Chapter 51: Chef’s Kiss

Halfway through the Kaijupiter’s stride, the poison started taking effect. A creeping blackness laced by flashes of fire, lightning, and various other elements Sean couldn’t detect flowed through its veins and arteries, spreading as far up as its ankle and all the way down to its big toe.

The Kaiju roared, and turned to Sean mid-stride.

Shit. It knows it was me.

Without stopping, the Jupiter generated a truly massive bolt of lightning and chucked it offhand. If its foot really did hit the tape, Sean didn’t have any way of knowing as the lightning exploded at his feet, blinding him and sending him tumbling through the air. By the time he landed, literally all his shit was fucked up. He was a mass of broken bones, cuts, burns, blunt force damage, and concussions all competing for his attention. He didn’t care. All of his attention was consumed by his returning vision’s big reveal that not only had the Kaiju’s foot hit the tape, the tape had mostly held. The statues were still in place, and the tape had pushed the giant’s toes to meet its ankle. The monster was, against all odds, off balance.

And it wasn’t going to be enough. Sean could tell. His SAV had a pretty good idea just how off-balance most enemies were, and this was something the Kaiju would be able to recover from after a few seconds. For all his efforts, he had failed. He was just one guy, and it had turned out not to be enough.

At least I’m too fucked up to try anymore. If the monster was going to kill everyone he knew, he was at least glad that he had a great excuse why he wouldn’t be there to see it.

Then, with no warning, the Kaiju’s back started exploding. Not in a big way, relative to the monster itself. But with just enough force to keep it from recovering its balance, a series of explosions peppered its back. Explosions that Sean recognized. Somewhere he couldn’t see, Estesia had found him and was dumping all her mana into helping out. It wasn’t doing damage, but it was having an effect.

Sean smiled. She was going to be so very, very pissed about this. He stopped smiling as another lightning bolt flew out, cutting off any further arrows. Although sending the bolt threw the thing a bit more off-balance, he was much more worried about Estesia.

After dealing with the explosions, the monster started regaining its balance, a little more slowly, but still plenty fast that it would get its footing back soon enough. Sean had just about given up again when a booming, rumbling voice filled the air.

“I believe my friend wanted you to trip.” Sean managed just enough energy to look in the direction of the voice and saw something truly astounding. Cedarhelm was not flying through the air, exactly. It looked like it had leapt with enough power and speed that it was semi-flying. A virtual mountain of rock, earth, and dragon-muscle slammed with an unbelievable amount of power into the Kaiju.

Cedarhelm’s teeth and claws flashed, but couldn’t penetrate the skin of the Kaiju to get a grip. As the guide had suggested, a cracks-of-the-Earth generated monster would only really be damaged by the person being tested. But all the strength of a level 125 seemed to apply to the Zeus, tilting it forward.

“I’m glad I could help,” Cedarhelm said as he took a couple more ineffectual pot-shots at the Kaiju’s back. “Good luck.”

And then, suddenly, the dragon disappeared.

Interference Negated

You know the whole “nobody should mess with your test” thing is supposed to go both ways, right? The system can’t directly prevent other humans from doing it. That’s their business, and their potential funeral. But that dragon shouldn’t have even been able to get out of the forest, let alone get close to your final test.

Before you ask, yes, it’s doing something weird to make that happen with your friendship bond. But no, you don’t get to keep him. He’s been deposited back in his forest, safe and sound. All the stuff that’s supposed to keep him in there is now reinforced.

Please enjoy the rest of your impossible task.

Cedarhelm’s help had sent the giant so very, very close to tipping. But as much as Sean wanted to disbelieve his SAV-driven understanding of balance and footing, it wasn’t quite enough. The KaiJupiter was leaning far, far over now, tottering on its badly poisoned foot. But it wasn’t going to fall, and Sean was all out of combat efficient friends.

Suddenly, he heard a whoop. It would have been hard to blame Sean for not remembering that voice. The person it was connected to should have been long, long gone. But, flying through the sky on some kind of jury-rigged motorcycle made of pure jank was a very fat, very bald Greek man wearing Mad-Max style armor. He was clearly enjoying the hell out of himself.

And like an OSHA violation from hell, he had strapped flaming propane tanks to every place on his flying bike that would accommodate them. It was completely the dumbest, least possible thing Sean had ever seen. It made zero sense, even before his eyes watered up, and he couldn’t see things very clearly anymore.

“Kid!” Jeff yelled, between whoops. “I’ll explain later!”

And then the world exploded.

—

By the time the dust cleared, Jeff was gone. Sean didn’t really see a way he could have survived the blast, and the system didn’t say it had teleported him away or anything like that. Still, if anyone could have survived it, it was probably him.

It’s… how does the system say it? Jeff surviving would be thematically appropriate.

The KaiJupiter, however, was dead. Very, very dead. When the system said it had built its monstrosity of a statue to be indestructible, it wasn’t kidding. It had taken absolutely no apparent damage from the impact. The Kaiju wasn’t as lucky. The Zeus had at least been designed to be somewhat killable by Sean, as unlikely as that was.

Impaling itself not just on the sword but in fact the full width of an irregularly shaped, indestructible statue with its full weight behind it was more than enough to take it down. Especially when one of Sean’s stupider long-shot insanities ended up bearing fruit.

Shiv-Chimera

Okay, I’m gonna shoot straight with you. This is the absolute minimum thing I’m going to pretend is a proper shank. You wrapped ONE loop of duct tape around this thing, and I’m allowing it entirely because what you are trying to do is batshit insane and won’t work at all.

It gets your bonus to how well shanks work from your class skill and absolutely nothing else. If you were looking for the borders of how your skill works, you’ve found it.