CHAPTER TWENTY

  Richard held on for dear life.

  Skipping across the sky with reckless abandon. Moving at suicidally high speeds without a care for his own hide. The earth-heaving tremors pounding away just behind, and rapidly gaining on him besides, the perfect incentive for a man to rethink his priorities—a choice few of his ingrained policies. Too fast? Hah! There was no such thing! When you were being chased by a mountain of gray flesh, dead set on adding you to the meaty wheezing amalgam, “too fast,” wasn’t nearly fast enough.

  Richard threw another backwards glance toward his pursuer, only to find a hyper-articulated arm the size of a train car rapidly approaching—barreling through the air in desperate pursuit. It shot forward with jerky lunges—loud pops and cracks resounding across the open expanse—literally growing new muscle tissue and bone in sudden, nauseating, regenerative bursts.

  From reaching hand burst forth a reaching foot, became a flying knee, became a reaching hand once more. Every new outgrowth that violently shoved its way from the former, bringing it just that little bit closer to swallowing him whole.

  It’s grotesque locomotion eating up the intervening distance at a truly alarming rate.

  And then suddenly, it was right there. It’s eight fingered hand looming above him. Blanketing Richard and his surroundings in shadow. Making ready to come down like the fist of heaven, delivering swift judgment, to all those in the vicinity, with the force of a falling meteor.

  Just as it began its descent, however, Richard turned and loosed a fist full of Leaping Explosive Talismans. The paper slips rocketing from his hand like fireworks. Streaking fourth to impact the descending gray palm with a series of flashing detonations. Several deafening explosions set his ears to ringing, the shockwaves violently rocking his conveyance like it were a dinghy out on the open sea.

  Unfortunately, given the creatures incredibly tough hide, the damage dealt was largely negligible. A few scorch marks here, a few pockmarks there. It’s regeneration quick to heal any damage it did sustain in very short order.

  Thankfully, it was enough to give the thing pause. So that when it slammed down and cratered the ground for dozens of meters around, Richard was just barely able to get out of the way in time. Unfortunately his conveyance wasn’t nearly so lucky. Clipped by the rushing winds picked up by it’s passage, the back half was shredded to bits, while Richard, meanwhile, was sent winging through the air.

  Ugh! Seriously? That’s the fifth time that’s happened!

  An old hand at the whole mid-air recovery thing by this point, more through necessity than any choice made on his part, Richard was quick to retrieve yet another flying contraption from storage, slot the batteries, right himself, and continue to make space between him and his pursuer.

  I can’t keep doing that forever. I don’t have an unlimited supply of these things!

  Of course, the option was always available to simply nope the heck out of there, launch himself into the stratosphere and pelt the thing at range, but the second he did, the Abominaball would immediately turn its attentions to the walled city instead.

  How did he know?

  Because he’d attempted to do that very thing, and the total destruction of one of the poorer districts had been the end result. And since he didn’t know whether the destruction of the city would constitute his failing the trial, allowing the beast to tire itself out playing Godzilla was not a risk he was willing to take.

  Which ultimately left him where he was now. Helpless. Out of options. And running for his life while trying desperately to wrack his brain for a plan.

  And all the while, the insufferable fiend hadn’t ceased its breathily, wheezing laughter. Thousands of breathless throats mocking him in unison. It was mortifying. More than that, it was infuriating. In a fit of rage, Richard loosed yet another volley at the creature, barely a hundred meters of distance separating them by this point. The soldiers atop the wall, who had been spectating this indignity for the past half hour now, having kept their cannons trained on the Abominaball for just such an occasion.

  Thunderous reports resounded. Distant cracks that heralded their arrival by seconds. A volley of white streaks that impacted the Abominaball in rapid succession. Rocking it slightly with the force of their collective impact. Heat and ice and detonation and electricity. All leaving their mark on its impossibly thick hide. What damage they dealt, largely negligible, regenerating about as quickly as it appeared.

  Useless!

  Of course, he’d already known the effort was largely meaningless.

  The creature was simply too strong to be so much as scratched by the same armaments that’d dominated the trial thus far. At lvl 100, with endurance, strength, and regeneration like it’d shown, he knew each of those stats had to have been encroaching upon the 300 points per attribute threshold by now—the stat cap for F Grade Elites. And while, in a way, that was almost a good thing—with its parameters so heavily skewed, it meant it’s other stats couldn’t be very high at all—it wasn’t as if knowing the beast owned a particularly low resiliency was going to aid him here.

  Maybe it meant his taunts landed a little bit harder than he’d been expecting, but making the thing even more mad wasn’t exactly the first thing on his agenda at this very moment. There had to be a way to turn things around. There just had to be! Because, the way things were going, he wouldn’t last another thirty minutes at this rate. The second he used up the last of his spare conveyances, he was a dead baby.

  The creature continued in its singleminded pursuit, while Richard, likewise, continued to evade.

  Three more times, an errant swipe managed to mangle his flying contraption, and so three more times was he forced to re-equip himself from his dwindling supply. And all the while, detonations rocked the titan’s massive frame at a sustained rate of fire. Richard, for his part, not only juggling his roundabout flight routine and the near constant fusillade, but also taking the time to lead the grasping meatball a merry chase across the field of pit traps he’d prepared just in case.

  The creature raced forward. Stumbled. Tripped.

  Placing far too much weight on unreliable surfaces. A massive foot punching through thin paper to slosh around in the thick pool of oil that’d formed below. A spark of ignition, a flare of scorching heat, and the leg was swiftly engulfed by a pillar of flames. Another false placement, a hand this time, plunging deep into a pool of muddy water. Talisman’s flashed, muscles stiffened, frost racing up along the freshly soaked appendage to coat the gray extremity in a layer of rime.

  Each doing significant damage to the trapped limbs in question, though neither lasting for very long. Skin blackened and charred under the scorching onslaught, tough hide turned blue and frostbitten from the arctic cold, only to fully regenerate in nearly the same instant, until they were just as hearty and hale as ever. In fact the only pit traps that seemed to give it pause whatsoever, were the shock talisman ones.

  He supposed it was to be expected when you knew what electricity did to a person’s musculature, then considered just how much of said musculature the fiend possessed. Conflicting, and sometimes overlapping strands of muscle, that more often seemed to hinder movement, rather than aid it. The detriments of a low control stat, no doubt. Leaving useless muscle groups and redundancies all over the place. Body parts placed haphazardly. Nonsensically. Was it any wonder then that, when stimulated with volts of electricity, the hodgepodge creation literally tore itself apart.

  And while sure, it healed itself immediately after…

  Actually, wait a moment. Was that the solution?! Let it tear itself apart? Basically do all the work for him?

  As it turned out? Even after minutes worth of investigation, the consensus remained annoyingly unclear. Unfortunately, it was seeming increasingly unlikely he’d actually be able to confirm or deny. Richard spun around, activating the ability scroll in his hand. An Aquatic Lance swiftly coalesced, launching forward with a salty spray. The ball, however—uniquely wary of the water, where it blithely tanked everything else—dug its hand into the soil and flung a chunk of earth at the oncoming projectile. Soil acting as impromptu shield. Water Lance met dirt clot and exploded in a burst of muddy water.

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  Richard tsk’ed. Wasting no time, he used up another three scrolls in rapid succession. One shot head on. Another was angled slightly to the left. While the final arced high into the air—predicting where the thing would be when it landed. Chunks of earth intercepted each without much trouble, then began to pelt him with a machine like rapidity. Richard was forced to duck and weave in between the thrown projectiles, only serving to slow him further and allow the Abominaball time to catch up.

  Not good! Not good! Not good!

  The whole of his focus so absorbed by simply evading, that he was forced to abandon the idea of electrifying the beast entirely. In fact, it was all that he could do to continually activate the pit traps the beast stepped in—his cannons long since abandoned—as they were the only things slowing the creature down.

  The occasional shock trap wracking it with convulsions for several precious seconds before it yanked itself away.

  If only I’d known they’d be so effective, I might have made more of them!

  As it was, it felt like there were no ways out, no more options left to him. It really did seem as if he couldn’t grasp victory from the jaws of defeat this time, merely stave off the inevitable for as long as his supplies allowed. It was infuriating! To have come so far, only to be stonewalled by this… this thing! Richard plummeted from the sky—a chunk of earth the size of a minivan just barely whizzing past his head—before righting himself.

  I can’t keep going on like this! C’mon! C’mon!

  Okay, what did he know? The thing was strong, fast, and regenerated like crazy. It was fast, strong, strong and fast, had a ridiculously tough hide, oh, and did he mention its regeneration was off the charts? If so, he’d like to reiterate. It’s level of passive regeneration was completely unfair!

  Whatever ability it was using, not only was it broken beyond belief, but it didn’t even make sense as far as energy expenditure went. Unless this glorified meatball possessed a secret stash of mana batteries in its back pocket, which he highly doubted, there was simply no way it was fueling that insane rate of regeneration through mana expenditure alone.

  Not with its stats as skewed as he suspected.

  It was a fundamental law, not only of the pre-ascension world, but of the integrated one as well, that you could not create something from nothing. Everything had a cost. Which meant it had to have been expending something to maintain that regeneration. The only question was, what?

  He dodged three more earthen projectiles, the last clipping the back half of his conveyance, though, thankfully, he got off lightly. A few seconds spent flipping madly through the air before he righted himself once more.

  As far as he could tell, no matter how severe the damage, the creatures regeneration healed things up as good as new. As if the rivers of time had been rewound in just that one area. The Abominaball stepped into yet another pit trap, and, without even knowing which element it was, Richard activated it.

  A pillar of flame grew to engulf the stray appendage. Filling the air with the scent of grilled meat and the bubbling of fat. The creature screeched, yanking its foot away from the scorching heat. The second it did, the limb was healed anew. Now exactly as it had been moments before.

  Only…

  Richards eyes narrowed. Wasn’t that leg a bit too… small?

  He was only given a brief glimpse before it was snatched from view by the things rolling momentum, but it was enough to leave him feeling confused. Logically he knew that, in order for it to have blundered into the trap in the first place, the leg had to have been long enough to reach the ground on its own. And yet, the newly regenerated limb he’d seen, dangling several meters above said ground—an atrophied runt amidst a forest of long legged limbs, each as thick around as tree trunks—couldn’t possibly have…

  It was a revelation.

  Don’t tell me…

  Everything had its cost, and this thing was no exception.

  It’s not regeneration, but reallocation?

  Giving the Abominaball a more thorough inspection, he wasn’t sure but…

  Is the Elite smaller than it should be? I might be wrong but, I feel like it was larger than this before the wave began. Not by much, I’ll grant you, but enough.

  Richard grinned. This…? Oh, this he could work with. He ran through a series of options for several long seconds before he’d settled on a plan of action. Now there was just the matter of it’s execution.

  Trying to ignore the keen trepidation he felt at possibly wasting a valuable resource, Richard reached into his ring and retrieved several more Aquatic Lance scrolls. Only. these weren’t merely your average ability scrolls. No, instead, what he now held in his hands were the inefficient mana batteries he’d been using to power his flying constructs thus far. The ones he’d altered so that they housed far more mana than they had any right to. Not allowing himself a second in which to hesitate, he activated all five scrolls simultaneously, and in the next second, five lances swirled into being.

  Except, where their unaltered counterparts had been as long as a grown man was tall, these could’ve rivaled a two story building in terms of height. All five lances shot forward with a violent slap of salty spray. The Abominaball was quick to throw up a screen of earth, but it underestimated both the size and piercing force of each projectile.

  They easily punched through the clots of dirt, barely slowed by the impediment. Seeing this, the meatballs myriad eyes widened. It tried to lurch out of the way, but they were coming on too fast, it’s bulk too unwieldy. Like water balloons, they burst across its surface in rapid succession.

  The thing reacted immediately.

  Throwing itself into the dirt and rolling around frantically. Scrubbing itself desperately in hopes of getting dry. Richard didn’t let up. One after another, his precious mana batteries burned to ash, drenching the creature, until the earth itself had become a sopping wet mire. Even as he pelted the thing with enhanced water lances, however, Richard rapidly ascended into the sky. Situating himself just above the flailing creature, he prayed to any gods that were listening that his second in command had picked up on his intentions.

  Having exhausted all but twenty of his mana batteries in seconds, he recognized it was likely now or never. He fired all forty triple barreled cannons simultaneously. His world was replaced by all white for a fraction of a second, his hearing by an incessant ringing. When his vision returned, he had to blink stars from his eyes.

  Yeah, maybe one-hundred and twenty simultaneous inputs was pushing his control stat by just the tiniest bit. Still, the results could not be denied. The missiles connected with the unsuspecting Abominaball, and he was once more gratified in Nancy’s appointment when the scent of ozone overwhelmed his olfactory organs.

  Blue lightning arced. The Abominaball convulsed.

  Richard thumbed his Ring of Plenty. Retrieving the second rune powered railgun from his storage—the only other of its kind. The twelve foot barrel pulled him inexorably earthward, until the thing was completely vertical. Richard fired. The kick of recoil not only bursting the once railgun into a hail of confetti, but sending Richard flipping high into the sky, a sizable dent now caving in bothpauldrons of his paper armor—pain radiating from the point of impact.

  He didn’t let it distract him however, already summoning yet another conveyance and slotting in the batteries—gritting his gums every time he moved his bruised shoulders. At least his collar bones remained in tact. Bruises he could handle. Below him there was a muffled explosion, followed by a geyser of shattered bone and gore. The explosive bolt having left a deep, though narrow, trail of destruction.

  Already he could see it beginning to wink closed. Strands of muscle reaching out like tendrils to knit the ends of the hole together. Richard tightened his grip on the handles of his conveyance until his knuckles turned white. Then, activating all of the acceleration runes simultaneously, he plummeted earthward like a stone.

  Directly into the stinking recess of the creature’s open wound.

  He crashed through the cordon of reaching muscle strands, causing them to snap and trail off like stretched taffy in his wake. The jarring impact spinning him around. His construct made to rebound off the sticky walls of the pulsing cavity uncontrollably. Cutting shallow gashes in gray flesh and bursting bulbous abscesses all the way down. Dousing himself in all manner of rank pus and blood all the while.

  His title’s passive, cleansing the filth as soon as it reached him, the only thing that kept him sane.

  From the walls of the cavity, muscle strands snapped at him like lunging snakes. Latching onto him or his conveyance, before being immediately torn free. Unable to withstand his uncontrolled momentum. Snapping himself back to some semblance of attention, his cogs having been rattled by the impact and subsequent tumble, he refocused his mind on the plan. Thumbing his spacial ring, he released a veritable avalanche of talismans, constructs, and layered munitions.

  Leaving a voluminous paper trail in his wake. The further he fell, the more paper filled the space. And yet, at the same time, the more narrow the confines became—the wound still closing quickly despite his interference. Worse yet, he clearly didn’t have much time left. His conveyance was in tatters, and the end of his flight was rising to meet him with impunity.

  In the moments before impact, and subsequent envelopment, Richard retrieved the two mana batteries from his ruined conveyance. Spread them out with a practiced flick before manually scratching out two lines on each.

  The scrolls began to glow with azure radiance as uncontrolled mana began to flood the treated paper. In the next moment, Richard tossed both scrolls high up into the air. Whereupon he immediately activated his title, |Liora’s Embrace| [Legendary], for the very first time.

  A bubble of absolute protection enveloped his armored frame, just as the scrolls exploded in a rippling tide of mana—the thick trail of talismans he’d left in his wake activating in mass from this massive expenditure.

  The brilliant blue radiance racing up through the rapidly closing tunnel, growing so bright, so fast, it was nearly blinding. The cloud of consumables making ready to explode, just as his head collided with something hard, the wound sealed shut, and Richard knew no more.