Albert saw reality recede back from him, the world growing distant as if he was driving backwards into a long, dark tunnel. He felt tired. He wanted to sleep.

No.

Not like this.

He was supposed to learn from his mistakes.

Fuck it.

He grit his teeth, letting go of his numbing skill. Pain returned to his body like liquid fire.

The pain was so strong, it was like a bolt of lightning to his brain. Clarity, even if just for a moment, returned.

The healing light of Healing Touch enveloped him.

A few moments ago, when he fired the fireball inside the first dryad, two things had happened. On one hand, the dryad caught fire and died a horrible and excruciating death, filling the air with screams guttural and sinister.

On the other hand, this message had appeared.

[Mana]: 32FU + 26/hour -> 35FU + 28/hour

The system was confirming the kills.

After the healing spell had run its course, Albert was back on his feet. He jumped up and away, rolling on the ground to avoid being impaled by yet another deadly branch being shot his way, but found himself in very close proximity to one of the dryads who had managed to walk all the way to him.

The thing about rolling on the ground to the side, aside from a faceful of dirt, is that it’s not very easy to react to sudden danger. Not only does it come after a brief moment of confusion due to the rotation, but more in general there is not much one can do to defend himself.

Albert’s reactivation of Bullet Time didn’t save him from a kick to the face, instead offering him a first-row seat to witness the delivery of a lot of pain. But he didn’t dare turn the pain off just yet, not as long as he could endure it.

He was sent flying in the air, but thanks to time dilation he was actually better off airborne than on the ground. He made use of the momentum to put some distance between him and the enemies and then relocated to the other side of the arena once he knew he could safely devote two seconds to teleporting.

Then he took stock of the situation. And the truth he realized right there was that he sucked at fighting. He flailed around with the sword like an idiot. He didn’t use his spells efficiently at all.

He was… kind of lame as a fantasy warrior.

But, well, it’s not like I need to be one.

In fact, his near-death experience taught him that perhaps he should only try to fight conventionally when his life was not on the line. When it was, like now for instance, it was better to use all the advantages he had.

There were guns at home. At the Lair, to be precise. Albert could not teleport there to grab them, however, due to the presence of the barrier.

Man, I wish I hadn’t been so stingy with guns and all.

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A good incendiary explosive would have done wonders in this fight. All he had, instead, was the rocket launcher he used when he infiltrated the Quadrangle.

He teleported. Even in Bullet Time, thinking too much when fighting means trouble. The dryads were not too smart at the beginning and had only walked towards Albert, but he was running out of safe space in the arena. They were figuring out his patterns now, and were spreading out. Because there were only three of them, they couldn’t cover the whole arena, but they knew where he was going to teleport to.

He was greeted not by stabby branches but by exploding roots. He didn’t expect the attack, but had already taken out the magically enhanced rocket launcher and thus just fired a rocket into the exploding ground.

Not a good idea, yet again. Bad ideas and bad decisions were piling up fast in this fight. It might sound like shooting rockets is not all that bad in movies and novels, but it definitely was. The shockwave did some serious damage.

Albert landed, rolled around, cursed, used Healing Touch, dodged an attack by a hair’s breadth and retrieved the rocket launcher. He teleported, this time making a feint and actually appearing right behind one of the dryads. He wasted no time, and shot a rocket at where he knew one of the other two was, before dipping out.

The missile flew through the air. Albert ducked to avoid a wooden hand, knowing that a slap like that would have knocked him out. He didn’t stop to look at the explosion in the distance, instead taking out the sword and severing the arm of the dryad, before delivering a slash that temporarily bisected its body and allowed him to deliver a fireball where it hurt the most.

Then he teleported out. With only one enemy left, he felt like he could take it a bit easier.

A sudden burst of magic told him it wasn’t the case. At the center of the arena, close to where the seed was planted, eight more dryads had appeared out of thin air. And magic.

Before Albert could even curse – a thing he definitely got from his grandfather – he realized that they were all standing quite close together.

Ah, but he didn’t have any more rockets because quite stupidly, he hadn’t stocked up on ammo. Just like he hadn’t stocked up on guns. Because, he had thought, why would he ever need them if he had magic?

Bad thought. Besides, magically enhanced guns slapped pretty hard, so much so that his current repertoire of magic paled in comparison.

He was getting sidetracked. The dryads were converging on him like a solid front, while the leftover from the first wave was nowhere to be seen. It seemed like the new dryads had not adapted to his strategy, having not seen it because they spawned too late.

[Mana]: 43FU + 32/hour

Albert cocked his head. He had an idea, and fortunately he had enough mana to pull it off. He staggered the dryads with Earth Shard, peppering them with holes. They quickly regenerated, but he had noticed earlier that when they did so, they briefly stopped moving.

He made use of this window to work on his strategy. And when he was done, he took out his trusted sword, teleported right in the middle of them, and decapitated them all. The sword’s edge was so sharp that he could literally spin on himself while holding the sword out.

Then he shot the fireballs up in the air. He only needed four of them, and then he could split them into eight. He cast the skills faster than ever before, aided by the speed-up granted to him by Bullet Time.

Everything happened in less than a real-time second. The fireballs soared up into the air, stopped at the apex of their trajectory and were each split into two. This granted them a new vector of motion, and they all plunged towards the targets Albert had in mind for them.

All the dryads combusted at the same time.

Fireball Skill level up!

· I: You can cast tennis ball sized ball of fire.

· II: Casting cost reduced to 0.5FU.

· III: The fireballs can be made to detonate either on command or on collision.

· IV: The skill no longer damages the caster.

· V: The fireballs can be dispelled mid-air.

· VI: Each fireball can be split into two mid-air.

· VII: Cast time is reduced to one subjective second.

Albert did not receive any notification from the system to confirm his kills. The curiosity as to why this was the case made him activate his magical perception and he saw that the mana was flowing from the dryads into the ground, right where the seed was buried.

At the same time, the distraction caused him to lose sight of the fact that he was still in the middle of a fight. A single dryad from the first wave was still alive.

Right behind him.