Chapter 1005 (1/2)

Before Alana could truly examine the notifications she had received, the huge boulder she was currently riding cracked further, splitting directly underneath her feet. Immediately the Dragons roared in triumph as they spotted her moving through the swirling snow. She sidestepped quickly and looked upward toward her attackers.

As she suspected, the Dragons were wasting no time in pouncing downward in order to strike while she was vulnerable. Cobalt bolts began to crash against the ground around her, scattering shards of stone that left tiny paper-thin cuts on her legs. Unfortunately for them, Alana felt that the change that resulted from the evolution of her Stat was much more potent than the rather short paragraph would indicate.

Although being able to live through the first time anything would kill me is already benefit enough… Alana thought grimly. For a second, her gaze stretched upward beyond the three remaining Dragons that were moving to hunt her and to the peak of Mount Olympus, where a beast that was almost Level 80 waited with half-closed eyes.

Hell, at this point it had probably returned to its lazy doze on top of Mount Olympus without another thought to Alana’s fate, the arrogant fuck. A resolution had firmed in Alana’s heart that she would rip that things heart out and eat that precious organ in front of its children. Then she would kill the rest of them to make sure another monster like this would never exist.

The wild violence of the sudden resolution shocked some part of Alana, but her stoic side accepted it as natural. If the Broodmother itself would have moved after its breath attack, Alana likely would have died. For whatever reason, it hadn’t. But the truth that Alana could have died in those desperate moments was not an easy one for her to swallow.

How long before Donnyton would find out that she had been crushed like a fly on top of this distant mountain? What would they feel, so soon after the loss against Randidly in the challenge?

This humiliation would be paid back with interest. Alana glared upward. But then she refocused on those who were currently in front of her.

The Dragons above Alana blasted out a heavy rain of cobalt bolts, and some strange whim caused Alana to just take a long look at them as they approached her. She ceased dodging and simply followed their bright track across the sky toward her. Then she flexed her left hand, feeling the tingling numbness recede as blood and energy flooded back into the previously frozen limb.

Almost casually, Alana reached up and chopped with her hand. Somehow, her instincts told her that attacks of this level weren’t enough to reach her any longer.

With almost comical ease, Alana simply smashed aside the Ice Dragons’ Skils. Her hand blurred outward with methodical efficiency as if she was swatting away lazy and fat flies.

The Dragons paused in their bombardment and regarded Alana with their bright sapphire eyes. Alana chuckled and raised her right hand. Her Skill Vengeful Javelin condensed into a bright orange weapon above her hand. With practiced ease, she threw the javelin of burning energy with enough oomph that the snow in the surrounding area was vaporized by its passage. Such was its speed that the targeted Dragon didn’t even have time to blink its sapphire eyes before one of its wings was ripped off its body.

Screaming, the dragon spiraled downward to crash into one of the splintering pieces of the shattered ridge. Stone continued to fracture and break. The two other dragons dived quickly downward, hoping to avoid meeting a similar fate to their companions.

Alana walked calmly forward, unphased by the crumbling ridge beneath her. After all, she was the tip of Donnyton’s Spear. She bore the weight of all of their hopes and dreams. She couldn’t afford to die here. Fights like these-

The orange energy around her eddied and began to wane. Whereas before the image had felt painted on her Willpower like a glove, it now felt fuzzy and difficult to manage. The energy continued to deteriorate as Alana blinked in shock for a full second. And for the first time since she had encountered this problem, Alana had an inkling as to the cause.

Was I… trying to utilize an image that was too big for me to handle this whole time...? Alana thought in wonder. The energy around her continued to stutter and swirl. It wasn’t that the concept of an image had left her, it was more akin to the rare occasions that Alana had tried Dozer’s huge pillar of a weapon out of curiosity.

Even if she had the Strength enough to use it, there was some implicit understanding of the forces and momentum involved that was missing. Her flailings with Dozer’s weapon had been comically bad. Perhaps should could master the usage with practice, but she had felt uncomfortably unable to exert her Strength while wielding it.

Is that why Randidly stepped away from authority for so long? To focus his image on himself as an individual…? Alana looked down at her hands. The orange energy around her had died down to almost nothing now. The cold and the snow came howling back. The passage of the wind shrieked in her ears. Some distance away, Alana could sense the Dragons pause again, unsure of this new change in her behavior.

But then, as all of the orange energy around her faded to nothing and the wind triumphantly blasted her face, Alana’s eyes began to smoke and burn. When she released a breath, the energy blasted outward like a beam of light. Fine then. I don’t need to be anything to Donnyton if I can’t even manage myself. I’m simply Alana, Valkyrie of the Red Clay. Alaihym, Angel with no Lineage. And I will spear the heart of the Ice Dragon Broodmother and roast it over a fire.

Alana’s images came surging back. She could feel the glittering feathers stretching out from her helmet and the perfect, gleaming spear she wielded in her hand. But one small thought swam nervously around the base of her mind.

...just how much has Randidly’s image grown in order to cow the image of Donnyton with brute force…? He wielded an image so large that it completely suppressed us all… Is that a matter of practice, or is there something else that I’m missing…?

Yet Alana’s thoughts had to stop because the present danger demanded her attention.

Three Dragons scuttled forward to attack Alana as she stood alone in the ridge at the base of Mount Olympus. Two more were swirling downward in the sky above, much larger than the four that had come before. She had fallen far enough down in elevation that the snow transformed to sleet, pasting her hair to her skull and running down the back of her neck to her spine like curious fingers. The ground beneath her continued to crumble and split. Around her, what had once been a ridge was slowly devolving into an avalanche.

And Alana laughed as she rode it all into darkness, burning like a bonfire.

*****