Chapter 817 - Boys vs a weird spider

Something streaks past me and slams into the ground, where it bounces and flies further. An orange light keeps flickering around that object, which I realize is Savant.

Even before I turn my head, I react to the presence closing in. I condense a massive surge of mana in front of me, making a barrier as thick as a wall, against which a fist punches with a gong like thud.

The barrier shatters, and I absorb the kinetic energy behind that fist, slowing it down. Morwag uses his energy to bind that fist toward the ground, causing an explosion that I use to move away.

The monster towers over me and Morwag, standing on spider legs that stab into the ground like knives. Its body is similar in size to that of a velnar man with six arms, but the proportions are twisted, with some arms bigger than the others. Instead of a face, there is a cluster of eyes, black and empty. The monster has no mouth at all.

[Skreth - lvl ????]

It stabs one of its hands into its chest, pulling out a rib which grows and elongates into a bone projectile, which it then throws. I duck under the thrown bone projectile, but it explodes behind me. The shrapnel from it rains onto the ground just as I teleport away to watch Skreth reach into the air, pull at the lines I have woven there, and tear them apart with its bare hands.

Just the next moment, Morwag crashes against it, and stone chains made with Morwag’s low pristine weapon fly into the air. All six arms of the monster move, some fight Morwag, while others pull at the lines I set or the arrays I try to deploy. Another one of them continues to throw bone projectiles, which grow in strength. The monster moves surprisingly quickly on its eight legs, often lunging forward to stab at Morwag.

Seeing that I will not be able to use my usual tactics, I surround myself with Regalia and manifest a long spear in my hand. I make the armor stronger by using [Weave] as I further weave together the structure I have manifested from my mind.

Wraith Dance brings me closer, but at the same time, the Skreth throws Morwag away. Through some sense, it predicts the kinetic vibrations of my movement and turns to the place where I appear.

My attempt to teleport away is torn apart by two of the hands, and in two more are a bone spear and a scimitar attacking me.

The spear in my hands breaks into two short swords, which I cross in front of myself with my mana roaring through my body to strengthen it.

I block the spear, but the bone scimitar cuts across my chest at incredible speed. I avoid the knife-like legs’ attempts to stab through me and pull the blood from my wound into my hand. The next moment, I send thermal energy to the wound, burning my flesh and the necrotic poison attacking my body, which is making the wound rot. [Empyrean Lance] grows from my blood, this time as I hold it in my hand, with it burning my flesh.

Morwag crashes against the monster again, and all six of the monster´s arms snap and pull toward its body as if tied by a rope, and I use the opportunity to stab at it.

I almost lose my balance as my attack passes through empty air, and my eyes sweep the area, searching for the monster, which I find standing high in the air. It breaks through the binding and releases its arms to spread them open. All of its eyes continue to blink, none of them in sync, and inside of them, a red light rises.

A huge amount of mana gathers around the monster, and it snuffs out some of the weaker attacks I shoot at it. It slightly redirects the ones I have time to weave stronger, which pierce through the body but stop against the bones and do not penetrate further. Any flesh pierced quickly heals, as do the burns from the explosions.

Morwag’s stone spines reach toward it to attack, but it is already ready, preparing an attack as I lean to the point I am almost falling, then run in a burst of speed. Around me and all over the place, bone projectiles land. Each one, immediately after stabbing into the ground, grows in size, and from it, many more bone spikes extend, creating something akin to a labyrinth of thorny web that I move between.

I stop, and another bone projectile as big as a telephone pole stabs where I was heading. I absorb all the kinetic energy from the impact, as well as the momentum of the spikes that began to grow and which now stop. A blast of raw mana shoots around me in an omnidirectional way, evaporating everything nearby and pushing it away, including the bone spikes.

More blood drips off my hand, expanding into a spear surrounded by mana with a golden and white core, which I shoot and boost at the Skreth. Behind the monster, something like enormous wings made of bones appears, and then a wave reaches forward at the lance, which breaks through the bone and continues, even piercing the monster's chest and leaving a huge hole through it.

That hole closes up as bone plates grow around it, and for a short moment, the monster wavers, seemingly about to fall down. Savant exploits the opportunity, appearing in the air behind the monster. In one hand, he holds the Sword of Aeons, and from his back, from one of his shoulder bones, a wing made of white feathers has grown, reminiscent of an angel's. Like the last light of a dying day, an orange light surrounds his figure.

Still, the monster reacts even then, moving its arms to block an attack and releasing mana to blast him away. I open my eyes wide, staring at that mana and taking in all of the information, holding the glasses in my hand. That mana unwinds, breaks, and weakens under my sight, creating an opportunity, and the Sword of Aeons cuts diagonally through the monster and deep into its trunk. The orange light intensifies, seeping into the blade and creating mana radiation that sizzles the monster, burning half of its eyes.

A terrible screech fills the area, and all the thorny bone web covering multiple square miles shakes and then begins to grow rapidly, forcing me to avoid and break the ones reaching toward me. Most of the bone spikes stab toward the sky, growing like massive spears to reach Savant.

Much more mana seeps from the monster, and Savant tries to pull his sword back, but he is unable to do so as it gets stuck, bone growing over it and reaching toward him. His wing swings, and he moves away without his weapon.

With a thunderous crack, another of my lances stabs through the monster, which jolts and turns toward me, forcing more of the bone spikes to target me as they create a dense web I can barely move through. When the monster turns back to Savant, he is gone, absorbing his presence again.

The Skreth screeches again, its bone wings spreading wide as the labyrinth of thorny spikes expands outward, now blanketing an area the size of a city of half a million people, and still growing.

I use Wraith Dance combined with Pulser Stance to weave in between them, sometimes slowing to a walk and destroying the spikes with a burst of thermal energy that lights up the night.

This begins to feel like fun, I cannot help myself but to think.

My body feels warmed up, that familiar tension creeping in. Skin going cold, hands hovering on the edge of trembling. My senses sharpen to their peak, taking in everything around me. Mana roars through me as I draw more and more of it, holding it just beneath my skin, ready to throw it at the monster.

I am not alone, and no one seems to want to end this fight too quickly. Everyone considers the monster an opponent we can fight or escape from, and the monster itself gradually increases its output.

More thermal energy floods out into an orb over my head as big as a baseball. It spins, and from it, a thin laser like stream shoots, roaring like a starting jet engine and sweeping all over the place in 360 degrees. It cuts into the bones, leaving molten cuts along the way.

Forcing my way through the blockage, I teleport towards one of the marks I have placed during the fight, and the place where I stood gets hit by a bus sized bone projectile.

Slowing into a walk again, I look up at the Skreth that is now surrounded by building sized bone projectiles, as long as two or three train segments put next to each other.

Another launches at me with high speed, and I teleport again, this time much further. From there, I shoot another lance with its launch, so boosted that it more than breaks the sound barrier and evaporates the bone spikes around me. It pierces through the belly of the monster and heads further, where it stabs somewhere into the ceiling far in the distance.

The wound across my chest is still not fully healed, and a bit of my blood flows there. All of it that is outside of my body, I gather and move thanks to how much mana it holds. It currently floats next to me in the form of a small orb.

There is a blast of orange light that encompasses the area, and then the building sized bone projectile that was about to crash there disappears. The next moment, it appears again and launches from that spot towards the Skreth instead. That projectile breaks into bone dust, and gradually, with a cracking and pulses of mana, all other spikes do as well. Like a sandstorm made of tiny bone pieces, it swirls around the area the size of a big city, carving into the ground and gathering speed.

I see the flash of a white wing as Savant launches into the air, his [Dawn] facing the mana pressure and bone storm. Morwag is still nowhere to be seen, and neither are Weslin and Brich.

Void surrounds Savant as his absorbed heart beats, sending out waves of his void around him. His orange light surrounds him tighter, almost like an outline of his figure, as he crashes against the Skreth with the dense, city sized bone storm roaring around them.

I watch as he grabs the handle of the bone covered Sword of Aeons, still stabbed through the monster, and pulls back with the bone cracking as an enormous amount of mana is released from the sword that he yanks out in a stream of sickly red blood. In a blink, he flies back and horizontally swings his weapon.

Like a scar, a clear one mile wide line separates the bone storm and cuts through it, a deep line also carved into the Skreth, now unrecognizable from before. The entirety of its body is covered in bone armor. The spider legs are now much bigger, and the six arms are longer, each ending in a bone blade of claws. Savant’s attack only causes a deep crack across its chest but does not pierce deeper.

My lance launches again, but with my thoughts accelerated, I watch as this time the monster catches up. It turns its head at such speed it feels like a swift movement even with my accelerated perception. Then, the monster disappears in a teleport.

I follow that travel and turn around just as the monster appears from a bigger piece of bone on the ground near me. It is now almost twice as tall as I am. A monstrosity entirely in bone armor with many limbs. There is not even a slit for eyes, just what seems like an uneven, twisted helmet with random protrusions.

Returning to the ground was a mistake.

I reach for the teleport. The Skreth fights me for it, savagely like an animal, but I grind through anyway.

Then, instead of me disappearing, someone else appears between me and the monster. The huge clawed arms crash against Morwag’s chest and break as the demon lets me teleport him through the mark I have placed on him.

There is a smile on his face, and his heart beats rhythmically. Not a single wound appears on his body as he uses his binding energy to the utmost. To increase his endurance, to hold his body, skin, and whatever else together. At the same time, he overclocks his body, pouring every scrap of mana into a reckless body reinforcement technique that sends his output skyrocketing.

With the obsidian spine chain forgotten somewhere in the distance, just in his clothes, without any items, and through the sheer power of his body, Morwag faces this monster. He grabs the clawed arm and yanks it downward, forcing the monster to bow to him, and smashes his head against the monster's, causing a shockwave that makes me stumble back.