Chapter 539: Playtime (1/2)
Chapter 539 Playtime
Ilea continued her training. With the survivors gone, she could focus near fully on herself.
Michael begrudgingly accepted the closure of the gate in a month’s time, the ultimatum coming from Meadow instead of Ilea.
She didn’t feel like arguing with the man and thus told Meadow to inform him.
He damn near revered the creature as a divine being, easily taking the explanation at face value.
I do wonder if Meadow could create Divine objects again if Michael thought of it as a god. Or is its own self perception already preventing such a possibility in the future?
Ilea activated Phaseshift, displacing a few death flames and blinking up before the spell took effect of the space near her body.
She remained in the air, slowly floating upwards when the first Astral Spirit finally showed up.
It would simply be unacceptable to leave this place without killing at least one of the creatures.
Her ethereal form was enveloped in astral energy, the spirits of death climbing on top of each other behind her were incinerated near instantaneously.
Ilea continued to float closer before she deactivated Phaseshift, her form flickering while the enemy spell still moved through her as if she didn’t exist. The second passed and she displaced herself close to the spirit.
Her ash rushed out and a near fully charged Heart of Cinder slammed into the smooth body of the spirit. Burns and blemishes showed immediately, the body molten where it had faced the spell. A thick turquoise liquid seeped out of various wounds, all of it reforming quickly as it drained her mana.
Ilea’s resistance to the drain was high. High enough that she should be able to kill some of the lower leveled Astrals. Both her own knowledge of the creatures and Meadow’s insight suggested such.
The problem in actually killing them was however difficult to overcome.
It didn’t just drain mana from her, it drained mana from spirits of death and even its own kind. Both the strength of their drain and the range they could use it at made the beings insanely hard to kill. As long as there were other creatures around.
The only reason she hadn’t given up on a kill entirely, was because of their somewhat lacking tactical sense.
They just stayed there, attacking and draining anything that even resembled a pool of mana. So far they hadn’t shown anything close to concern or fear. Sometimes they left but Ilea doubted it was her doing in the first place.
She covered the creature in ash, igniting all of it with Flare of Creation. The spell blazed up with the full five hundred health per second she could add additionally.
Ilea kept a close look on her health and sacrificed a thousand points to activate her third tier aura.
Her ashen limbs cut and slammed into the creature as quickly as she could manage. She grappled it from behind and pushed reverse mana into it as Absolute Destruction charged.
The hits she took from its astral area spell were substantial but she simply kept her third tier healing active at all times. Her growing resistance and other bonuses made the enemy magic at least manageable.
Her resources dwindled quickly but she kept grappling the spirit.
She saw two more Astrals arrive and released her charged Absolute Destruction, her destructive mana coursing through the creature with all the buffs and bonuses she could muster.
Ilea was forced to jump off, displacing herself as she dodged a few spells on her retreat.
Not quite enough… even with all that.
The hordes of Death spirits continued being burnt through by the Astral variants, until nothing was left but a group of nearly twenty of the latter.
But if I go in now there are too many, she thought with a sigh. It was just as hopeless if she looked for an area with no death spirits, or if she tried to use this area where the Astrals killed all the Death variants already. In those cases, the star monsters would simply not come.
Ilea definitely had the power output to kill the various creatures but when it came to pure mana usage, a group of fifty death spirits still outperformed her. Even then it often took twenty to fifty seconds for the first Astral Spirit to show up.
Damn all those regenerators!
She flew back to the temple, frustrated another attempt had failed. Killing an Astral Spirit wasn’t her only goal in the month left on Erendar however.
“Failed again?” Meadow asked.
“It’s nuts… I can kill even higher leveled beings with less damage output,” she said.
“Destructive mana may not be the best way to face Astral Spirits. A more physical approach might be beneficial,” it informed her, again.
“Yes. Let me just get new Classes and level them to three hundred. My ash doesn’t do enough either,” she said.
“As long as the death spirits remain, it will be troublesome,” Meadow said.
Not if I get Flare of Creation higher. Or if I actually manage to charge Destruction for longer than a few seconds.
Ilea could deliver more damage with consecutive punches using her Destruction but what she needed against the quickly regenerating creatures was heavy damage that came all at once. Both methods however had failed so far.
It was sobering in a way but on the other hand she could easily survive even combined attacks by the beings. Her own regeneration wasn’t anything to laugh at either after all. At least I don’t need dozens of living creatures to siphon away health and mana.
“Don’t frown like that,” Meadow said. “I’m sure you’ll succeed eventually.”
“I have my armor on. You can’t see my frown,” she said and sat down on the black grass.
“I can feel it. It’s all encompassing,” Meadow said.
“Can you help me with a skill. It’s been a little annoying to level,” Ilea said.
While Sentinel Huntress did gain levels during her training and fights, it was still far behind her other more directly useful abilities.
She knew that adding markers to enemies during her bouts made a difference but the core of the skill was an investigative one.
“How may I help you, my friend?” Endless Meadow asked.
“Have you ever heard of Hide and Seek?” Ilea asked.
Ilea felt the tear tremble in her hand. Just enough for her to register.
She was on the right track.
Probably in this range, she thought, flying upwards now. The mountains here rivaled the north in Elos, bursting out of the ground beyond the wastes she had covered.
Ilea had flown for hours, Erendar really proving to be quite desolate.
But I guess it’s quiet at least, she thought. No annoying people. Just monsters to battle. For all of eternity. What a dream.
There were however no cooks, no humans to talk to, no cities or architecture to admire. Even for Ilea it may be a little much. Perhaps as a spa it was acceptable.
She felt the temperatures drop even further as she flew up towards the distant peaks. Everything was frozen by now, even Ilea taking damage from the weather. She started using Heart of Cinder to counteract the cold.
Her wings could barely move anymore, despite her high second tier resistance. The crystal was thrumming now.
Ilea displaced herself a few times, appearing in a broad valley. A cave entrance showed on the side of a still distant mountain.
What’s that, a hundred meters high? she thought, teleporting closer.
The storm cleared up more the closer she got. Less snow too, she thought, starting to see bones stick out of the icy wasteland.
Mountains towered to each side, untouched for thousands of years.
Ilea looked down, seeing something trapped inside the ice. A spirit. An astral one.
She tried to gauge if it was alive still but couldn’t discern any information at all.
The closer she got to the cave, the more skeletons and frozen spirits were visible in the ice, entombed forever. There were hundreds of each kind, even the skeleton of one of the worms broke out of a frozen mountain side.
The snow had stopped, even the air itself entirely still.
Ilea looked at the cave entrance, the hair on her neck standing up as she took a deep breath. There wasn’t much oxygen here.
Might be rude to enter its home without permission, she thought, looking at the crystal that now nearly hummed with power.
She played around with her ice manipulation, forming a snowman with the level ten skill that somehow worked instinctively as long as she held the crystal.
Her Monster Hunter chargedand was infused with the intent of a greeting.
“Hello!” her shout echoed through the soundless valley, traveling through the terrain like waves in a pond.
A few kilometers behind her a crack formed near a peak. Massive chunks of ice broke off and quickly formed into an avalanche, crashing into the valley before it all froze again, long before it should’ve stopped moving naturally.
Ilea watched the cave, her arm outstretched and holding the crystal.
She felt as if the air stilled even more, her own heartbeat and breathing the only sounds perceptible to her.
Ilea saw the creature emerge, the pale light from the eclipse reflecting from the clear parts of its body. The being took the form of a wolf and reached a height of nearly sixty meters, its body entirely made of ice.
The shape of the creature didn’t come from bones and muscles but from smooth geometrical shapes. Each shape connected to the next in an angle to form the massive being, almost like the wolf had been carved from a piece of crystal.