141 - Encountering A T12 Monster

I was gliding away from Andrius and Redax, the two of them watching me go towards what might be the dumbest thing I had ever done. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the fact that going to therapy for being addicted to the thrill was what made me decide to take up the challenge. You’d think that in therapy, they’d tell you that what I was doing was self-destructive and unhealthy, but no. The addiction was a bit of a problem, but there were exercises to channel it in a “healthy” way, to not let it get out of control, and stay in charge of my mental faculties. No, what I had learned in therapy was how to align my old ethical values with my new reality and come to terms with the fact that things were wildly different now. 

And, well, bottling up and denying the addiction was bad. All that would do was that eventually I’d do something stupid due to “needing my fix”. I still thought that accepting an addiction was a weird thing to do, but apparently, being addicted to the rush of fighting was all too common in this new world. So, long ago, they switched from trying to heal the addled to facilitating their addiction by supporting them in their efforts to get stronger, getting a powerful warrior in return that they could send after powerful monsters. Well, here I was. A powerful warrior, going after a powerful monster of his own making. 

Never mind that what I was doing was monumentally stupid. 

Another angry roar shook the world, my ears sealing themselves automatically, yet I was still shaken by the rumbling sound waves. Acknowledging that the time for remembrance was over, I switched over to combat mode. If I’d give it anything less than 120%, this would be the day that my second life came to an end. I stacked my speed buffs, activated all defensive skills I had that didn’t hamper my movement, readied a teleport without finishing the matrix just in case, and activated my shield spell. Against a tier twelve monster, getting hit with my shield active ran the risk of immediately bottoming out my MP, but that was preferable to becoming a smear on the ground.

The dust cloud still concealed my opponent, but I could see flashes of shapes as the monster apparently lashed out against everything in its vicinity, destroying buildings that threw up even more dust and debris. It would seem like I’d gotten my wish of a big and dumb monster after all. Not wanting to squander the element of surprise and recognizing that my poison would be the most likely candidate for clinching the fight, I started up my full arsenal of poison spells. Poison Aura, Poison Mist, Poison Caltrops, and a small army of blindly fired poison assassinations. All to make sure my poison would stick before the fight proper would begin. I wasn’t sure how resistant this monster was, and since I couldn’t see the monster yet, the archive couldn’t tell me if the poison was applied, but with how much I’d done, I could only hope.

With preparations out of the way, it was time to kick things off properly, and soon enough, an angry void rend descended into the dust cloud from above. The resulting explosion added even more to the chaos. I immediately followed the void rend up by throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at the as-of-yet unknown monster, which meant a whole barrage of spells raining down on it. 

It was already pissed when it got displaced, but now that it was being attacked, it was well and truly pissed off. I could tell by the earth-shaking roar sounding even angrier than before. This was immediately followed by a pair of massive wings unfolding up and out of the dust cloud, forcing me to activate my panic teleport without hesitation. From a safe distance, I could finally see the monster as the beat of its ginormous wings got rid of the obscuring cloud.

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Liquid Ice Dragon (T12)

A rare evolution of a water dragon, blurring the line between liquid and solid states. Their body is not solid, but rather consists of millions of tiny ice creatures subordinate to a hive mind. While their body is special compared to other dragons, they still enjoy the full benefits of being a dragon, including race-exclusive skills, while gaining access to a whole slew of morphing skills. 

Due to their rarity, little is known about them. Fortunately, one thing that is for certain is how to defeat them. The hivemind possesses a core, which needs to be destroyed, or it will be able to regenerate infinitely. Unfortunately, however, the core is usually barely bigger than an individual ice creature and can shift its position freely within the body.

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The dragon looked, true to its description, like it was halfway between a solid and a liquid state. It was slightly transparent with a deep blue hue, and looking at it felt like looking at a vast ocean. Yet, upon closer inspection, it became apparent that the monster consisted of tiny beings that moved together to form the illusion of a dragon. My first thought was that this could be what happens when you took the crystal symbiote too far and incorporated it into your evolution. Or maybe the symbiote took over the host? I shook my head, not wanting to accuse my little friends of having an agenda. They were symbiotes, not parasites. 

The dragon stood at a good three stories tall, not including its wings, and was about twenty meters long, including the tail. It was slowly beating its wings and roaring to the heavens, its movements looking oddly smooth, yet jerky at the same time. It was like the movements weren’t due to moving muscles, but rather ripples in a lake, resulting in different motions. I quickly reopened my ears, confirming that there was a constant noise as the tiny creatures moved and rubbed against each other. It was a grating sound, and I watched as my HP ticked down slowly, causing my ears to automatically seal themselves again. 

I already loved that upgrade. 

The dragon hadn’t spotted me, so it resumed its angry rampage while I took a few seconds to observe. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t using any skills, but the way it moved should be impossible for an actual dragon. One of the many benefits of not having a solid body, I suppose. Maybe I was actually seeing the morphing skills the archive mentioned in action. 

Looking at my opponent, I couldn’t help but curse. I had gotten my wish. A big, dumb monster. But at the same time, this thing would be supremely hard to kill. The archive said to destroy the core, but that thing was a grain of sand in a haystack. To make matters worse, the dragon most likely was proficient in keeping the core out of trouble by shifting it around quickly, or even worse, had a slew of skills to protect it.

Just how was I supposed to deal with that?

For now, I didn’t have enough information. My usual strategy of bombarding my enemy would most likely not work, or take forever, so I needed to be smart about this. If I could figure out a weakness, some kind of flaw, and take advantage of it, I had at least a chance. I scoffed at myself for even considering being able to out-gun a monster four tiers above my own. Of course I needed to abuse some sort of gimmick. But right now, I needed to at least try in order to find an opening.

I started a long-range bombardment, a healthy mix of poison spells, void javelins, the odd laser, occasional void rends, and even a lava torrent or two. Of course, the dragon noticed quite quickly that it was under attack again, and following the constant barrage of spells back to its origin point wasn’t much of an issue. I kept an eye on my MP and VMP just to keep on top of things, happy that my giant hunter passive had already kicked in. The passive that I’d received as a reward for beating the reaper snake on the first layer had been a reliable companion ever since I got it. It was essentially the main reason I was able to fight above my weight class as effortlessly as I did, and over time had become even more ridiculous as my attribute pool grew. 

If I didn’t have the additional HP, MP, and other improved attributes, I’d have no chance at all. 

I didn’t get to bask in my increased attributes for long because it turned out that the dragon didn’t take kindly to being bombarded. As soon as it saw me in the sky, it took off from the ground at a speed that belied its size. An icy-blue glow appeared in its wide open maw, and after about two seconds of build-up up an obviously magical projectile shot out at incredible speed, right towards me. I once again teleported away, keeping an eye on the ball as it soared into empty air, eventually hitting the ceiling. When it impacted, a fifty-meter area instantly froze, and a giant icicle shot out from the impact point, thankfully hitting nothing but empty air. 

Probably shouldn’t get hit by that. 

I couldn’t help but notice that there had been no visible spell matrix, which meant it must have been a skill. That was good news for me, because skills always came with a cooldown. Just the image of getting bombarded by a spell of that magnitude made me shudder, even though void rend wasn’t terribly far behind in power, and I could cast that spell pretty fast and often. After all, I didn’t have the ability to take more than a few of these, like my opponent clearly did.

To my great relief, the dragon wasn’t the smartest cookie in the jar and proceeded to hunt me down in the most straightforward way imaginable. For a while, I kept teleporting around, flinging spells into the dragon's face, wings, body, limbs, and everything in between. If it was taking any damage, it didn’t let it show, which made me worry quite a bit. I kept my eyes wide open for any discernible effect, but the only thing I noticed was that my spells regularly broke off chunks of the dragon that seemingly got replenished almost immediately. It clearly had a way of creating more of the stuff that made up its body. Surely it couldn’t do so infinitely, but I suspected that I’d run out of MP long before this guy ran out of hive mind creatures. 

Interestingly enough, the dragon didn’t seem worried about defense at all, since all of my spells clearly did damage. Rather, it fully focused on healing and filling up the parts that got blown off, while presumably shifting around its core so it wasn’t in danger. The obvious solution to this problem would be a massive attack that got rid of the whole thing, but sadly, I wasn’t quite at that power level yet.

I was desperately trying to come up with a way out of this awkward stalemate when the dragon decided that it was done mindlessly charging at me. To my surprise, the dragon exploded. It took me a second to realize that the damn thing hadn’t commited suicide, but rather had split up its body into several… streams that shot at me much faster that it had moved before. There were twenty spears of… dragon liquid crystal things shooting at me. The surprise had delayed my response, but I managed to teleport just before the spears converged on me. 

From a safe distance, I watched as the spears collided, forming a roiling mass that would have crushed me easily, before eventually reforming into the image of a dragon. An angry dragon. I had paused my constant barrage to watch, yet the dragon located me almost immediately and spat a glob of its body in my direction. It missed rather spectacularly, and I watched it sail by, wondering what it was trying to do when the glob stopped dead in the air about a hundred meters away from me. I was surprised once again, as the glob seemed to work like some sort of ass-backwards portal, since the dragon imploded at its old location, exploding out of the orb shortly after. 

I reacted just a little too slow and the dragon managed to get in its very first hit, a claw scraping across my shield and sending me flying. I quickly glanced at my MP during another teleport away, and the attack ripped out a good chunk of my pool. If I didn’t have the increase due to giant hunter, I’d already be dangerously low. For now, I was fine, but I needed to avoid getting hit again, or things would start to cascade toward failure.

I took another look at the dragon that was already charging at me again, wondering if I had bit off more than I could chew this time around.