Deadworld Isekai

Sometimes, reality is stranger than fiction. Even in a situation where Leel was bragging that his bolt would pierce Matt's shovel, Matt couldn't imagine the kind of mind who would be jealous of a shovel, and angry enough to nurture a grudge against that same shovel because it had managed to block his magic.

If Matt had more time to think about it, he might have noted that Leel was very proud of his magic. If Matt read between the lines of Leel's statements, he might have learned that not everyone on Leel's world was able to do magic, and that Leel had access to one of the higher, formalized forms of it. If Matt compared Leel to Earth equivalents, he might have seen the archetype of someone who had access to resources that others didn't, but still represented themselves as having worked hard, or pulled themselves up by the bootstraps so to speak.

Matt might have realized that a person like Leel might, in anger, identify a shovel as an obstacle to his goals, feel frustration that he hadn't cleared that obstacle already, and end up aiming at the obstacle first.

Matt didn’t, in fact, have time to think of all that, but he did notice the practical upshot, which was that Leel aimed his exaggerated, finishing-move mega-bolt direction at the shovel instead of at Matt's head. From that range, Matt wouldn’t have had time to block even if his stats were in play.

Still, none of that would have mattered if Leel was right and the bolt ended up punching through the shovel and straight into Matt, or if the power from the bolt radiated through the shovel and cooked Matt alive. Instead, something weirder happened. Instead of immediately fizzling like the fire bolts that Matt had blocked or rebounding like the bolts he had batted away, the mega-bolt hit the shovel and stopped. It pushed fruitlessly at the shovel, twisting in the air and showering sparks against the shovel head. It failed to get through.

In the meantime, the heat from the bolt diffused into the air around it, making the environment around painfully hot, but luckily, not enough to cook him. After just a few seconds, the power from the bolt faltered. Another few seconds and it was gone entirely. Luckily, Leel hadn’t moved during that time, instead standing still with his mouth hanging open in shock.

“Impossible. Simply impossible.” He shook his head while backing up a few paces, far enough that it would be a bad idea for Matt to take his chances with a shovel strike on a guy who could, at this point, end Matt with just a thought. Leel kept muttering, “Deflecting a weak bolt? It’s possible, if unlikely. Absorbing one in place of the target? Possible even for mundane materials. But stopping elementally shaped mana in place? Do you know what you’ve done?”

“Not… not really, no,” Matt said cautiously. “It’s a pretty good shovel.”

“The best shovel in the universe shouldn’t be able to do that. It stopped mana. No explosions, no anything, it just stopped it. That’s not possible. Where did you get it?”

Matt was still laying on his back, holding the shovel in front of himself defensively. It wasn’t a great situation, but it was better than a hole in the head. He’d take it for now.

“I found it. In the ground. It’s a long story.”

“Ha! Perfect. A shovel that bends around the arcane physics of the universe, and this rube just finds it. Let me guess. You’ve actually been using it as a shovel?”

“Yeah?”

“Perfect. Just perfect.” Leel’s casting hand started glowing again. “Luckily, it doesn’t matter how much it can block. You know what gets around limited-coverage shields just fine? Explosions.”

Leel started backpedaling at an unnaturally fast speed, much faster than Matt could follow. At the same time, the energy in his hand started forming into a flaming orb. It grew larger at a rapid pace before topping out at the size of a beach ball. Even without Survivor's Reflexes telling him, it looked like a ball of pure destruction waiting to be unleashed. Matt took the opportunity to stand up, getting into a batter’s stance.

“Oh, you want to deflect this one too?” Leel snickered. “This is a bombardment spell, Matt. A good one. A complex casting, one that goes beyond what a simpler mage could do. To explain it in terms you can understand, I can tell it to explode whenever I want it to explode. Please, please, try to hit it with your little shovel. I’m sure it will go just fine for you.”

Matt gritted his teeth. Leel didn’t seem like he was lying about the spell. He was perfectly confident that he could end Matt, and it didn't seem like there was much Matt could do about it. He could run, but not very far or fast, certainly not fast enough to dodge the aftermath of an overloaded magic mortar shell. He could try to run towards Leel, get into melee range, and hope he’d be afraid to explode the thing. But Leel was already out of range and still backpedaling at rates an un-enhanced Matt couldn’t hope to match.

Matt's only hope was to try and whack it with the shovel anyway, banking on the incredibly small chance that Leel was just bullshitting. It wasn't likely. Leel was arrogant and haughty, but he seemed to always say the truth. Laughing maniacally, Leel lifted the ball above his head, where it began spinning faster and faster in place.

“Well, it’s been nice, Matt. Thanks again for the conversation, but I’m afraid that’s that.” His eyes suddenly became serious as he lifted the fire-orb just a bit higher into the air, then brought his arm down level with the ground, pointed the orb at Matt, and said. “Fire bombardment: Launch.”

With a fizzling noise, the orb disappeared. Matt winced, waiting to get blown apart by an invisible bomb, but nothing happened. The spell was just… gone.

“What. No. No! That's not possible. I casted that flawlessly. Unless…” Leel's eyes took on a faraway look as he referenced his mana screen. “No, no. That’s not possible. How?”

He started backpedaling again, but fell head first into the ground. His movement skill had failed him. Before even closing his screen, Leel turned tail and started running away. He had to. Matt was already charging towards him.

Matt had a vague idea of what just happened. To the extent that he had a plan at all, he had been banking on the idea that if there wasn’t enough mana in the atmosphere to grow a non-lethal turnip, there probably wasn’t enough to sustain a mage’s mana regeneration either.

Now, that plan had become reality, allowing Matt to go from having no chance of survival to a fighting possibility that he might live through everything. After all, Gaia sucked. It was dead in a really stupid, comprehensive way that had all sorts of nooks and crannies into which the sucking had packed even more horribleness that would ambush Matt from time to time.

But, Gaia was shitty in a way the system didn’t control, which meant it was probably equally shitty for everyone, Leel included. The system messages about Matt’s mana-sickness didn't mention a mage or their spells. But mana had to come from somewhere. Leel had probably arrived at Gaia with a full mana tank, then burned through it before he could finish the job. Matt could imagine that Leel had all sorts of regeneration techniques on his home world, but probably none that took a global plant apocalypse into account.

The other part of the plan was something that Leel said. He had stated, with no reason to lie, that he had dumped all of his stat points into mental categories. It was probably the reason why he talked like an accent-less plantation owner, and reinforced Matt’s decision to never put more than the bare minimum of points into Intelligence. But more importantly, it meant that unless Leel's wizard class dumped points into DEX, VIT, or STR automatically, Matt was dealing with what amounted to a normal, un-augmented dude.

Just like Matt.

Matt had already ditched his pack. The loss of his STR stat changed it from “slightly annoying burden” to “ridiculously overfull deadweight” in one fell swoop. He was in a hurry to put Leel down, too. It was possible that Leel still had somemana regeneration and had just overdone things. Matt didn’t want to give Leel an hour to recover and then have to face a mage, with mana.

Leel had a pretty good lead on Matt and probably equivalent DEX, VIT, and STR stats, but one thing became almost immediately apparent. Leel was an inside kid. Matt could easily visualize him spending all his time getting carried around on litters while doing magic Sudokus or something. Leel ran like he had never run before. Even though Matt was pretty banged up and burned, his couple months of track team experience coupled with his still-working Boots of the Wasteland Traveler meant that he closed the distance pretty fast. By the time Matt got close enough to Leel that the boots’ arbitrary “is this a combat motion” decision-making kicked in and stopped giving a movement boost, Leel seemed to sense Matt and turned around. He gripped his staff with both hands and lowered into a surprisingly competent-looking fighting stance.

“You have a combat skill?” Matt asked, surprised.

“No, unfortunately. Just training.” Leel was visibly short of breath, but apparently wasn't winded enough to stop talking entirely. “Every proper wizard gets some, although it’s generally useless. It’s enough to brain you, at any rate.”

Whether it or not that was true, Matt was going to find out the hard way. What ensued was perhaps the shittiest melee combat Matt had ever been a part of. It was like a middle school fight. Matt planted and swung the shovel like a baseball bat, while Leel stepped in and tried to block with his staff. The resulting collision somehow ended up with both of them off balance, and Matt feeling like he had sprained his wrist. A couple more swings resulted in Leel either dodging back or trying to counter swing, all of which Matt then easily dodged.

Matt’s shovel might have been made of weird magic metal, but Leel’s staff was no slouch either. It didn't show signs of breaking after a couple of clashes. In fact, the staff had the advantage on range and the fact that, to a very limited extent, it was actually designed to be a weapon of sorts. For a minute or so, that weaponry advantage combined with Matt's minor injuries was enough to give Leel the advantage. But the tides of battle soon started to turn.

Matt’s stats might have been equal with Leel’s, but his baseline cardio was better. Not a ton better, but Matt was consistently a level or two less out of breath than Leel, which meant he was able to move just a bit faster in any given situation. After clipping Leel several times, Matt managed to get a pretty good swipe in and bashed him broadside in the face. At this point, Matt's arms were basically pool noodles, and he couldn’t get much force behind it, but it stopped Leel cold. Rather than retaliate, Leel did something Matt didn’t expect but should have.

He lowered his staff and ran. Well, jogged, since neither he nor Matt were in full running condition anymore. But to the extent he could move away, he did and headed straight toward the center of Matt’s estate.