A glowing yellow and blue orb struck the Nightmare across the face, rippling a patch of inky skin.
{Nightmare : (-205k) 1b Hp}
[{Nightmare} has been dealt [True Damage]]
[This unit has lost 205k instances of [Health] [Strength] and [Resistance]]
I’d used ten thousand mana for that manifestation for about twenty times damage multiplication, all of which completely ignored the monster’s inherent resistance, weakening all the giant’s stats.
This wasn’t just possible.
The nightmare’s defeat was certain—
{{Nightmare} has grown in power}
[+4m Hp +20m Str + 13m Dur]
Eh?
The Nightmare poked at one of its faces, surprised. The giant was still miles from the city. A projectile that small from that far with that much force defied explanation.
But what little damage I’d done was completely overshadowed by the flashing blue and red emotional energy, sinking into the monster’s skin.
The city could see the giant. They were losing hope, only worsening the problem.
{{Nightmare} has grown in power}
[+100m Hp +100m Str + 50m Dur]
A low screech shook the ground, cracking stone plates.
“No more holding back,” I hissed, raising both hands into the sky. “Goodnight, Ugly.”
My mana channels heated under Riot, straining to unleash such a force as quickly as I did.
Eight hundred sixty thousand mana, split between a hundred and twelve smaller orbs.
The force threw me backward, blowing down houses, physically knocking back the dense storm clouds, exploding the evening stars. Light flashed like the rising sun, vaporizing rat sized monsters by pure magnitude of explosive force.
Riot took hold within each, barely tinting the edges of the blast before they connected into the Nightmare, one after another.
Just looking too close to the colliding manifestations made my eyes burn
[{Nightmare} : (-157.8k) 1b Hp] [{Nightmare} : (-162.4k) 1b Hp]
[{Nightmare} : (-166.974375) 1b Hp] [{Nightmare} : (-171.6k) 1b Hp]
[{Nightmare} : (-176.165625) 1b Hp] [{Nightmare} : (-180.8k) 1b Hp]
[{Nightmare} : (-185.4k) 1b Hp] [{Nightmare} : (-190k) 1b Hp]
[{Nightmare} : (-194.5k) 1b Hp] [{Nightmare} : (-199.1k) 1b Hp]
Enormous clouds of smoke and ash covered the desert.
And then, the blasts stopped hitting.
My chest tightened like a vice.
[{Nightmare} : (-1394k) 1b Hp] [{Nightmare} : (-1409.3k) 1b Hp]
[{Nightmare} : (-1424.6k) 1b Hp] [{Nightmare} : (-1440k) 1b Hp]
[{Nightmare} : (-1455.3k) 1b Hp] [{Nightmare} : (-1470.6k) 1b Hp]
[{Nightmare} : (-1485.9k) 1b Hp] [{Nightmare} : (-1501.2k) 1b Hp]
[{Nightmare} : (-1516.6k) 1b Hp] [{Nightmare} : (-1531.9k) 1b Hp]
The nightmare growled, brushing ash from its chest.
[{Nightmare} has been dealt [True Damage]]
[This unit has lost 171570k instances of [Health] [Strength] and [Durability]]
I’d seen each of those blasts hit. I’d felt their collective force even from this distance.
And they’d done nothing.
Whole, totally, absolutely nothing to that monster.
A billion health was just a lot.
Energy shone within its body, flashing blue and red.
{{Nightmare} has grown in power}
[+150m Hp +100m Str + 75m Dur]
[+400m Hp +600m Str + 275m Dur]
I couldn’t stop this.
The giant stopped.
It let out a shudder, shedding small patches of burnt skin from the rest of its body.
My hands tightened.
“Now’s not the time to panic,” I whispered. “You hurt it, didn’t you?”
I massaged my forehead.
Even if I couldn't kill it, I could slow it down, or at the very least, make it annoyed. This city wouldn’t fall without a proper fight.
[MaxMana +8% Refill per Minute (0:59)]
I looked up, immediately realizing that the giant had its central mouth open, humming with mana.
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I dove off the rooftop, moments before a beam of scalding energy vaporized seventeen of the skyscraper’s floors, even though it had missed by at least a block, splashing molten metal over the ruined buildings.
“I really hope nobody was in there,” I grunted, kicking off a shattered department store.
Heat flowed through the street, popping monsters like zits as they came into contact. It raced out from the impact crater in every direction, snapping concrete and warping metal.
And it was fast.
I twisted, diving over the blast, landing on the street that’d already been torched. Since the wave of hostile mana had passed, I couldn’t lose hitpoints from the heat, but my shoes were melting, so I froze to screens and stuck them under my feet.
Thankfully, melted rubber is a half-decent adhesive to whatever glass-like material the screens were made of.
Once that was taken care of, I wandered back toward the giant, passing the corpses of players and Npcs.
Several belonged to students I knew.
Most belonged to people I wish I could’ve.
The battle was already over and the biggest nightmare hadn’t even arrived yet.
The monster moved closer to the city, crossing the better part of a half-mile in a single stride. When it pressed its foot back to the ground, buildings collapsed and the street splintered apart. Fear clogged the air, not just from players, but from the other monsters as well. Everything now paid this Nightmare their full attention.
{{Nightmare} has grown in power}
[+250m Hp +250m Str +150m Dur]
I stepped directly beneath where the beam had passed.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Concrete had been blown apart in explosive temperature change, covering the impact site like a blanket of snow.
My nose burned.
[You have been afflicted with [Toxic Gas] : [1:00:00]]
A million power attack and a hundred million power attack are virtually identical to a billion power attack. They both destroy the very properties of the materials they strike. What isn’t vaporized becomes melted sludge, and what isn’t sludge is so hot as to light things on fire.
The only difference is in terms of scale.
A million power blast might be the size of a train.
A hundred million could have an impact larger than most freighters.
But a billion?
Power like that reached the point where it just kept going. On and on and on. When I crossed to another block, it was obliterated too. The one after that was colder but utterly inhospitable. So were the next few blocks.
The monster raised a finger, flicking a blast of similar power into another part of the city. Soon, a wave of heat brushed up against the air, stifling my breath.
[{Nightmare} has grown in power.]
[+300m Hp +300m Str + 200 m Dur]
The nightmare took another step and it reached the city.
Just from the bottom of its feet to its ankles, the monster was taller than any remaining structure. Even if the skyscrapers were still standing, they’d only brush against the Giant’s knees.
The monster was just so, freakishly enormous.
It took another step and a fifth of the city went flat as a pancake, churning the molten sludge into other districts.
It took another step and another hunk of the city vanished from sight.
Why did I even bother?
This Nightmare was comically beyond my own power, only getting stronger. I was helpless. Utterly helpless all over again.
I’d have to restart.
Maybe.
Probably.
But not quite yet.
The Nightmare bent down, poking at something in the rubble. I threw myself to the ground, gritting my teeth to the scalding tar burning my stomach. A cloud of dust and rubble cleave through buildings, accelerated at the speed of bullets.
My system chimed.
[MaxMana +8% Refill per Minute (1:00)]
[(+68800) 68800 Mana]
Two thirds of the city could still be alive. I could buy them time.
Two fields appeared within my hands.
If I wasn’t willing to take risks, I wouldn’t have any chance to make any sort of an impact on this fight.
An explosion ripped through my arms, tossing me sky-high.
I loaded another series of mana blasts into my palms, shooting higher and higher, up to face the Nightmare.
At first, it looked right past me, trundling forward with its next step.
And then, it stopped, all heads squinting. They focused on me, glowing a little brighter, like when someone realizes there’s a fly on their shoulder.
I squeezed my hands, unleashing a blast of ten thousand mana into the monster’s throat, the aftershock of which blew me into the far desert, kicking up clouds of dust.
The middle head groaned, blowing out smoke.
{{Nightmare} has grown in power}
[+200m Hp +200m Str + 200 m Dur]
[+130k Hp +20k Str + 5k Dur]
Hang on.
Why did the growth split in half? And why was one half so much weaker than the other?
If it was all growing from the same source than everything ought to—
No.
I spun mid-air, firing another projectile. It broke apart in a shower of sparks ontop the nightmare’s shoulder.
{{Nightmare} has grown in power}
[+100k Hp +10k Str + 5k Dur]
The terrified people in the city hadn’t caused that.
“I’m such an idiot!” I cried out, smacking myself on the face. Soise would kill me if she heard I made a mistake like that.
Nightmares feed off negative emotion.
I’ve been using negative emotion to fight it for the past ten minutes.
So what if I could do damage? All the damage dealt was being overshadowed by the absolutely ludicrous amount of emotional power I’d been letting the Nightmare absorb.
Now I had no mana and the monster was stronger than before.
I squeezed my face, taking deep breaths. “Fine. Fine. Now you know.”
[MaxMana +8% Refill per Minute (1:00)]
[(+68800) 85600 Mana]
There had to be some sort of angle I could work with. As long as I could change what emotions I was using, I could keep the monster from absorbing my attacks.
I pushed happy thoughts into one of my manifestations.
The bands on my wrists and ankles went hot, scorching against my consciousness.
[Mental Fatigue I : indefinite]
I dropped the ability, squeezing both eyes shut, focusing as hard as I could to keep Grey’s screen frozen. A brief trembling shook the back of my mind before the I gained a bit of control back and the screen was frozen again.
I collapsed in relief.
This wasn’t working, obviously.
I was going to die, obviously.
But I already knew that, so it wasn’t a big deal.
A yellow bolt fired from my palm, scoring the Nightmare across one of its jaws.
The yellow mental energy only simmered in the Nightmare’s skin for a short moment, dissipating outward.
No popups appeared.
Whatever energy signature I was using, the Nightmare couldn’t process it.
The Nightmare paused, then turned, facing me again, forcing it to move away from the city. Several heads clicked to one another, and it seemed to tense.
The monster jumped after me.
I scrabbled to my feet, choking on my own spit.
It came crashing down behind me, knocking up dunes of sand in an explosive spray that tossed me higher and higher into the sky than I’d ever been before.
Not to mention I probably broke an arm, judging by the clicking sound it made wherever I twitched my neck.
And my shoulder was dislocated.
{Grind}
[Whiff : (-100k) 650.3 Hp]
All things considered, I was quite fortunate the monster had such horrendous aim.
Beneath me, all three mouths opened, filled with smoking light. The sheer force of their mana could be felt from miles and miles away, radiating outward like the heat of the sun.
The nightmare was seriously, really mad.
I tumbled in the air, diving downward at an accelerated pace, dribbling black blood in streaks behind me.
This fight was over.
I lost.
And that was okay.
I stretched my arms wide and started laughing. “See you next time!”
The Nightmare fired.
And the beam split apart.
A cold, chubby hand grabbed me by the back of the collar.
“You are the stupidest mortal I’ve ever served, seen, or heard of,” Sharon growled, flapping a pair of gorgeous and enormous shimmering wings. “What were you thinking?”
He had one hand stretched out into the path of the blast, deflecting it in a cone around us. What heat made it to us was deflected by Sharon’s own mental energy.
He huffed, beating his wings faster as he pushed against the roaring hostile energy.
“This one is much stronger than you or I, understand?” He hissed. “Much, much stronger. What you feel now is just mana. Not a spell. Not an ability. That thing is breathing mana at us.”
Sharon faltered against the roar of scalding light, dropping altitude.
“Even so, his technique is sloppy!” The fairy cackled. “Fool! Practice moves before you use them!”
The Nightmare’s blast gave out, and the monster actually staggered, panting for breath.
“We can go now,” Sharon said, aiming into the distance. “As long as we hurry—”
“No.”
“I—” Sharon blinked. “Excuse me?”
“We’re going to kill it,” I mumbled, blinking hard to keep myself from losing consciousness.
That was a close one.
I breathed a little deeper, realizing the air was way thinner than I realized.
“You’re joking,” Sharon growled. “You’re not going to make me fight that thing, are you? And after I saved your life, too?”
“Please,” I whispered. “Please, just until I die. You and I are the only ones who can stop it. Or try stopping it, anyway. It doesn't seem to be particularly smart, and it’s pretty slow, as far as billion-strength monsters go, so we might have a chance…”
Sharon bit his lip. Finally, he bowed his head, hissing under his breath. “Stupid foolish mortal whims. Fine. Until the moment you die, I will continue fighting. But I will not go a moment longer, nor will I extend your deal even if you ask—”
“Thank you, Sharon.” I smiled wide. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Sharon grumbled, summoning a sword larger than a metropolitan bus. “The nightmare’s not dead yet.”
// {Notice} //
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