SSS Awakening: I am the First Legendary Mage

The impact sent a violent vibration through his entire body, and for a moment he couldn’t tell whether the crack came from his own skull or the monster’s. Either way, the mantis froze for the briefest instant, its movements becoming sluggish as the blow stunned it.

Alex immediately twisted his body and threw the mantis onto its back before climbing onto its chest.

He reinforced both arms again and poured more lightning-element mana into them, causing his fists to blur as they hammered the monster’s head over and over.

Every punch landed harder than the last, shaking the mantis’s skull while the bones in Alex’s own hands gradually began to fracture from the repeated impacts.

He ignored the damage completely. While continuing the barrage, Alex created small mana knives and launched them downward with elastic threads anchored in the air.

The blades repeatedly struck the monster’s face and neck, adding fresh wounds while his fists continued pounding brutally without pause.

The mantis’s head gradually deformed under the relentless assault, but it still refused to die.

With a furious screech, the mantis swung the broken stump of its arm. The heavy blow smashed into Alex and launched him backward into the wall of the ruined house. Bricks cracked around him, but the weakened attack lacked the force to send him crashing through this time.

The monster had clearly grown much weaker.

Alex pushed himself upright almost immediately, his expression remaining unnervingly calm despite the blood soaking his clothes.

Fresh mana daggers formed in both hands while he forced even more mana into his brain, driving his concentration higher without caring about the consequences.

At the same time, Mana Sense swept through his own body, giving him a clear picture of the damage he had suffered. The broken scythe had fallen out of his chest during the struggle, leaving behind a gaping hole that continued bleeding heavily. Several ribs were broken, and both arms had suffered fractures from exchanging blows with the mantis.

Alex compressed dense layers of mana around the wound, using the hardened mana to clot the wound, and to slow the bleeding.

He wrapped more compressed, and hardened mana around the broken bones, creating crude supports that would keep them together. It wasn’t healing his injuries, but it would allow him to continue fighting.

The mantis slowly climbed back to its feet, swaying slightly as green blood dripped from countless wounds across its body.

Alex watched it carefully while finishing the emergency treatment of his body, and the moment he judged himself capable of moving again, he dashed forward without hesitation. Neither of them intended to give the other another chance to recover.

The mantis swung its remaining scythe. A brilliant green glow immediately spread across the blade before the attack accelerated far beyond its normal speed, slicing through the air with terrifying force.

Fear and anger mixed in the monster’s eyes as it stared at Alex, clearly recognizing him as a threat.

Alex ducked beneath the glowing slash by the narrowest margin.

One mana dagger drove upward beneath the mantis’s chin while the second stabbed into its side, and before the monster could react, Alex ripped both blades outward.

Long gashes opened across its body, forcing it to stagger backward as its posture collapsed.

Alex didn’t waste the opportunity. He stepped in and slashed both daggers across the monster’s neck with everything he had left.

The damaged neck finally gave way, and the mantis’s head separated from its body before rolling across the floor of the ruined house. Its headless body remained standing, perfectly still.

Instead of relaxing, Alex immediately jumped backward and kept both daggers raised. He silently watched the headless corpse for several seconds, unwilling to assume that decapitation would definitely kill a creature.

He didn’t dare apply his knowledge of earth biology to these monsters, and let that make him a mistake.

His caution proved justified. The headless body suddenly moved, and the remaining scythe shot toward his face wrapped in an even brighter green glow.

Alex twisted aside just in time, the blade narrowly missing him before carving deeply into the wall behind him, yet the headless mantis showed no sign of stopping.

Without its head, the monster abandoned every trace of self-preservation. It swung relentlessly, caring nothing for the damage it inflicted upon its own body so long as it could drag Alex down with it.

Alex remained terrifyingly calm throughout the exchange, continuously dodging, blocking with newly formed mana daggers, and creating fresh ones whenever the previous pair shattered.

Even while fighting for his life, Alex devoted part of his concentration to observation.

An enormous amount of mana flooded into his eyes as he carefully watched the green glow flowing through the mantis’s scythe, studying how it gathered, compressed, and sharpened the blade before every strike.

He memorized every detail of the movement, comparing it with his own control over mana until the pattern finally became clear.

Then, while another glowing slash descended toward him, Alex copied it.

Instead of simply increasing the vibration of his Mana Thread, he changed the way mana flowed through it.

He mimicked the pattern he had been observing in the mantis’s Origin Energy, forcing the mana inside the thread to circulate in a similar rhythm.

A sharp whistling sound came from the blade as the Mana Thread became noticeably more stable and far sharper than before.

The mantis’s glowing scythe collided with Alex’s dagger, but this time the exchange ended differently.

The reinforced Mana Thread sliced cleanly through the scythe before continuing forward without losing much momentum.

Alex stepped in immediately, cutting through both of the monster’s legs before twisting his wrist and driving the final slash across its abdomen.

The headless body staggered as its lower half gave way. A deep cut opened across its torso, and the monster finally collapsed onto the broken floor without moving again.

Alex didn’t rush forward right away, instead watching the corpse for several seconds to make sure it wasn’t another trick.

Only after confirming the mantis was truly dead did he move.

..

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