(Oct 21)

My magic aura surged around me uncontrollable like hell fire.

I was in intense pain unlike anything I’d ever felt before, and yet my brain didn’t register it as a bad thing.

‘Is this… what it feels like to do drugs? It hurts so much, and yet I feel good…’

I’ve never drugs before, but I highly doubt it was anything close to what I was feeling.

Drugs don’t burn your entire body in agonizing pain and neither does it boost your strength by this much.

100%.

That’s how certain I was that my strength was on par with an A ranker.

I inhaled a bit of the air—which smelled like my burnt flesh—and all the muscles in my body instantly pumped simultaneously.

I raised my leg and gently tapped the ground with my foot.

However, I didn’t expect the dirt below to suddenly explode as my entire body was sent flying several meters into the air and landed perfectly on the ground outside of the hole.

It took me a while to get used to my new strength.

What entered my immediate view was a bunch of flashes of light, and magic explosions going off around me.

The Grinch zipped past my view as dozens of lightning arrows chased after it.

Alisha and a bunch of undead shadows summoned by the A ranked necromancer were engaged in combat against The Grinch.

A shadowy undead, cladded in full shadow armor and a giant shadow shield smashed its legs into the ground and lowered its body to increase stability.

This proved to be useless, as The Grinch jumped into the air and using its massive bulky arms, it slashed downwards, destroying the undead completely.

A couple soldiers that survived The Grinch’s screech attack earlier rushed in with spears, trying to help as well… but that was the worst mistake of their life.

The Grinch easily dodged their attacks and shoved its massive claws right into one of one of the soldier’s stomachs and ripped out the poor guy’s intestines as if he were a pack of noodles.

The other soldiers tried to back away, but The Grinch appeared behind them and strangled a soldier to death with the intestines that it had taken from the other soldier’s body.

It wrapped around his neck so tightly that it caused his neck to completely snap and decapitated him, as his head went flying into the air while spewing blood in its path.

The Grinch jumped into the air, grabbed the head of the decapitated soldier, and used it like a basketball, slam dunking it into the last remaining soldier’s face.

His skull immediately crushed inwards as his head exploded due to the impact.

The sound… it sounded like if I crushed an apple with my hand… a sharp crunch, but also a slight squirt from the mush and liquid…

It was a blood bath.

Bits of meat and blood rained down from the sky.

So this was the true nature of The Grinch.

It’s a pity that those soldiers died, but I couldn’t afford to flinch or hesitate.

And honestly, I had already seen the corpses that The Grinch caused so it wasn’t surprising.

I raised my sword and activated my magic as dragon scales appeared all over my body, covering my skin like armour.

My dragon essence poured out of me like the heat from an explosion.

I took a deep breath and then…

“ALL REMAINING SOLDIERS, RETREAT!!!”

My voice resonated through the entire cemetery, and even I was momentarily surprised at how loud and confident I sounded.

This immediately alerted The Grinch, causing it to turn its head to look at me.

Good. I had gained its attention.

My eyes narrowed as the world around me slowed down until everything stopped.

Time itself had frozen… or so it seemed.

Due to my powers being exponentially boosted from the pills, my dragon’s mind ability also become more advanced. It enhanced my brain’s processing power at an insane speed to make everything around me look as if it were frozen.

However, this ability only causes me to perceive time differently, meaning my body still moved in slow motion.

The Grinch tilted its head and lowered its body.

Despite me being able to perceive time as if it were frozen, The Grinch was still fast enough to move like normal.

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It lowered its massive body, and its legs—for a split second—expanded revealing muscles comparable to Brigg’s muscles and then The Grinch shot forward at me like a bullet.

The Grinch was fast. Very fast.

But at least now, I could at least react to its attack.

As The Grinch closed the distance between us, I gripped my sword and swung it upwards at its incoming claws in attempts to block it... and maybe even do some damage.

However, I overestimated myself.

Right after my sword made contact with The Grinch’s claw, my entire arm was blasted backwards and nearly knocked the sword out of my hand as I flew back several meters.

I was overconfident. After consuming the two pills, I had temporarily broken through to A ranked and that blinded me. I felt like I owned the world, I felt powerful, I gained a new strength unlike anything I felt before.

But with this one exchange of blows with The Grinch, it snapped me back and made me realize just how massive the gap between us still is.

In a way, I’m glad it happened because it stopped me from being too arrogant.

When I looked up, The Grinch was literally in front me.

Before I could move, the ground beneath The Grinch froze and several ice spikes shot up stabbing into The Grinch’s fur.

The Grinch shifted its body, and somehow managed to weave around the ice spikes in an instant and narrowly avoid getting hit.

Its reaction and speed was absurd. Or maybe its instincts? Regardless, it was able to dodge almost all attacks.

The Grinch disappeared and reappeared several meters away in a blur and looked around.

Several undeads shadows were summoned behind it, a few dozen C ranked, a couple B ranked and a single A ranked undead.

Alisha was hidden in a nearby tree with her thunder bow and lightning arrows ready.

William also appeared behind me, with his blue tight suit and ice magic ready.

And then there’s me, who had achieved the strength of an A rank through spice drugs.

4 A ranks vs The Grinch.

“Let’s do this.”

The Grinch may be powerful, but so were we. We also have the advantage of having multiple different abilities, skills and classes whereas The Grinch was mostly speed and attack.

I created a floating dragon claw and gave my sword to it.

By allowing my dragon claw to hold my sword, I could use it to attack The Grinch without even needing to get close to it, though this does decrease the accuracy and strength by a bit.

I summoned a few more dragon missiles in the air and sent them all shooting at The Grinch including the claw with my sword.

This marked the beginning of the battle.

William shot forward dozens of ice spears, Alisha unleashed a barrage of lightning arrows raining down and the summoned undeads all rushed forward fearlessly without any regards of death as we all attacked at once.

The Grinch leaped into the air, avoiding most of the attacks, but it couldn’t dodge all the attacks perfectly as some of the ice spears and lightning arrows still managed to hit their marks.

As the lightning arrows struck The Grinch’s side, it exploded into a flash of electricity and the ice spears froze everything it touched, including part of The Grinch’s fur, turning it into a white frost.

The Grinch didn’t even flinch though.

It seemed as if it had very high resistance to all attacks and magic.

Hitting The Grinch once or twice won’t be enough to even faze it, we need to deal more damage.

Fortunately, we still had plenty more opportunities to do so.

Despite our attacks missing, all of us were able to control our projectiles using magic. William was able to remotely control his ice spears, Alisha was able to bend and curve her arrows and I was able to manipulate my dragon claws freely.

Even if we miss, we’ll just attack again.

The Grinch landed back on the ground, as several more of dragon missiles shot forward at it.

The Grinch suddenly crouched once again, and gathered all the magic in its body into its legs and then…

BABOOOMPH!

The air itself exploded as The Grinch vanished.

I was able to see The Grinch move due to my dragon mind, but only barely.

The Grinch had moved so fast, it broke through the sound barrier and created a sonic boom.

This means… it was faster than the speed of sound.

Our magic attacks also chased after The Grinch at a similar speed that neared the speed of sound.

From an outsider’s perspective, it would look like a blur of lights, flashing around as a giant green thing would disappear and reappear.

Every time The Grinch’s took a step, the ground beneath it cracked and dented inwards with a mini dirty explosion, as the beast would get launched several dozen meters forward.

It was fast. Absurdly fast.

Looking over, even Mona and Alisha couldn’t see The Grinch’s movement. I was the only one who could, due to dragon’s mind.

This didn’t stop their attacks from chasing after The Grinch though.

Alisha’s lightning arrows tailed right behind The Grinch and William was constructing ice pillars up from the ground, as an obstacle to stop The Grinch.

Even though they were unable to see The Grinch movements, William and Alisha were both able to sense the trail of magic being left behind from The Grinch and they were able to predict it’s movements.

The Grinch jumped around at insane speeds, avoiding attacks and slashed away most of our attacks with its massive claws, but some of them were fast enough to slip through the cracks and hit.

Slowly, one by one, The Grinch would be struck by our projectiles, and it slowly took damage.

But that was when I noticed the shift in patterns…

Up until now, The Grinch was running away and destroying our attacks as we were hiding and attacked from afar.

But then suddenly, The Grinch changed its directions towards William.

It charged through all the incoming undeads, destroying them all with two swipes of its claws and ignored all lightning arrow/ice spears/dragon missiles being shot at it.

The Grinch had somehow realized who was controlling these magic attacks.

I quickly launched my dragon claw (with my sword) over to William’s direction, to defend him from the incoming Grinch, when sudden The Grinch changed directions again towards Alisha who was in the tree.

‘Wha- what the fuck is going on??’

The Grinch possessed some intelligence as it was able to detect and specifically target William and Alisha.

It had ignored me and the necromancer as it had realized we weren’t as big of a threat.

Alisha jumped out of the tree just in time and narrowly dodged The Grinch’s attack.

Just before Alisha could shoot an arrow at The Grinch, it once again vanished.

It had completely changed directions yet again, circling around the entire cemetery and appeared several meters behind William.

That little green piece of shit… it had purposely changed targets to make us focus on Alisha so it could target William.

I watched in slow motion as The Grinch’s claws grew closer and closer to William.

What could I do? No one else was able to see The Grinch’s movement as well as I could.

‘Shit.’

I need more power.

Using every ounce of muscle I could muster, I pulled out the leather pouch and grabbed another pill.

I was moving in sow motion, but if I strained as hard as I could, I moved a little faster.

I quickly threw the pill into my mouth as I started running in William direction.

The moment I swallowed the pill, a flood of heat washed over me like a wave of lava.

I summoned a dragon tail behind me and activated dragon’s jet to propel myself even further, spewing literal dragon fire outta the tail like a fucking rocket.

My leg muscles expanded and condensed, as I lowered my body and kicked off the ground at a destructive speed.

KABOOOOM!

I smashed through the sound barrier, creating my own sonic boom and surpassed the speed of sound.

My entire body was launched forward like a bolt of light, as I thrusted my dragon fist forward, smashing it right into The Grinch’s face.

I, for the first time since the beginning of this fight, managed to hit The Grinch.