“How much mana do you have left?” Lev asked, letting his urgency show in the question.
“More than three-fourths, still,” Beatrice replied, her face turning ashen.
Lev wasn’t faring any better. The approaching monster was, frankly, absurd. Its aura was unlike anything he had ever seen, far too large and potent. Even worse, it seemed to pulse, sometimes getting stronger, and sometimes getting weaker.
To top it all off, it belonged to a second-threshold creature. How that was even possible, Lev had no idea.
“Hunter Lev,” Grand Strategist Wayne’s message came through the communication tablet, his voice strained and distracted. “Stall and await support. Do not engage unless necessary.”
He didn’t need the warning to avoid the monster in the first place, and what a monster it was.
In the distance, hundreds of meters away from the fort, a huge ant emerged. It burrowed through the ground with disturbing fluidity, standing up to its full height of ten meters while flourishing the wings on its back.
Black carapace and black wings, the creature looked far too smooth and put together too well to be a monster, which it undoubtedly was. Surprisingly enough, its gaze didn’t land on Lev first.
Instead, the ant did a cursory scan of the fort with an eerie calmness. Then it looked at the bubble, and all pretense of calm vanished.
A quick use of Identify was all he could manage before the monster soundlessly charged.
[Champion of the Volcanic Hill - Level 447]
Tens of shieldwalls were deployed in the monster’s path as its wings started to glow with mana. Lev quickly prepared several lances, overloading them to stop the ant when it blurred.
An odd sensation spread through his being. Over thirty connections suddenly vanished from his mind, though before he could even start to feel disoriented, a titanic crash rocked the bubble.
Disbelief warred with fear, urging him to confirm what he was feeling. Turning his head, he looked towards the fort’s towering walls, particularly the massive cavity within the Eastern wall.
In one charge, the ant had torn through dozens of shieldwalls and brought down one of the last lines of defense faster than he could see.
From the rubble, the champion emerged, victorious and unhurt. Its task was done, and the way its posture shifted was more than enough warning. No more did the creature need to help the hive.
No, it had come here for a specific purpose, and that purpose ditched the bubble immediately.
Beatrice didn’t get to continue her rest. She immediately overloaded her buffs again, increasing his Intelligence massively while tripling his mana regeneration.
Lev kept the bubble at the very edge of his manipulation range, over three hundred meters above ground. That way, she would be safe from the hell he was about to be subjected to while keeping up the buffs.
It was a good thing the buffs had a really high range, because he really needed them for what was to come.
The first few seconds of battle were enough to know how outclassed he was. Lev dove while overloading his armor with lightning, and yet, the ant passed merely inches away from him, its thick limbs almost scraping against his armor.
Just the vicinity of its charged flight sent him tumbling to the ground. He crashed hard enough to form a crater, and it was immediately blanketed by potent telekinesis.
A single round of examination was enough to determine that multiple mage ants were trying to hold him in place. Blue fire streamed into his armor, affording his mental strength enough power to shear through the force binding him.
Flying out of the crater set him straight into the path of the champion. It almost skewered him with its oversized mandibles, only stopped at the last second by Stargazer.
Cracks spread into the glaive’s blade. Kinetic Absorption formations were overloaded from a single impact, which he used to deflect the ant’s momentum enough to dash out of the way.
Blobs of acid raced towards him from below, forcing him to divide his attention. Shields formed in a blink, blocking most of the veritable acid rain falling upwards.
Shadow mana infused his armor, counteracting the telekinesis that tried to hold him in place, and lightning gathered in his right arm.
A lightning bolt tried to ineffectually slow down the champion. Lev flew up in time to dodge a charge, then crashed again when the wind turned chaotic.
All of it funneled into the champion’s open mouth, sucking in everything like a vortex. Unable to stop himself, he gathered blue fire in his left hand and shot it right below the monster’s face.
The explosion closed its mouth, stunned it for a moment, and allowed him to fire the prepared lances. Two landed on its back, exploding in blue and orange. Another two targeted the front limbs, though the extent of the damage was hidden.
Lev didn’t idle. Chains swooped in from above, lengthened and enchanted on the spot. Orbs drilled into the ground, coated with shadow mana and invisibility.
Stargazer’s blade was imbued with blue flames for maximum damage, though right as he was about to close in, the flames dispersed enough to reveal the ghastly wounds.
The same wounds that were also healing at a pace visible to the naked eye, even at his Perception.
Lev gulped. Chances of victory were slim already, but now the prospect seemed downright impossible. Not only was the champion using both mana and stamina to heal itself, but there was also no indication in its aura that the process was taxing on its massive reserves.
He was outmatched in his own specialty, and by a second-threshold monster.
Truly ridiculous.
A short sigh escaped his lips. The fight with Night Hunter had resulted in a lot of improvements, but he had hoped not to put them to use so quickly. Definitely not in a battle to the death.
No sign of Alec, Sherron, or Drakys still. Isabella’s team and Melvine are also out on missions, which leaves me to deal with this abomination. Joy.
Perhaps he should’ve hesitated a bit more, but as Lev descended to meet the monster on the ground, his flight was smooth and quick.
The champion watched him with something almost resembling patience. It wasn’t going to fight honorably, nor did Lev expect the battle to be a duel.
To that end, he reduced lightning conversion to a fourth of the total. Blue fire dominated his armor, turning the blue armor into a blazing star that struggled to hold in the mana.
Acid blobs burst out of the ground the moment his feet touched the ground. Loosening his control on the fire slightly, an aura of heat bloomed around the armor, evaporating the fluid before it could make contact.
He only had a blink to note that detail before the champion was on him. Mandible tried to snap him in two. Lev took an explosive step back, charring the ground, and lunged when the attack missed.
Stargazer raked across the ant’s face, missing the eyes. The advantage of blue fire made itself known when the searing injury healed more slowly than expected, though the champion also showed no signs of being in pain.
A charge almost flattened him to paste. He jumped, unbalanced as the calamity of an ant passed below him. More blobs of acid tried to pepper him, accomplishing nothing except highlighting faint traces of mana, revealing the responsible monsters.
Lev didn’t act on the new information. There was something else there, an unexpected evolution if he played his cards right.
Within seconds, the champion was charging him again. Telekinesis tried to immobilize him, only to falter against blue flames. Chains formed above him, waiting for the monster to approach.
When the champion was next to him, orbs burrowed out of the ground, targeting the relatively squishy underside. Lightning exploded with vengeance, disrupting the charge and making the champion stumble.
Lev didn’t waste the chance. A burst of fire launched him towards the black wings, Stargazer lopping off one without trouble. This time, the ant screeched, a sound loaded with mana.
Blue fire resisted that, too. Cut after cut appeared on the carapace, the defense parting easily under the glaive. When the monster found its bearings, a lightning bolt landed on its big face, popping one of its eyes.
Stunned once more, Lev wreaked even more havoc on its large body, but the healing almost kept pace with him. Frustrated, he lopped off the second wing, tore off a chunk of flesh and chitin near the face, and aimed his left hand at the wound.
A blue fireball roared out of it, and that was when the monster decided it had had enough.
Raw arcane rushed out of its big body, effortlessly dispersing the fireball. Lev tried his best to move away, almost melting his armor with dual infusion, but it was for naught.
The wave dug into his armor, flesh, mind, and even his soul to a small extent due to the combined damage. Enchantments fizzled out first, the barrier construct corroding and melting from trying to absorb the wave.
Weaponized pure mana overpowered even the impact-resistant Epic suit underneath, reaching the fleshy body and distorting its way deeper.
He almost passed out on the spot from the pain. The wave didn’t just damage his body. It destroyed the flesh, crunched bones, and disrupted the blood flow.
Healing mana coursed through his body in a large stream, and for once, overloading himself with restoration mana wasn’t too much. His body greedily absorbed it all, focusing on the minor brain damage and keeping his heart beating.
Regardless, the damage wasn’t extensive enough to debilitate him entirely. His eyes worked just fine, deciphering light to inform him of the monster that had focused on regrowing its wings.
They were glowing now, not with mana, but heat. The champion had volcanic in its name, something that had slipped Lev’s mind.
An orange light spilled out of its open maw, and it was getting stronger and stronger. Lev forced his broken body to respond, manipulating it with the damaged armor to bring Stargazer in front of him. Speed was of the essence, so he used lightning to form a Fracturing Wave.
The mana slash wasn’t launched a moment too soon. Only a few meters away from him, the crescent wave clashed with a compressed, conical beam of fire. It was cut in two by the Fracturing Wave, affording him just enough time to fly up before his skill lost power.
Or at least, he tried to. Telekinesis held him in place, the unexpected attack locking his limbs entirely. Barrier after barrier formed in front of him, some of them belonging to Beatrice, and chains formed a net in front of him.
None of it mattered to the ant that had already finished charging up its dash. Chains shattered first, some of them cutting deep. Shieldwalls and shields, all the ones he had left in reserve, were destroyed next, but they failed to slow it down as well.
Time slowed down to a crawl as Lev’s Perception skill activated. Less than a few meters away from him, a mandible was about to skewer his face, and this time, no one was going to save him.
No Exalted would suddenly swoop in. Alec was nowhere to be seen either, and other than Beatrice, who couldn’t do anything, there was no one else to lend him a hand.
I’m going to die…
A chill spread through his body, a fear so intense that his memories didn’t do it justice. His hands shook for a single instant as he remembered facing the Windstrider Warg, the resignation and terror that had accompanied the encounter.
Then his resolve to live, if only to spite all those who wanted him dead, took over. Kinetic energy, stored in his armor and swiftly dispersing without the enchantments, rushed to his right arm. Letting go of Stargazer, he gathered blue flames in a fist, and from below, uppercutted the huge approaching mandible.
The result was just as explosive as the first time he had tried that in the pit. Blue fire packed enough of a punch to both halt the champion’s charge and toss Lev to the ground like a ragdoll.
He landed with a sickening crunch. A part of his spine was reduced to bits, and his left arm didn’t work properly. No plating remained on his armor, and the armor itself was barely whole. Riddled with cracks and devoid of functioning enchantments, it was a single push away from being destroyed.
Of his right arm, neither flesh nor bone nor armor remained above the elbow. The Epic Suit was miraculously still working at a reduced efficiency, the only thing that had stopped his own flames from killing him.
A tired, sluggish mind took note of all of that. Some part of it whispered how he should’ve just fought from afar and injured the ant as much as possible. Even dying, he knew that wouldn’t have solved anything, not when the monster would eventually outlive his full pool. The rate at which he would need to draw it all out to kill the monster in one go would’ve killed him first.
This is a shit way to go, he concluded with a grim mental chuckle. Done in by an ant. No matter if it was a champion, he wasn’t fine dying to ants.
With a silent sigh, he resolved himself to hasten his death because that was the only hope of survival. Surprisingly, he still had more than half of his combined pools remaining.
That gave him an idea. Barrier armor was fixed first, and he focused on carving Controlled Enhancement and Flameforged Constitution as quickly as possible.
The renewed armor also covered the stump of his right arm. With the barrier limb, he grabbed Stargazer just as a bout of force pushed him deeper into the ground. He ignored the pain and let it do so.
Swinging Stargazer through mental strength alone, he launched a Fracturing Wave at the monster. Formed of lightning, it covered distance in a blink, landing on the monster’s face.
Again, he formed a slash and launched it with a dozen chains. Half of the constructs broke in the first instant, buying just enough time for the slash to land on the same spot.
Hyperaware as he was, Lev acutely felt ants digging towards him to eat him alive. Two dozen meters below the surface, tens of orbs lay still in wait, exploding without preamble to take out entire groups of the monsters.
Vibrations flared pain throughout his body, but it was of the good kind. Like the reward of a particularly intense and satisfying workout, or perhaps a decent dying effort. He welcomed it with open arms.
In front of him, the monster screeched, trying to charge another wave, except Lev fired another Fracturing Wave at it. Mana continued to rush out of his pool through the legs, further destroying the currently-useless limbs to power a fifth mana slash.
This time, however, it was not so easy. His soul protested at the gross overuse of the strong skill, but urgency forced him to shape a slash anyway. From above, a rain of arrows fell on the champion to buy him more time, except that it also revealed a particular detail.
Below him, a hundred meters deep into the ground, a few of the auras vanished without a trace. Well hidden as they were, Lev just barely noticed them. But he had noticed them being snuffed out, and he tested it again with a few overloaded lances.
More ants died, and the champion continued to be healed at a ridiculous pace.
The moment the dots connected, he hurled the hastily formed slash at the monster. Picking himself up with a rope and tossing his battered and bleeding body back into the bubble, he flew away from the fort as fast as he could.
For the first time in his life, Lev accepted his defeat and fled the battle.