ZING

Liam’s body crashed on the ground, slammed down due to the strength of the enemy’s blow. The armor kept him from being split in half, but the kinetic energy still ravaged his insides, damaging his organs. His flesh and organs squirmed, trying to reconnect. He was unmoving as he lay on the ground, but the attacks didn’t stop coming his way. Jumping up, he avoided them. The enemies hadn’t received the XP notification telling them of his death, so they hadn’t stopped attacking. It meant that there was no time for Liam to rest. He had to regenerate mid-battle.

For the past two days, Liam had been consistently and continuously baiting out soldiers who attempted to finish him off, only to get caught off-guard by the buff to his abilities near-death and end up being killed. Over time, the tactic had been refined and proven itself to be quite effective. Nevertheless, as the deaths started to pile up, even despite the rotations of tens of thousands of soldiers at a time, they were beginning to be noticed. The biggest reason for this was Liam’s armor, which was quite distinct and overall better than the ones worn by the ordinary soldiers. He was forced to run around the battlefield to avoid having his strategy discovered, going further and further away from his teammates, still locked in battle with the enemy’s Elite Squad.

Liam could see the need to change his tactics. Soldiers had been leaving the forcefield less and less, reducing its effectiveness. He needed a way to kill them while they were still inside the barrier, but that was impossible. The only alternative, then, was to break down the forcefield and take the battle directly into the Fortress.

In the past two days, Liam’s stats had increased a fair bit. By killing two to three enemies at a time, he managed to increase them steadily. Now, Constitution and Recovery were getting close to the value of 1500. Once they reached it, he would have to level up to continue to increase his stats.

‘I should get to level 20 as soon as possible, even if it takes me longer to adapt to the sudden increase in strength.’

Right now, he had to narrow the gap between himself and the others as much as he could. While it would take him a while to reach the same stats as One, he had to get as close to them as he could. Reminding himself of the Elite Squad’s Captain, Liam gazed into the distance. Far from him, only visible by his improved eyesight, One fought like a beast, slashing and slamming at the forcefield as his weapon changed in real-time, from a greatsword to a hammer to a scythe. He poured out Active Skills, making the earth and skies shake. If Liam could destroy a small town, One was at the level of leveling entire metropolises with a single blow. His attacks resonated for kilometers on end, each move a beautiful dance of skill and power in equal measure. Liam couldn’t even begin to guess how many Passive and Active Skills the Captain had accumulated throughout his life. Nevertheless, he was closely matched by the enemy Captain, who remained inside the forcefield.

‘The gap between us is as wide as expected.’

There was no way to bridge the gap caused by the immense stat difference between them. In order to help the Drakkhan deal with the other Captain, Liam needed to increase his stats. He looked at the System message that kept popping up every once in a while, including moments ago.

[Your body responds to your Will.]

Frankly, he had been on his last legs for a while now. Every battle forced him to regenerate endlessly and fight to the best of his ability, spending his energy as if it were worthless. While he still hadn’t come across an attack that could kill him, the damage added up. Regeneration after regeneration put a strain on his body, draining his Aura reserves and tiring his mind. Unbreakable Will was responsible for keeping him standing and fighting, but even that had its limits. In a mere two days of fighting, Liam had been pushed to the brink. It was then that he realized how he could die.

‘If I don’t have enough energy to regenerate, it’s over.’

His Aura was constantly spent to increase his regeneration’s speed. When it came close to running out, it wouldn’t work like that anymore. By that point, his regeneration would either stop or drastically slow down; if enough damage was dealt, he could end up dying without even realizing how it had happened. At least, this was what he guessed.

‘I need to be careful. I shouldn’t allow myself to be hit anymore.’

Liam gripped his spear tightly, now moving more cautiously than before. There was no time to rest and recover. He had to keep fighting.

He used Waterstep, approaching the forcefield. As he had many times before, he first got in a few blows on the barrier, before letting himself be targeted by the enemy’s attacks. Then, as if on cue, four soldiers slid down the wall, getting closer to his position. As expected, due to the sheer number of them, not all soldiers had been made aware of his tactics yet.

‘Four of them is going to be tough.’

Liam defended himself against their attacks with genuine difficulty. He would have had trouble even when going all-out, so there was no need to fake how desperately he dodged their blows and countered them. Avoiding the hundreds of meters long blades and waves of Aura with Waterstep, he used Flow to hit the forcefield in front of them, reducing their incoming momentum; if they didn’t stop, they would run directly into his move and Aura. Taking advantage of this, he used Drought to hit the shield once more.

Two of the soldiers, both looking like a mix between a wolf and a humanoid, much like the beastmen from before, joined their forces and split apart Liam’s Flow, leaving the forcefield. They fired long-range attacks as they dashed forward, getting closer and closer.

‘They’re melee fighters?’

This would only make things easier. Liam tried to keep himself from grinning. The remaining two soldiers kept themselves at range, inside the forcefield.

‘Let’s see if you can keep standing there.’

Stopping, Liam got into a stance and prepared himself for the incoming enemies. The first of the wolven beastmen arrived before the other, using claw-like weapons that utilized his original claws to great advantage. Coursing his Aura through them, the beastman raised his right claw up high and brought it down. Liam’s Intuition screamed at him to move. He used Waterstep to appear directly behind the beastman as four gashes appeared on the sand where he used to be standing, each several hundred meters long. He thrust his spear at the enemy’s back, but the soldier’s body twisted abruptly, avoiding his attack. The atmosphere around them imploded due to the sheer speed of Liam’s blow, raising a large amount of sand. Both combatants were wholly unperturbed, using Aura Sight to orient themselves.

The beastman swung his claw horizontally and Liam jumped up to avoid it.

‘Drizzle Drought.’

The soldier disappeared, reappearing over 300 meters away in a mere second, but the current of small spears followed him accurately with equally blinding speed. As the creature dealt with the flood of spears, the second soldier arrived. Immediately trying to hit Liam with his spear, the being thrust forward. Liam parried the blow with his spear shaft. Not losing momentum, the beastman spun his body, trying to come at Liam from the other side. The youth quickly placed his weapon’s shaft in the way once more.

BANG

The enemy’s spear’s blade crashed against his’ shaft, upturning the earth around them. The ground cracked and broke in a radius of one hundred meters, the stone underground soaring towards the heavens. At this moment, the first beastman approached Liam from behind, swinging both of his claw weapons at the same time.

‘Event Horizon.’

“Urgh!”

“Wha-?”

The two soldiers were instantly swallowed up by the great darkness. Liam’s Aura ground away at their bodies, trying to turn them into nothingness. Their Auras surged, but the Event Horizon’s pressure made their Aura circulation slow and sluggish. The first beastman’s swinging claws got slower and less powerful, cutting through the air and hitting Liam’s back; the armor absorbed most of the blow, proving its effectiveness as the Empire’s elite equipment. Withstanding the attack, Liam deactivated his technique. The sudden disappearance of the pressure made both soldiers overextend themselves due to the strength they were using to move, making them be thrown off-balance for a split second. It was enough.

PANG

The back end of Eynart’s spear’s shaft smashed into the snout of the clawed beastman, while the youth’s foot pierced at the pit of the spearman’s stomach.

BOOM

The clawed soldier was sent hurling backwards for over a kilometer, digging into the earth until it was tens of meters underground. At the same time, the spearman slid back until he slammed into the ground right in front of the forcefield. The sudden stop made him cough out blood. The other soldiers within the barrier looked at one another before leaving the shield. One of them inserted their Aura into the kneeling spearman, while the other pointed a long-range weapon at Liam. However, the young man was smiling.

‘Singularity.’