He would’ve been an idiot to allow them to set the pace. The entire point of his training was for him to have absolute control over every battlefield he stepped onto.
He attached a point warp to a chunk of Fyn that came from his inventory and shot it in the angel’s direction, missing and producing a laugh from the winged fighter. “Surely your skills are not this lacking, false God!” It exclaimed.
A mana platform was summoned.
Amon tensed his legs to prepare to jump while mana began to condense around his right fist, charging up his attack. Once he felt it to be an adequate amount of energy, he jumped into the air and activated his point warp.
He twisted his body rather violently so that he was able to take advantage of the momentum from his jump and press his feet against the slightly elastic mana platform that had appeared in the air above the attack that the angel felt he missed.
Obviously, his sudden relocation was impossible to track, since he was literally teleporting. The angel was able to detect him once he made it back to the dimension they were fighting in, but it was all too late. Amon burst forward and struck the angel in the back of the head from above, activating the mana cannon on impact.
The resulting blast surpassed his expectations. There was a brief white flash as if time had paused so that it could render the blow, then all of the magic that he had been condensing ripped through the air and the bodies of his foes. It was all a bit much for him to look at directly so he squinted until everything subsided. Once it all came to a rest, there was a massive gaping hole in the floor and everything from the neck up of the snake was nowhere to be found, including the angel.
Amon landed on top of what remained of the snake’s corpse, but even that began to dissipate as he received experience points for the battle. He didn’t get a summoning crystal.
“Mmcht,” he said as he turned around and started walking towards the now free book. When he looked at it, something clicked in his head.
Fuck, I didn’t get the key as a drop either?!
He grabbed both sides of his head and gripped his braids softly, scrunching them up and feeling just how loose they were starting to get. It may have seemed insignificant at the moment, but he couldn’t help but think that he needed to get his hair done again.
He felt a pit of anxiety festering inside of him, sending all of the hairs on his body into high alert and making his palms sweaty. The feeling was so sudden that he would’ve thought he was having a panic attack if it wasn’t for his training with Juno. His perspective of the world felt like it was shifting into third person, as if he were piloting his body instead of being part of his body, and he barely managed to follow the feeling and move out of the way.
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It was a good thing he now understood the feeling of imminent danger, because just as he jumped out of the way and turned to face whatever danger activated his sixth sense skill, he saw a golden beam of mana tearing through where he had just been standing.
He followed the attack to its source and saw the angel, ragged and tattered, somehow flying despite the fact that some of their wings were torn up worst than their bloodied body. To Amon’s delight, the key was still intact. He hadn’t messed everything up!
“Your fatal flaw was underestimating me and not felling me with that initial attack. I won’t h–”
“Shut up!”
“What?”
“Shut up! I hate this trope. Why are you talking like you’re able to win? Be realistic, I didn’t even use my full strength to put you in this state. You attacked me from behind and I effortlessly dodged it. Why do you think you have any kind of chance here?”
There was silence in the air between the two of them. He wasn’t actually trying to have a conversation, but it just came out of him. Maybe it was because there was no real need to keep up his character here since nobody was watching other than the little robot.
“Well, I think I’m speaking more to myself than you. I feel fear just like any other living creature and I know when I’m outclassed. I still have a job to complete so I’m going to do my best to do so no matter what.”
“Is it really worth dying over? Nobody will remember your sacrifice. In the grand scheme of things, you’ll just be a forgotten speed bump in my story. I’ll defeat you with ease, get the tome, then be even stronger. Is that the legacy you want?” Since the scene was progressing this way, he decided he might as well get the most out of it. “They left you out here, alone, for eternity. To guard some stupid book. You can’t get out because you’re protecting a trap, doomed to just… Sit here until someone like me comes along and kills you. Is that the kind of God you really want to serve?”
The angel was openly distraught. Amon knew he was right about everything he was saying since it wasn’t difficult to empathize with the angel.
After almost a full minute of silence, mostly filled with Amon thinking about his hair, the angel spoke up again. “What kind of God are you?”
He held in his smile. “All of my followers live prosperous lives. They’re currently on the ship right now, picking books that will help them grow stronger so that they can live freely. I can give you that kind of life too.”
All of the apprehension was now gone. The angel descended to the ground and threw the key over to Amon before falling to their knee before him. Amon caught the key.
“Please take car–”
Before the sentence could be finished, the angel’s eyes widened and they clutched at their heart. Blood burst from their eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth before they fell over, limp. Amon initially reached out, but he quickly stopped himself once he realized it was futile. He didn’t know what was happening and he didn’t have the power to stop it even if he did, he wasn’t anything close to a healer.
“What was that?” His question was directed toward the robot.
“There’s a failsafe in all servants of the Designers that forbids them from betraying their primary programming. The angel was making a decision that conflicted with what they were created for, so they lost their utility and became a liability.”
“I see…” He understood the reasoning behind this design choice, but that didn’t mean he approved of it. “What’s your primary protocol?”
“To provide those within the bounds of this ship with information.”
He had nothing else to say. He turned to retrieve the book, walking up to it by creating a staircase of mana platforms with each step. Once he unlocked it, he furrowed his brows in disappointment.
‘Creating Mana Cores! Unknown Author.’
All of this for a method of condensing mana cores? Sure, he had to learn a method that suited him, but was this really some universe shattering secret? Maybe it was by the standards of this specific universe and not the Tower as a whole?
He looked through the book regardless. It was shortly after that he realized he was sorely mistaken. This wasn’t a book on taking in the ambient mana around him and using that to fuel himself. This was a book about creating energy from nothing, something that was literally impossible.
‘Further reading of this forbidden text will expose its true secrets. Is this the book you would like assigned to you?’
“Yes!”