Weapons of Mass Destruction

Everyone evacuates the area as the giant and Jean clash, reducing their surroundings into a field of craters in a storm of shockwaves.

Jean stands his ground this time, taking blows he otherwise wouldn’t in order to deliver a few of his own. Each punch he throws tears his flesh, sending chunks of skin flying and blood spraying into the air as his body fails to endure the sheer power of his own attacks.

Surprisingly, his bones endure, without breaking even as the giant beats him down, and that’s when I notice the barest hint of mana surrounding his massive fists.

Of course, Lucien supports him with an occasional round of healing, climbing onto Luna's back beside Leticia. While Luna keeps them out of harm’s way, avoiding stray attacks from the few surviving lurkers, Leticia weaves mana around them to defend and attack doing so quickly and precisely.

Another powerful lurker crashes into Savant, who’s been silently radiating his domain into the area, the lurker’s body, already having taken damage from the deadly field, begins to break down even faster as it takes a strike from the sword Savant creates from said domain.

Noelle continues to avoid attacks while picking off the weaker lurkers, her projectiles bursting forth in a near uninterrupted stream.

But Derick seems to be having a bit of a problem. His opponent is a male lynthari dual wielding swords with a crown seemingly made of ice, floating over his head.

Neither Derick nor the lynthari move quickly, but their movements are smooth and dangerous. The area around them has also grown immensely cold, causing Derick's breath to mist in the air as the skin-tight barrier around his body freezes over.

With a boost, I land nearby, armor surrounding my body.

The lynthari doesn’t even flinch, focused on pressuring Derick with a constant barrage of his attacks, who’s been deflecting the blades with his forearms and shins, without even the slightest injury.

Then the immense cold hits me, freezing the armor around my body, and I find myself unable to move for a moment. Boosting my movements with kinetic energy, I take a step, breaking the layer of frost hindering my movements, and infuse thermal energy into my armor. The pale blue mana taking on a hint of the energy’s golden hue.

That's when the lynthari reacts for the first time.

The crown over his head spins and expands, vastly increasing the influence of his cold. Even the ground glazes over with a sheet of ice that feels almost sticky, freezing to my shoes whenever I take a step. And Derick ignores it. Without armor to protect his body, or flames and heat to disperse the ice. Relying on nothing but his skin-tight barrier, glowing tattoos, and incredibly short bursts of mana that he uses to attack and disrupt incoming skills.

More thermal energy surrounds me and I shoot off a few mana projectiles, which freeze in the air, crumbling into fine particles as they make contact with the lynthari.

One of the swords swings my way only to be met with Flamebearer, flames warring with ice. I increase the output of the flames and boost my body to push back against the sword.

And my golden flames begin to die off, unable to resist the concentrated cold. Immediately after, a strong pulse of cold shoots into the area as I release my thermal energy into the area around me, letting it burn.

That cold stops Derick just for a moment and one of the lynthari’s swords pierces his leg, the frost quickly spreading before the man frees himself.

An ice projectile that was about to pierce me evaporates just in front of my heart, meeting my forearm instead.

I have never felt so cold in my life.

Shrinking my domain, I stop trying to fight the cold surrounding me. Instead, I make my [Mana Domain] skin-tight, adding resonating mana into the mix. The armor around me disappears and I charge up heat just under my skin, and send a burst of kinetic energy through my body, as I move to attack.

With an almost lazy movement that feels perversely elegant, the lynthari meets my axe with his swords, with each clash my axe, coated in golden flames, evaporates some of the ice releasing a frozen mist to chill the air surrounding us.

The sword pierces through my foot and continues on into the ground. I duck and avoid his follow up, and take a step back, breaking my foot, leaving it behind, entirely frozen, little more than a block of ice.

I detonate the frozen stump and use one of Lily’s healing marks, quickly restoring my foot.

In the meantime Derick takes up the lynthari's attention, the swords clashing against his form, as his tattoos glow brighter than ever. A few short exchanges and Derick staggers back, with the lurker pulling a sword from his chest, the blade coated in blood.

A pulse of mana explodes from Derick and the frost-like effect fades from his body, but the wound remains as the red-haired man attacks again, working in concert with me.

My axe burrows into the lynthari’s side, and Derick caves in the lurker’s chest.

In the blink of an eye, the field around the lurker shrinks, condensing the area of effect and concentrating the effects of the cold. I can feel it in my chest, as my fingers start turning blue, even filled with my thermal energy. My movements are getting even slower and the mana around me keeps freezing and becoming extremely brittle.

Then the third person joins the attack.

Savant ambushes the lurker from behind. Striking with the broken Sword of Aeons, restored with the orange light of [Dawn], which actually seems to pressure the lurker, the mana poisoning doing its vile work, even here, the lynthari’s skin already beginning to show the effects.

The orange blade clashes with the sword seemingly made of ice a few more times, and with immense effort I force myself to move even though my body feels ready to break with the slightest impact just like my foot. I swing my axe and bury it in the lynthari’s shoulder, and I nearly empty my vortex core as I feed thermal energy into the lurker.

Derick grapples with the Lynthari, twisting one of its arms until it breaks, putting it into a hold, and forcing one of its swords to clatter to the ground.

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A burst of cold sends Savant staggering back before he can attack again, the sword in front of him glowing brightly in his defense. His green eyes shining dangerously from behind his guard.

Derick lets go to avoid a spray of ice projectiles and the other sword thrusts its way towards my head.

I teleport to the opposite side of the lynthari lurker having placed a Ley Line before and deliver another swing with the axe, a brilliant gold exploding into the area.

A wall of ice shoots up from the ground, and my flames crash against it, forcing me to pull them back into the axe so that I can reuse them.

The lurker ducks and Savant's sword passes just over his head. The crown disappears entirely, and with it, the lurker turns an even paler shade of white. Even his own body glazes with frost and as he takes his next step his arm and leg shatter into tiny particles of ice, but for that moment, the three of us freeze in place.

Thermal energy, kinetic energy, all my external mana are useless.

As the sword heads toward me, I activate the glove on my hand, copying the lurker’s ability.

I make use of his ice skill and add that to the immense cold that’s already serving to freeze the lynthari. And just like us, he freezes mid strike, standing there on a single leg and with a sword just a few inches away from my face.

The first to move is Derick. He takes one small step, followed by another, the ice beginning to fall from his body.

With the last step, he swings his arm, striking the lurker’s head with an open palm, and forces mana through the point of contact, causing its head to explode into a cloud of frozen particles.

[You have defeated Reanimated Corpse - lvl 321]

As if it never existed, the field of cold disappears, the air gradually heating up as normal air rushes to fill the area.

I let thermal energy surge through my body and still feel that mind numbing cold, even with all the heat I can channel now.

Barely a minute has passed since we attacked the group of ten lurkers and since the giant overtook us.

Jean is still fighting him and only two lurkers remain aside from the giant, and they’re being dealt with by Luna, Leticia, and Noelle.

Meanwhile, the area around us is nearly unrecognizable. Gone are the buildings and the ground is scarred by long tears and craters. In the middle of it all, they continue to fight, the giant is riddled with bloody wounds, a broken arm, and the mana around his fists is flickering.

Jean seems just as enthusiastic as before. Blood covers his body and one of his eyes has been blinded, not to mention that a massive blow has clearly turned half of his face into a mangled mass of meat. Even so, he punches the giant’s knee and it explodes into a gory mess, forcing the huge lurker to kneel. He raises his forearms to block, but Jean's immense strength blasts them aside, leaving his guard wide open.

With a jump, Jean reaches the giant’s face and strikes.

At that moment, the lurker snaps its mouth closed.

He doesn’t bite off Jean’s arm, instead, it holds its ground, the giant lurker finding himself unable to shear through.

Laughing maniacally, Jean doesn’t even try to pull the arm free. Instead, he swings his other one, his fist burrowing into the giant’s eye, pieces of flesh and liquid erupting from the eyeball to cover him.

And he swings again and again until the giant stops moving and falls down.

The man then continues to punch the dead lurker’s teeth until he breaks enough of them to free his arm. It's nearly devoid of flesh, connected to his body only by a visible section of bone.

“Lucien, my boy!”

“Got it, got it!” as if this were a common occurrence, the boy shouts and the mark he put on Jean’s back activates, the wounds closing slowly.

“We have a minute before the group of twenty reaches us. Thirty seconds before the quickest arrives!” Leticia warns us, already going through the equipment that was on dead lurkers.

Even as wounded as some of us are, everyone immediately does the same, with the only exception being Jean, who stands there longingly staring at the body of the giant.

Ten seconds later, we start running.

After five minutes of this, I start checking out the ways everyone’s been covering their steps, and I have to say that Leticia might be even better than me.

Whereas I can remove residual mana, she does so much more naturally, making it look almost indistinguishable from ambient mana or at least mana that had been fading for weeks.

I also have a strong suspicion she can reduce our scent and mitigate a few other lingering effects.

And when we reach the huge tower, we hide on one of the floors. While we wait, Lucien goes around healing everyone. He doesn't put in a lot of effort but no one complains. His abilities might be even more necessary later.

Luna, in her normal size now, keeps guard since the lurkers would be able to track anyone else.

Even though we killed a pretty large number of lurkers and should be easier to notice now, it may still be possible to hide here for a few minutes. Any longer would incur too much risk.

“Aren’t named ones supposed to be rare?” Derrick asks, resting against the wall with Noelle next to him.

“Want to bet you just jinxed it, and more will appear?” Noelle jabs, playfully poking him in the side.

“Damn it. But since we started… When I get home, I’ll open a nice café or restaurant. Oh, and by the way, these are my kids, aren’t they cute…” He chuckles, miming taking a photo out of his wallet.

Noelle laughs and pushes him away, “I’m sure I’d know if you had any kids.”

“I’m a handsome young man, women are throwing themselves at me, maybe something happened behind your back.”

“If that were the case, then the lurkers would be the least of your problems, Handsome young man,” she says with a final poke before turning to Leticia. “Luna scared me for a moment there, she grew so big.”

“Right!” Leticia smiles happily. “She’s really good at all of this, and sometimes I think she was the one meant for Hell Difficulty, and I just got caught up in all this with her.”

Luna waits patiently as Leticia squats and squishes the golden retriever’s cheeks together. Even so, I can see her tail wagging.

Somehow, I find myself disagreeing with Leticia. Just seeing the way she handles mana, it’s obvious she “belongs” here just like the rest of us.

“Why are you so shy?” Leticia asks her golden retriever. “I think you could say something now.”

“Leticia, sometimes I think it’s me who’s human. Maybe you were the real dog, and our minds got swapped when we were summoned.”

Everyone stops what they’re doing, staring at the retriever from whom the sentence came. It’s not telepathic or anything. It’s just a human voice reverberating in the air as the retriever opens her mouth. Her mouth isn’t moving, in a parody of the act of speech. Rather, it just hangs open, emitting the voice from its depths.

The voice is womanly, very soft, and soothing. The kind one might imagine singing lullabies.

Leticia doesn’t seem the least bit shocked and smiles even wider. “I wouldn’t mind it at all! Should I try barking and asking for pets?”

“Please don’t do that, Leticia, you’re embarrassing yourself,” Luna says, sitting down and lifting one of her paws, licking it while glancing at us. She reacts to the silence. “Really? This surprises you after all we've seen?”