I feel the outside world becoming far less visible to my senses.
Through the two holes in the mansion floor where I slashed with my full-powered attack to free Raven from the threads, I can still send a weaker pulse of perception through it.
However, the outside world isn't my main concern right now. It's the dozens of yellow eyes on me and the pulse of divine energy that floods out of the large marble orb at the back of the room, powering all of these statues.
The density of True Core's power circulating through the white statues varies a lot, but the two that lunge toward me have the highest amount inside them.
Their strength is equivalent to the manifestations I cut down entering this mansion, but the difference lies in their battle patterns. These statues aren't just dancing puppets rambling away and spewing white threads my way.
The statue to my right is a tall and muscular man wielding a large battle axe, while the hunter to my left carries two short swords.
My greater form towers over them in stature, speed, and strength, but they charge at me with no hesitation.
Behind them, the remaining statues quickly shift into a triangular formation with the base holding the majority of marble hunters guarding the large sphere at the back of the corridor.
All of them move in unison, and the yellow glow in their eyes seems lifeless. However, their intricately detailed armor, weapons, and facial features remind me that these were humans too...
The blurry visual of Raven's body turning to stone as I flew here at my top speed replays in my mind while I swing my two swords in their greater form at the higher-powered statues aiming to attack me.
They were at one point human too, but with the amount of power streaming through their systems right now, it's too risky not to go for the instant kill...
As both my swords slash through the stone hunters, I'm met with minor resistance, but my attacks are ultimately successful, cleaving both warriors in half in a single strike.
My decision not to hesitate and go straight for the kill was the correct one, as behind me, seemingly summoned out of thin air, thousands of shimmering threads multiply from a single one, and three clones of the tall, lanky man appear, sending waves of white tendrils my way.
I have enough time to jump out of the way, following through with my attack and dodging the white threads that seek to tether to my greater form.
At the same time, two more hunters from the defense line step forward, and the sphere pulses, allowing two more full-powered hunters to lunge at me.
It's five versus one.
While they're not exceptionally strong, the growing web of white threads behind me and the huge army of hunters in front of me isn't the best position to be in.
My greater form gives me very noticeable strength benefits, but inside this narrow hall, I feel a bit limited in the maneuverability of my weapons.
I can't jump or take long flying motions to build up momentum for my swings.
To make things even worse, the manifestations of the lanky, faceless man behind me are very aware of this fact, using it as an advantage to cut me off and force me into a corner.
Still, I'm in control of the battle, slashing through a swordsman and a tank in front of me, and step off the white wall to my left to narrowly avoid the incoming web of countless white strands.
However, when I attempt to position myself to fly further down the hall, over the army of still guards, three more manifestations of the faceless man materialize and grow out from a single stray strand.
A web of countless white threads now falls toward me on all sides, and there are only small exit points far too narrow for my greater form to slip through.
I don't know if my higher level of True Core's strength can combat these threads and strongly consider using the reflective unique barrier ability to create a potential opening, but all of these options are risky and the outcome isn't certain.
A more viable option seems to be deactivating my greater form, but I want to keep all the strength and speed buffs that come with it.
So, instead of fully deactivating it, I decide to focus on the energy that surrounds my body with much closer attention to detail.
It is a pure mana manifestation, linked to my lifeforce at its core.
A larger-than-life version of myself. Whatever happens to my greater form is reflected onto me. This gives a far greater surface area to be attacked, but in turn gives me far more strength.
Its form isn't exactly concrete.
I've altered it two times before. The first was when I began flooding it with Soul Energy, turning the dark black shadowy reflection of myself into a dark red fiery warrior. This significantly strengthened my greater form by allowing it to be fully saturated with a perfect mix of Qi and Mana at all times, fully able to reflect my ultimate attacks in a larger sense.
The second alteration was more recent, when I intuitively began imbuing my greater form with divine threads, all the way back in the construct.
It gave another layer of enhancement and has rooted my greater form far deeper into reality, as if this massive version of myself is truly an energy being.
Now, I get another intuitive feeling as my instincts scream at me to keep my greater form activated while also relaxing the necessity to downsize to dodge these webs falling in on me.
The True Core's silky energy that permeates through me compresses my Soul Energy as my gaze turns toward a closing gap in the webbing.
My bright yellow glowing body shrinks in size as I air-step forward, but the amount of pure energy coming off me stays constant, glowing brighter and brighter the more it's compacted.
I feel my overall strength slightly decrease, as I don't have the leverage or ability to generate as much torque in each of my swings and strides, but with all of this compact power, only creating a greater form about 1.5x the size of my actual body, I feel my speed and agility rise to heights far surpassing what they were even when I came crashing into this mansion seconds ago.
I grin while a streak of yellow light zooms out from the closing webbing, leaving a trailing zig-zag of light all throughout the long corridor.
I slice through all six of the manifestations before they can even turn to see that I've escaped their trap.
The infinite sphere of threads falls lifelessly to the mansion's floor, seeping back into the structure, and the maniacal laughter starts up again.
"It wouldn't be as fun if you let me win that easily—"
The voice comes back, echoing out from the marble pearl as four more stone hunters wake from their stances, and two more bundles of string manifestations appear behind me.
"It has been decades since another True Core came about. I thought all of the fragments in this world were collected after the Great War, but you've certainly made things lively again. I thank you for that."
I don't listen to his words, and only zip through the corridor, easily slicing through the two string puppets. But when my swords clash with the knives, axes, and shields of the hunters before me, I face far more resistance than I did in my larger form.
I shatter three of them to pieces despite the harder time cutting through, but it takes me two slashes to break through the shield of one of the tanks.
The laughs echo through the corridor as I come to the realization there is a cost to increasing my speed and agility—that's a minor loss in my overall pure strength...
However, I can tell this isn't the full picture.
Not only has my strength fallen by a small amount, but that tank's divine energy density was greater than its partners...
As more and more guards wake up every time I kill them, and countless thread bodies are created, things become clearer and I start to piece together a few patterns.
The first is, I was right about that tank being stronger than the others...
The closer to the sphere I get, the more powerful the hunters become.
It takes me three to four hits to injure and finally kill each of them, shattering them into fragments of white marble.
Just taking off an arm or a leg isn't enough. When I manage to break off small parts, hundreds of tiny white threads seep out from the wounded area and reach for the broken stone, piecing itself back together and hardening like nothing happened. Their chests or heads need to be destroyed in order for them to stop fighting...
The other thing I notice is the manifestations of pure threads that attack me never change in strength. No matter how close or far away they get to me, they are always identical, and all it takes is one heavy slash to get rid of them.
The last pattern I notice is the maximum number of moving statues and thread manifestations combined I ever face is six...
The closer I get to the sphere at the back of the room, however, the fewer are summoned at once.
Only two to three statues are sent toward me at a time, and they're significantly stronger than when a full six are sent my way.
I get into quite the rhythm slashing through the constant stream of statues and strategically placed webs of threads to try and lead me away. Despite this, I make a few meters of progress every second, spinning and slashing my way through the air with my eye on the prize—the pulsing sphere at the back of the room.
As I slash through more and more of the stone statues of hunters mindlessly trying to kill me, like they're monsters in a dungeon, I feel Raven's lifeforce growing dimmer and dimmer.
She is frozen, with over 80% of her body turned to the same lifeless stone that I'm slicing away at here, but her core and mind are still intact, barely.
The answers to everything I want to know lie within her mind.
The only one stopping me from finding out is this mad, rambling man that finds pleasure in turning great warriors into stone and playing with their bodies like puppets.
My own core burns brighter, and I start to control the output of my greater form with a far more intricate degree as I'm on a strict clock. I want to be as efficient as I can and destroy the source before it's too late.
I begin manipulating the amount of energy I compact, growing in size temporarily by 25–50% during a slash of my blades to increase their power output, and compact my greater form even tighter, almost pressing up against my real body's skin when I need to make a split-second escape from the vast arrays of webbing.
Eventually, as the seconds go by, and I smash through dozens of statues, I gain proficiency in my new technique and the ability to even manipulate only certain parts of my greater form becomes more natural.
My legs can be compacted for greater speed, while mid-strike, I allow my swords to expand and extend to gain the maximum amount of power.
Even as the divine energy of the statues becomes over double that of what they were at the front of the line, I'm able to slash through them in a single hit once I've completely mastered this new ability.
The mad rambles and endless laughter don't stop as I smash through the last statue guarding the orb at the back of the room...
In fact, they get louder and more incoherent.
"Yes... Yes... this is it. Another worthy candidate for the throne I can keep for eternity. One who grows with ease and climbs to greater heights, obsessed with the fight even when there is no need to be. Another savior, blind to the fact that it is this instinct that kills them in the end. A moth helplessly flying toward the flame..."
Behind the white orb, lurking in the darkness, there is a final statue that I couldn't perceive before.
This is because it was merely just stone.
Now, as the sphere pulses bright yellow, the brightest it ever has, the entire back of the corridor shows itself, and a glossy white dragon I recognize from the Apex Region's Association Headquarters stares down at me.
Its body glows with True Core Energy, and its eyes pulse yellow with its light.
Five faceless thread manifestations come to life behind me in a semi-circle formation, casting their nets.
At the same time, the white dragon stretches its wings and lets out a roar as it comes to life.
The entire mansion shakes from its intensity, and an aura of intimidation makes the air pressure and room temperature rise drastically.
A thick stream of white threads bursts from its mouth, and a dome made of millions of white tendrils forms above me, collapsing downward. It stomps its front legs forward, protecting the orb with its entire body. Visible streams of energy pulse from the source it guards, and the density of the True Core's power flooding into the dragon continues to grow, far surpassing any of the prior statues.
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Author's Note:
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