As he battered the reptilian monster with his punches, he began to wonder how the stat distribution for large monsters worked. The laws of physics alone would dictate that they were powerful in terms of physical might, far more powerful than any human could be, but the effects of the System were able to bridge that gap somewhat. The monsters were still stronger than any human at their level, unless that human possessed a lot of bonuses like Jonathan, but there was still something that set them apart. Perhaps they simply had stat bonuses to their physical abilities, and demerits to their mental ones in order to balance them out. That made sense to Jonathan. However, there was no way to verify that.

As he moved through the searing orbs of lava, and dodged around Edgar’s attacks, letting them hit the monster in displays of aeolic power, he let his mind wander somewhat, thinking about how to defeat this monster. Although he had landed a few attacks on it, none of them seemed to have dealt much damage, and its natural durability was off the charts. The monster used its body like a weapon as well as its more magical abilities, and its size allowed each of its strikes to land like a hammer blow from some divine smith. Most of them did not manage to hit Jonathan, as he was too fast, but those that did took him off his feet and shot him into the air, fracturing bones. At least he was able to get a good idea of his regeneration speed from this.

It took about a minute for a smaller bone like a rib to grow back, and it was still brittle for the next ten minutes after, but larger bones like his arm bones took longer to repair themselves. The way that his body repaired itself seemed to be in relation to how much he was damaged, and how close the damaged area was to his body. For example, his regeneration would be unable to repair an amputated limb, as his flesh was only intact on one side. However, as long as two halves of a limb remained, even if one was holding on by a thread, it would regenerate eventually. It would have been downright overpowered, except for the fact that everyone else had it as well.

But, it just made logical sense. He was over fifty times healthier and more durable than a normal human, which meant that his healing rate was sped up as well. In addition the natural mana that percolated through his body helped to fuel his regeneration as well. Still, there were very clear limits to his ability to regenerate, and it wasn’t instant, which meant that it would do little to stop him from dying. If he took a fatal hit, that was it, no matter how much he could regenerate. It added an edge to battle, an edge that had not really been there before he had reached Tier 2. However, he actually enjoyed the feeling of being in danger for once, as it made every battle feel like it was real. No longer would he just be able to charge blindly into danger like it was an old friend. Now he would have to develop his skills. Seeing as his skills were already quite potent, the fact that they were being stretched showed just how strong this monster was.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Jonathan smiled. This was the most fun he had had in quite some time. With nothing but the noises of battle and the sound of his own beating heart, he was at peace for a few blissful minutes as he weaved around the strikes coming his way, with nothing to distract him. Then the Pseudo Drake kicked him in the stomach, and he was rocketed into the stratosphere, with a host of broken bones. Groaning in pain, he righted himself, before seeing a dozen balls of molten rock heading his way. Even worse, there was no way to dodge them. His unbinding abilities would do little, as the mana present in the attacks was only there to keep it together. They would still keep flying his way after he unbound them. In fact it would probably be even easier for them to hit him.

Instead, he summoned the destructive energy of his pure conceptual energy to his hands, creating small fields of utter devastation around them. Although the energy was completely invisible, it still had an effect on the world around it, and Jonathan’s hairs stood on end slightly as he summoned it.

Punching out left and right, he struck the balls of lava coming his way. The areas where he struck were simply erased, and he managed to eat away at enough of the mana within them to create a donut-like hole in the center of the attacks, which ended up expanding as they fell apart, spreading out around him. He narrowly passed through the holes of the first few strikes, but the latter ones were too large and coming too fast to do the same thing to, and he was forced to look for another idea. The fact that all of this was happening at a speed that even he was hard pressed to react at, meant that in objective time, he was basically suspended in midair, with no way to get out of the way of the incoming strikes, as gravity was too slow to take him down.

Then he remembered his newest rune, and scratched it onto his armor, creating a vacuum of hungry energy that began to suck the mana out of the incoming attacks as they neared. Such was its voracious power that the attacks completely destabilized as the mana was torn out of them, and gravity suddenly took hold of them once more, taking them to the ground. Not only did his rune suck out all of the mana, but it also removed the mana enhanced motive power of the balls of lava that had been so threatening mere moments ago.

Jonathan let time return to its normal rate and he fell to the ground, landing in the center of a rapidly cooling morass of seething lava. Edgar was a few hundred feet away, and was retreating steadily as he peppered the Drake with his skills, which seemed to be having little impact. Without a straight route into the monster's body, like an open wound, his skills were simply too weak to do much to the monster’s tough outer skin. In addition, the few wounds that he had made were rapidly closing over, as they were merely flesh wounds. In addition, the energy reserves of the monster had barely dipped, whereas Jonathan’s stamina was starting to take a hit, even though it was over ten thousand. He really needed to find some way to utilize his stamina beyond simply running and jumping. There was no reason for the pool to become so large unless there was a way to use it for empowering skills. Perhaps some skills ran off of stamina rather than mana.