As we descended toward the battlefield, the platforms separated, each flying to a different part of the arena. I was guided toward the grasslands, together with the rabid rat. The odd wolf and the kobold were sent toward the forest. The water elemental and the Saurian to the lake, and the Minotaur and the Reaper Snake to the mountain. Once everyone was in position above their starting point, our platforms passed through a barely visible dome over the arena, slowly descending to the ground. I got ready to unleash the surprise I’d been preparing for a while now, and as soon as the platform touched the ground and the dome over it vanished, I jumped into action.
I had figured out that there would be some type of battle quite a while ago, even though I wasn’t sure if it was going to be in the style of a tournament or a free-for-all. Betting on an everyone vs. everyone scenario, I’d started preparing a little spell for this exact moment. Poison Mist was a lowly D-tier spell that had been with me since the very first layer, rarely seeing use as I had spells that were far more suited to inflicting poison. The only exception was when I was facing hordes of enemies. While I wasn’t facing a horde, the arena was quite big, making poison mist the best vehicle for delivering my poison to all participants.
As such, two days ago, I started casting poison mist.
The spell was one of the few I possessed that could be cast with a variable mana cost, with no apparent limit. Attempting something new, I attempted to charge the spell while maintaining the meditation skill. I failed several times for the first few days, constantly losing concentration on the spell, causing it to activate early. A careful balance between emptying my mind to meditate and concentrating on maintaining and feeding mana to the spell was needed. But once I finally found it and the spell maintenance became effortless, I was able to do both at the same time. I was forced to be stationary, and I only charged the spell as much as meditation allowed me to recover, so that I would remain topped up on MP for the actual battle, but it worked. As the days kept passing, and more and more mana got pumped into the spell, it became harder to maintain the spell and keep it from going out of control, so I had to stop once I reached my limits, lest I waste it all due to letting it rip too early.
As such, when the dome finally dropped, I released one of the most potent spells I’d ever cast. I’d spent two whole days charging it, after all. To make matters worse, since the platform had conveniently delivered me here, I hadn’t moved from this exact spot for a while, making my turret skill activate. Charged with an absolutely ridiculous 1.2 million MP and enhanced by the turret skill, poison mist exploded outward from me. I wasn’t aware what the mana costs were like for EX-tier spells, but having pumped that much mana in there had to have been at least on par. And, in line with my expectations, the supercharged spell received some additional effects similar to how magical bolt had behaved.
For starters, the mist was spreading explosively, whipping up strong winds as it spread far and wide within seconds. It was so dense that it was actually visible, the world taking on a green tint and limiting visibility, more fog than mist at that point. And it kept coming, more and more poison mist flooding the arena, even long after I lost my ability to see further than a hundred meters. It took a whole thirty seconds for the spell to run its course, and it finally stopped. In its wake, all that remained was a world of poison.
I couldn’t help but smile, knowing that all the other monsters now had to contend with incredibly potent poison, limited visibility, as well as each other. Considering that my poison was of the tenth tier while the monsters gathered here were at the eighth, it was only a matter of time until the first one succumbed. And, unless they had some kind of countermeasure, their death warrant was sealed.
Speaking of, here comes one now.
My void feelers picked up the presence of the giant plague rat before I could see it. I would have probably been able to hear it before that, but the buffeting winds from my spell had droned out everything else. A quick check with the archive revealed that it was not affected by the poison at all, which wasn’t all that surprising. Out of all the monsters here, if any of them had poison immunity, it would have been this thing. Looks like I needed to take out this thing the old-fashioned way.
The rat was charging straight at me, while letting out a gurgling screech. No feints, no traps, just mindless destruction on its mind. Not wanting to engage it on its own terms, especially since it dealt in diseases which I had no interest in contracting, I teleported into the air behind it. I could hear faint explosions now as the other monsters that had been dropped close to each other started engaging as well, and I joined the cacophony by releasing a set of void javelins. Just before they hit home, I noticed the camera following the rat scurry out of the way. I assumed the cameras were of a similarly indestructible material as the arena floor of the tournament, but I couldn’t be entirely certain. Maybe the camera just wanted to get a wider angle.
As for the rat, it was pelted with seventeen void javelins, which caused a rapid series of explosions, briefly obscuring the rat. In the wake of the detonations, a screech even worse than before resounded, causing me to seal my ears. It may not be any kind of sonic attack, but it was unpleasant to listen to. The rat was missing chunks of its body but was still standing in a grotesque display. If I had to guess, the damn thing was some kind of undead monster, so missing a few body parts should hardly stop it.
I was about to cast some more spells to finish it off when the rat suddenly exploded. Contaminated blood and gore shot off in all directions, and only some quick thinking and a teleport save me from being pelted and infected. Confused at the seemingly suicidal attack, I returned to the spot of the crime after giving things a few seconds to settle down. The ground was littered with rotten body parts, the blood releasing some kind of mist as it was eating through the grass and dirt like a particularly potent acid.
What the hell was that rat doing? Did it just give up and hand me the win?
The lack of a system screen confirming the kill made me wary, though. While it was in line with a hyper-aggressive monster to have a skill to blow itself up, I didn’t think that it would spell the end for the rat. There had to be more to the skill. And, just as I thought, after a few seconds, the strewn apart body parts of the rat started to move. They wriggled and morphed as I watched on in fascination and disgust. Eventually, one of the smaller bits transformed itself into a tiny version of the plague rat, shortly followed by every other part. It only took a few seconds, but where once there was a giant disgusting rat, there now was a swarm of differently sized, smaller disgusting rats.
They somehow locked onto my position, gliding in a circle above them, and all let out their signature screech. Slightly amused at the odd display, my smile quickly faded as the mass of rats surged. They stepped on top of each other to build a fucked up ladder toward me, with some of the smaller rats being launched in my direction like some kind of disgusting, tiny missiles. A quickly charged wind bolt sent the rat projectiles back to the ground, and I decided that this thing needed to go.
Since the rat would probably survive as long as a single ratling survived, I decided to go scorched earth and unleashed a lava torrent at the swarm. After the initial splash on the main mass, I drew a wide circle with lava to prevent any rats from running, before recasting the spell to keep it going, flooding the entire area in lava to make sure nothing survived. After deleting the main mass, I still hadn’t gotten the kill notification, so I started gliding around the area until my void feelers picked up what had to be the smallest rat of the bunch. I’d almost missed it since it was so tiny, and if it had held still while hiding instead of running away at great speed, I probably would’ve overlooked it.
Unfortunately for it, I did spot the speedy coward.
A quick spell took care of the rat, barely bigger than a fingernail, and when it died, I finally received the confirmation.
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Eighth Layer Quest:
Participants: 6/8
Personal Kills: 1
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Looks like two monsters already died. I wonder who else managed to get a kill this fast, and which monster was killed. The fact that the system was keeping track of the kills I accrued was new, but not entirely unexpected. There had been no mention of extra rewards for killing as many monsters as possible, but the fact that it bothered to display the count meant that it wouldn’t hurt to at least attempt to get as many kills as possible. A perfect sweep was already impossible, but getting at least half seemed like a realistic goal. Maybe I could get more if I got some lucky kills due to the poison mist covering the entire arena.
Either way, if I wanted to rack up points, I needed to get going. And what target was more worthy of being my next victim other than the reaper snake? Having seen the snake being deposited in the mountain area, I oriented myself toward it and shot off while activating my speed buffs.