3rd POV
It had been a few minutes since Hajin and Rachel were training in the new facility. They started at intermediate level, but as of now, they had already reached the last round of Hard level.
Each level had 3 rounds. The first round consisted of mobs and other monsters like goblins, sand worms etc whereas the 2nd level was a mid boss with a few mobs. The mid bosses were decently strong for their level. The third and last round of each level was for fighting a final boss monster.
On the first intermediate level, they had fought some mid-level goblins and orcs. The mid-boss in this level was a mid-level bear monster. After defeating it, they proceeded to the final round where they fought a high level-hob goblin.
On hard level, the starting monsters were low-level hob goblins with weapons, while the mid-boss was a high-level flying monster, but a lot weaker than the butterfly sampling monster on the island. The final boss for this level was a mid-level goblin lord.
They were currently fighting the goblin lord, which was attacking them with a gigantic axe. Its best point was that both its offensive and defensive was good, but still, its speed was slow compared to its other stats.
Rachel jumped towards the monster and started performing various combo attacks. Hajin in the meantime was providing boosts and aiming for the right timing to shoot.
Yes, that's right. Hajin could also use buffs. He had only discovered this when they were fighting the intermediate-level boss monster. It was when the boss monster used its AOE attack to paralyze Rachel on spot. Hajin had tried to use his [Recovery] skill on Rachel, but instead of just that, she also received a temporary boost in stats.
Hajin had currently set the skill to consume mana instead of SP. Since he already had a near-infinite pool of it, there was no need to use SP, although, that didn't mean that he was lacking in SP. Actually, his recent involvement had gotten him a lot of attention which made him farm a lot of SP.
Rachel attacked the boss monster's legs, cutting its legs from the foot part. This much damage with just a slash was possible since she was also receiving offense boosting buffs.
The boss monster fell on the ground unable to stand since its legs were cut. Taking advantage of the moment, Hajin instantly pressed the trigger and shot a mana-strengthened bullet that pierced the monster's skill, effectively killing it. It stopped struggling and dropped to the ground, dead. Soon, it was converted into data and deleted from the room.
"Good job, Rachel." Hajin said as he now stood besides Rachel who was cleaning her blade. Each level had a timer in between during which it loaded the data of the next monsters and configured the algorithm. So, they had a few seconds to take a breath or two.
"Thanks, and it was all thanks to you and your buffs backing me up that we made it so far with this much ease." Rachel said and later added, "Honestly, I can't even be surprised now from the number of things you can do. Its like your gift is perfect for everything."
"Haha, of course not. Well, we just haven't encountered the situation. And my gift is good at destroying and erasing stuff, it can create, but not as good as it can destroy." He replied. "And besides, Its not like I can use it for several days nonstop. I would have to put a great toll on my physical body and mental ability to do that. Though, fighting for a day or two won't do anything, except maybe mental exhaustion."
"... *Sigh* and that's what I meant by saying that your gift is too overpowered. Honestly, it sometimes scares me to think what you could do if you ever decided to turn against someone." She said while turning her face to the side.
"Well, you don'd need to be afraid. I would never harm someone you, or in that case, anyone who hasn't messed with me or my family." Hajin instantly replied while reassuring her.
"O-oh." A small blush appeared on her face as she averted her eyes. Maybe those words were normal for a guy, but for a girl, those words meant a lot, especially when they came from someone close to oneself.
"Anyways, ready for the next round?" He asked. There were only 5 seconds remaining before the next level started.
"Yes!" She replied, determination filled in her eyes.
The next level was Master. This was where things got real hard as even the mobs in the first round of this level were comparable to the mid or final bosses of the previous rounds. The mid boss was strong as well, and to top it off, it was accompanied by other mobs.
The final boss was even stronger, and it could give even a new hero, heroes who had just very recently officially became hunters, heroes or mercenaries, a run for their money.
You needed to know at least a little about the boss and had to have at least some experience to even try to fight it with the hope of winning. However, that was it. This was basically just for preparing them for the grand-master level, although, that wasn't actually how it was meant to be since they were cadets. But maybe, just maybe, they would reach grandmaster level.
-- Level : Master | Round : 1 |
The AI announced the beginning of the first round. As for the mobs, 5 warrior hob-goblins spawed immediately. Along with them, there wer also 5 hobgoblin archers and magicians, to top that off, even their equipment had some enchantments. There were also 5 mutated flying elemental monsters, which could shoot their respective elemental attacks from high up. So, a total of 20 monsters, all high leveled.
The fact that there were exactly 20 monsters wasn't a coincidence, as 20 monsters were set for each first round of every level, except of course, the grand-master level. However, since the difficulty varried, to make it fair, as the difficulty level increased, so did the monsters' levels.
The monsters started attacking immediately. Archer hobgoblins began shooting tens of arrows at once at their direction. However, Rachel quickly used her mana to make a mana shield. The shield was further strengthened by Hajin's passive buff that he currently had active since the round started.
As soon as the arrows were shot, other monsters also started running towards their direction. The first to reach were the the goblin warriors which each had a different weapons.
Hajin quickly used [Stigma] to duplicate his weapon, an idea he thought up of while fighting a large number of weak monsters on the lower levels. Rachel, on the other hand, coated her rapier with mana and formed a sword stance.
One of the hobgoblins, which had an axe, quickly jumped in the air and attacked Rachel, however, seeing the opening, Rachel stabbed the monster's heart while desplaying great agility. The buffs had also increased her speed, but not her handling on it. What she was showing was purely her adaptive ability and talent to master her prowess in a short time.
At the same time, two more monsters shot towards Rachel while the other two rushed to Hajin. Hajin, seeing this, infused his guns and bullets with even more mana and shot the two monsters in the head, killing them instantly.
This was normally not possible, and the monsters wouldn't go down with just a shot in the head, but there were two factors that changed that. One was the bullet's attack power, which completely obliterated their head instead of just making a small hole in the skull.
The other factor was the property of magic infused in the bullets. The mana infused in this case was converted from nothingness energy using mana converter, a sub-skill that Hajin later unlocked using his [Idea Creation] and [SP Converter] on [Imaginary Space].
This sub-skill allowed him to convert the near-endless nothingness energy inside his pocket dimension into mana as much as he wanted. However, there was an advantage here. The mana converted had more density than normal mana, and it also had corrosiive property in it, so once a target was shot, it was bound to loose thae part of its body that was shot. Even if it tore the part from its body, the part wouldn't regenerate. The corrosive effect infected them with the speed beyond light.
Leaving that explanation for later, the other two other hobgoblin warriors had attacked Rachel from both sides. One of them swung hus sword towards Rachel's neck while the other attacked with a huge spiky hammer from behind. Rachel quickly evaded the sword and slashed her rapier at the monster's neck and cut it. Or at least, she tried, but cut half of its she had only before the sword could slice its neck completely, the other monster again swung his hammer with great force and attacked Rachel from the back.
She awaded the attack quite easily. It wasn't just her senses that allowed her to do so, but actually Hajin who was constantly instructing her through the telepathic rune that allowed them to directly share their thoughts through their mind.
However, he they could only share thoughts, not power, or at least, that's what the rune had currently shown to be capable of doing. The hammer that Rachel awaded had hit the ground with great force, thus creating a small earth quake that imbalanced Rachel, breaking her from her stance.
The monster, already recovered from the previous attack since Rachel's attacks didn't have such properties that could negate their regeneration.
But before the monster could do anything, Hajin again shot two bullets that hit the monsters on the head, killing them. However, during this time, the other flying monsters had already reached them and had started shooting their attacks at them.
Even if the shield was strong, it wasn't impenetratable. It wasn't made by Hajin, who had an endless pool of mana, it was made by Rachel. And even if Hajin's buffs were great, it didn't mean that the shied wouldn't break, And that was excatly what started happening now, although the shield completely break.
A lot of visible cracks had appeared on the shield, clearly indicating that it could only hold for a few more attacks before collapsing.
'The shield won't be able to hold for much longer!' Rachel thought as she again established her stance and coated the sword with even more mana, so much that this time, mana started to flow through the sword like liquid.
It was not in the solid shape like that of heroes, but it was still extremely impressive since Rachel was still a cadet. Even she herself didn't know how she managed to pull this off, but of course, the first thought that came to her mind was the buffs, however, she hadn't received mana boosts before, so she wasn't sure.
'Hey Hajin! Was the buffs supposed to enchance mana as well?' She thought and directed it towards Hajin, wishing for him to hear it.
'No, the buffs only boost physical capabilites. I'm currently directly sending you mana through the runes on your hand. However, I can only do so in small amounts, not because it will run out, but because sending it in excessive will break the connection and the rune and it can also injure you.'
'... Just how overpowered is that gift of his?! It can literally do anything required so far!' She thought to herself. Now she started feeling that the world was unfair, but than she remembered that she had no right to say that since she was the one who was receiving all this benifits as well.'
'though... its strange. Its like everytime I need something or run out of something, it happens. It can't just be a coincidence...' She thought to herself, but quickly left it there since this was not the time for it.
'How much longer do you think you can send mana like this?' She asked Hajin in her mind.
'I can keep going for several hours, maybe even days, but can you fight for that long without mental exhaustion?'
'I don't know, I have never tried fighting for so long. Oh, and now that you mention it, do you know how long it has been since we started fighting?'
' I don't really know how much exactly, but its been at least around 30 minutes. We can see the timer everytime before the level starts, and last time it was 26 minutes in. I think it's already way fast 30 now.'
'Hmm, isn't that more than the previous record?'
'Yeah.'
'So that means we have already breaked the record?'
'Yes.'
'... what do we do now than? We already breaked the record, and reached master level. Do you want to continue or do you want to end it here? I mean, Hajin, people usually get tired after fighting for so long continuously.'
'What do you want? I'm fine with either. I'm not particularly tired, I think I can go for a few hours if we continue fighting like this. But that's because of my gift, and you don't have that. So, do you want to leave it?'
'... I think we should continue. Since you're constantly sending me mana through our... connection... I can keep going for a while too. Though, not as much as you. I would be mentally tired if I do so.'
'Don't worry. I think this won't last long. Since we decided to continue, I'm planning to finish the boss this time with one shot, you just have to distract it for a few seconds, just like in the island~' Hajin said, but he sounded quite sadistic in the end for some reason, at least to Rachel. She thought that he was having fun killing these monsters, but well, who wouldn't have fun if they knew they would get stronger by doing this?
'... okay. But please don't do something like destroying the whole place again, I don't think they would let you go that easily this time if you destroy something in cube itself. Something that was just newly installed at that.'
'Don't worry~ They won't do a thing, it's not like they can either. If they stop me, I'll just blame them that the defenses were too weak, after all, cube's defense mechanism should be enough to withstand a 'cadet's' attack, right~?'
'... you're too overpowered...*sigh* very well. But please refrain from going too far.'
'Okay.' Hajin said innocently, although, it dind't sound innocent in the least to someone who knew what he was going to do.
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World Count : 2420