Weapons of Mass Destruction

Even though the metals Dennis and Aaron brought back are only epic rarity, I’m happy with them. I’ve long since learned that sometimes a nice complementary metal with good properties is better than something with a higher rarity. Sometimes.

The lights around me flicker back on, coming from a dozen thermal cubes lighting up my underground lab. My crown hovering over a metal bust inlaid with a range of inscriptions moves, floating across the room until it takes its rightful place over my head.

My baby, my precious. The crown has become a deep shade of blue, marbled with faint traces of pale blue.

The amount of mana stored in it is probably enough to destroy… I don’t know what, probably something very big. Without further testing and experience, it’s hard to guess. It will probably also be difficult to channel that much mana, but hey, it’s what I’m good at.

I drop the metals on the table next to a short sword in a sheath that obscures any mana signature that might be emanating from the blade. The sheath is made of an alloy of a dozen metals: shades of copper, black, blue sheen gray, are blended throughout, alongside tiny bits of blue and white crystal, complemented by the densest and most complicated inscriptions I’ve ever made.

My Mana Wavelength Iris activates again, and as always, I feel the gradually increasing pressure on my mind. It’s doable, but doing so any longer will cause problems, even with my goddamned arcane passive.

I get to work, radiating heat, and melting the metal in my hand, moving thin strands of material with my mana, as I hammer it with kinetic energy. Reaching the required consistency, I move the molten metal to a set of pre-prepared grooves on the sheath while reaching into the back of my mind, where I’ve kept an inscription structure prepared just for these situations.

It doesn’t take long, and after performing the requisite checks, I absorb the heat from the metal, while making a few finishing touches with my kinetic energy before it hardens.

I give the sheath a few more checks, but the seals and inscriptions for suppression, protection, camouflage… and other things, seem to be working better now and the signs of degradation I saw mere moments ago have been rectified.

Good, that should be able to contain that evil sword I’ve made for a bit longer.

Lastly, I take a sheath wrap I made out of the leather of a level 350 manta ray I hunted in the Mana Desert not long ago and apply it, finishing the protections.

For a while longer, I examine the hilt of the sword and guard. Both have been made from a single piece of molten alloy, combining arcanite alloy, amberlace, tiny bits of voidcopper, and a few other materials I got from scrapping some of the damaged arcane weapons I had. Combining them into a dark gray alloy, with mottled hues of black and light gray and streaks of copper running through the metal like a spiderweb of cracks.

There are some imperfections here and there, cracks even, and shapes that feel off. To be honest, it’s every bit as ugly, as my fellow group members have pointed out several times over. But it’s my other precious, and I carefully put it back on the table and activate the defenses I’ve placed around it.

Not so much to protect the sword, as to protect us from it.

The thing is just evil.

I send a signal through a Ley Line connected to Lily and receive her confirmation, then use it to teleport over to her.

Unlike me, she doesn’t need an underground bunker lab as she didn’t have an accident that blew up her lab and took an entire fortress with it. The sort of thing that could’ve happened to anyone. Even to the best of us.

Lily likes to do her training and experiments in the confines of our walled yard. She even made some of the guys plant some nice trees here, which they had to get from one of the dangerous forests that litter the central region.

The result is trees with white bark and leaves that produce a shade of green unlike any we’ve ever seen on Earth.

There she sits on the bench with the axe she made on her lap. An axe she grew from her own bones. Its handle is only half as long as Lily is tall, but I’ve seen just how quickly she can make it longer if she needs to. The axe blade is single-sided and likely has a surface area nearly as great as that of Lily's entire body.

This weapon is something she’s been growing for months already and started doing so after I made her level up as much as possible to reach level 250 and get a body upgrade that was a massive power-up for her. Growing the axe from her body also made it stronger than it would have been before level 250.

“It seems to be nearly done,” I note and sit on the ground opposite her. In an attempt to avoid slacking off, I create one of my evil cubes and start training.

She smiles softly, “I’m happy with the shape, and I changed the handle a bit, so I can grow it quickly if needed. Now I just need to keep working on strengthening the blade while I experiment with infusing the blade with [Disintegration].”

I long since gave up being surprised at the terrifying ideas the members of group 4 tend to come up with.

I stop for a moment and examine her. Lily is still very pale, and her brown eyes seem lighter in this light. She also has her hair tied up in a simple ponytail with her trademark bangs falling across her forehead. She also seems to be growing more athletic by the day.

Her shoulders are a bit wider now, and she packs a hint of muscle, bringing to mind an amusing memory of a time when she refused most forms of exercise, worried that she was going to turn into some kind of muscle monster.

And the twins threatening to call her “muscle mommy” didn’t help much either.

But in the end, she’s still just as petite as ever. A tiny killing/healing machine.

“How’s the Skele-Suit coming along?”

“Nat, please, you at least, should stop calling it that.”

“What about calcium-cage?”

“Another one? I’m going to beat the snot out of those two little assholes.”

I don’t think I’m going to tell her that the last name was my idea.

Lily points at the tree, against which she has lain a chestplate made of the same pearl-white bone as her axe. “It’s hindering my movements. Sure, it can hold some mana and block attacks, but my bones can do that just as well. I’ve already got some designs with platings that should make the armor much easier to move in.”

“How about making chainmail, and using your bones in place of the iron rings?”

“Huh, that’s not a bad idea, but now I feel like going to sleep and procrastinating just imagining how much work that would take.”

“I already tried making something similar from manabloc, so you can bet on my sympathy.” A memory from a few months earlier flashes through my mind, and I shudder. Then a thought comes. Could I one day replace mana rings with Ley Lines? Wouldn’t that be too strong?

“How did it go with Gravelhand?”

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“The twins triggered a trap, and their Champion Candidate appeared. The information about him being out of the city seemed to be wrong.”

“I’ll talk to the informant about that. Any trouble?”

“By talking to him, do you mean engaging in intimidation and knocking some heads together?”

“What else? I’m not Tess,” she says, smiling playfully, despite the horrifying implications of the statement.

“As for any trouble that might cause, it shouldn’t be anything major, and don’t worry, I’ll speak with the informant. We’ll just need to be more careful when we visit Hollowgate for a while, that’s all. Hey, what have you done there?”

Proud of me noticing, she excitedly moves closer, hefting the giant axe in a single hand and shoving the blade within an inch of my face.

Before I can complain, she proudly points out, “I finally succeeded, and I think I’ll be able to ‘heal’ the axe if it gets damaged. Of course, it shouldn’t be all that easy to damage it in the first place. Between the effects of my constitution, body upgrade, and trait, my bones are extremely tough as it is, but it could still happen! Now it almost feels as if it’s part of my body! I told you that growing it out of my own bone rather than using those of a Champion or some powerful monster would be better!”

“It’s pretty cool,” I agree, “I just still think it would be super strong if you did.”

"It would take much longer to grow it from a Champion's bone. But don’t worry, this one will grow along with me, and I’ll be able to keep strengthening it." She says, pulling the axe back.

Some time ago, I held that weapon and was surprised by its weight. Sure, with the increase in my stats from using the Restrictive Training Emblem, I could hold it and even swing it, but could I have done the same with a single arm, with the same ease as Lily? She swings it through the area around her, taking swift steps and manipulating the axe as if it were no heavier than a normal splitting axe.

And the fact that it’s a petite black-haired girl doing it feels especially weird.

“I’m almost caught up with my work here, so we’ll leave soon to regroup with the others.”

“How about that place?”

“The Hoarders are preparing an expedition to the mines in a few days, so we’ll join them. I already had Dennis enlist us while you grew that monstrosity, and by monstrosity, I mean it in a good way,” I add before she can complain.

Lily laughs shyly as if I had just given her a massive compliment. “If you’re right and one of the Containment Cells is down there, it will be a truly fun expedition.”

I can only agree with the sentiment.

Later that night, I close my eyes, appearing inside of my mind, where, as usual, the area has changed.

This time it’s a view I saw a long time ago on TV. Whitey and I stand on the surface of the Moon and look out into the pitch darkness that almost seems to swallow the Earth in the vastness of space, making its troubles seem small and insignificant by comparison.

The gravity is normal, Earth-like. All of this is from my imagination, a combined image made from a collection of images and videos I saw on TV and the internet.

As I sit down to enjoy the view for a moment, Whitey moves closer, sitting next to me and tapping my shoulder. He holds a tablet in his hand, playing a video of me fighting the Gravelhand’s Champion Candidate.

“Here you were slow to absorb your inertia,” he says, touching the screen and scrolling, “here you could have moved to the opposite side. The way you destroyed his barriers went pretty well, but there are still a lot of ways you could improve. Instead of concentrating on such a small surface and delivering equal power, you should spread it out, make it more powerful in the middle, and weaken it as you move towards the surface.”

I grab the tablet and replay it, “Wouldn’t that make the aftershocks weaker?”

“Ha!” He exclaims, snatching the tablet away. “Quite the opposite. The gradual separation would strengthen the pulses, and while it would be a bit weaker it would also make the attack more efficient. Even better would be releasing a timed series of pulses, but you suck at it.”

“Bullshit. Show me.” I stand up and create an exact copy of the barrier the other man used.

Whitey jumps to his feet as well and does just that, a single tap on the barrier, releasing a series of three pulses. Each comes at a different time, in a pattern that doesn’t seem to make any sense. Yet I watch as each pulse meets, crashes into, and strengthens its predecessor. Instead of spreading further around the spherical barrier, they make for higher frequency “waves” in a smaller area, destroying the barrier even more quickly.

Knowing what he wants to hear, I sigh, “I know shit all about kinetic energy.”

Whitey smirks, “I wouldn’t exactly say it’s shit, but yeah, it’s pretty bad.”

Having spoken his piece, the closest he’s ever gotten to giving me praise, his stance changes. Breaker Style.

Gone are the smile and careless bearing he displayed before. As always when it comes to fighting, his eyes seem to flare a deeper shade of red and the atmosphere around him grows that much more dangerous. Joviality is replaced by the presence of a cruel, and dangerous predator.

I mimic the stance, and the rhythm of my heartbeat changes, matching his. Pulsing in slower, more powerful beats.

He takes a step forward, and using the force of his entire body, thrusts his open palm towards me, surging forth behind a brutal, and heavy burst of kinetic energy.

Taking a similar step forward, I stomp, releasing a similar burst with what I might otherwise think of as perfect timing.

The moon dust flies into the air and covers the area, but eyes in a fight against kinetic energy don’t matter.

His next strike erupts from behind the veil of dust, followed by another, hidden in its shadow. Increasing my output, I attack three times, each burst sending more dust flying into the air and producing an audible disturbance, almost as if someone were banging on a massive drum.

After a few more exchanges I sense a change in his heartbeat, replacing the prior rhythm with a quicker, erratic, and more chaotic one.

Needle Point.

Thin bursts of kinetic energy, as narrow as my fingers, shoot toward me, forcing me to dodge again and again. Instead of slowing down, the attacks come faster as time goes on, several times per second, leaving me no time to strike back and demanding every ounce of my focus just to react.

But unlike our Challenge, I can actually sense them with some degree of accuracy, boosting my body to react with a near sense of ease.

Duck under, jump over, move to the side, twist my head. I sense each and every burst.

Then they stop.

And immediately after, a dozen more fire off almost simultaneously.

I manage to dodge the first six, amazed at my ability to do even that much, but the rest pierce my body, perfectly anticipating my movements.

My knee explodes, my shoulder gets pierced, the fingers, on one hand, find themselves reduced to mush, one of the attacks even punctures a lung, while another destroys my ankle.

With the next step, the cloud of dust is blown away, revealing Whitey in Wraith Dance. He appears in front of me, followed by a switch to Pulser Stance.

He avoids my attacks with excessive ease, simply ripping the ground apart around him with Breaker Style as he deflects the rest. He grabs my arm and tears it from my shoulder, spraying my blood across the surface of the moon.

He dodges again and continues to deflect my attacks as I switch to first stance, then he kicks me, caving my chest in and causing blood to seep from the corners of my mouth.

“Your heart’s output has greatly improved as has your efficiency,” he says, examining the arm he tore from my body.

“Is it?” I hiss, blood flowing from my mouth.

“Yes.” He says, throwing my arm somewhere behind him, having lost interest. “Your detection is also starting to get pretty good, so I’ll start adding in feints the next time we spar.”

“Lucky me.”

“Indeed.” Whitey squats in front of me and touches the wound on my chest with his slim, pale finger, “It’s already been five months since we started this training. I mean, it was fun at the start, but it’s lost some of its charm. Do you feel like giving up yet? You could spend more time on your mana, that’s where your true talent lies.”

“I liked you more when you talked less and beat the shit out of me more.”

He stands with a smile. And I notice that here, on the moon, surrounded by scenery devoid of color, his eyes seem especially red, and his white hair seems to shine against the void.

“You aren’t half bad, for a human. This makes the hundredth time I’ve killed you.” Whitey muses, then stomps on my head.

I open my eyes back in my lab and stretch on my bed before closing my eyes and replaying the fight.

It could be said the kinetic training has been going pretty well.