Weapons of Mass Destruction

We split the loot from the lurkers well and head deeper into the 1st floor. The blasted environments and high ceilings beginning to feel familiar, but I don't let it lull me and stay attentive.

At some point, two lurkers finally manage to reach Sophie—something Tess lets happen—and Sophie takes control of them. One a vyssari man with flame attacks, and the other a human woman with some sort of domain that serves to reduce the effectiveness of healing skills.

Around that time, we reach our first named lurker—of the same race Rat used to be, the name of which I still don't know. It’s a humanoid with gray skin and long, slim arms and legs.

[Reanimated Corpse - lvl 307]

I reach him before Jean can, and activate my Mana Wavelength Iris. The ever-present mana moving around the creature making itself known to my sight. I feel like I can see it all. I see the ambient mana floating in the air, mana seeping from the bodies of the people around me, the structure of the skill the lurker’s trying to activate. The amount of information that strained me before, even before undergoing the strengthening process, now flows smoothly into my brain, which accepts it—all with an ease that feels almost like cheating.

The lurker uses my shadow which expands, becomes three-dimensional, and takes on a shape unlike any animal or monster I’ve ever seen. Its eyes glow red, and six powerful limbs reach out to grab me.

The mana in my crown spins and destabilizes, releasing a disrupting pulse, returning my shadow to its normal state. At the same time, all the shadows around me erupt with monsters, wolves with six legs and no tail, humanoid figures with snake heads, lion-like animals with elongated maws and six eyes. Each one a pitch black shadow given form by mana.

Another wave disrupts them all.

I weave a javelin from my mana and launch it at the lurker, who bursts like a bubble in a flash of shadowy substance.

Wraith Dance brings me closer, and my eyes read through the remains of his skills. [Eclipse] activates in the same fashion as [Resonance]. My mana overpowers the lurker, and I connect to his skill, teleporting along with him.

I form a barrier in front of me, incepting a barrage of attacks, ripples of force rolling through the surface.

More and more of that shadowy substance leaks from the lurker in an attempt to encapsulate the area around me. It floats like water, covering an area wide enough to take out a city block and spinning like a whirlpool, sharp edges grinding the surroundings to dust: whether it be the remains of buildings, trees, or stones.

I create a projectile and launch it through, piercing his defenses with ease without slowing down in the least and opening a gaping hole in his barrage. The lurker's barriers crumble under my attack, and he finally stumbles back missing the left half of his body.

Every shadow in the area moves like a living thing, surrounding him—and giving form to a pitch-black figure the size of a multi-story building. Its head looks like a lizard's and it has four arms, two thick legs, and a long tail to top it all off.

Each step is fluid, the surface of the lurker's creation rippling as it moves forth. The huge figure opens its mouth, and pours forth a white flame, quickly narrowing the stream until it's condensed into a beam about as thick as my arm crashing against my barrier like a laser. That flame roars as it pierces through the air, burning everything in its way; without even sparing the mouth of the shadowy black creation before me as the shadow substance evaporates into nothing.

I give it a bit longer, but the lurker doesn't seem to have any secret trump cards in the mix.

Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised. That kind of skill combination would’ve probably managed to wipe out a big city or two, and it's somewhat fitting for someone at level 307, I think.

My own mana explodes from me, surrounding me in armor the size of the beast facing me. The barrier disappears, and the white flames crash into the chestplate of the blue armor I’ve enclosed myself in, right in front of me.

I weave it denser and denser, until I feel happy with the integrity, noting that it’s not even putting any strain on my mind. Kinetic energy explodes from me, and my armor moves faster than ever before.

The shadowy figure gathers the surrounding flames into its hand, a sword made of white flame forming there as it swings against me.

I further weave and compress mana and let the sword crash against my forearm.

There is no damage, and the sword breaks into flames which rapidly dissipate into the air.

Before it can move, I take a step. My eyes locate the body of the lurker, and I burrow my arm into the mouth of the shadow from whence the flames emerge, grab the lurker, and squeeze.

[You have defeated Reanimated Corpse - lvl 307]

[Lvl 297 > Lvl 298]

Right away, I pull the mana back into my crown, and over where the head of my mana armor was, a barrage of stone javelins passes. I boost myself towards the ground and use Wraith Dance to move towards where I see pulses of mana.

The ground in front of me explodes, and a huge arm made of stone reaches towards me. I dodge it, and another is there, and then more. Dozens of arms, some of them not much bigger than mine and others as thick as trees.

Boosting myself into the air, I fly in the direction of the attacker. Whitey's favorite, Resonance Flow, surrounds me, and every projectile entering my perimeter slows to a stop in mid air as if frozen in time. Hundreds of them follow suit, immense amounts of kinetic energy collecting inside of me.

The figure disappears underground, and I crash into the surface where it disappeared, releasing all of the kinetic energy into the ground below, reverberating through stone and soil.

My eyes read the movement, and [Ley Line] stretches down after him, teleporting me into a room just big enough to take a few steps in.

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The vyssari lurker, even emotionless as they are, seems to show shock seeing me here and turns to attack me.

I release the mana orb I’ve been making—a compressed mess of thermal energy, kinetic energy, and a lot of mana. Before it explodes, I teleport back to where I was, the ground under my feet shaking.

[You have defeated Reanimated Corpse - lvl 291]

Three more lurkers attack me all at once, two of them go all out to disrupt my mana and the last one prepares to deploy a domain that I can feel hanging patiently in the air, all the while firing harpoons made of mana at me with chains tied to them connected to a wildly oscillating circle behind his back.

[Eclipse] activates, and I gradually feed it more and more mana, without the slightest regard for their attempts to disrupt my mana. My eyes read them all, modify the frequency of my mana, and with that, they’re barely a bother.

The world loses more of its color under the influence of [Eclipse], and only mana keeps its color. It's something that happens from the view of others as well—not dissimilar to the effect of [Focus].

[Eclipse - lvl 8 > Eclipse - lvl 9]

[Eclipse - lvl 9 > Eclipse - lvl 10]

[Eclipse - lvl 10 > Eclipse - lvl 11]

The domain the lurker was preparing to deploy destabilizes and deactivates, unable to penetrate the effects of my [Eclipse], which simply overpowers it—my mana resonating at frequencies that counteract and disrupt its structure.

His mana harpoons crash against my bare body, dissolving into a mist of fine particles in the process.

Mana threads swirl around me, growing denser and denser and weaving together as they move through the air behind me, forming a circle of inscriptions.

The harpoon lurker tries to move away, but a javelin quickly forms next to me, connected to me with a thread of mana, much the same as the harpoons connected to the lurker. It shoots ahead, changing direction mid-flight as the lurker tries to dodge, only for the projectile to follow him. At times, bursts of kinetic energy pulse forth in time with a slight tilt this way or that, sending it in different directions until the javelin finally pierces the lurker and a kill notification rings in my head.

[You have defeated Reanimated Corpse - lvl 289]

[Eclipse - lvl 11 > Eclipse - lvl 12]

The two remaining lurkers, a pair of similar-looking feylith figures, finally stop trying to get into my head and disrupt my mana.

Wraith Dance brings me to them before they fly into the air, avoiding my pulses of kinetic energy, and swiftly maneuvering their flight around me. The inscriptions made of mana threads I’ve been working on finally activate, attempting to mimic the thing the eye did that prevented me from flying.

For a moment, the two feylith stumble, and it seems like they will fall, but flaws in my inscriptions sabotage the attempt, allowing the duo to push through.

More testing needed.

I deactivate [Eclipse] and my mana threads before boosting myself into the air with kinetic energy and quickly catching up to the two feylith.

The highly specialized lurkers attack again, their mental attacks crashing uselessly against my passive, while my mana control is much too great for them to disrupt, allowing me to finish them quickly.

Two more notifications ring.

Quickly, I move from body to body, grabbing any useful items and reading through the descriptions.

Looking around, I don't find any lurkers nearby, so I teleport through the [Ley Line] connecting me to Lily and appear next to her, only to duck down immediately, as her huge axe passes over my head.

"I'm sorry! You surprised me!" Lily shouts and moves away at incredible speed.

Sensing mana, I look into the air and find a vyssari floating there, blue flames surrounding her with a crown made of fire floating over her head.

[Reanimated Corpse - lvl 313]

I quickly realize what Lily was escaping from. This fireball composed of blue flames with a white core as big as a small building.

Feeling the heat scorching my skin, I teleport again, reappearing next to Tess this time, after sending her a warning through our link of course. In the distance, a flash explodes into the darkness, as blue flames mixed with white burst into the sky, the heat serving to set the surrounding forest ablaze and evaporating anything in their direct path.

The shockwave and heat reach even us here, and I watch as the flames swirl and move like living creatures, merging into the shape of a snake seeking out a lonely figure.

Jean doesn't even try to avoid it, and I would bet he’s smiling, even now. He throws a punch at the giant flaming snake, which promptly disappears like the flame of a blown-out candle. The immense pressure from Jean’s strike blowing it away and tearing the ground apart around him.

Flame armor surrounds the flying vyssari, making her seem even bigger than Jean as she lands—burning blue armor surrounding her and two enormous gloves made of white flames.

She and Jean clash again, burns appearing on the man's skin, but the flames blowing off before reigniting quickly as Jean hits her once again.

The vyssari in flame armor is thrown through the air, setting anything she touches on fire and only coming to a stop after bulldozing through dozens of trees. Jean reaches her surprisingly quickly, his stomps blowing out the fire raging through the forest and then crashing into another battle with the armor which once again finds itself extinguished. He grabs the vyssari by the head and arm, ignoring the burst of white flames ravaging his chest, and pulls, tearing the small body in half.

The flames blaze up once more before the vyssari lurker dies.

Jean stands there with the flesh burned away from his chest, ribcage clearly visible, along with the organs inside his body, especially that big, powerful heart beating a surprisingly calm rhythm.

Slowly, his wounds begin to close, and I can tell Lucien isn’t healing him. Even so, his combat abilities don’t seem reduced in the slightest.

With all the lurkers dead, we exchange a few quick messages and loot the bodies, before heading towards the safe zone once more.

"So what do you think of Jean and Lucien?" I ask Lily, matching my speed to hers.

"I could beat him if I wanted," Lily immediately says.

Now that I think of it, that would be fun to watch, but I don't say it out loud and specify instead, "You know what I meant."

"Well, I can obviously heal better than that boy, I think. He hasn’t really done much until now. As for CarrotCake... Jean... I can see why he won the tournament for his round. He might seem hotheaded and dumb, but he is surprisingly effective in a fight."

"It's called battle IQ," Sophie states, joining the conversation. "When it comes to combat, he’s hyper aware of his positioning relative to his opponents, and to top it all off he’s quick to grasp their abilities."

I don't even ask her why she’s been observing him so much. She obviously wouldn't like someone like him threatening her life.