Alexia

I immediately look up to try and find a way to get back to the hole in the ceiling, but the way the cavern is set up makes that pretty much impossible to do without some struggle. Something I can’t do with a fucking mana eater draining my…

Realization dawns on me that I don’t feel the painful draining sensation that I’ve heard about from the internet before the Reset, so I look back down at the mana eater to find the creature looking rather confused.

Then I remember an important detail and grin.

I don’t have mana.

Okay. This battle might actually be a lot easier than I thought.

I stretch my arm out before summoning my polearm and sending it flying straight towards the large mana eater who is still underneath the poison. Then I send several Quantum Bolts after the polearm and all around it that end up striking the creature after it ducks down deeper under the poison to avoid the polearm. A polearm that I resummon to my hand right when it’s about to hit the poison.

The mana eater lets out a loud gurgled roar, disturbing the poison lake and moving the poison away from it for a moment to reveal its body. And just like what I was expecting, the creature is some sort of leech-spider hybrid creature. It has eight legs with a long body and a leech’s mouth with two glowing red eyes. Meanwhile all eight of the claws tipping its legs are dripping with a red liquid, which I’d say its safe to assume is poison considering its name.

While the thing is having a roaring fit, I send several more Quantum Bolt’s its way while also using Quantum Burst just to get rid of the annoying poison at my feet. And this shuts it up by beginning to wear away at the carapace making up its outer layer.

From everything I’ve heard about mana eaters, they’re not the strongest creature physically. Generally they rely on magic entirely, simply eating the mana of anything within a couple dozen meters around it while attacking them with their elemental magic. Which in this case is poison.

The mana eater finally locks its eyes on mine before suddenly opening its mouth wider and shooting out a large glob of poison my way. But I just teleport out of its way and continue throwing Quantum Bolts at the monster. Which it clearly doesn’t like as some parts of its carapace are starting to shatter and explode, sending bits of its carapace inside of its body and making it roar even louder in pain.

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Huh. This fight is actually rather easy when I don’t have to worry about it rapidly draining away my mana. Although part of it is also probably because of the thing’s surprise, since I doubt it was expecting its mana eating racial skill to fail miserably like that.

My thoughts come to a halt when the thing lets out another loud roar, its eyes flaring both red and purple this time as the poison lake around the central island I’m on suddenly rises into the air and rushes towards me on the center of the island.

Well, shit.

I rush straight towards the center of the island before doing the only thing I can think of right now.

Spamming the hell out of Quantum Burst and pushing away most of the poison before it can reach me. But since I can’t spam it fast enough as the skill does have a cooldown no matter how short, the poison ends up reaching me anyways, only ending up stalled a little in the end. And I immediately let out a hoarse scream of pain because of it.

Without hesitation, I use Quantum Reversal to repeatedly reverse damage done to me until I hit the skill’s limit.

Several seconds pass after that as I scream in pain until I get several System Messages.

{Congratulations! Your Active Skill ‘Quantum Reversal’ has reached Level 3!}

{Congratulations! Your General Skill ‘Pain Resistance’ has reached Level 5!}

{Congratulations! Your General Skill ‘Poison Resistance’ has reached Level 3!}

{Congratulations! Your General Skill ‘Poison Resistance’ has reached Level 4!}

Then the pain significantly decreases, and the poison finally starts to settle, moving down towards the ground and slowly beginning to go down the island back towards the lake.

I drop to one knee while panting in pain and exhaustion before glancing at my armor through the purple spots in my eyes to find that while it is damaged, it isn’t as damaged as I would’ve expected. Probably because of the resistance to poison this particular set of armor has.

After looking over my armor one last time I raise my head to find the mana eater panting in exhaustion as well, likely having used up a large portion of its mana to use that attack. Which reminds me that a mana eater’s skills are often extremely mana intensive because of their ability to drain mana from others.

And since this one isn’t draining any mana right now… it’s gotta be low on mana.

I glance at my arms and legs again, finding them both severely burnt due to the poison before I look up again and raise my right hand, my left still supporting myself on my left knee as I stand back up. Then I start sending Quantum Bolt after Quantum Bolt at the mana eater again, with several of them going directly into the monster’s mouth and glitching out before blowing up the creature’s insides.

The creature lets out pained roars for all of five whole seconds until they cut off and its entire body slams down into the quickly refilling lake of poison, dead.

And after using Quantum Burst a single time to clear the poison directly around me, I collapse onto my back as well.

Then I glance at my Status before sucking in a hiss of air through my teeth at the sight of my soul being at just about a few hundred left and still slowly dropping thanks to my healing wounds from the poison. But my mood is brought back up again at the sight of the System Messages that appear soon after.