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Chapter 163- Battle of The Lake
🕑 Added 2024-07-11 22:59:01 +0000 UTCArthur was a little stumped with how he’d go about fighting such a massive creature. For starters, though, he invested the remaining stats he had left over from his last level-up. He wouldn't be making the mistake of forgetting them again. In the end, he decided to go with a tried and tested opening salvo of water bullets, each loaded with enough ether to punch through an inch-thick sheet of steel. Fifty bullets were fired at Wovan, a thousand ether spent in an instant. They shot forward at eight times the speed of sound, ignoring the innate pressure the monster's domain tried to apply to them.
Unfortunately, they never reached the spider. The closer one got to the creature, the weaker Arthur’s domain became, and atop the spider's skin, it was all but non-existent. Fifty tiny portals were generated, none larger than a small coin on Wovan's grey skin, each of them perfectly positioned to intercept his water bullets. That wasn’t all they did, though. The only reason he wasn’t taken in the back of the head by his own returned attack via said portals was because of the split-second warning his domain gave him that told him to duck.
A single shot still managed to clip him in the ear, though, and the fragile appendage throbbed with pain. Arthur was surprised the strike hadn’t drawn blood. Sure, he was durable and he hadn’t invested much ether into his own attack, but it was still the equivalent of getting shot with a modern firearm. So the spider uses portals to defend itself. How the fuck do I deal with that? Wovan created a single large portal, twice the size of an ordinary man. This was new. Arthur couldn’t sense any build-up of magic coming from it, so that ruled out another energy attack. He wasn’t held in suspense for long.
The purple-blue portal pulsed once, twice, and then stabilised. Out of it crawled all manners of beasts, some he recognized as variants of Earth's native creatures and others that looked completely alien. There were lizards, wolves, some kind of six-legged cat, and a host of insects from his worst nightmares, all the size of a large car. Whatever colours the animals may have once been, now they were now the same grey as the hivemind spider. A quick use of Homunculus' Eye told him what he was working with.
Drake corpse puppet
level- N/A - A level 197 drake that was killed by Wovan, now its spawn crawls beneath its skin, piloting its flesh as its own. Corpse puppets possess 50% of the strength the monsters possessed in life and lose access to the magical affinities they once had. Their ether pools have been reduced to 20% of what they possessed in life and are used to fuel Wovan's magic.
Strengths - Highly durable
Weaknesses - Fire
Health - N/A
There were two dozen creatures with an average level of 198. Their descriptions were all the same: strong bodies, weak magic. The portal finally blinked out of existence and Arthur was left facing the 24 monsters. Wherever Wovan had come from, Arthur was certain it was the apex predator. The advantages it possessed with its spacial affinity and its latest revealed trick were the greatest he’d seen in a monster, save apocalypse beasts. That raised the question of why it had decided to travel through the portal to a place with far less ether. Had it been running from something? Arthur doubted it, but it was the only thing that made sense.
The time for speculation had finally come to an end as all the monsters rushed at him. At half-stats, they had the strength of level 130 creatures, and Arthur was more than confident he could deal with them even if there had been thrice the number coming at him. The six-legged cats reached him first, three of them working in tandem to cut off any avenue of escape. Arthur would not be fleeing today. Clenching his spear in a comfortable two-hand grip, he rushed to meet them.
Arthur got a first hand experience of what his ability meant when he called something ‘highly durable.’ His spear sunk into the monster’s flesh, only it felt like his spear was sinking into wet wood, penetrating a few inches deep before coming to a stop. The cat didn’t respond like a living creature; there was no recoiling in pain, no hesitation at further damage, only a savage determination to see him dead. Pushing forward and ignoring the spear in its chest, it was able to close the distance and swipe at his head.
Arthur ducked under the blow but was forced to retreat when another puppet attacked him. He cursed as his feet slipped on the wet soil beneath him but managed to maintain his balance. Falling to the floor now would prove quite troublesome. Retreating backwards, Arthur considered his foes. The monsters had no health pools to speak of; they were soulless dead husks, and so his usual methods of attack wouldn’t work.
Soul damage couldn’t affect something without a soul. Arthur wondered briefly how the massive spider managed to keep its puppets' stats intact. As far as he could remember, stats were an integral aspect of a soul, and these puppets demonstrably had none to speak of. Whatever the answer, he wouldn’t be getting it now. Arthur had learned from experience that engaging multiple enemies in melee at once grew in difficulty exponentially. He’d learned that rule sparring against humans, but it held true even now. Fortunately, a massive difference in stats would make that a non-issue.
Watching the approaching monsters, Arthur came to a conclusion. Wovan, while terrifyingly large, was not a creature that excelled in physical combat. It was a mage, through and through. Creating these puppets was a means to breach that glaring hole in its fighting style, and Arthur had to begrudgingly admit that it had been largely successful. Even with all his many advantages, Arthur was having difficulty finding a way to win this fight, at least in a way that didn’t simply mean outlasting his opponent. He was sure Wovan was under the same penalties as him for coming to such a low-density ether zone, though he suspected the detriments weren't as harsh as his own.
It was time to pull out the big guns. Arthur prepared his strongest attack, Poisonous Fang of the Hydra, marvelling at how easy channelling the skill had become since gaining his new traits. Hyper efficiency meant his skills cost fifty percent less, and with his domain in play, that cost was further reduced by an additional twenty-five percent. When it came to his channelled skill, it meant he could now load it up with far more energy than its 30,000-point limit suggested. The energy also flowed far smoother, almost as if the skill was a dry desert and his ether was some precious water.
He didn’t channel his skill for long, only the two seconds he was given before the monsters reached him, but he was able to invest just shy of 5,000 ether into the skill. A tried and tested water shot at the butt of his spear sent it barrelling into the face of the leading cat beast, and he watched in fascination as its body deformed around the energy-dense green spear point. There was no sound to the collision, almost as if his poisonous ether had absorbed all vibrations. He didn't have to wait long to see what would happen.
It was the first time Arthur had used the Poisonous Fang of the Hydra at such a low setting, and he couldn’t say he was disappointed. The orb of poisonous ether exploded outward in a five-metre radius, completely engulfing an additional four puppet monsters. It wasn’t at the level of his attack against the ascended blood beast, but it was overkill nonetheless. Once again, he’d somehow managed to grant his poison ether the attributes of fire, and he watched in amazement as the creatures caught in the blast simply disintegrated.
Those further away didn’t get away scot-free either, with the closest three combusting into green flame. The toxic flames didn’t so much as burn as dissolve the monsters, their dead grey flesh sloughing off bone like papier-mâché. It was a painful way to go, and only the fact that the creatures were unfeeling corpses prevented them from breaking down in agony. Arthur had no such luck, and he cursed as the three flaming beasts came at him like vengeful spirits with a debt to pay.
Arthur retreated backward a dozen metres, all the while dodging Wovan's constant barrage of ether bullets. Five dead, three were dying, and sixteen were perfectly fine. He could choose to engage and hasten the monsters' end, but Arthur wanted to see how fast his toxic flames worked. Twenty seconds of dodging later, Arthur got his answer. It was a better result than he'd expected but worse than he'd hoped for. Preparing another attack, Arthur channelled the skill for a longer period of time, getting closer to his maximum.
The 50% reduction he had to all ether skills, courtesy of his new trait, translated to an increased upper limit on his channelled skills. With his domain active too, that meant that Poisonous Fang of the Hydra could now take up to 52,500 ether. Arthur wasn't willing to spend anywhere near that much energy dealing with minions, though, so he capped the skill at 20,000 ether, which meant he actually had to spend 25,000 ether because of his cooldown restrictions.
Arthur grunted at the feeling of so much energy leaving his body. That was a sensation he didn't think he'd ever get used to. This time, when his spear struck the leading monster- a bipedal lizard of some kind- the resultant explosion was four times larger, completely engulfing the remaining thirteen corpse puppets too. The green ball of energy persisted for an additional forty seconds, and Arthur didn’t need to check to know that the monsters were all dead. Even he would suffer under such an attack, and the puppets had a fraction of his durability.
By the time the attack died down, Arthur had recuperated most of the energy he'd spent in the fight so far. Is it just me, or is my build kind of broken? Arthur was in possession of a legendary class, a feat so rare for one's entry-level class, that it was practically a statistical impossibility. Except Iris had one too, and he’d witnessed first hand just how broken her abilities were. She was the daughter of one of the strongest beings in this sector of the universe, born with the mother of all silver spoons in her mouth. Even then, she was considered a prodigy. And he was just Arthur Ward, a man from a baby planet that only just qualified as Tier One.
Before his refinement, Arthur would have placed his chances against her at fifty-fifty odds. Now, however, Arthur didn’t know how he could lose. I think my legendary class was a lot closer to mythical than I suspected. Maybe dealing with all the noble bullshit down the line won’t be such a drag.
When his green flames finally died down, they were brought back to square one, with only Wovan and himself standing opposite each other. The massive spider seemed confused, almost unsure of itself in the wake of the power Arthur had just displayed.
Perhaps a fully powered Poisonous Fang would be enough to end the spider.
Comments
bcd051
Hopefully he'll never have to fight Iris, mostly because I totally ship them
