The bovine stomped the ground with its right forelimb. An indescribable force washed forward from the hoof and went past Niklas. Niklas felt sensations as the force moved through him. Behind him, the force began a cascade of pillars heading straight at the trio: Blue reaper, Blue's Tiger, and Reverend of the blade. The trio jumped away from the attack.
Niklas was ruminating about the force, staring at the erect hairs on his arms.
Reverend of the blade, who wasn't far from Niklas, said to him,
"What you felt is the force called mana. In layman terms, it is called magic."
Blue's Tiger smartly deduced that the beast had intentionally attacked them just now to test Niklas' perception. He himself was impressed that Niklas had a high sense of perception. He said to the rookie,
"Dude, you have to be careful! The beast is sizing you up."
The lion-head bison considered Niklas more of a threat than the other hunters. It was waiting for Niklas to make the first move. It had decided to quickly end any other hunter who threatened it.
Niklas read about his pending mission.
[Mission: Help in defeating the lion-head bison, a rank-A beast.
Punishment: You will lose 300 evolution points!]
'A rank-A beast? How powerful can it be? I must not slip up. The beast seems to be very powerful, for it to end the other hunter with one move,' Niklas mused.
He began to notice the numerous pillars that littered the battle area.
'My god! This beast did all this?'
He began to look at the Knife edge members with more respect.
'Heavens court of Hades and Lord of the universe, I call on your aid to help me not to die in this place. For nothing else, keep me for my sick mother!' He prayed as he walked towards the uncharted beast before breaking into a sprint.
He regained and sustained the lightning sparks over his body. The lightning blade was tucked inside the backpack hanging behind him. The backpack had commendable vitality to have survived his rolling and falling without getting damaged.
Earlier, Niklas wanted to use an AOE lightning attack on the swarm of lion-head gators, but for an unknown reason, he felt unsure of himself. He planned to use the AOE lightning attack now against the lion-head bison, and he was feeling unsure, but he had concluded to use it. When the distance was short between him and the beast, he pulled out the lightning blade as he jumped. Lightning was concentrated and sustained on the blade of the long sword. The bovine was wary and stacked pillars of earth layer after layer around itself to protect itself from the lanky red-haired man's attack. Niklas slammed the edge of his sword on the ground as he landed on the ground. Unfortunately, the lightning did not leave the sword, and the attack never happened.
Niklas heart raced in disappointment. He couldn't believe what was happening. He stayed in his landing pose, looking at his sword as if it were the sword's fault that the attack failed. A bar from the system interface popped up in his view.
[Your proficiency in manipulating lightning is too low to initiate your attack; Lightning AOE.]
Another bar appeared on the previous bar.
[Skill: Lightning AOE.
Availability: 0/1.
Cooldown: 4 hours.]
Another bar appeared.
[CLASS: Lightning-mancer.
Class level: 0.
Class evolution: 2/100
Use and perfect your proficiency in handling lightning in order to evolve.]
Niklas was so shocked that he slowly digested the information from the system interface.
Reverend of the swooped in and out, dragging Niklas away from Blue's reaper line of attack. Blue reaper had taken aim at the bovine hiding within the shields of earth, waiting for it to come out. Niklas would have obstructed her aim if he had stood up.
The twins barraged the shields of earth around the bovine with speeding fireballs. The fireballs exploded on impact with the pillars. The combined effect of each ball's kinetic energy and explosion shattered the pillars easily. Meanwhile, the twins looked ghostly pale. Manipulating the fireballs to detonate on impact was taking a toll on them.
'Last layer of shield!' Blue reaper anticipated as the immediate-to-last layer of pillars crumbled down.
BOOM! The last layer of pillars came down. The hunters were on their toes, ready to react to anything thrown their way.
Three golems rushed out from behind the crumbled pillars towards the twins. The twins fled, and the golems chased them. The lion-head bison emerged from the dust clouding it. It walked out in Blue reaper's general direction. Blue reaper took her shot at the right side of the bovine's head that was in her line of attack.
The lion-head bison reacted quickly. It bent its head so that its antlers would be forward instead of its face, and it swung its head from the centre to the right. The antlers collided with the bullet at the right time, knocking away the bullet, which exploded midair at a safe distance from the beast.
A line of cascading pillars came straight at Blue reaper. The bovine didn't draft the attack, and so it almost caught Blue reaper. The lady leapt out of the way, to her left.
The attack didn't stop and continued towards the nearest building in the unscathed area of the settlement near the battlefield.
Reverend of the blade recognised the building that the attack was heading to. It was an orphanage that had 10 floors. Some of the floors were used as an elementary school for the orphans. Worry overcame Reverend. He pointed at the orphanage as he sorrowfully and helplessly yelled,
"There are still kids in that orphanage!"
The earth below became quicksand. Rapidly, his legs sank up to the knee point, and he was destabilised, making him fall forward. His arms sank into the ground as he tried to use them to support himself. The ground solidified, and he was stuck. He looked at the orphanage in grief and self-disappointment.
The twins weren't faring well, as they were constantly getting caught by the golems' punches and kicks. They couldn't fight with their flames because their mana reserves were depleted. Consequently, they were low on stamina, so their reflex wasn't good enough.
The twins had gone back to use their light sabers. They would slice away a part of a golem, but the part would regrow in seconds.
Blue's Tiger was hanging on the top edge of a pillar, impaled in the stomach by it. The beast had quickly launched a second attack but aimed at Blue's Tiger after Blue reaper had dodged the first one. Since Blue's Tiger sword was broken, his stats were halved. The impalement left him weak, and he couldn't help in the fight.
Niklas was about to attack the lion-head bison when he heard Reverend yell beside him. He saw where the attack was heading and subsequently saw the Knife edge member get trapped in the ground.
Reverend looked at Niklas. Niklas gazed back. The lanky, red-haired man saw the grief in Reverend's eyes, and he was touched.
Reverend said, "I promised those kids that I would come back to get them. Now they are going to die with fear and heartbreak because of me."
Niklas glanced at the orphanage and returned his gaze to Reverend. He shook his head, gesturing negation to the Knife edge member's conclusion, before sprinting away, going after the cascading pillars.
He knew what guilt felt like, and he knew what being heartbroken felt like. He put himself in the shoes of the kids in the orphanage; they had no parents, but they had dreams and ambitions. Heck, even some of them hoped to find their parents. Some of them just want to see the face of their parents, despite knowing that their parents were horrible people who had abandoned them.
'All these dreams, all these desires—these kids—they are innocent, even if some of them may be little idiots. They deserve to live. They are the future of this cruel world.
'Who knew that one day I would be a demigod? I became a demigod because I was given the chance to live. Now it is my turn to give back to the world,' Niklas mused.
His speed increased from 65 kilometres per hour to 130 kilometres per hour. His desires had grown so strong that he had broken a chain of limitations that restricted the cells of his existence. The lightning sparks on his body changed from white to blue. He raced past the cascade and got in front of it.
The incoming pillars were up to 70 metres tall, taller than the orphanage behind him. His thinking went hyper.
'The mana moving the pillars is so strong that if I stop a pillar, the attack will continue behind me. I have to use my mana to cancel the effect.'
Tum! Tum! Tum! The land trembled as the cascade got closer to Niklas. A pillar shot out from the ground before the demigod. He placed his hand on the pillar and directed his mana into the pillar. The pillar served as a bridge between his man and the mana in the ground that was driving the cascade.
His mana took the form of lightning and travelled through the pillar into the ground.
[Your mana is draining at a very fast rate!]
[Your mana reserve has been depleted!]
[Cancel your action!] [Cancel your action!] This bar popped up repeatedly with a red background, but Niklas kept going. It was a miracle because when one's mana reserve was depleted, all their mana-based abilities would cease to manifest.
Authors note: If you are reading this chapter on September 30, 2023, chances are high that you read the previous chapter where I forgot to describe that the lion-head bison has branching antlers like a white-tailed deer. But the bovine's horns are a bit irregularly branched, like a tree.