Chapter 331
Roar of a King (XII)
Even Cain stood frozen and stared for a moment before mumbling a gasping “Fuck,”. The atmosphere changed instantaneously, with the giant’s presence immediately shaking the world and undoing the joy that the portal’s opening wrought.
Thousands of eyes jousted left and right and up and down and wiggled about, inspecting the world and the hundreds of terrified souls retreating. Its tentacles suddenly flexed taut, appearing as though they were about to fire off.
“Fuck,” Cain exclaimed once again as he urged his Mana. “We can’t let it kill anymore people! Quinn, with me! Harmony, Nature, try to completely hide yourself from it and lemme know if you succeed! Lear, rush toward the people running away and save ‘em in case an attack gets by Quinn and I!”
“Got it!” everyone was immediately pulled back into the reality by the roar of his lungs and dropped their anxious expressions in lieu of hardened ones.
Cain, on the other hand, immediately leapt, using his Mana to coat Quinn and drag her forcibly through the sky at speeds she began doubting possible. Before she could even blink, she found herself facing the behemoth--and once again froze for a moment. The scale was something that even she never faced before--and especially never tanked directly.
“Snap out of it!” Cain’s voice brought her back again when she realized an attack was coming. “Cover as many as you can! Don’t have to block ‘em, just deflect them toward me!”
A pair of flaming wings that suddenly blanketed the sky blurred out, drowning out the atmosphere that the giant brought with itself. Suddenly, the dark felt banished and buried as the warm, coral light alighted the world as though a star was suddenly born into it.
Mana surged in the shape of the visible storm, winds cutting as the tentacles began raining forward. Cain slammed his palms together as a visage of a giant flew out his back and into a projection; just a breath later, a wave of fire sprung forth like a tsunami, drowning out the many-woven tentacles, deflecting them easily before continuing toward the giant.
The latter roared, causing a frigid wind that easily dissipated the wave, its many eyes suddenly shifting within their sockets eerily and focusing on Cain alone.
In the meantime, Lear struggled mightily to snap everyone to safety as the aftereffects of the clash continued to rain further down. Breaking out in sweat, he was unable, in the end, to save a few that were the furthest away, but managed to help the most. Looking up, his jaw gaped when he saw the wings as wide as the giant was tall.
Cain flung his arm forward and the case of fire followed, springing from nowhere into a shape of a blade quarter of a mile long, falling toward the giant. The latter retaliated by sending dozens of tentacles upward and destroying the bladed before it suddenly roared and its eyes began to shine. Cain frowned, sensing inordinate amount of Mana gathering in them.
On instinct alone, he used an element he had never truly used before in a battle--Sand. Gathering what felt was every last spec from the beach down below, hundreds of millions of grains coalesced into a massive wall that curved around the giant, almost like a panel separating two worlds. Just a mere breath later, the light from eyes faded as Cain felt an invisible micron of Mana slam into the sand wall. It shook and nearly shattered, but held up in the end while Cain began to sweat.
He had nearly miscalculated--if that energy passed through, even he was likely to suffer, let alone everyone else. Furthermore, he miscalculated in general since it was clear to him by now that the giant, eldritch-like thing was far stronger that he anticipated.
“Y’all fucks staring and doin’ nothing need to pick up your straddling balls and get your ass over here!!” he suddenly shouted at the world and those below staring wide-eyed at him, shaking them out into the reality. They hesitated, however--even Lear could only swallow a mouthful and move forward, his heart speeding like a bullet in the face of the behemoth. “Oh, fuck you, lazy cunts! Just deal some fuckin’ damage you ill-gotten degenerates, otherwise you all can kiss leaving this place goodbye!!” Cain’s repeated cursing seemed to have motivated a few people, and that appeared to be enough.
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People align with herd mentality rather well, Cain had learned--as long as there are a few that will lead, no matter how stupid the situation is, others will soon follow. And the few people who felt themselves being belittled a bit too much by Cain’s comments led the very same herd of survivors forward.
Though there were some that ran away still, the majority stayed, much to Cain’s surprise. Even if he expected a few macho-mes to stay, and a few others to follow their example, even in the best of circumstances he anticipated over half of them just flipping him off and leaving.
“Much to learn still, huh,” he mumbled with a smile. “Well, can’t let them die now. How is it?”
“Can’t hide,” either Nature or Harmony said, appearing next to him. “They see through stealth completely.”
“Fun.”
“Yup.”
“Any observations you have to share?” he asked.
“It’s big, it’s long, it’s strong, and it nearly made me pee my pants,” either Harmony or Nature said.
“That’s what my wife said on our wedding night.”
“...”
“...”
“... really? You had to go there? Now of all times?”
“Had to? No,” Cain grinned widely. “But I’m not one to pass up on good setups tossed my way.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, what’s the plan?” either Nature or Harmony asked dismissively with a sigh.
“You two should go and hold the hands of others,” he said. “Gather together anyone with a healing spell and have them all spam Quinn permanently, no matter what. Anyone who needs to go into melee to do any damage needs to stay in front of the healers at all times and soak whatever shit comes flying through. All ranged peeps need to be bustin’ their balls dealing as much damage as possible.”
“Isn’t it better to retreat and form a proper party? Even Quinn won’t be able to solo tank that,” either Harmony or Nature said. “She has a lot of cooldowns, but she doesn’t have that many.”
“And that’s when I step in!” Cain exclaimed.
“...”
“What?”
“You’re a Mage.”
“So?”
“The fuck are you gonna tank?”
“Ey, ey, have some trust in me,” he said. “I’ve too much to live for to toss my life away here.”
“Fine, do whatever the hell you want. Not my problem.”
“Thank you for your unconditional support.”
“Dumbass.”
“It’s funny how I manage to piss people off cross-dimensionally,” Cain said. “I guess... talent is really one thing that knows no bounds.”
“...” while Nature and Harmony rolled their eyes as they themselves rolled away to being organizing those on the ground, Cain focused forward where he saw Quinn temporarily distracting the giant, blocking tentacles with all her might and spamming cooldowns like crazy.
Some healers have already realized what they were supposed to be doing and started spamming her, slowly recovering her dwindling health, but it was still a game of inches, with her bar jumping up and down like a reading of a really fast heartbeat.
Cain took a deep breath and mentally went through the collection of his created Spells--in reality, it was getting to the point of diminishing returns. He had to repeatedly remind himself, especially in this world where he didn’t have access to the Tower’s convenient system, what spells he had. Even if he could create Spells on the fly, the issue was that they couldn’t be of the complex variety--in part because of the personal limitations, but also class limitations.
As it stood, anything more complex--especially spells that come with delayed or persistent or even layered effects were a huge no-go in terms of making them on the fly. He had a whole library of those sitting in his head, but it was still a pain recalling them, especially the very niche ones that saw virtually no use outside of very, very, very specific situations--such as this one, where he was facing a void-type monster that specialized in Physical and Mind damage, the rarest of combos, in fact.
Because of such combination, and the monster’s general make up, it effectively made over 90% of his library useless. There was also the elemental limit--the strongest element against the combination of Physical and Mind, as well as the clearly tank-oriented overall structure of the creature, was actually Lightning, something he had no access to.
The reason he never really pursued the Element was that it was quite narrow in its uses--though the King in those uses, he pursued an entirely different style of battle, quite unlike Lear. Nonetheless, it wasn’t as though the Lightning was the only element capable of damaging the creature. Fire and Starlight, in combination especially, will do just fine--it all depends on how much others will be able to do in terms of damage as well as the creature’s total health.
“Oh well,” he mumbled to himself, slowly gathering Mana and beginning to self-buff himself into oblivion to temporarily take over the tanking duties for Quinn. “Let’s see how well I can take a beating... and how badly I can give it back. I suppose it can be a test for how I’ll fare against that thing. Yeah, let’s treat it like that. Fuck, I hope I do well...”