“Hmm… This is strange.”
As I’ve wandered about the fourth layer, I encountered all sorts of monsters, from rank F all the way to rank A. While they were somewhat stronger and of a slightly rarer than a monster of the same rank, I didn’t particularly see what justified the fear towards this floor over the third one.
“GROOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!” A deafening growl boomed from far behind me.
Step after thundering step approached from a distance, and a massive silhouette slowly emerged from the heart of a flowing magma river in the distance.
A perpetually burning, troll-like monster, who was as tall as five buildings stacked on top of each other, stepped on to the rocky shores, with an equally massive rock club held against its shoulder. It wouldn’t surprise me if this beast simply carved out that crude monstrosity of a weapon out of an entire rock pillar.
As the monster slowly approached, I used [Appraisal] to figure out what this monster was.
[Fire Giant Lv. 12]
HP: 435,032/435,032
MP: 32,194/32,194
SP: 89,526/89,526
Vitality: 17,835
Strength: 13,196
Dexterity: 5,151
Intelligence: 3,917
Wisdom: 3,485
Racial Traits:
[King’s Roar]
[Territorial Vision]
[Giant Combat]
[Undying Tyrant]
[Flame Infusion]
[Vaporizing Inferno]
[Giant Fury]
Skills:
N/A
Titles:
N/A
Rank S creature. In terms of raw vitality and strength, the fire giant enjoys a massive lead against any other denizens in the first five layers of the Unfathomable Abyss. Those who are fooled by its massive size into thinking this is a slow, dumb beast often fall prey to its surprising agility and its cunning traps. As one of the rare rank S creatures of this floor, Fire Giants jealously rule large swathes of hunting grounds as iron-fisted tyrants.
I whistled.
“Looks like I’ve got a good fight on my hands!” I grinned.
The monster’s gait slowly morphed into a jog, before outright becoming a sprint.
“GROOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!” The beast yelled, crossing alarming distances on its way to crush me.
Unlike my stunt at the tournament, however, I also had a feeling that digging through sand was a lot cheaper and more viable mana-wise than digging through flamerock, so I couldn’t simply sink into the ground to avoid this attack.
Fortunately for me, however, I had tools that were made to deal with this kind of opponent, unlike Furialis.
I simply pointed my hand towards the approaching giant and activated [Force Lord], with an equal and opposite force to that of gravity applied on the giant.
The thundering steps of the beast ceased, and instead were replaced by the flailing of the floating beast, which hadn’t lost any bit of its forward momentum. The monster sailed over my head wide-eyed and helplessly, not having encountered an enemy like me before. I laughed and pointed my hand once more towards the floating beast.
A barrage of devouring orbs flew out of my hand straight at the monster, greedily consuming large, spherical chunks from its body. The monster roared before it crashed into the nearby wall, its form having sunk deep enough that it didn’t fall back to the ground, despite me waving away [Force Lord].
“Is that all you’ve got?” I taunted.
Although I doubted the beast spoke Draconic Akashic, its expression warped with so much fury that the world itself trembled in fear.
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“GROOOOAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR!!!”
What skin was visible over the flaming giant’s body burned red, and its whole body began to gush out steam. The wounds littering the beast’s body rapidly closed, and its health was already back to full. Suddenly, it disappeared from my view, and my instincts screamed danger!
I immediately spread my arms out and activated [Almighty Push], and the giant’s club smashed into it not a moment too soon.
“GROOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!” it yelled.
Just before my class skill cracked, the beast’s club shattered into thousands of pieces, many of them flying and digging into the monster itself. The beast ignored the damage and sent a terrifyingly powerful kick my way, ripping apart [Almighty Push] like a mere soap bubble.
Fortunately, that bought me barely enough time to jump, and the monster’s foot flew beneath me like an enraged tempest. Before I could celebrate, the beast’s foot landed on the ground behind me, then it turned around and brought its other leg down on me!
I wasn’t fast enough to dodge nor strong enough to block the attack, and in the split second I had before I was turned into a bloody mist, I made a decision.
“[Ensnaring Domain Field]!”
In an instant, the world froze and lost all color. A black sphere appeared between us, and the world warped around it as it dragged the two of us deep within, with neither of us able to move so much as a muscle.
***
Once more, I found myself floating in the empty space of my domain field, surrounded by large celestial bodies composed of the energies of the six attributes available to me.
The fire’s burning across the giant’s body vanished, revealing the choking, red skinned troll-like monster beneath. Judging by its flailing and clutching at its throat, it couldn’t breathe, let alone fight back against me. My mana was already dropping rapidly to support this domain, and I had to take down hundreds of thousands of health points in less than a minute.
Fortunately, if there was anywhere a feat like that could be done, it was here. Drawing mana from the massive force sphere at my back and the arcane sphere ahead, I prepared to launch the only attack I could think of in the moment to accomplish that.
I fired a devouring orb at the giant’s chest, gouging out a hole big enough for my purposes at the center of its mass. Then, with the hundreds of thousands of false force and arcane mana created by the domain, I materialized an original gravity spell of my own inside the space I created in the giant’s chest.
It was a spell built with a simple, elementary-grade magic circle: all it did was merge the force and arcane mana into gravity mana, and used it to enact a single command – draw everything in. At the same time, in the same moment the construct formed, I used [Force Lord] on the giant and the construct, and at maximum strength.
Under the powerful pressure from both my pseudo-black hole and force lord, the giant’s body was instantly warped and shredded into a flesh sphere that looked like it was being torn apart by the world’s most powerful magic blender.
Just to weave in even greater damage, I fired rock and ice shards towards the black hole, then began repeatedly reversing the direction of the pull of [Force Lord] for even greater effect. Then, just to make my victory over the giant that much more overwhelming, I fired a barrage of devouring orbs to erase every single piece of the giant’s flesh from existence.
Despite the Giant’s obscene vitality and regeneration, even it couldn’t overcome that onslaught, and the system notification signaled the rank S creature’s death before the domain field consumed all of my real mana.
As I dispelled the domain field, I took a closer look at my gains.
You have killed a [Fire Giant Lv. 12]!
34,728,014 EXP awarded!
13,531,643 bonus EXP awarded due to the effects of [Giant Slayer]!
Experience gain divided between [Sorcery Dragon] (38%) and [The Crusher] (62%)!
For slaying a rank S creature for the first time, [Divine Shard] granted!
For slaying a rank S creature as a rank A creature or lower, [Divine Shard] granted!
For slaying a rank S creature as a rank B creature or lower, [Divine Shard] granted!
I whistled.
“That’s a lot.”
Now that I think about it, since I hadn’t actually killed Furialis, this was my first real rank S kill. On top of that, since rank S is two ranks above mine, my [Giant Killer] title triggered and granted me a boost in experience points.
Both my class and my evolution gained plenty of levels for the first time in quite a while. It was worth it to take a look once more over what I had.
Name: Kiara Azoth
[Sorcery Dragon]
[Level 15]
EXP: 1,152,729/18,000,000
Divine Shards: 14/?
HP: 27,325/27,325
SP: 7,512/7,512
MP: 23,795/81,282
Vitality: 1,310
Strength: 1,575
Dexterity: 1,473
Intelligence: 2,917
Wisdom: 2,432
Racial Traits:
[Sapient Creature]
[Dragon Combat]
[Dragon Breath]
[Draconic Vision]
[Draconic Scales]
[Kin of Mana]
[Shapeshift: Base Humanoid Form]
[Greater Appraisal Obfuscation]
[True Elemental Body]
[Evolutionary Inheritance]
Class: [The Crusher]
[Level 113]
EXP: 3,145,964/14,000,000
Class Skill Points: 0
Class Skills:
[Mana Commandeering Lv. 24]
[Force Lord Lv. 20]
[Ensnaring Domain Field Lv. 20]
[Orb of Devouring Lv. 20]
[Celestial Descent Lv. 20]
[Destined Collision Lv. 20]
[Almighty Push Lv. 20]
Skills:
[Appraisal Lv. 10]
[Sneak Lv. 9]
[Ambush Lv. 9]
[Fate’s Jester]
[Pain Immunity]
[Fist of Justice]
[Trauma Conqueror]
Titles:
[Ferocious Underdog]
[Abyssal Cockroach]
[Avenger]
[Indomitable Will]
[Progenitor]
[Giant Slayer]
[Trailblazer]
[Protector of the Meek]
[Mad Dog]
[Defier of Fate]
“Hehehe, I am getting stronger! At this rate, rank A and my next class advancement aren’t too far away, even with the obscene experience requirements for supreme rarity evolutions and classes. Now, all I have left to do is to find what I can salvage from the giant’s carca-”
I froze.
“Oh. Right.”