The mana within the slime churned violently, a chaotic maelstrom that tore through the landscape with merciless force. Towering trees, their roots once embedded deep into the earth, were wrenched free as if they were nothing more than blades of grass in a storm. The very air trembled under the weight of its presence—an entity forged from raw, unrestrained power. The world itself seemed to recoil at its existence.
And I stood before it.
The mana coursed through my veins, pulsing in time with my hammering heartbeat. It wrapped around my limbs, reinforcing my body, dulling the sharp edges of my pain—but not enough to erase it. The wound on my abdomen throbbed, a burning reminder of my mortality. My right hand pressed against it, pushing mana into the injury—not to heal it, for I lacked access to my special eyes, but to hold myself together, to keep fighting.
Because I had to fight.
Escape was impossible. The sheer pressure of the monster's presence made running a meaningless dream. If I turned my back on this creature, it would consume me whole, reducing me to nothingness before I could take a single step.
The air shifted.
A sudden, crushing weight slammed into me, a suffocating tidal wave of killing intent.
My breath hitched.
For the briefest moment, my vision blurred. A primal chill crept down my spine, my instincts screaming in pure, unfiltered terror. Every nerve in my body ignited, recognizing the truth my mind refused to accept.
I was being hunted.
The realization struck like lightning, setting my body ablaze with urgent, desperate energy. My skin prickled, cold sweat beading along my brow. My muscles locked, torn between fight and flight, my heartbeat a frantic war drum in my ears.
Run.
Flee.
Throw myself onto the ground and beg the heavens for mercy.
But this time—I was ready.
Mana surged to my fingertips, gathering like storm clouds before the downpour. I molded it, shaped it, gave it purpose.
"Fire Magic: Flamefang Rain," I muttered.
The air crackled.
Then, they appeared.
Brilliant motes of mana flickered into existence, swirling around me like fireflies in the dark. At first, they were delicate—tiny embers, fleeting and fragile. But in mere moments, their light intensified, their forms solidifying into blazing streaks of crimson and gold.
They pulsed.
Each one brimming with raw, condensed destruction.
They elongated, twisting, morphing—serrated fangs of pure fire, their edges glowing white-hot. The air itself warped around them, heat distorting reality as they hovered, waiting.
And then—
They launched.
A storm of fire descended upon the beast. The sky wept flames, each arrow screaming through the air with deadly precision, striking the monstrous vortex that swirled before me. Heat rippled outward in shimmering waves, setting the battlefield ablaze, scorching the broken earth beneath us.
This was a B-Rank spell. A spell designed to reduce a B-Rank monster to cinders.
But as the flames consumed the air, as my arrows tore through the vortex—
I already knew.
It just wouldn't be enough.
The slime shuddered.
And then—
A pulse of mana erupted from its core. Wind expanded outwards from it in all directions in an invisible hemisphere.
Boom
Not one.
Boom
Not two.
Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom—
Thirty violent bursts of wind expanded outward, spherical waves of destruction, obliterating everything in their path. The earth beneath us did not merely crack—it was shattered, broken apart like fragile glass. The wind surged outward. It was a merciless storm of raw wind magic, devouring my flames as though they had never existed in the first place.
The fire died.
The wind reigned.
The concerned monster possessed no eyes. It did not see, did not observe, did not recognize the world as I did. Instead, it sensed—through the vibrations of mana, through the tremors in the air, through the very lifeblood of magic itself.
It turned its attention to the cliff's edge, where I had stood mere moments ago, only to find—I was gone.
Silence.
Despite the wind revolving around it, ravishing the nature, it stood silent. As if it was stunned. Just then—
—Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom—
—the air detonated.
Brilliant, searing flames erupted from all sides, engulfing the monster in a relentless inferno. The ground beneath it cracked under the weight of my spell. The sky itself seemed to glow with the intensity of my flames for a moment.
The fire arrows that I had launched at the monster were not just mere fire arrows.
It was a B-Rank spell. Of course, they meant something more.
Each and every arrow was laced with an intricate explosive spell I had mastered with great effort during my time in the basement. I only had to will, and they would explode—each of them covering a radius of 5 metres.
Of course, such an attack consumed a ridiculous amount of my mana, leaving only one-fourth of the total left.
The smoke disappeared, revealing the tempest warden.
A small smile crept up onto my face as I noticed a crack on the mana orb of the monster.
The wind revolving around the orb had somewhat slowed down due to my attack, but it again gained its pace, protecting the gentle mana orb.
The monster had no problem with the shortage of mana that I faced. There was no comparison between our mana pools.
Its pool was not merely larger than mine.
It was a world apart.
I was now at a much greater distance from the slime. I had used "Swift Wind" to travel swiftly while the tempest spammed earthing-shattering attacks. I was on the complete opposite direction of where I stood before. I needed to be on equal ground with the monster for what I was going to do next to work out.
The slime had two weaknesses.
One, the mana orb that was being protected by the ferocious swirl of wind and mana was gentle—too gentle. Something that can break just by mere touch.
Second, the monster took approximately 7 seconds to perform its next spell. The one it performed was known as "Voidburst Maelstrom", a spell infamous for destruction.
I had 4 seconds left for its next attack.