70: Aidan vs. Horrors
Aidan felt like his world so far was nothing but violence and mayhem in just a span of a few hours. He just got back from raiding a dungeon, defeating a powerful boss after killing many monsters to raise his level. Then he was committing Red Riot genocide, taking just as many lives as he did within the dungeon to make a point.
And now, he was on another killing spree, this time with creatures nowhere close to being natural. His original five swords flew out and struck as many of these Eldritchian Horrors as possible, not caring at all about precision and strategy.
First, he needed to know how much these things could take. And according to what his swords felt, they were indeed not naturally made. Their bodies felt almost like jelly, his swords slicing through their spongy texture, yet they bled this ink-like blood just like actual flesh. The horrors responded in fury, striking back with their natural weapons like claws or mouths to hit him, but he flew away before striking back with full force.
He kept ramping up the attacks, noticing something that would be troublesome later on. Their bodies were strangely durable, and no matter how many times he struck at their weak points, such as their heads or their chests, they didn’t go down at all.
Thankfully, they weren’t immortal, nor did any of them have some sort of regeneration effect going on. They were just unnaturally durable and tough to take down. He took down one after another, finally making an impact in their numbers.
That was when he realized something. Aidan was flying towards a group of demons when one Horror came pouncing at him, its claws extended and mouth opened wide. Aidan willed his sword to fly straight and true, piercing right through the beast from one end to the other. He already did this many times before, and that normally wouldn’t take them down, but it would at least distract them long enough for Aidan to follow up with more swords.
To his surprise, the beast went down instantly, its black body dispersed like some sort of mini-bomb as black mist trailed upwards to the air. At the time, Aidan sensed that something broke within the body of the horror he slain, and through his sword, he recognized what it was.
It was some sort of object with an undeterminable shape, hiding deep within the horrific beast. It was almost like a core, and he realized that these creatures reminded him of slimes like in most fantasy media.
Slimes were amorphous creatures that worked like jello, and were often either the weakest creatures to deal with, or could be incredibly resistant to most physical attacks, especially slicing and cutting weapons. The only way to actually take down these slimes with such high resistances was to target the core that acted as their hearts, and once taken down, it would immediately kill the slime.
These horrors reminded him of that, so he decided to sense their bodies through their souls to see if he could easily find the cores. To his dismay, that was nearly impossible.
No matter how close he was, all he could sense from their souls was utter darkness. There was no sound, no tone, not even a single chord that came from them. All it was is just a pit of blackness that had nothing living inside. He even started to wonder if these creatures were even alive considering how dead their souls sounded.
His mind whirled at these creatures’ existences as he hurled himself into the fray. He kept commanding the swords to spin around him like a blender as he flew through the masses, grinding against their bodies and slicing them apart one by one in a matter of seconds. Some he took down with ease, their cores targeted through his random onslaught, and some still stood and tried to counter as he flew past.
But there were too many to count. And too many that survived against his attacks. He was already starting to get worn down, his stamina lagging behind.
When he spotted the horrors running past him and heading to the city, he crafted the air to shoot air shots at them, making them explode where they were and fly up into the air in response. Yet despite the clear direct attack, the beasts recovered themselves easily and managed to get back up and start running again.
He sensed it at the time. When his air shots reached them, it was as if something made the control he had on the air disappear, making the air shots nothing more than your average compressed air. While they did manage to hit, without his magic controlling them precisely, they didn’t deliver that much of an impact.
Were they resistant to magic as well as physical damage? Just how tough were these things?
Aidan roared, unleashing more of his Crafting power as earth was summoned from the ground, targeting and piercing each beast that was trying to run away. He kept making the earth spikes to pierce as many creatures as possible, but they were just as resilient to these attacks as before. Some were taken down thanks to hitting their cores, but there were still too many to count.
“Damn it!” Aidan cursed, realizing that some of the creatures left his vicinity of control from taking too long.
Thankfully he didn’t need to worry. When the horrors approached the city wall, wood sprang out from the ground, creating another layer of wall in front and stopping the creatures from approaching any further. Several long branches appeared from the walls, striking against the horrors and either wrapping them up or piercing right through them.
Aidan watched as he noticed Yin floating upwards, her hands outstretched as her eyes glowed with power. She flung her hand forward, and several wooden beings started to form, creating what looked like humanoid figures straight from wood. They came to life and started to target the beasts, mostly by holding them in place and lifting them up so that the spiked branches could kill them.
With his rearguard established, Aidan kept working, unleashing more of his power as Craft kept going. But he realized that the best thing they could do was to keep the horrors back rather than actually deal any damage to them.
So he instead opted to use the best spell for the job. He pointed at one of the horrors and cast Rend. The twisting power of harmony took hold, and the beast that was rampaging with disturbing glee suddenly burst apart, twisted into erasure.
Aidan was taken aback. He felt absolutely no resistance against his spell. It was as if the only thing he faced was its will to live, but these creatures barely had any will at all according to their souls. With that in mind, he ramped up his casting and kept using Rend on all the creatures he could see.
One by one, each of the beasts was twisted apart, and the horrors were finally starting to show a semblance of survival as now they targeted Aidan. He kept his distance in the air, using Rend as much as possible.
It was a drain on his mana, but he didn’t have to focus hard on finding their cores or dealing as much damage as possible. All he needed to do was to cast Rend and they would die instantly. Kill notifications kept clogging his vision, making him push them away as he targeted them one by one.
But that became a problem. There were too many to count, and he could only cast Rend one at a time. Some of the beasts even managed to survive the Rend spell, showing a distorted shape but still managing to keep themselves upright before attacking again.
He kept using Rend, all the while he had Infuse on himself to keep fighting. He wasn’t even aware of what was going on back in the city, or wondering whether there was anybody else helping him on the front. All he could focus on was targeting each and every Eldritchian Horror with Rend and erasing them from existence.
Level Up! From Level 39, you became Level 40!
+1 Free Attribute point
+3 Free Stat points
+1 Intelligence
+1 Toughness
+1 Dexterity
+1 Vigor
…..
You have reached level 40. Here are the choices you can pick from:
The sudden notification brought him back to reality, surprising him that he had a chance to pick up another ability from his class.
Deciding to take a chance, he looked up the list for the new ability to get. He activated Split Mind to better look through the list while he fought off the many Horrors raining down on him.
“No… no… fuck that… shit, isn’t there anything good here?”
He kept searching for the right ability he needed, but he couldn’t find anything of worth. His rising panic whenever one of the horrors got a little too close for comfort only made that more difficult before he eventually found an ability to choose.
Area Field (Copper)
Create a field around your vicinity which expands the range of your spells by a fair margin according to the Intelligence score. Your spells will not decrease in potency, but requires careful precision and increases the cost of mana output.
Unbelieving of what he was reading, he immediately picked it up. Even if he wasn’t in a bad situation, he would still pick this up. When the knowledge of the ability entered his mind, he quickly activated it.
A field that only he recognized was born from within, expanding outward to reach perhaps a mile in radius. As it expanded, he also sensed that his mana reacted differently from within. Several horrors were ready to pounce on him, so he prepped his Rend spell and realized that it changed dramatically.
He completed the spell, and not just one, but all of the horrors that were jumping at him were twisted out of existence. He felt his Rend spell increase in cost, but it really did split itself up to take each horror out.
He had a good feeling about this new ability. With this, he could easily control his swords and spellcasting while increasing the fire output. Right now, however, he shot off as many Rends as possible to rapidly decrease the amount of horrors approaching.
Throughout all this, he opted to experiment a little with his field, trying to see if he could expand it further. When he flew, the area flew along with him, keeping him at the center point of the entire thing. So while he swept across the field, his Rend twisted every horror he came across, eventually wearing the mob down little by little.
That’s when things took their own twist when everything turned dark around him for a moment. He looked up to find a gigantic creature ready to crush him whole, forcing him to fly upwards to see a horror standing as tall as a building. It opened its big mouth wide, and a small translucent energy gathered in front of it before it became darker.
His senses flared in panic as Aidan fled the scene before a laser blasted out of the mouth. It hit the ground before causing a massive explosion that shook the earth and took apart the nearby horrors out with it.
He was surprised at their lack of coordination, though he should’ve realized that due to their lack of will, it was possible that they were just a bunch of mindless monsters. Mindless, but with a singular purpose–to take down the city.
He couldn’t read anything further into their souls due to their inky blackness, but he could tell at least that much. As for the giant, he scanned it to make sure that he knew what he was looking at.
Eldritchian Giant Horror, Level 52.
He should’ve figured, but quite frankly, he had nobody else to blame but himself for expecting anything else.
The giant horror rose up, towering over a few stories high before opening its maw again for another laser blast. Aidan flew around the forest, evading the blast that came out at the rate of a shot gun, taking a small interval before releasing another blast again.
He knew he should take it down, but he was also using it to clean up some of the horrors around. Thanks to its low intelligence, it was doing the job for him as it took down quite a number of these horrors without spending too much mana. But then his proverbial free ride was over when the giant horror decided to take him down itself. Apparently it should’ve done that as it was a lot faster than its size would indicate.
Aidan kept using Rend on it, but due to its sheer size, only a portion of its skin was blasted and twisted off to oblivion. It wasn’t just the size either as its will was considerably stronger than the smaller horrors around it. He kept swerving in the air, nearly getting grazed as the giant horror’s teeth closed right near him, making Aidan blast himself with a strong air wave to keep him away from the beast.
His senses blared when he felt a powerful source of mana coming from the giant horror, revealing itself to shoot a laser blast right when Aidan was at his apex of his flight from the last near-dodge. The beast actually managed to react fast enough to launch a blast, forcing Aidan to cover himself in a barrier of air before getting blasted down to the ground.
He crashed into the soil, destroying parts of the forest as wood broke and crashed, the clods of dirt flying everywhere before he finally managed to land properly after crashing around like a ragdoll from the momentum multiple times. He was hurt everywhere, especially at the parts where the laser hit him.
It burned like a bitch, and when he opened his eyes, he could still feel the lingering sensation. He realized then that the laser left him with lingering energy that festered like pus around the surface area of his arms and face. It might be possible that a normal human couldn’t sense this, but Aidan could, and it stunk like it shouldn’t exist.
Thankfully using Heal let him get rid of that lingering funky energy, along with the pain and the damage done to him. But his health didn’t recover that fast. He needed to cast multiple Heals to make up for the damage caused by the laser blast, and he didn’t have the mana necessary to spare before he forced himself to take flight as another laser blast hit him.
If he didn’t do something about the giant horror soon, he’d have an entire army of horrors to face while still dealing with that big fucker that kept shooting like there’s no tomorrow. There wouldn’t be any tomorrow at all if he didn’t stop it now.
Taking flight, he aimed at the giant horror with his hand out. He used both Mana Boost and Mana Focus together to form his Rend spell, but knew it wouldn’t be enough. That would increase the power of the spell but it wouldn’t increase the range.
Oh, damn it! I already have something that could work!
Taking a shot, he flew towards the giant horror, ignoring the laser blasts that kept coming at him. Once the giant decided to go for melee, Aidan prepped his Area Field and sensed his range expand even further. He put more emphasis on his Field rather than on Rend, flipping both Magic Boost and Focus onto Field instead.
He felt his Area Field expand just the slightest bit, but more importantly, he had more control. Going right into the underside of the horror, before it could open wide and eat him whole, Aidan unleashed a fully powered Rend.
The air exploded as a shockwave ensued from the action. It didn’t take a small portion, but a massive bite that took the entirety of the upper part of the giant horror.
The problem wasn’t the power of the Rend, but the limited range. With an increased range, he finally managed to take out the entire thing in one go. The horror, now left without anything at the top, slowly dispersed into dark mist as a kill notification finally landed on his vision.
He felt more tired than before, but did a quick fist bump to the air in his celebration. But right when he was about to start going ham on the other horrors, he felt more presences coming in–a lot more.
He turned around, and saw not just one, but multiple giant horrors being born right in front of him. Multiple large dark pits showed up and those giant horrors slowly appeared from those dimensional holes, destroying part of the forest landscape and letting out deep roars, which all the other smaller horrors hollered back in return.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Aidan groaned, closing his eyes as he felt a large headache coming on. Seeing that there was no backup coming, he slapped his cheeks and shook his head.
He had work to do, and plenty of killing to be had. Taking another drink of his Soul-Mending water, he flew forth, unleashing his Area Field to take out as many of them as possible.