from the dragon. The magic he now cast was able to pull on the very bones of those that he attacked like how the dragon brought back those skeletons from the ground.

He hopped onto Meda along with Sinistra and Cuddles flew by itself. It was a sensational experience, the wind swept their hair way back and flowed through their face. He held onto a row of spikes growing on the slime's back while its fanged mouth held gingerly onto Sinistra but the sharp teeth held her in place without killing her.

They flew back to Fahlhala where Page and Elton were still fighting but Iustus was seriously injured. Four hands protruded from her back like a bug and four stone hands rose up from the ground, moving to squash the rest. Rubble and traces of old rock hands littered the floor.

She held onto Elton with four of her hands, her forehead eyes glared red and she yelled, "Human slingshot me back!"

Page managed to dash forward and cut off two of her hands while Zeeth threw a dash of water that cut off the other two before the lines got her away. Elton was released but Iustus got away. He noticed that no one else was there, no elves or dwarves.

"Page, Elton, where is everyone else?" Zeeth asked upon landing on the ground.

Page said, "Zeeth, you're back! They were all slingshotted away with those magical bonds. They surrounded us with their people and used it on groups of people at once. We don't know how far they are but the stronger ones should be closed so they can go and get the others later."

"I've never seen so many powerful attacks used by such a large group before! The only reason we stayed was that they wanted to isolate us and everyone else leaving but one group here was enough for them." Elton said. "The woman with the infinite hands was stronger than anyone I've ever met. Thank goodness we lived. Cool dragon by the way."

"Thanks. Yeah, they were really strong. What's up with that, how did they gather so many strong people?"

"They didn't." Page said. "They were probably praying to some deity and gained power from it. These two must've been particularly well-received, they have special robes. What was your attacker like?"

"She used teleportation magic, creating portals and using them to attack."

"Portals? Was it to Birmalu Kingdom?" Page asked in a hurry.

"Yeah, it was," Zeeth said while petting Cuddles. The massive bird seemed to have grown a tad smaller and its wings longer. But it ran past Zeeth and tackled Elton and they both played around.

"And you went there? And beat the people up?" Page continued.

"Yeah. squashed a few people charging up her attacks."

"Uh, oh. If my information is right… there should be a new name surfacing there soon. Someone they will dub the Crusher."

"That's a sick nickname, why would that be bad?"

"Because it shouldn't happen so soon. It could cause some trouble to my plan, which is already hanging by a thread."

"I think you should just drop the plan. How would it help us?"

"I think you should stick to it a bit longer. The next place I plan on going will be a rather big deal."

"What is it?"

"Do you know the three great cities? We're going to one of them. The largest commercial city, and just the largest city on the entire planet before the Apocalypse. It was a city that spanned several kingdoms, trying to understand just how much money traded there each day would blow your mind. It has now been demolished by the sudden apocalypse and the wreckage and mana there is still too dangerous for anyone to really check out and rebuild."

"Then why would we head there?"

"Because we are finally strong enough. We have a good enough control on our mana that we can enter."

"How come kingdoms don't just send in a bunch of people like us then?"

"Because people like us are hard to find and sometimes even harder to pay for. They don't have armies of us to rebuild a city with and many just don't want to. But we are going there for more personal reasons."

"To get stronger?"

"In a way."

"Then why don't we go now? I wanna see the place."

"Because we need to wait for the rest of the village to come back. Possibly save a few as well."

"Will Elton and Cuddles come."

"If they wanna. The mana shouldn't hurt Elton at all, I just worry about Cuddles. I don't know if it can survive the area. We can protect him but only if he stays still. Is Cuddles a he or a she?"

"No clue. Is there a way we can know?"

"Uh, oh. I think we might just know."

Staring at Cuddles, a massive egg was coming out of her and into a large hole she just dug. She wasn't tackling Elton, she was moving away to make a nest for herself. To their surprise, it wasn't just one egg, three cold blue eggs came from her. She sat her now much smaller butt on her eggs and fluffed herself out comfortably.

"How long do you think she's gonna stay there for?"

"A bird this size, it could take months."

Two days later, elves and dwarves finally started coming back to the village. During the two days, they hunted and ate animals, tended to their crops, and made meals with Zeeths table. To their surprise, Cuddles ate any food they gave her and gobbled it all up instantly. Thankfully, the table was cooking food faster and better than ever before due to all the metal and magic it has been melting and consuming. Afir had only ever used it for cooking and feeding it blood or useless bits from the creatures he hunted in the forest so it was only good for cooking incredibly well.

The first to come back was Drawk and Alba. They hauled together ten robed people and threw them to the floor. All of them had painted eyes on their foreheads that were drawn on their otherwise normal faces.

"It's just you guys left?" Alba asked.

"Yeah, everyone else was slingshot away. How come you two were together?" Zeeth said.

"They sent us away in groups of elves and dwarves hoping for us to clash since we were different races. But luckily that didn't happen. We get along pretty well."

"Damn right we do. That was some good thinking, throwing my hammer like that."

"Thank you," said Alba with a hint of smugness in her smile.

Over the next few days, more and more groups of elves and dwarves came back. Some with injured teammates that were instantly treated by Alba, but also with a closer sense of comradery, and some with lively discussions about fighting tactics and heaps of limp bodies dragged with them. In secrecy, Zeeth sent out slimes to the outer edges of the area to look for more groups that may have been lost. He only led one back to the village, the rest hadn't seen anything since he didn't let them go too far.

He hid the slime when it came back and the group, one elf, and two dwarves, told the tale of a small slime that saved their lives and led them back by shooting water in the direction of the village.

Luckily, none of them had been slung too far away and their combinations were enough for them to win most battles. Unluckily, five elves and three dwarves were missing. And out of the eight missing people both Tatio and Utha were missing. "They were surely strong enough to take down a few goons, they just broke away and escaped. This attack was one major setback." Alba sighed, "I can't believe this wasn't predicted."

Page was tying up a few robed men with ropes so he grunted, "We're running out of mana disruption stones. Some of them will have to just be tied up the old fashion way."

Zeeth was inspecting the mana distortion stone. It was almost pitch black but colorful sparkles littered all around it like a grated rainbow. "How does this stuff work?"

"The sparkling bits are pieces of mana stones that likely broke off. It takes the mana in the air and processes it so it can provide a foreign source of mana into the body. The black part of a rock called flangrite. It distorts the mana leaving from the particles which also distorts the mana in a person." Page explained.

"How much does one cost?"

"A little more than a Breadcrumb, around 50 styrs."

"How does a Breadcrumb work?"

"You plant it somewhere, the mana inside it coded to send out a distinct form of mana that you put in, and only you should be able to track using the other half, known as the Plate, which is just a screen-like thing. If anyone else wants to track it they would have to figure out the specific pattern and find it."

During all the waiting, Zeeth had done almost nothing but work on making new weapons and carving circles. He noticed something while etching the circles, there was a fundamental difference between the speed circle he saw from Sato and the circles he used on the weapons. The ones he used were made of a mixture of worm-like letters and patterns in the circles. Sato's circle had nothing but letters that wriggled into one another. His was made to enhance humans for a short while but the circles of this world were made to enhance things for an extended amount of time and to be used multiple times, which would be damaging to living tissue to use over and over again.

He always wondered why no one carved circles onto themselves, this was why.

He threw another completed broadsword to the table, now receiving the proper guidance, lighting, and tools with the dwarves, open air, and sunlight.

"RAAaagh!"

Someone's yell was heard behind him. Sinistra was running at him while sending a portal at him. Behind her, one of her robed men was holding a mana stone, the stone that had been lodged in her nape. Black immediately recognized the danger and opened up Zeeth's forehead to kill her. She stared at his head in shock, but She already had a portal made in the floor beneath her, and she was falling through it. The portal swallowed her up just before a black beam of energy erupted from Black and dissolved the floor, but she had to close the portal before the lightning-fast beam got to her and her hand was cut off. A small puddle of blood laid there next to a cleanly cut-off hand and the ground smoking from the blast.

Zeeth walked over, a memory flashed in his mind. A piece of red liver sat on a dark metal tray. A doctor moved the liver into a cooler and he blacked out. A flash went through his mind and he was suddenly viewing himself from above. Scientists were moving a piece of refined, complicated metal into a cut in his body. They carefully stitched it back together and replaced it with some kind of laser technology. The liver was moved away into a large box the size of a refrigerator and frost flowed out. When it was put in, a layer of frost coated the liver and slid it backward.

The scientists left the room and took off their lab gear.

"Ben, how do you like that? We implanted a working mechanical liver."

"It's impressive. No, it's beyond impressive, we never thought we could fit a Poison Screening device into a human and have it all work, this is on the borders of impossible. I wonder how much pain the boy will feel though." Ben tilted his glasses up to check a clipboard.