Might as Well

Adam was very satisfied with the results of their plan. Granted, the loss in personnel was significant, but with the altar and the endless coffers of the guild, they could offset all of that.

And now they only had to contend with a titanic stone and crystal spider with nine legs that spewed stone dust in the air that minced the lungs of whoever breathed in while raining dangerous lightning at them. Not to mention the chance of dying from being crushed by falling debris… or one of the legs.

The countless monsters rushing about the quarry were an afterthought, really…

Looking over the chaos in front of him, he watched as the people of the guild began to prepare for another strike. They needed the downtime to reposition their strikers as well as to wait for those who fell to return and retake their positions. Some of the bigger attacks, especially from those who did the last attacks, had very long cooldowns.

Or such costs that some of the mages were still regenerating their mana.

Thanks to the planning for the super-sized attack – and the manuals Lucy and Sam shared with him – he became somewhat familiar with how mana operated on a higher level in the game, which in turn made Adam very glad he focused on the physical aspects of the game.

Watching Sam play around with mana like a potter with clay, he knew for a fact he could never reach his level…

Before he could delve deeper into his introspection, he was approached by one of the officers. He turned toward them with a questioning gaze.

“Yes?”

“Have a question, sir!” came the immediate reply.

“Go ahead!”

The man hesitated for a second, then nodded toward the monster that was still blasting everything in its zone with red lightning.

“Why don’t we send more people to the back?”

Adam opened his mouth to answer, but before he could do that, both of them saw a person flying toward the monster’s back. Whether they were launched or moving through their own power was something that Adam didn’t know, but soon it became immaterial. As soon as the flying person arrived in the airspace of the gigantic monster, one of the crystal outcroppings peppered around the body flashed with a bright light, and a blink later a lightning strike, as thick as a healthy oak, lashed out at the player.

Their shield held for a second or two, but the lightning proved too strong in the end. It shattered whatever protections they had and incinerated them within seconds.

“Ohh…” his officer uttered, seeing the death of one of their guild members. “Probably not a good idea…”

Adam nodded sagely, pretending that he already knew about it. Most social interactions confused him, but acting like he knew all along came easily. He didn’t want to tell the poor guy that he simply planned to cripple the monster and then just go full caveman on it.

Then the officer spoke up again. “But then how did he do it?”

“Who?”

“He! You know… the boss!”

“I thought I was the boss…” he spoke out loud, a little amused as he watched the officer panic at the thought of possibly upsetting his superior.

“N-no! I meant he is a boss and you’re a boss too! Great boss! Yes!”

Adam chuckled and reached out and patted the guy on his shoulder. “Relax. I was just joking.”

The officer glanced back at him before releasing a relieved sigh. “Thank the heavens…” he whispered almost inaudibly.

“As for your question… he is bullshit. Made of pure bullshit created by the bullshit gods,” he told the other guy.

“R-really?”

“Pretty sure… You were here before the monster woke up, right?”

“Yeah… we watched him deal with the monsters that took all of us to kill. How? How did he do that, boss?” the officer asked, naked greed for power visible in his eyes. Adam was usually bad at reading people – though his grandmother was giving him lessons, with Lucy also occasionally giving him advice – but even he could recognize the look.

He looked deep into the guild member’s eye, waited for a few seconds as the hope began to build in the other man, then he exclaimed.

“I have no fucking idea!”

Watching the man deflate was hilarious. He was about to try to repeat it when another call went out.

“READY FOR THE SECOND STRIKE! STAND BY!”

Adam patted the flabbergasted man’s shoulder and quickly walked over to a better vantage point.

He watched excitedly as his guild executed the plan to perfection. Sadly, he knew that five seconds after the fight, the strategy would be sold on the black market and he would need to use something else. Not that it was that much of an issue. He had dozens of such plans in his files and from what he understood from Lucy’s, Sam’s, and even Tim’s conversations, they also had at least that much ready to be used. Still, it was a little bummer that his hard work would be used by others.

Then he received a message from Tim that he had found a buyer for the strategy.

Seeing the money written in the message, Adam felt he was nowhere near the level of the others. However, that didn’t discourage him. No, instead, it stoked the fire burning in his heart, urging himself to reach even newer heights.

He grinned and bellowed. “FIRE!”

Immediately, the same rain of projectiles began to fly toward the humongous monster as the earth began to move and envelop the next leg on their target list.

Once again, it was very satisfying to see the countless projectiles chip away at the monster’s exoskeleton leaving behind a rainbow of explosions. However, he couldn’t help but notice that some of the crystal patches began rapidly firing lightning strikes at the incoming attacks, either incinerating the projectiles or simply exploding them prematurely.

‘Apparently, it is learning…’ he mused as he watched the crystal marrow exposed despite the titan’s efforts. ‘But it is not enough…’

And there went the barrage from the mages.

BOOOOOMMMM

One more leg disintegrated and, once again, the people were moving to reset and do it again.

‘I wonder how Sam is doing…’

Sam was very annoyed.

As he headed for the titan’s head, ready to deliver an atomic bomb's worth of mana into the cranium of the monster, he was constantly harassed by waves of spiders from the smallest ones to the biggest ones. Thankfully, for whatever reason, they didn’t have the same level of resistance against damage as the big one, so a few crowd control spells and he was mowing them down like a middle-aged dad did to the grass in their new suburban house.

Meanwhile, he could feel the mana just growing and growing inside the monster somewhere, being prepared to be unleashed. This slowed down a little as the second leg was taken out because the titan had to focus more power on its defenses, but even so, Sam sensed enough mana to destroy everybody in the vicinity, including the fledgling town built upon the ruins nearby.

Thankfully, as the waves of monsters continued to appear, he noticed that great canyons began to open up on the rock surface of the titan’s back and several holes also mysteriously appeared at higher elevations.

‘Good. Then it’s not creating them ex nihilo…’ he celebrated inside of his own mind as he rushed forward, dodging lightning strikes, or just absorbing them with his shield. He was very much looking forward to the skill growth that would result from this fight.

Soon, however, he reached the part where the monster’s head was visible from his location.

He took in the giant horns made of red lightning crackling with energy and occasionally shooting off attacks at incoming projectiles and people who tried to follow him. Sadly, they didn’t have the same defenses as he had…

BOOOOOOOOMMMM

Sam staggered, using his mana to anchor himself and grabbing a nearby rock to avoid being thrown about as the third leg was taken out.

Before he could regain his equilibrium, the horns flashed and a pulse of very angry red lightning was released covering the entire quarry almost instantly. Sam couldn’t see them, but through his Mana Sense, he could feel hundreds of life signs being snuffed out at the same time.

His hastily erected earthen shield, layered with air and shadow, took the brunt of the damage and the rest were taken care of by the Mana Shield, but even so, the damage was big enough for him to notice.

Fortunately, he was almost there.

After the pulse, the horns began to radiate even more mana, which caused the crystalline structure supporting it to be exposed from under eons of stones as the mana it gave off simply evaporated the stone and rock covering the head of the titan.

And right in the middle of that was an irregular black stone. It was so black that it looked like it was sucking in the very light.

‘No… it’s a portal… fucking great…’ he realized as he took a closer look. It didn’t just look like it was sucking in light, it was actually sucking in everything that came into contact with it.

He pushed a few buttons, and a second later, he was looking at Adam.

“Found the weak point,” he stated placidly as he kept an eye for an ambush. However, it seemed that titan decided that stone spiders weren’t doing it for him, thus the very obvious bait.

“I assume it’s not that easy,” came the reply from the giant of a man.

Sam nodded. “It’s a portal. Probably into the core of the monster or some sub-dimension.”

Adam blinked then cursed quietly. “And we can’t send anybody to support you. Katie will be disappointed.”

“Oh, they arrived?”

“Just after the pulse.”

“Good. Focus on the legs. How long before the next strike?” he asked as he began to stretch a little.

Adam looked away for a second, clearly doing the math before replying. “Two minutes to the next one with your team here fully.”

“That’s the fourth leg. What about the next six?”

“I want to see how it reacts to that. The anti-air has grown rather strong after the second leg…”

“Estimate?”

“Two to five minutes per leg, I think. So, you’ll have around fifteen to thirty minutes to deal with whatever is inside,” came the report from the guild leader.

Sam thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Rush job it is. When are the guilds arriving?”

His reply was a sardonic smile from Adam. “Tim estimates thirty minutes to an hour. That guild-level blueprint really lit a fire under them. I took a glance at the forums and all the hot posts are full of speculations about it.”

Sam just grinned unrepentantly. “Alright. Good work, Adam. I’ll see you on the other side!” He hung up and faced the dark portal between the very angry and dangerous-looking horns of the titan. Wondering what would be waiting for him…

“Oh well, it’s not like I have time to wonder…” he murmured under his breath before sheathing his blade, cracking his neck to the left then to the right, then launching himself forward enhancing himself with all his available speed-boosting skills, running straight at the portal.

It seemed his thought of this being a trap was true. As he ran forward, the scenery flashed by, the lightning strikes around multiplied by several hundred times, but somehow the biggest ones seemed to always miss by the hairbreadth, only the smaller ones finding him before being absorbed by his shield.

Whatever intelligence this monster had; it was not big on subtlety.

Then, as he reached the portal, he jumped forward, hands held in front of him like a swimmer would, and dove headfirst into the super-dark portal. There was a brief flash of a notification screen, but before he could read it, he was distracted by the turbulent and turbid mana as it swirled around him for the second or so he spent in transit.

He landed in a roll but before he could hit anything; he felt himself being grabbed from the back by the jaws of his loyal companion, his movement halted by the powerful body of his familiar. It was a little jarring, but much better than slamming into the stone wall at full speed.

Grinning, he thanked the wolf, then sent him back to his shadow, and looked around.

Unsurprisingly, he found himself at the beginning of a cave system with the portal angrily swirling behind him as if saying that if Sam wanted to exist, he would only do it dead.

Now that he could actually focus, he called back up the notification screen.

[You entered the Core Dimension of ???!]

[You need to destroy ??? to escape!]

‘Very informative, system…’ he grumbled to himself, but instead of spending energy and time on figuring out something he could do after the fight, he unsheathed his sword and began walking forward.

Not even a few steps later, black mana began to ooze down from the ceiling in front of him, rapidly forming a spider made of the stuff.

But now that Sam was this close to the source, he could take a deeper look at the monster before him. He grinned.

“Well, it seems some demons really don’t like me… Wonder why?” he mused out loud as he simply walked forward and eradicated the poor monster with a swing of his sword.