I waited at the edge of the city as the countdown slowly took place. Once the preparation time was over, I killed the monster next to me. That was the signal they could start. There were loads of people watching from the outer wall of The Abyss.

It was an interesting name, and I was glad I hadn’t allowed the cities to change names. It would have been confusing otherwise. Better to keep them the same. A reminder of our past. Who knows what stories would be conjured up in the future about such cities.

Rushing at me were hordes of monsters. Let’s see how well their coordination worked against an actual threat. I kicked off the ground and advanced. The circle was about two miles away across the flowerlands. The nice flowers had no chance of surviving. Their colorful forms, trampled under the horde.

This would be a battle measured in minutes. Explosions occurred as I raced forward, beam attacks already being sent by the more capable of monsters. I kept moving forward, easily dodging their attacks. I had noted that defense was a weak spot in my skill list, but it was on purpose.

Having defensive skills was a weakness in my mind. I had originally wanted an absolute shield, but such a defense would give me false confidence. It was better to meet attacks with attacks. To counter energy with annihilation. That was how I beat a level 7 monster on my own after all.

It was also why I had invested excessively in Body, and not my other stats to such an extent. The ratio of the Body to the Mind stat was supposed to be 2 to 1. That was something I had originally worked out. But the simple fact was, that I didn’t need that fast of a reaction time, I just needed to be faster.

My speed and ability to resist damage, was directly proportional to my Body stat. It was something I had learned of over the years. It was important that I be able to actually reach the speeds I needed to reach. Monster attacks tended to impact an area, either at their destination or around themselves.

There were very few attacks that were incredibly pinpoint, like a laser beam, and fast enough to be concerning. Even then the Body stat would help me resist the damage. In the end, I needed speed. At least I wasn’t being insulted by having level 2 or level 1 monsters rush at me. They wouldn’t even hurt me.

I had tested such things with slimes. Where before a blue slime would melt my body and give me pause. A level 1 blue slime was nothing to me now. Level 3 monsters were mostly worthless, but they had some combination abilities that could make me pause for a brief moment.

The attacks were nothing. Even my Mind stat didn’t ping against the mental attacks sent my way. While quantity might have a quality of its own, you needed to get over the initial hurdle of being able to damage me.

The beam attacks were interesting, and the targeting was spot on. They were trying to force me back. Monsters hidden from sight, in the ground, or in the sky all began to converge on me. I just kept moving forward and there was nothing all these summoners could do.

I had given them time to prepare, which they normally wouldn’t have, and I was disappointed, even with the combination attacks. After fighting level 7 monsters, lesser monsters didn’t concern me that much anymore. It was both relieving and disappointing. While this challenge had been impulsive, it wasn’t without purpose.

Time to try something I would normally never do, because of the risk. I kicked off the ground hard, aiming not forwards, but upwards into the air. While I could change my trajectory with my skill Air Burst, that wasn’t the point of this exercise. I wanted to push myself.

I was more than quick enough to twist and lash out with my arm, hitting some sort of flying bird monster. It turned to dust and my course was changed. I began leaping through the sky from monster to monster, using my hands and feet.

Their entire attack plan was thrown off as the flying monsters quickly spread out and forced me back to the ground. Instead of dodging attacks, I used my palms to intercept them, pushing out energy with my Channel stat to counter any curse damage before it was done to my flesh.

Nine massive worms burst out of the ground just as I was about to land, seeking to bite me and crush me. One was even shooting out flames at me. Time to do something I had been fiddling around with. I pushed down and expelled a lot of energy. It wasn’t a skill and using Air Burst would have been cheaper, but I wanted to test it out.

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My foot touched on energy that was pushing back against me, generating its own force. I leapt off it and to the lip of one of the worms. It was a neat trick, which wasn’t a skill, but I could have used 20 Air Bursts for the energy involved with this trick. It was completely and utterly pointless, but since this was a kiddy battle and I had set the goal of not using any actual skills to win. Even against Michelle.

It was insulting, incredibly insulting if my opponents knew. They would cry tears of blood at how much I was looking down at them. But as I leapt from worm to worm, each kick turned another monster to dust. My hands lashed out at other monsters leaping at me and swatting away attacks. This kind of overbearing stunt would spread far and wide and nip any ideas people might have in their heads about taking me out.

While I doubted anyone had such thoughts, I wanted to make clear, numbers didn’t matter. One needed the quality to do damage, before numbers mattered. I had been might level 6 monsters, and recently a level 7, that it was easy to forget the vast divide that set me apart from the lesser monsters and combat levels.

This is probably what the Divine Empress felt all the time. While it was amusing, it was also disappointing. Unlike her, I didn’t enjoy combat or killing or furniture making. I enjoyed being the strongest, but crushing ants doesn’t make one feel strong. It just makes one question things even more. These ants were my people, my Empire, which is why I couldn’t just ignore them like regular ants.

There was the saying, ‘enough ants could bring down an elephant.’ Well that saying was clearly struggling to hold weight here. The combinations I saw were interesting, and well thought out, but there was just such an overwhelming difference it didn’t matter.

Racing across the ground, more explosions and monsters tried to intercept me, but they all failed to hit or do damage. That was when a keening shriek hit my ears. Powerful mental attacks hit me as well. I almost stumbled, and only blinked. They made me blink, I would compliment them on that if it wasn’t so much of an insult.

Countering by channeling energy around my head was easy. My Aura stat was already weaking their attacks, and by spending energy like water, I added another layer of defense. The Channel stat let me push out energy and control it, outside my body. It was used for active enchantments, but it was also best used as additional defense for energy-based attacks.

With my stats, there just wasn’t anything they could do. I had 20,000 in every stat but Body just for this reason. Even stats that might be useful right away, I had increased. There were no useless stats, only those of greater importance.

That was another reason my stats weren’t so lopsided after all these years. While it was only a guess, I suspected there was a complimentary nature to stats in a way I didn’t fully understand. It was probably wrong, like a lot of other guesses, but I couldn’t help but think that.

Who knows when a certain stat would be useful? Even with all these combined attacks being fired at me, there was nothing they could do. Their annihilation effects were too weak, their monsters too low level, and their numbers didn’t matter.

Michelle still hadn’t done anything, and I was already halfway to the circle, only about a mile or a kilometer and a half to go. She was probably giving the local forces a chance to shine, that was interesting, but also disappointing.

As I kept running forward, more monsters tried to stop me. It was pointless. I could see the large group of people in the distance, but something was off. The energy didn’t look right. The control threads led back in that direction though. How interesting, I would go right into the trap.

A circle of gray stones, cut out of a city building, had been set up around the group to denote the area I had to enter to win. I landed in the circle and they disappeared along with the people. Michelle was pulling out some interesting monsters with that illusion.

Flying swords, one of her signature skills and level 6 monsters, came flying at me. They were clearly cursed by the Book Of Curses and Doctor Katz used his imbue skills on them. There were four of these swords. Smaller monsters rushed in at me, very small. The Devouring Swarm, a level 4 monster, and there were multiple copies, poured out from under the ground.

Michelle had somehow bent the threads of control. And while she had tried to hide them, I could still trace them back. She might have one more decoy spot, but no more. She also must be using her skill Puppet Strings to bend them or set the control threads to be bent. It was a clever trick to hide the summoners’ location to the extent it had.

I easily dodged past the higher level monsters and followed the threads back towards wherever the group really was. It was a decent trick and my evaluation of Michelle just went up higher. There was no way this was something this summoning school had come up with.

“GAH!” I shouted out as a sword suddenly appeared in my path and stabbed me in the shoulder for the one moment I blinked. Air Burst. Acid Shot. The blade had hit my armor and dug in, the point had hit my shoulder and drew blood.

I was not expecting that. It appeared Michelle had made progress in working out the layers and moving monsters through them. I noted a striped eel around the hilt of the sword. That was impressive. Teleporting a high level monster that didn’t usually teleport, was not something that could easily be countered. A shame it was already turning to dust after I had melted the combo with my skill.

Altering my path, I didn’t encounter any more surprises, even when I blinked. So most likely something set up. Michelle had lured me in with the decoy and then gotten me as I followed the control threads back to her. It was clever. The initial rush made me put my guard down slightly, and that attack had been perfectly timed.

If it had been any less perfect, my danger sense would have warned me. She truly deserved her title as Monster Master Michelle.