Return of the Wind Mage: A Regression litrpg

4.

Santi had the morph blade turn into its thin whip form, thin as a string and sharp as a razor. It pooled around his feet as it stretched out, its recent growth giving it the mass needed to reach over twelve feet long. He didn’t hesitate, snapping his wrist around and sending the silvery death whip through the dry crops at waist height. From the time he had seen the wilted crops move to cutting everything around him in half was less than two seconds.

He still hadn’t been fast enough.

A brown blur flashed by him, over the top of the whip and headed straight toward the center of the group. Santi had a glimpse of mandibles and chitin before Penelope screamed. Adam went under in a blur of slashing arms, yelling in pain and rage as blood flew.

Chloe spun, crossing the distance between them nearly instantly as her axe took on its pearlescent glow. Santi transformed his weapon to a long spear and stabbed at the mutated bug's back. The morph blade tore through tough chitin like it was tissue paper, a shower of gore exploding outward as the spear punched out the other side. Chloe hit it a second later, her axe bisecting it as she split it in half horizontally.

Santi heard the rustle of the dead wheat. He spun and met the next charging bug. It blew through the brown crops and stood tall and proud for a second as it took in their group. It looked like a praying mantis had been hit with a growth potion. Six long skeletal legs and two raptorial legs that stuck out like arms. The hooks on the arm-like appendages were cruel looking and Santi had no desire to feel them.

His new found hammer crushed the five and half foot bug to a paste. His strength made up for the lack of weight as he made the “hammer” as wide as possible. It was closer to a fly swatter, but the metal was unyielding and Santi’s strength was undeniable. White gore spattered out as chitin broke and the mantis was pulped at his feet.

“Adam alive?” Santi called backwards, his eyes stuck on the suddenly very active field in front of him. The seven foot tall dried wheat were waving back and forth as if a storm ravaged it. There had to be dozens of the mutated bugs coming at them.

“I’m good,” Adam yelled back. A moment later Santi heard a grunt followed by the passage of something large going by his head at inordinate speeds. As it flashed by him and into the thick wheat, he got a glimpse of one of the hammer throw implements flying surrounded by a gray aura.

Wheat dissolved as the heavy metal ball cut a furrow through the field. Santi could hear as bugs were crushed under its undeniable impetus. And it kept going. From what he could hear, he had to assume at least five of the bugs had fallen victim to the single skill. Not wanting to be outdone, Santi started to draw the mana needed for his newest ability.

Crosscurrent-Orb gave the promise of directed chaos. He was immensely excited to try the new spell out and the mantis-like beasts were perfect for it. Activating the spell was like reaching his hand into the wall of a tornado. The power of the summoned winds were contained in less than a second. A shell of compressed air formed around the whirling winds with a faint green glow around it.

Santi pictured the spell leaving his hand and flying into the heart of the field. He held that image and then Willed it into existence. The green orb rocketed free of his palm and followed the path that Adam’s skill had created. It flew for a hundred yards in a second and then the shell popped like a bubble.

Arctic flurrys that howled over the tundra. Salt laden ocean gales. Scouring hot desert winds. All of those and more were contained in that simple, fragile orb. Santi could feel them, feel the eagerness to escape their containment and then their wrath.

A bomb’s detonation would have been more gentle. A thirty yard circumference was flattened. A shockwave rolled over them all as a wall of dust came to wash over the small convoy. Choking coughs and spluttered curses were all Santi could hear for a moment, but the newfound grin on his face didn’t leave. That had POWER.

Multiple kill notifications had dinged when he detonated the orb, the crushing power in the blast radius must have liquefied the mantis’s insides. Not the prettiest kills, but enjoyable. The drifting dust made it hard to see and Santi had to use his Air Current to guide himself as he ran toward where the field had been. The mutated beasts were stunned and he wasn’t going to give them time to recover.

“Don’t shoot!” Santi yelled over his shoulder right as he plunged into the destroyed field. Stalks of wheat cracked under his shoes as he searched with his spell. His blade snapped back and forth with deadly precision as he hunted. There had been nearly thirty of the beasts. Most had survived the orb but had been stunned to the point of being frozen. Santi reaped them without hesitation. It was over in minutes as Santi used all of his inflated stats to fly around without the others to see him.

For just a minute he could revel in the surge of strength and speed he had. How his arms didn’t tire as he swung his weapon, how his hearing was keen enough to hear the shift of weight from the surviving mantis. He got to play at being a god for a minute as the weak beasts couldn’t have fought against him even if they hadn’t been stunned.

Mutated Mantis lvl. 21

They were strong beasts. If it had been any other group from the city they likely would have taken casualties. The lowest ranked people in their convoy was Adam and Hana though, and both of them were level twenty-two. It showed the rapid evolution of the world around the city, that the wild animals and corrupted creatures could be just as deadly as a monster nest or rift.

“Everyone ok?” Santi yelled as he trudged out of the field. His weapon had decided it didn’t like the mantis blood and was vibrating the blood off of itself. Santi hadn’t seen it do that before, but could feel the disappointment radiating off of it.

“Adam has several lacerations. I’m working on it. No other injuries.” Penelope told him, still hidden in the slowly settling dust cloud. There was no hint of the fear and anxiety that had been there moments before. Just the cold, analytical, experienced voice of a trauma nurse.

“Alright. Let’s push out of this dust cloud and then we’ll let Adam get bandaged up and then we’ll be on our way.”

“I need to go and get my hammer,” Adam protested. That was one of the major problems with classes that relied on physical implements. If they lost them, they’d lose a significant chunk of their powerset. It was why magic was the best class.

At least Santi thought it was.

“Yeah, go and grab it then. Everyone hang tight and we’ll be on our way.” Adam got finished being fixed by Penelope and then he was off and running into the field to find his hunk of steel on a string before trotting back to them. They were off and moving in less than five minutes, the entire encounter having lasted less than six minutes.

The speed and power they all had now dwarfed where they were a week ago. After their evolutions and becoming Acolyte’s the easy levels would slow. Right now if they breathed hard on something they could gain potential or levels. Soon they’d have to start pushing themselves and Santi was planning for it. Once his family was safe.

“How much further are we going today?” Chloe asked as they left behind the scene of insectoid murder.

“We need to find something defensible, so whenever that happens. I don’t want to be out in the open after dark.” Santi thought about it for a moment and decided now was better than never.

“Daniel, come here for a moment!” Santi called to the front of the line where Daniel was calmly pedaling on. He motioned for the rest of them to keep riding on while he talked to the scout.

Daniel braked and just waited for everyone to pass him. Santi let the entire convoy go ahead as he and Daniel fell further and further behind until they could speak quietly with each other. Daniel was one of the two surviving people to have heard Santi tell them he was from the future and while his geas suppressed those memories, Daniel still trusted him.

“I need you to go up and ahead tonight. Down Road 96. You’re going to be looking for people,” Santi explained.

“Who am I looking for?”

“My family. Do you think you can move through the dark?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine. Santi, how do you know your family is out there?” Daniel asked. He was a normally taciturn man, quiet and introspective, rarely voicing complaints or questions. British stoicism maybe. Him asking this was the equivalent of Tank getting violent.

“I told you on the night it all started. You, Tank, and Paulie.” The damned curse kept him from elaborating but Daniel nodded along, lost in his own thoughts.

“Yeah, I’ll go tonight after we settle down. Just keep Hana safe while I’m gone.”

“Like my own sister,” Santi promised.