Moving deeper into the industrial complex came with more enemy critters. Rats, some small birds and sizable insects were our primary enemies, all of them fairly easy to detect thanks to their obvious fire attributes. Some were burning outright, like the rats, while the birds had bright colours, their feathers vividly red or orange, making them look quite exotic and impressive. Certainly nice to look at. Less nice was their habit of launching those feathers as deadly projectiles, hot enough to make the air around them distort or scorch the flesh of anyone unlucky enough to get hit. The insects, shaped quite similar to ants, were equally nasty. What they lacked in speed, they made up for with their tunnelling and ambush tactics, coming up from underground or burrowing through walls to launch sudden attacks with a highly flammable liquid they immediately set ablaze. Just from the looks of it, I was reminded of Mrs Wu’s field manual for asymmetric warfare and the homemade napalm described within.
All three types of enemies were incredibly numerous, attacking in groups of five to fifteen, with levels between sixty and sixty-five. Luckily they all lacked the durability to become serious problems. Their weakness to Ice and Water meant I could directly counter their attacks, opening them up to brutal reprisals from Lia and Silva, while Luna and Alex focused on supporting me. It worked out incredibly well, to the point that we stopped trying to find the centre of the area and simply started to kill anything that moved, gaining a tremendous amount of EXP, while my own Ice and Water Magic went up by a fair margin. By the end of the night, I had gained enough EXP to level twice, the first time fairly early in our grind, the second just before we left the area, thanks to a special encounter. That second level brought me to level seventy-two, rounding things out nicely. In the time we spent fighting, my Ice Rune Mastery went up by one, reaching level fifty-five, my Ice Magic, mainly used to directly manipulate temperature and control my conjured snow, went up by two-reaching level sixty-one and my Water Magic reached twenty-two.
Just before we got out of the area, I felt myself freeze when I noticed a particularly powerful aura of fire. Unlike the somewhat diffuse auras of the swarms of smaller creatures we had encountered thus far, this was a singular, comparatively powerful enemy, maybe even strong enough to match me in level. Just like everything in here, it radiated fire magic, though there was another element mixed in.
“Incoming, not sure what,” I warned the others, gesturing to the rubble-covered street I felt the thing coming from. For a moment, I considered retreating with the others as the night had been long and productive, meaning there was no real need to face some seriously powerful enemy right now. It would still be there when we returned the next night, at least I hoped so, but would we find it? This industrial park was either stupidly large or it was similar to the forest near my home, dimensionally expanded in impossible ways. But no, at the very least, I wanted to see what our enemy was, maybe test it a little. Worst case scenario, we could always retreat, there was nothing in this place that could realistically trap us.
When I finally saw the approaching enemy, I had to pause for a moment, making sure my eyes weren’t fooled by some sort of magical illusion or heat haze. Prodding towards us on fairly short, stubby legs was a tortoise, only it was a tortoise the size of a tank with a shell that looked like it was made of glass or crystal and had fires burning all over it. Its head seemed to be on a long neck, sticking out quite a bit from its shell, and had an intimidating beak, likely strong enough to crunch stone if that thing wanted to.
“Don’t get close, that beak looks nasty,” Lia called out, mirroring my thoughts.
“And it's most likely a lot quicker than you’d think,” I chimed in, already considering the best way to fight that thing, namely, to stay away and slowly freeze it to death. Or at least freeze it to the point of immobility, allowing me to take my time with its destruction.
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Even from afar, I could see the moment the tortoise noticed us, thanks to the sudden burst of speed it put on, going from its slow, prodding movement to a pace matching a runner with ease, but even more obvious were the two gleaming eyes alight with malice, completely fixated on me. As it charged at us, I realised it would cross the roughly two hundred metres between us in a few dozen seconds instead of the multiple minutes I thought it would need. So, I suddenly had to act a lot quicker than planned, with simple magic instead of the complicated and fancy formation incorporating multiple different runes I had been thinking about.
If the thing was this big and that fast, it couldn’t be agile, simply from the amount of mass it had. It had to weigh a literal ton, or rather multiple tons, and even if it could transfer its momentum into the ground, the ground wouldn’t be able to absorb it. My mouth curled into a grin as I rapidly conjured Ice, not even trying to hit the tortoise but simply coating the ground in a smooth sheet, taking away any friction the thing might want to use.
The others noticed what I was doing and immediately moved to what little walls remained nearby, likely planning to use them to gain elevation and avoid the thing if it tried to run them over. Once I felt there was enough Ice before us, I followed suit, only that I moved back a little, spreading the Ice further and taking what I felt was a strategically useful position.
Whatever I had done to earn that thing’s ire, it was completely focused on me, not even slowing down as it barreled onto the frozen ground, causing some of the Ice to crack but not completely shatter. The effect was almost comical, especially when the tortoise let out a strange bellowing cry when it went sliding completely out of control. All four legs had lost traction and were stretched almost perfectly straight, scrabbling across the ice while the tortoise's bulk meant it continued moving on its previous path, sliding across the ice.
A part of me was reminded of the fun cart game I played as a child, with tortoise shells acting as projectiles, the idea making me smile until I realised that it might actually be useful here. The thing was out of control, so why not try to mess with its equilibrium? If a person could get completely dizzy because they spun around on a desk chair, what would happen if I caused the tortoise to spin around its axis on the smooth Ice?
Sadly, before I could even try to make it spin, I realised that I’d need a lot of energy to cause the spin, due to the thing’s weight. I’d have to strike the shell with multiple, powerful attacks, all of which would reduce its speed and lessen the impact it would have when it hit the wall, an event only seconds away.
So, instead of trying to accomplish something amusing and effective, I went with something simply effective. There was no doubt in my mind that the tortoise had an incredible defence, likely enhanced by orders of magnitude by the shell on its back, so the obvious solution was to circumvent the shell. To me, that meant using a medium that could bypass it to carry my attack and here, given the obvious elemental bias everything in the area had, it meant water.
Standing atop one of the few remaining walls, easily out of reach from the tortoise, I began to cast. My fingers flashed through the appropriate runes to conjure a stream of water when the tortoise crashed into the wall it had been sliding towards and, for the second time in this fight, my eyes widened in surprise. Sure, the wall it had crashed into was crumbling down but instead of having come to a stop, the tortoise had kicked out just before crashing, hitting the wall with an insane amount of force and reversing course. Everything within my mind screamed this should be impossible and yet, my eyes were telling me that, yes, it actually was possible and happening right before me.
Still, the way it had redirected its movement meant it was still sliding and moving out of control, though luckily not towards the wall I was perching on. Instead, it was sliding towards Silva who had taken cover between the rubble but luckily, the entire redirection had given me the time to complete the magic I was conjuring. A stream of water hit one of the leg-openings of the shell, some of the water splashing inside, some landing on the ground, reinforcing the Ice I had left there. Sadly, compared to our previous enemies that I could easily paralyse by abusing their elemental bias, the tortoise had too much fire to simply fizzle, instead, the water I had conjured exploded into steam and now, with the steam shooting out of the leg-hole, I had my wish.
The tortoise was rapidly spinning, completely out of control. That much was good. Only, how was I supposed to actually damage that thing now?