Basic Explosives Catalogue Tier Amethyst Unlocked for 30 Points, New Total: 663
I took a look through the new catalogue, trying to find what I needed for this hunt. I eventually found something I thought might be good enough.
FS33 Explosive: A handheld incendiary explosive that releases a burst of extremely high intensity fire in a small location. It is made so that the fire spreads much slower as to be safe for usage indoors, but it is still recommended that you purchase a suitable extinguisher, as the flame can burn at high temperatures for multiple hours at a time.
I took a look and saw that there was a grenade that is made for putting out fires, and for some reason they were only one point each, which was confusing but helpful. Celeste explained later that certain essential items for saving lives are forced to be basically free, otherwise there would be a lot more civilian casualties.
FS33 x2 Purchased for 60 Points, New Total: 603
Extinguishing Foam Grenade x2 Purchased for 2 Points, New Total: 601
As they popped into existence, I tucked them away into my inventory as I heard Celeste speak in my head.
”What exactly are you planning to with that?” She said as I stood up, getting a quick stretch in.
“Well, I figure if that thing can regenerate, the best way to take it down would be to burn it until it can’t anymore.” I said, heading for the door of the shelter.
”You don’t have to do this you know.”
”Yep, I am aware of that.”
”And you are going to do it anyway?”
”Correct.” I said, and Celeste sighed.
”As much as I think this is a bad idea, it is my job to keep you alive, so I’ll help however I can.” I smiled and gave a quick nod as I popped open the door to the rest of the building and dashed out. The first floor looked pretty much the same as before, the only difference being the giant entity corpse had vanished from underneath the large archway of the entrance.
I realized I didn't actually know what happened to bodies of entities when they died, but seeing as I hadn't seen a ton of corpses laying around, I just assumed they dissolved after a while.
As I had seen on the cameras, the first floor was completely cleared out, but this time I couldn't hear anything more than some sort of shuffling. I knew that damn Recorder could be incredibly silent when it wanted to be, so I simply took out my glaive and switch it to chain mode, spinning it casually as I walked forward past the weird boat statue.
For some reason, I stopped and looked towards the statue for a bit. This floor was easily the most open floor plan of the building, no stalls or corners to hide around. So, if you were trying to hide from cameras and people walking on the ground, where better to hide then an elevated statue? You could simply lie down, and no one could see you from below.
Realizing this, I turned away slowly and began walking away. As I did, I strained my ears as hard as I could and waited until I heard it stand up, hoping I wasn't just overthinking things. Sure enough, I immediately heard a very slight rush of air behind me, and without even looking first, I shoved enough mana into the blade to cast a fire enchantment spell and whipped around, snapping out with my weapon as I did.
I saw the Recorder not on the statue, but instead leaping off of it towards me, blades outstretched to try and sever a limb. Due to me getting both the speed of the creature and how long it would take the chain to spin around wrong, I saw that I was going to miss the damn thing entirely if I didn't do something, so I reached out a hand and used gravity manipulation to send the blade even faster through the air.
Just before the entity got into the sweet spot where I couldn't hit it, the burning blade slid through the air and sank into its shoulder, slicing through it completely. For a moment I thought it would keep going and cut the thing in two pieces, but the Recorder bent backwards in midair and managed to slip off the blade before it made it past its neck.
It spiraled as it flew forward, and I jumped back as it slammed into the floor with another horrible screech. I held my hands out and cast a Flame Pillar, adding to the fire from my weapon, and the recorders flesh bubbled as its regeneration fought against the fire. As I was deciding the next course of action, I heard Celeste's voice shout out to me.
"Three more entities coming from the same spot!" She yelled, and I looked up to see three Cloners jump off the statue and begin charging for me. I tried to use my gravity manipulation to smash one into the other, but as I did, I felt something I couldn't really understand. In the same way feeling out my mana was like a different sense, I sensed something inside the entity fight back against the mana fueling the ability. Thankfully it was weaker, but it still negated the effect enough that instead of throwing the two Cloners into each other, it just made the first one tumble a bit and roll into the second.
The second stumbled but recovered, while the first one stayed on the floor trying to regain its bearings. I switched my weapon back to glaive mode and stabbed through the closest one, then pulled out Venus, letting him take care of the last two as I turned to look back at the Recorder, all I saw was a vine shooting towards my head.
"Shit!" I ducked down as quick as I could, throwing myself to the side as I heard more flying out. I recalled Venus back to my inventory before he got hit, and thankfully he had already managed to gun down the last two Cloners. I sprinted forward as the Recorder, now unfortunately fully regenerated and standing about forty feet away, began sending out more and more of its tendrils, creating a sort of web in front of it.
I jumped over one and immediately increased my weight, dropping down to avoid another that would have hit me in midair, slicing through another as I did. Halfway to the entity, I realized there were too many of these tendrils to dodge before I would have to take a hit and looked around for a solution. I looked behind it and saw the statue that had helped the entities before. Well, maybe now it could help me.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"Celeste, how heavy is that statue?" I asked her in my head and ducked to the side as I saw her running some calculations in the corner of my vision. This vision overlay from the communicator was more helpful than I thought.
"Best estimate I have is about two tons!"
"Well, if nothing else this'll be a good litmus test!" Before she could question what I had meant, I increased my weight as much as I could and hurled my glaive forward. The Recorder, much more agile than the giant entity from earlier, simply tilted to the side to avoid it, but that wasn't my target. The blade ripped into the base of the statue, sending cracks throughout it. As I slammed my feet down into the ground and yanked on the chain, I also pulled as hard as I could with my gravity manipulation.
I felt something in my arms crack as another tendril flew towards me, and I unfortunately wasn't able to fully dodge it as it pierced through my stomach. I tried my best not to scream as pain radiated through my body and gave one last pull as the base of the statue collapsed and the rest tipped over, heading right for the Recorder.
It turned back at the noise and screeched again, trying to jump out of the way, but I reached down and held the vine in my stomach, keeping the entity in place long enough for the statue to collapse on top of it. The statue smashed into the ground, leaving a small crater filled with a pile of rubble in its wake as my glaive landed at my feet.
Okay, so that was a valuable learning experience. Good news is, I can pull down a four thousand pound statue. Bad news, I definitely broke some bones doing that. I cast a healing spell on myself, focusing on my arms instead of the stomach injury as my spoils of war appeared in front of me while I picked up my weapon.
Three Entities Killed, New Point Total: 631
"Hang on, three? Did one of those weak ones slip away or somethi-" My very stupidly timed thought was interrupted by the rubble of the statue exploding outward as the Recorder stoop up, dozens of tendrils floating out of it. I was able to reflexively catch anything flying towards me psychically, for lack of a better term, but I could tell the situation was bad.
While the Recorder looked like it was on its last legs, it was actively patching itself back up, and somehow its form was even bulkier looking then before. I launched some of the rubble back at it as a distraction while I quickly sent my mana down to my legs. I decided now was as good a time as any to answer my earlier question as I prepared an explosion spell, this time at the bottom of my feet as I lowered my weight.
Thankfully as it turns out, legs can indeed cast spells, and I immediately rocketed forward, this time much more stable than before. The Recorder, now out of the small crater, smashed through the rubble I had thrown and sent multiple extremely sharp looking vines at me.
I switched my glaive back to chain mode and spun one end as fast as I could, slicing through a few of the incoming projectiles as I twisted around the last one, and I went back to glaive mode as I reached the entity.
It lifted its arms back to slice my head off as I stabbed the end of the glaive into its stomach, seemingly doing nothing. With one hand I grabbed the chain and with the other, charged up another explosion spell and sent myself flying backwards, barely slipping underneath the scythes.
I increased my weight, landing back on the ground as I looked and saw the entity had already healed the wound. As I had thought it might, it repaired around the weapon, seemingly trapping it inside its body. It gave a disgusting smile, clearly thinking it had taken away my only means of defense, not realizing this was exactly what I wanted.
Before it could do anything else, I pulled the chain to the side. The creature looked down as it saw the chain ripple, but unfortunately for it, it wasn't nearly as heavy as the statue, and it was quickly pulled through the air, sending out tendrils into the floor to try and stop itself to no avail.
I spun it in a circle around me a few times, building momentum, before lifting the chain up directly over my head, the entity following the whole time. With what I meant to be a deep yell, which ended up sounding more like an animal growling, I slammed my foot down and pulled the chain with as much force as I could. The Recorder slammed into the ground, leaving a dent slightly smaller than the crater from earlier.
I ran over and got ready to arm one of the explosives, but as I did the entity leaped out of the crater, readying its scythes to make one last ditch effort to finish me. I looked over and saw some more of the rubble from the fountain sitting nearby, and psychically threw it the Recorders path.
The rocks slammed into its legs sending it tumbling, and as it reached me, I sent as much mana as I could into my fist. I hit the entity in its boney jaw at the exact same time the mana reached my hand, and as I did, I noticed something I hadn't before.
Whenever I used mana to strengthen my attacks, I usually lost a lot of it in the transfer to specific body parts. But here, I had managed to do it just quickly enough to not lose anything, and I saw the usual pale purple aura my mana powered attacks have amplified by an absurd degree, a wave of violet flowing out as the entity rocketed backwards, falling back down into the crater from before.
A regular punch managed to be stronger than slamming it down from twenty feet in the air! Taking advantage of the opportunity, I armed a grenade and rushed over, throwing it directly into the hole. The Recorder tried to stand up, but as it did the FS33 exploded on top of it, bathing it in fire that I could feel from where I was standing. I threw the other one as I pulled out Venus and my SMG, as we both began spraying into the entity from above.
"Help...me!" The entity let out in its sickening multitude of voices as it walked towards me through the fire, actively melting as it did.
"Just fucking die already!" I screamed as I used the last of my mana to cast one more Flame Pillar directly on top of it. It let out it's horrifying screech one last time as the amorphous material that made up its body liquified fully, before burning away completely. I pulled a foam dispenser and threw it out on to the fire, where it proceeded to spin around, shooting out a viscous liquid that expanded into foam, extinguishing most of the fire.
I fell backwards as it did, looking up at the different floors above me as I finally got a chance to breath. I noticed what looked like flower petals falling from the sky, the same shade of violet as my mana, and as they hit the ground they vanished. I simply stared at them as I finally got the message declaring my victory.
MASAL Tier Entity Killed: As this entity is far above the expected grade for a Guardian of your rank, you will receive additional rewards.
New Point Total: 1433 + 2 Tier 1 Gems
I had won. I thought of every person that monster had killed, and mentally apologized to them that I couldn't do it sooner. I just hoped that they could see it finally get what was coming to it, wherever they were.
Congratulations Guardian! You have reached the rank of Aquamarine, and with it, you have gained access to a class! Click here to see a list of classes available to you!
Well, that was good! Now all I had to do was deal with this class stuff, and finally get everyone else the hell out of this nightmare of a building. Oh, and fix this hole in my stomach. Yeah, that really hurt now that I thought of it.