{Nico’s 1st person POV}
The air felt weirdly still for a second. Like the whole island was holding its breath.
"Here they co-" I muttered.
I didn’t even get to finish the sentence.
Because a guy, no... a glowing runic knife with a guy attached to it, erupted out of the darkness like a horror movie jump scare with a shit-eating grin on his face already mid-swing.
But he wasn’t aiming for .
He was aiming for Nom-Nom.
Bad life choice.
Because the mont he breached that invisible line she considers "my space," her instincts snapped awake like a trap springing shut.
And then -
- BOOM.
Her fist t his face with the sound of a bowling ball hitting concrete.
And the man was "knocked back".
Nah, he was driven into the ground, headfirst, like she was planting a goddamn tree.
A crater ford, and leaves fell. And sowhere a bird died of second-hand embarrassnt.
The man blinked up at us in a dazed with blood trickling from his nose, clearly processing the fact that he had been out-sped by a ’dragon’ who wasn’t even trying.
And then-
- Fwip-
-he vanished again, swallowed by the darkness like a guilty cat fleeing the scene.
"How is he doing that?" I muttered.
-Ding!
{Shadow Affinity. And the technique he is using is called Shadow Steps.
Host, that technique makes him incredibly dangerous at night. But a Greater Dragon should have the reflexes to handle that.}
Nom-Nom cracked her knuckles at that, eyes gleaming like she had just been handed dessert.
"Master?" she asked.
"Alright...You handle this one..." I exhaled hard before slamming all my MP into the cloak, "...I’ll keep the others busy!"
- FWOOM-!!
And my body snapped upward into the sky.
The wind roared past my ears as I shot toward the four signatures moving toward .
How did I know exactly where they were?
Easy.
At the top of my vision, the System’s dynamic compass bar lit up like a video ga HUD:
[ • • • • ]
SOUTH
1.0 KM
Little red dots marked Hostile / Aggro’d Targets just like in video gas.
"Neat," I muttered. Except for the minor exception that if I died here, I ain’t respawning.
Precognition pulsed in my skull, like a steady heartbeat of MOVE WHEN I TELL YOU, MORON.
I also kept a chunk of mana aside for Ice Pebbles, feeding the rest into flight.
At 700 ters, I could see faint lights between the trees.
At 600 ters, I saw that light getting brighter.
At 500 -
-BOOOOM-!!
A massive sphere of roaring blue fire tore through the night straight at faster than sound, like a cot-sized "screw you" launched with religious enthusiasm.
Precognition gave that I’d be extra crispy in the next couple of seconds.
So, I jerked left just as the inferno roared past , before exploding sowhere behind with enough force to probably flip a whale.
"Holy-!" I hissed, snapping upright and reflex-fired faster than thought.
-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-!
Fragntation Ice Pebbles launched with screaming sonic cracks toward the four approaching signatures.
For half a second, I thought I’d hit sothing.
Then -
- FWOOM-!
A massive green do of light erupted over them, tanking my shrapnel like the world’s smuggest turtle shell.
The explosions burst harmlessly across the surface before scattering across it’s surface like glitters.
"Right..." I muttered. "Of course they’d do that."
And the next mont, Precognition foretold getting cooked dium rare before another smaller and faster fireball, tore toward like a sniper shot blessed by a sun goddess.
I dove with everything I had as the fireball shrieked past my shoulder, missing by inches and detonating upward in a flash of burning blue.
"Okay...nope. Not doing this head-on." I coughed before shooting upward.
"Higher..." I hissed as another fireball brushed past .
"Higher..." I barely dodged another.
And I went even higher, until the night sky swallowed and the forest turned into a dark sar far below with a lit do in the corner of it.
I cut the mana feed to the cloak down to just 1 MP/sec, levitating there before I shoved the entirety of my remaining 54MP capacity into one spell.
And a few heartbeats later, a single, colossal boulder of an Ice Pebble ford in front of .
I held it for a heartbeat.
And then, I let it go.
Letting gravity add the velocity I didn’t have the MP to.
That giant unstable mass of ice dropped like a frozen teor, screaming through the sky as it fell straight toward the glowing green do.
The do brightened in response before -
- BOOOOOM-!!!
It hit like a glacial asteroid, sending a shockwave of frosty dust across the canopy, and bending the trees violently under the force.
The do wavered and dimd for a brief mont before lighting right back up.
"Tough little bubble," I muttered. "Alright... round two."
Another ball of blue flas ca screaming at , but with this much distance, I dodged it quite easily.
I kept feeding just enough mana into the cloak to hold myself mid-air, and began shaping another Ice Pebble.
But this ti, I made a massive Fragntation Ice Boulder.
Every inch of that thing was violence.
Took more than a few seconds to form, and once it was done, I simply let it drop.
And it fell, gaining more speed with every ter.
And then:
BOOOOOOOM-!!!!
The explosion tore the forest apart.
Shards the size of fists blasted outward at supersonic speeds, ripping a clean gouge through the forest.
Trees were shredded, split, or straight-up uprooted by the frost blasting across the ground in a sweeping wave that left the ground below white and sparkling.
And when the haze finally settled...
The do was still standing. Flickering, yes, but still standing nonetheless.
While I... grinned.
"I can do this all day~" I said, hands already gathering mana for another.
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