----[13th Floor]
----[Elise's perspective]
We are currently in a precarious situation.
-Exterminate vampire!
-Exterminate vampire!
-Exterminate vampire!
Multiple voices, coming from [Ice Golems] reverberate in the area with a single order to follow. Which is to simply and plainly put an end to my existence.
And as I kill them one after another, it seems that their numbers only increase more and more.
Olivia is helping me, but only just. Her attacks can't properly penetrate the frozen armour of the golems, so their efficiency is considerably reduced.
They were really designed to fight vampires, uh...
You may be wondering, what kind of trouble did we get ourselves into to come to this?
Well...
----[A while ago, approximately 30 minutes]
-Well, here we are. -. That was the first sentence Olivia said the moment we set foot on [Floor 13].
It was a bit of a struggle to get up here, but no big deal really. Rather, I'm amazed at the strength Olivia has to lift us both into the air... although after seeing her do so many things, I don't know if I'm surprised anymore.
From what I've seen, she is impressively skilled in the area of survival. She's been very adaptable to both environments so far.
I must say... I was more or less expecting it coming from the woman who has [Heroine] as her title. I find this world extremely hilarious the way things have developed since I've been here.
Several things have happened in the last few days... but losing Saeko has probably been the lowest blow I've received so far.
Olivia still hasn't noticed the change in our personalities. Maybe that's actually a good thing since I've had no problem mimicking Elise's behaviour since before all that stuff happened.
I still can't find an explanation as to why these things happened. In fact, even as part of the [System] I had no idea that someone's personality could be lost like that.
And I can't force anything for some reason, even if I access the depth of the [System], there is nothing to do.
I can only reduce myself to waiting for how long it will be before I can talk to Saeko again.
-This reminds me a lot of Cerola, but I had no idea this place was so big. I can't even see the hole you made.
I didn't notice it until Olivia pointed it out. That's right, I can't see anywhere the hole I opened and took us to [Floor 14] all at once.
-Let's walk for now. We won't do anything by staying in the same place. -. Olivia starts walking after saying this.
I follow a few steps behind her.
My feet sink slightly into the snow with each step I take. I have memories of Saeko playing in the snow with her parents before they died... I feel a little sad to have those memories, as if a feeling of nostalgia comes over me.
I don't understand how to feel about Saeko's memories.
I have them all, good memories, bad memories. However, I can't explain my point of view about it... apart from feeling sad about it.
I would like to lose these memories so as not to invade Saeko's privacy, but unfortunately that's something I can't interfere with either. Because it would mean directly interfering with Saeko's soul, and I don't want to do something like that.
While I was deep in thought, we were walking for quite a while...
When all of a sudden, my head collides with Olivia's back. She had stopped somewhere along our path.
-What's the matter? -. I ask her.
With a hesitant tone, Olivia answers me:
-Uhm... There's a barrier here. Just two steps away.
Her tone of voice remains hesitant. I understand her, both she and I can't understand what did this.
It's confusing.
-What kind of barrier is it? -. I ask, moving to stand next to Olivia.
Although it's hard to diffuse because of the white environment, yes, I can also tell that there is a barrier in front of us.
But I can't detect any magical energy apart from this one here. It's confusing.
-It's like the one I made to hide us from the [Orcs] but it's much denser and stronger. It probably has some kind of warning spell for any intruder trying to break through it.
Olivia touches the barrier, and it glows a rainbow hue as she does so. I was surprised to see the interaction present. I do the same as Olivia... and I'm surprised at how strong this barrier is. But consequently, I'm also bothered by something.
-There is a very powerful sorcerer inside this barrier. And whoever it was is not someone to be underestimated. -. I say to Olivia as I run my hand over the surface of the barrier.
She is silent for a moment.
-...
I don't have any skills that can handle this, so any attempt on my part is completely useless.
-Elise.
Suddenly, Olivia calls my name, which catches me a little by surprise. Her tone of voice is the same as when we first met and she was threatening to kill me.
I look up, and her expression now is definitely a scary one.
(Gulp...)
It even makes me gulp. And I thought I had experienced fear with that damn hydra in the past, but no doubt my real trauma back then is no one else but her, Olivia.
-Y, yes...? -. My tongue gets a little clumsy as I ask her for some sort of confirmation.
And with all the calmness in the world, she just communicates:
-Get behind me, I'm about to blow this crap up.
It doesn't take me half a second to obey her order and get behind her. Olivia adopts a particular posture... placing her fingertips on the surface of the barrier.
Hey.
That's... the [Zero Inch Strike] I used against Drïmur in our fight to the death. I guess she watched my attack closely enough to know what it is.
Olivia isn't doing this to annoy or humiliate me on the pretext that my attack was too weak to do anything.
Instead, she is doing this for one purpose only.
As if she's saying "Pay attention to everything I do."
-Fuu... -. Olivia lets out a small breath. A sign that she is relaxing her muscles in preparation.
She moves her left hand to hold the arm she's aiming at the barrier with. But even without activating some kind of skill, I can see the giant torrent of magic flowing through her right arm right now.
-Straighten your back. Focus all your senses. Keep your breathing steady with respect to the flow of magical energy in your body. And when all that is done, launch the attack with 90% of the magical energy and then shut off the flow of your energy for a moment.
Olivia pronounced the instructions as she has done so far. And then, the moment she closed her fist, the barrier was almost completely knocked out of position. The shockwave sent our hats and several piles of snow flying at the same time.
My eyes glazed over at the incredible feat, but the barrier was not yet completely destroyed. And Olivia goes on to explain.
-In the minimum time, charge up as much of your magical energy as you can again! I don't have a problem since I have too much to burn but you must take it into account. When your damn enemy is on the verge of being blown to hell, throw everything you've accumulated and strike the final blow! I present to you the [Zero Inch Strike 190%]!
Finishing explaining everything, a destructive power greater than before was unleashed in a single instant. The snow was ripped from its position at the same time as the barrier was pulverized with Olivia's final attack.
The shockwave surpassed the speed of sound and if it wasn't for me holding on to Olivia who was holding her ground, she would have been blown away by now.
Holy shit, that was too cool!
My ears are still ringing from the incredible explosion of energy that destroyed the magical barrier.
When the whole mess finally stopped, I can hear Olivia say:
-Sooner or later you will reach an exorbitant level of magical energy and that is one of the best uses I can teach you at the moment. Sorry for copying your secret technique, hehe.
The cold, almost emotionless tone of voice disappeared and Olivia was back to her old self.
But I'm actually... excited as hell, dammit!
-It was amazing, Olivia! I haven't seen anything like that until now, not even in my original world! You have to show me more than that!
-Huh? Was it? I'm... I'm glad you liked it...
-I loved it! You're great, Olivia!
-Ah, uh... thank you... -I don't...
I don't understand why Olivia's reaction, but she deserves a standing ovation right now anyway.
However, this celebration didn't last long.
Clipping a few hairs from my fringes, I could slowly watch as a spear passed right in front of my eyes. My confusion reached a new level.
I cast my eyes to the front, and right there, I can see rows upon rows of giant ice floes with limbs moving towards us. One of the front row, most likely the leader, was the one who threw the spear in my direction when he was so close to hitting me.
-Get ready, Elise! -. Olivia shouts, pulling me out of my thoughts again.
I was emotionally shaken when I saw the walking ice chunks in the front row throw their spears at us, all of them equally. We both started running in opposite directions.
I didn't think too much about it and activated my [Recreation] as fast as I could to create a longsword in my hands and throw it towards Olivia, who is unarmed right now as she hasn't taken anything out of her backpack.
-Okay, lesson number two! Use every last resource to your advantage!
As she shouts at me, Olivia raises a huge wall of snow as she swings her sword, allowing her to block the spears on her side.
For my part, I decide to try something new.
I lift myself into the air by boosting myself with magic and applying [Acrobatic Aerodynamics] on my arms and torso, I grab the first of the spears that was coming towards me and change its direction by applying wind magic on the object.
The spear impacted with more power than it should have previously, destroying a couple of those ice monsters.
I wanted to test how it turned out, but it's pretty inefficient when it comes to multiple targets.
I managed to dodge all the other spears without interfering with the trajectory of any of them. After the fight against Drïmur, I became much better at reacting. I return to the snow completely unscathed.
I have no trouble making sure I am unharmed, however, the second and third waves of spears were already being thrown at us.
And it was then that I got completely careless. Because the spears that were already thrown burst out in a strange cloud, covering the entire battlefield, the two of us included in that.
My feet were covered by a thick layer of ice.
-When I say everything, I mean literally everything!
Olivia keeps shouting her instructions, which I don't hesitate to heed.
I haven't taken damage from them so I can't get the [Vengeance] boost, however, I guess just 100% of [Slayer] is going to be enough for this.
Activating my ability, I break the ice on my feet with no problem with it and activate [Recreation] once again, but this time creating a shield several centimetres thick in order to successfully block the ice spears.
But that shouldn't be enough, so I activate [Flaming Reinforcement] on the shield, causing it to burst into flames and melt the ice on contact.
This is never going to end if we don't keep getting closer, Olivia and I understand that, so we start running to the front to melee these things.
The distance is quite a distance and the attacks don't seem to stop.
But since it's us, that doesn't become any kind of problem. And while Olivia is the first to break through the ranks of the ice monsters, I'm no slouch either.
Undoing the shield, I switch to a small war hammer. I hurl attack after attack wildly demolishing the bodies of these monsters one after another. Each attack is one of them destroyed. A rather large fragment of rare blue ice falls, but I don't pay any attention to that.
While I was at it, I could defer the noise these things were producing for some reason as soon as I got close.
-Exterminate vampire!
-Exterminate vampire!
-Exterminate vampire!
-Exterminate vampire!
-Exterminate vampire!
-Exterminate vampire!
...?
What the hell? Why are these icy rocks saying so much shit all of a sudden?
I don't understand, but I concentrate on continuing to destroy them no matter what. Some of them want to attack me directly with their spears, but they're destroyed before they even manage to hit me.
Olivia, on the other hand, is sweeping the snow with them, finding herself stealing these monsters' spears again and again and using them against them.
However... as I'm attacking more, I'm noticing an irregularity. More and more of these bastards are building up and as they do so, they are resisting more and more of my attacks.
I've gone from taking one hit to break them to having to use four or five for the same task.
I feel a bit nervous about this - why are they suddenly becoming more and more resistant?
Even Olivia's attack power is being reduced as more of them are closing in around us.
My attacks are becoming more and more useless, even when I put all my strength into the little hammer.
And then----
-Shit! -. I scream into the air, seeing what's above my head.
A huge fist of ice descends on me, seeking to bury me alive in the snow.
I barely managed to cover my head with my arms and protect myself from the tremendous impact that fell on my body. The invisible armour was unaffected, yet the pain was still there.
My arms went numb, and my feet dug a few centimetres into the ground from the impact. It was certainly an incredible blow.
This is a huge body of ice that is going against me and only me. I guess I was totally serious about exterminating the vampire. The bastard starts throwing successive blows at me one after the other.
-Damn it, Elise, didn't you destroy the cores?!
-The what?!
-A piece of blue ice, these damn golems apart from getting stronger the less of them there are, they can become almost indestructible when they combine their cores! That's why it's important to destroy that thing any way you can!
-How was I supposed to know that?!
The pounding didn't stop for the world, now I'm pinned to the ground up to my ankles. This is bad.
Ahh, I'm going to be buried alive!
It's no surprise that these things happen. But, how could I possibly overcome...? Ah.
Damn, I had to think about it before!
Now that I've taken damage from these things, I can activate [Vengeance] and since I've destroyed several of them, [Genocide] can come into play as well.
Okay, let's do this!
Activating the two aforementioned abilities, my stats instantly shot up and I prepared to then activate [Stell Claws] on the golem's next attack. Throwing that last hammer blow I would receive, my right hand dug deep into its congealed fist.
That hurt quite a bit and I think I have a couple of broken fingers, but with this I managed to get up along with him the moment he raised his arm after his attack was over.
I then made my way through with my plan, which first of all had one of the things I did with Olivia's help. It was... complicated to do, you might say, as I don't have much knowledge of weaponry, but with Olivia's help it all worked out wonderfully.
The golem noticed that I was now stuck in its hammer arm, and tried to shake me off, but it was no use, my grip had become too strong in no time.
-You're not going to get away with this. -. I mutter in a cold tone of voice.
You know 1,2,3-trinitroxypropane? Exactly! The popularly known TNG! Or nitroglycerine for those who don't know chemistry.
Nitroglycerin reacts easily with almost anything to cause it to explode. Combine that with the fact that almost no one in this world, including Olivia, has an extensive knowledge of chemistry or chemical reactions, there is no way they could have prepared for this.
I've noticed that many things have a high resistance to magical attacks, but what about a physical attack that pretends to be magical? That's the solution to a lot of the problems!
I unfold the helmet of my armour and prepare to activate [Flaming Reinforcement] in my right hand when I drive the nitroglycerine into the thick chunk of ice taking up all the force available to me, the nitroglycerine we compacted into a boar tusk then reacted with the flames and produced a violent explosion that shattered the giant hammer arm into two blocks of ice.
I released the block of ice in the air and with [Acrobatic Aerodynamics] I rose a few meters in the air and got ready to take out from my inventory the thing I thought I would take the longest to use.
A bulky warhammer, made from the finest materials available on the violent [Floor 14], this was the weapon of the [Orc Emperor], Drïmur.
And this same weapon, I wave it in the air only to impact directly with the golem's head. All my strength imprinted in that one blow.
The ice head shattered into ice dust. But this hammer has one of the craziest properties Olivia has ever seen in a weapon, and that is to multiply the impact received as many times as the user's attack stat.
So the formula would be:
22000 (rounded) attack × 400% increase for Vengeance, Slayer and Genocide = 88,000.
88,000 × 22000 = 1.936×10⁹ total attack points.
In other words, Drïmur would have made mincemeat out of me with a single attack from this thing and I would have had no way to withstand the impact.
And that was just what happened to the golem, whose body could not withstand the brutal force of the impact and disintegrated into tiny particles of ice.
It was just putting its feet back on the snow when...
-Everyone, stay where you are!
A scream rises into the air, and my feet are pinned to the ground by the command. And all the others too, the [Ice Golems] and Olivia.
-Uh-huh... -. Despite everything, Olivia is still able to utter that little sentence.
Hey, I can't turn around. I don't know what's going on!
-Who the hell are you, blondie? How dare you enter another vampire's territory?!
...?
I have no idea who she is. I can't turn my head no matter how much I want to, what the hell did she do to me?
-What? Wait a minute, vampire? You are supposed to be extinct.
-You all thought the same thing, until she came here! How does a brat like her exist?!
-That's what I'm asking you! You're illogical!
-It's illogical what she did to my barrier!
And those two went on arguing and arguing, while I was petrified in my place.
What a load of crap.