Nisos Iphitus

The Frost Troll ahead of us was quite the ugly thing, even by a monster’s standards. It looked like an overweight, comically disgusting, five-meter-tall bald man with a deformed skull along with snot and drool covering its face.

It’s exceptionally repulsive appearance aside, its attributes were incredibly lopsided. Its tremendous strength means that it’s likely going to be able to strike at us with near unstoppable force, and it’ll likely be just as difficult to dodge; the only saving grace is its horrendous dexterity, which makes it unlikely to be able to control the power in its muscles. With any luck, it’ll hurt itself more than any of us.

Through the telepathic connection between us, I sent the plan of attack to the other two.

“Ati, for this fight, I want you to be the one playing the role of tank. None of us can take a hit from it and you’re the only one fast enough to dodge its attacks. I’ll temporarily transfer [Greater Draw Aggression Lv. 1] and [Guardian’s Tenacity Lv. 1] to you. The former should keep its attention on you as long as you stay close to it, while the latter will protect you from a single fatal blow. If you get hit, fall back and switch with me. I should still be able to get one more use out of [Guardian’s Tenacity]. If you can manage to sneak in hits, I won’t complain, but you must keep it busy.”

Without a word or a move, Ati signaled his affirmation.

“Jezibel. I am not very familiar with your beasts, so I’ll leave you to deal damage and act however you see fit, as long as you stay out of its reach. Unlike us, even a hit is fatal to you. I’ll be restraining its movements from up close, so take whatever opportunities you can find.”

Just as she sent a mental nod, and the monster began to dash rapidly in our direction.

“GO!” I yelled, and Ati dashed at the troll while Jezibel and I dashed to opposite sides.

“WOOOOOOOAAA!” the troll roared, snow exploding at its feet as it rushed wildly to meet Ati.

In the fraction of a second before their clash, Ati suddenly flapped his wings and gained altitude, narrowly missing the troll that was already in the middle of a flying lunge. Its momentum carried it far, slamming it right into a froststone boulder, which ended up smashed into pieces!

Mercifully, the crash happened far enough from all of us that the deadly shrapnel missed all of us. Ati turned around and looked down on the troll from hundreds of meters above. He summoned a sleek, deadly arrowhead made of wind mana that covered most of his upper body, then dove towards his foe, which was struggling to get up as half of its head and most of its left shoulder were missing entirely. The crash made it look like it had a pretzel for a spine, which was already twisting and turning as the monster’s missing flesh mended itself with terrifying speed.

Ati’s dive rapidly picked up speed as his descent drove the air to scream with an ominous promise of death to anything that dared to stand in his way.

Just before Ati was a hundred meters above the troll, he launched the arrowhead from his body with a thundering gust of wind as he pulled up to avoid crashing into the ground himself.

Another explosion of snow and froststone followed, and it was no less powerful than the one the troll itself caused. When the rubble settled, a large hole was where the center and right sides of its chest were; his spine that was just straightening was nowhere to be seen. Jezibel and I were not idle; as soon as I did not have to worry about stray rocks, I dashed towards the already healing monster and thrust my spear at the back of its knees and its ankles, its elbows, and armpits, and anywhere else that I thought would make movement more difficult for the monster.

Jezibel pounced from the opposite side, who merged with her tiger to look like a particularly deadly tiger beastman with claws, fangs, and bulging muscles to match. She dug into the troll’s insides with her claws and began to rip and tear so savagely that it made me shudder, despite my telepathic connection showing that Jezibel’s mind wasn’t taken over by her beast – rather, they seem to be controlling the body together.

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Flesh and blood were flying as Jezibel and I were tearing into the troll, but its flesh healed faster than we could cut at it.

“We can’t keep this up, Nisos! What should we do?!” Ati asked.

I grunted as the exhaustion from tearing apart the tough hide of the troll was starting to weigh on me.

This isn’t working. Jezibel smashed the thing’s brains, heart, lungs, and every vital we could think of, and yet the monster kept on healing. Ati was already low on mana after that devastating attack. Our approach to the fight has to change.

“Ati, I want a large quantity of attacks from you! I don’t care how strong they are, just take my mana and do it!”

Ati summoned dozens of darts made of wind mana and began to launch them at the troll’s chest, as Jezibel and I were striking at its limbs and its head respectively.

I felt my mana drop significantly faster now that I was powering Ati’s magic as well, though I am probably going to reach the limit of mana I can transfer even faster than that. We needed more, and fast.

“Jezibel! Merge with your viper instead! We need its poison!”

“What?! It’s so much weaker than-”

“Trust me! Just do it!”

She separated from her tiger, which jumped away to continue wailing on the troll, albeit with significantly lesser efficiency.

Jezibel quickly merged with her viper, then her hair and fingers all turned into vipers themselves and began to bite at the troll, poison seeping through its body. It wasn’t enough to reverse its regeneration, but it slowed it down significantly. Enough that we were dealing slightly more damage to its health than it earned back.

Jezibel then summoned her owl and monkey, merged with the monkey after releasing the viper, and began to wail on it again with renewed vigor!

This stalemate continued for a while, and my nerves were starting to get to me. Was I going to reach my mana transfer limit before this thing died?

My nerves were beginning to fray as I carried on projecting confidence through our telepathic link regardless; I was afraid that anything less would somehow tip the balance against us.

My fears were thankfully laid to rest with the last remaining HP the troll had. I was just 17 MP away from my transfer limit, which is far too close to comfort for my tastes.

Jezibel sat down in the snow, heaving as she separated from her bonded monster. Ati landed next to her, pale-faced and covered in just as much sweat as the two of us. I fell next to them as the sound of nearby footsteps showed that Kiara and Lady Sept were approaching.

Everyone kept quiet, and I wasn’t sure if it was because they were taking in their gains or because they were wrapping their head around the fact that three rank D students just killed one of the most infamous horrors of the abyss.

“Congratulations. This is an incredible accomplishment; you three should be more than proud of yourselves.” Lady Sept said in her usual, neutral tone, though a hint of pride showed regardless.

Why are the two Tameryians in our party so reserved in stark contrast with their other countrymen?

As I shook my head at that conundrum, Jezibel spoke to no one in particular out loud.

“Oh. My. Money. That was too damn close!”

“Don’t you mean Gods?” Ati asked.

“You worship your thing, I’ll worship mi- huh? My monsters are evolving!”

***

That fight got all three of us plenty of experience to our new races and classes, not to mention the doors it will open on our next evolutions and advancements. That said, the real winners of the battle with the troll were actually Jezibel’s monsters. The owl and monkey evolved into the rare rank D creatures [Witch’s Owl] and [Simian Menace] respectively, while her tiger evolved into the legendary rank C [High Sabertooth Tiger]. But that wasn’t even the most shocking development; Jezibel’s mere common rank F [Abyssal Viper] evolved into a mythic rank E [Juvenile Ouroboros]! The only catch was that it turned back into a snow-white egg that contained an obscene amount of mana.

“I can’t even appraise it! It’s like I am appraising Kiara all over again. Is this something that you get when you reach the mythic rarity?” Jezibel scoffed in disgust.

Kiara’s ego seemed to be pleased by that, judging by her wide grin.

“No, that’s something specific to my race actually. I’ve no clue what’s going on with your monster.” She said in response.

Jezibel sighed.

“Okay. I was about to suggest that the three of us go hunt for rank B monsters on our own while you two go on your rank A wild goose chase, but there is no way I am exposing my cute little Yasha to fights!”

“…You named it already?” I asked.

She shot me a menacing glare.

“She’s a her, you jerk! It’s not surprising you aren’t popular with the girls, Nisos, being that crude.”

‘But it’s not even out of the egg yet!’ were the words that died in my throat as I instantly withered under the Tyrian’s death glare. Kiara laughed out loud while Ati and Nicotris smiled.

…This isn’t fair, damn it!