The birds had long stopped chirping.
Every single one of them, across the entire clearing and the forest beyond, had gone quiet, taking even the insects with them.
The wind itself had dropped to nothing, and the only sound left in the forest was the faint, continuous hum coming from the gold speck floating beside my right shoulder.
The air around it had been doing wrong for the past twenty minutes.
The space in a two-ter radius around it was hard to even look at.
The nearest patch of grass bent outward at an angle that had nothing to do with wind. The water in the small puddle three ters away was rippling from the pressure that little speck was radiating.
60 minutes of continuous charging at 60 MP/s.
That’s 216,000 MP.
I had never produced anything that contained this much mana in my life.
The speck itself was barely the size of a coin, floating there, pulsating gold like a miniature sun.
[This is either gonna be the most spectacular thing I have ever done...] I thought, feeling the grin spread across my face, [The coroner is going to have an extrely interesting report to write.]
Peko was at the far edge of the clearing, standing far enough back that she would not end up inside whatever was about to happen, and she had not taken her eyes off the speck since we entered the clearing.
The hem of her robes was shifting slightly from the passive mana pressure rolling off it at this range.
Nom-Nom was standing directly across the clearing from the speck, maybe 50 ters away.
Her arms were loose at her sides, and her shoulders were relaxed.
Her chin was angled up and slightly to the right, violet eyes trained on the gold speck.
With her nose pointed up and her eyes blatantly looking down, her entire posture said, without a single word, that whatever was inside that speck was not sothing that warranted her full preparation.
I silently chalked that up to draconic arrogance.
That was fine. She would know in about thirty seconds.
[Alright...] I thought as the grin hit feral territory. [Here goes.]
-BOOM-!
The ground directly beneath the speck ruptured into a ring of cracks and pulverized rock from the shockwave of pure mana, slapping the entire clearing, bending the trees away.
And from the center of the speck that was now a massive, roaring ball of pure energy, it ca out.
-Thud-Thud-Thud...
The footsteps alone sent rippling tremors throughout the clearing, and with mana expanding upward in a cascade of gold light that poured out of every joint and seam in the armor like plasma pulsing out of the sun itself, my Ferrum Knight stepped out.
Twelve feet, black plates so dense with accumulated mana that the surface of it shimred at the edges with heat distortion.
The proportions were wrong, containing way more than they were designed to contain. The armor was overbuilt, the fra broader than the standard knight’s by a margin, and the ten-foot greatsword in its grip was thicker too.
The gold light pouring out of the seams wasn’t just a glow. It was mana rolling off in waves that rose and dissipated into the air. The grass directly beneath the Knight’s feet had scorched from the passive heat of it without anything touching it.
And the pressure, holy shit, the pressure it wafted out suffocated even .
It was both hard to look at directly and even harder to look away from.
Peko’s eyes had gone wide, and even her mouth went slightly open.
That realization alone made my excitent spike again, because apparently, I had finally built sothing that even Peko had to stop and respect properly.
But Nom-Nom was looking at it with her chin still up and her eyes looking down at it as though she was staring at an insect.
And I had no doubt she ant every ounce of that attitude.
"Ready?" I asked, keeping my voice light even though my heart was beating like a drumr on crack.
"Ready," Nom-Nom simply said.
I looked at her for another beat, because I still had enough sense left to wonder whether I should warn her again, and then I did exactly that.
"You sure? You don’t want to draw your sword, or charge up, or sothing?"
Her eyes moved to . Just her eyes.
"I am ready, Master."
I snorted, because there was no arguing with that tone, and because she sounded so completely sure of herself that I almost respected the audacity.
But still, I turned to the System.
[System, how much percentage per second should we throw at her? I was thinking one percent a second, that’s 2160... already ridiculous.]
-Ding!
{I recomnd ten percent per second.}
[Yeah... Nope... that’s nearly 22,000 MP...]
The System added nothing further.
So, I asked Nom-Nom herself.
"Nom! How much MP per second are you comfortable with?"
"Let it all out at once," she said.
I blinked at her.
[Nope...]
"Okay!... We are going 10% a second, so get your sword out and stuff... that is still about nine tis your capacity."
Nom-Nom did not even bother replying to that.
[Know what? Fine! You do you, girl...] I thought, adjusting the output manually through the subconscious connection, and taking direct control of the knight, feeling the staggering reserve of locked mana respond to my intent like a pressure system roaring to exhale energy worth a goddamn nuke.
The Knight’s perception of the clearing was different: the grass lower, the trees smaller, and Nom-Nom was a violet-eyed figure with her nose pointed at the sky, looking at the Knight with an expression that said she was waiting for it to do sothing worth paying attention to.
"Here cos!" I shouted again, because at this point, warning her had beco a formality.
And with that, I moved it... Gently.
-BOOM-!-CRACK-!
The massive sonic boom shuddered the entire forest, heating the air as it covered the distance in less than an instant, greatsword up in a wide horizontal arc aid straight at her neck, with a full 22,000 MP behind it.
And that’s when her right hand ca alive.
Instantaneous, with zero wind-up, her nails beca black claws in the sa mont the black scales spread across her hand and up her forearm, and her legs snapped into a wide brace, and-
-KABOOM-!
The blast of dust, debris, and sheer kinetic heat detonated, all generated by force alone, ripping apart trees to smithereens.
And through the senses I shared with the knight, I felt the blade stop as though having hit sothing immovable.
At the part of the blade that was supposed to have connected with her neck, I found Nom-Nom’s claws embedded in. Saw her legs dug into the dirt in two deep furrows.
[S-she caught it... with a single... bare hand...] The thought ca in fragnts, amidst processing the fact that I felt no mana flare from her body.
And through the Knight’s shared senses, I felt her gaze.
[Ancient...] The word floated up by itself, as I felt the gaze, feeling my heart slow beyond normal, as though the abyss I had been gazing into so frivolously had just gazed back.
The deep draconic growl that rolled out of her throat arrived in my gut before it reached my ears, and as I kept looking into her eyes through the Knight’s perception, I felt a fear so absolute that my entire body, down to thoughts themselves... just locked.
[P-pull back!] I sohow forced it into existence.
But just as the thought finished forming, she opened her mouth.
The flaming silhouette that erupted from it was not just fire. It was the shape of an ancient, primal terror condensed into an instant in the outline of a draconic head of burning violet and gold expanding outward, and it swallowed the Knight whole in one violent instant, burning bright enough to bleach the edges of my vision before everything went abruptly and horrifyingly quiet inside my head.
The connection vanished the very sa instant.
[S-she ate it?]
-Ding!
{Alert: Familiar Nom-Nom has gained 300 MP capacity.}
[SHE ATE THE DAMN THING!!!]
As the violet flas faded, Nom-Nom’s fra ca into view, standing in the scorched center of the clearing, untouched, her chin still angled up, her eyes moving from the space where the Knight had been to .
And the look she gave with those violet eyes was the look of declaring, ’The point is yet to be made.’
Blue light flashed beside her hand, and a six-foot greatsword appeared in her grip from inventory.
Nom-Nom raised the sword high into the air, pointing it straight at the sky, and spoke just two words.
"My turn."
[Huh..? wai-! No! No-no-no-no...!]
-KABOOM-!!!
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