Chapter 63 Those Axes Look Neat.

  Shamesh threw a lightning bolt at the ax wielding berserker. She didn’t even bother dodging as the lightning scattered and skittered off of and around her armor. The bits that reached her exposed skin sparked and cracked as they discharged their power into her body directly. She didn’t even blink. Shamesh’s flight magic yanked him out of the way of a thrown ax that lodged itself almost entirely into the stone wall behind him. A ring around the pommel of the thrown ax started to glow and vibrate with magical power. There was a sudden spike in the attraction between the ax’s hilt and a bracelet around the berserker’s wrist. She launched herself at the ax with a few quick steps and a lunge. She cleared fifteen feet in a blink and the ax met her in the middle as it was ripped from the wall by the magical attraction to her bracelet.

  Shamesh yanked himself away from her as she swung blindly at the space that he had just been. Shamesh had learned enough about berserkers to know that she was most likely following the shadow of the feeling of his death flames. Unfortunately, those death flames were his eyes so there was nothing that he could do about it. Berserkers were known to be predictably unpredictable. One might be entirely reliant on sound to fight and choose to fight blindfolded to more ‘be one with the sounds of combat and bloodshed’, while another might fully embrace the instincts of a wild wolf. The berserker in front of him seemed to follow death itself. She was the kind of berserker to chase after those most likely to die and finish them off because she could feel the Reaper’s attention on them. If that was true, then Shamesh was not in for an easy time, his master’s shadows meant little to her.

  Shamesh threw an icicle at her, which exploded on contact with her armor, only for all of the cold energy that it brought with it to be entirely washed away by her scorching ax’s heatwaves and blocked by the fur padding of her armor. Both axes came down on him faster than he could make distance and he was forced to erect a Reality Shield that was wide enough to take both blades together. ‘Master said that, in normal battles, Words of Power are like cheating, but I do not see how I can win otherwise.’ Shamesh thought to himself while he cast another spell.

  Right as Shamesh’s Reality Shield faded away, a branch of reality destroying magic blinked into existence. Shamesh had no idea how she managed it, but the berserker had done the impossible. She had moved just far enough to the side while raising her arm so that the branch of disintegration magic formed in the space between her arm and side. As far as Shamesh knew, there was no way to properly predict where a branch of reality magic would go once fired. Now that he’d thought about it, both his master and mistress had intercepted Disintegrate spells with their weapons before. He had attributed it to blind luck but maybe there was some instinctive way to feel the path that the spell would take. Regardless as to the why and how she had managed to pull it off, the spell missed her and removed a chunk of wall at the other end of the hallway.

  Both axes were quickly thrown at Shamesh in retaliation. The skeletal wizard turned to the side and allowed both to pass by him without even leaving a mark on his clothes. He was just about to try and end the berserker with a Word of Power, but then, her bracelets both began glowing even brighter than the one had previously. Shamesh instantly threw up a Reality Shield behind him and another in front of him to stop the charging berserker who was already in mid air and nearly on top of him. The pair of axes slammed into the Reality Shield behind him as the berserker slammed hands first into the one in front.

  “I hate to do this, but you leave me no choice.” Shamesh spoke even though she couldn’t hear him. “Die.” He ordered her. Mana was ripped from his body as the spell tried to execute the berserker in front of him. Based on how brightly her soul was shining, Shamesh figured that the spell would burn through about a quarter of his entire maximum mana reserves. Once the spell had finished, Shamesh realized that he had already burned through half of his maximum mana reserves. The flight spell, both Seething Embers, and everything that he has used against the berserker thus far had really taxed his reserves but he was confident that he still had plenty to finish his task.

  The berserker stumbled as the magic shuddered against her innate inability to instantly die. Something that all berserkers could do was push past their bodily limits. That fact only continued to compound the higher the level of the berserker. By the time a berserker was platinum rank, it wasn’t strange for them to shrug off a mortal injury only to kill whatever had injured them. By the time that they were double platinum, it was a well known fact that killing a berserker was easier than stopping one. Shamesh’s spell had already sealed her fate but she was still hellsbent on bringing him with her and a crushed heart wasn’t going to stop her.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Power blazed as Shamesh used his final option against such an unstoppable force, an immovable one. A Reality Bubble appeared around the berserker as Shamesh flew backwards and above his Reality Shield that was holding the berserker’s axes at bay. His Reality Shields faded and the axes, as well as the berserker’s wrists, thunked against the Reality Bubble. Shamesh stared at her for a long moment as he made sure that she was truly stuck. He was just about to leave when he felt his spell start to pull more heavily on his reserves. He eyed the woman and her weapons a moment longer before he realized why.

  Gravity was a mysterious yet perfectly known force. There was even a demigod of it to prove both of those facts. Everyone knew that there was a reason why they didn’t fly to the moon whenever they jumped at night, but no one truly understood it beyond the knowledge that it was a universal constant. The attraction that the berserker’s axes had with their matching bracelets worked in much the same way as gravity or magnetism, their attraction only got stronger the closer they were to each other. Shamesh hadn’t registered that there might be a reason as to why the bracelets shut off once the axes got within a few inches of them. He was now seeing why as his Reality Bubble started to warp under the strain. The bracelets and axes were only separated by Shamesh’s thin wall of reality magic and at that distance, their desire to be together would not be denied. If Shamesh could have swallowed hard, he would have.

  Shamesh knew that he had exactly two options. He could hope that his Reality Bubble would hold out until the berserker finally succumbed to her crushed heart, which could take anywhere from ten seconds to two minutes depending what kind of berserker she was and her natural resilience. Or, the plan that he least liked because there was a high chance that her amazing magical gear would be destroyed, he could fire two simultaneous Disintegrate spells while he cut the power to his Reality Bubble. The recoil from the weapons hitting the woman’s wrists would be more than enough to destabilize her for long enough that at least one of his Disintegrate spells would hit her. Even going with the second plan, however, an easy victory was not assured. There was the chance that she would be able to purposefully sacrifice either a weapon or a body part and would thus still be a threat until she finally just dropped dead.

  Right as Shamesh’s Reality Bubble was about to burst, he settled on a third plan: Run. Shamesh launched down the hallway towards some of the occupied rooms and the other teleportation circle. He passed a few random people but none of them were strong enough to pose a threat to him so he simply dealt with them as he passed. Stars of Doom and Ember Storm made short work of them as he led the now freed berserker through the underground corridors. Shamesh blocked every thrown ax with a Reality Shield and placed one right in the path of the berserker on multiple occasions to keep her at bay. His plan worked as, after less than a minute, he was fairly certain that he and the berserker were the only two conscious beings left on their basement level, if a mostly dead rampaging berserker could be considered conscious. He had also cancelled his extra Seething Ember and instead removed a small piece of each teleportation circle with a singular Star of Doom. He still wasn’t sure if the circles could be easily pieced back together or not, but he really needed to make sure that no one else would show up to help the berserker.

  With his other job finished, Shamesh could turn his full attention back to the berserker that was still hellsbent on bringing him with her to the afterlife. Shamesh finally decided to use his highest leveled utility spell on the enemy, in much the same way that Shamsha had used it on Kahtesh. A magical and phantasmal force locked onto the berserker as Shamesh’s hand reached out and grabbed the air. His will and magic acted as one as the berserker was momentarily halted. She was entirely in a grasp of magic so firm that few creatures could even withstand its pressure. She held firm.

  Shamesh had begun to wonder, while she chased him around the lowest basement level, if a berserker’s brain really mattered at all once they had been fully wound up. He intended to test just that. With a rotation of his wrist, the berserker was suddenly upside down. Shamesh then started rapidly rising and lowering her. Her head slammed down into the ground again and again and again. After nearly a dozen impacts, and a shattered floor, she finally managed to break free from his magical grasp with raw strength alone. She landed on her head one last time.

  Shamesh watched on with a new found respect for berserkers as she forced herself back up and onto her feet. Her out of focus eyes locked onto him, despite her now misshapen skull, and she lowered herself to launch at him once again. Shamesh readied a reality shield to place it right in front of her so she would run headlong into it, again. She leaned forwards as if she was starting a sprint, then she continued leaning forwards, and then, she hit the ground. A clang of axes on stone and a thud from her, mostly intact, body were the only sounds in the lowest level of the basement of the CSC building for a long moment. She had finally run out of power and died. If Shamesh could have breathed out a sigh of relief, he would have.

  “It looks like you’ve had fun.” His master’s voice said from behind him. “Those axes look neat.”