The demon fiend ferociously clawed at Mine’s face, but this only ended with him being blown away from the mountain. I was shocked by the amount of brute strength Mine displayed, but I kept my focus on the chains.
I used [Death Claw] on them, powered by 1000 MP in [Mithril Body] that boosted my stats to the level of a dragon king, but even then, the attack failed and Mine used my very own attack on me.
He however missed by a hair’s breadth since I still had the [Dodge] skill. Arisu on the other hand wasn’t so luck and got slashed across the face. She let out a painful cry as tears and blood flowed down her face violently.
The sight of her being in so much pain would normally invoke a certain form of anger within me, but honestly, I was happy that it wasn’t me who got attacked by that. Unfortunately, in her pain and wrath, Arisu also fired off an attack.
A beam of pink light aimed at Mine’s head. Whether she intended for the attack to hit him or not, I honestly couldn’t tell since she was moving her head about in an aggressive manner. The attack hit the yellow man directly, digging a him deep into the ground, but soon, Arisu’s beam went about attacking the surrounding without care.
I activated [Damage Absorber] and took the hit on directly whenever it came my way. From what had been calculated by the agent, I could take that kind of damage and recover within a couple of minutes.
[You have lost 1000 health point]
[You have lost 995 health points]
[You have lost 1013 health points]
[You have lost 980 health points]
Once I deemed the damage sufficient, I jumped out of the way and chose to close the gap between us. In this situation, I was confident that I was far stronger than my opponent, but his ability to copy my skills put me at a disadvantage.
Which meant, I had to free Arisu from his binds so I could attempt to end him in a one-hit move. When I got close enough to hit him, he threw Arisu right in my face, causing me to hold back my punch.
With that split second opening, he grabbed my abdomen with both arms and squeezed as hard as he could. The idea here was probably to crush me and cause some internal bleeding which was more lethal than external attacks, but his mistake was that he didn’t know that I could simply increase my defence with [Mithril Body] and [Iron Fortress].
I took the chance to grab his arm and transfer 200% of the damage Arisu hit me with to him using [Damage Counter], [High Force Impact] and [Destroy].
His hands were instantly obliterated and a golden substance poured out of it like water through a pipe. Unlike what I expected, he didn’t react to having lost both hands. Rather, he opened his mouth wide and tried to bite my neck off.
I widened the distance between us in an instant, going about 10 metres back. That was when I noticed that he wasn’t trying to bite me. His target was Arisu who he had already captured.
With the way things were looking, even I wouldn’t be able to close the gap between us before he bit her head off. We scrolled through dozens of possible solutions then one came to mind quickly.
Some days back, I was given some gifts for surviving one month in this world. I had no use for most of those gifts, but now I had use for one of them.
Quickly, I withdrew the [Null Field Orb] and activated it. Mine’s fangs stopped on Arisu’s neck, like a toothpick against an iron wall.
Confused, Mine tried to bite her neck once more, but it couldn’t even cause a mark on Arisu’s flawless skin. A smirk found its way on my face as my plan worked perfectly.
‘Huh, it was this easy?’
‘I’ve got the new skill ready.’
[You bought [Soul Maimer] for 400 store points]
With this, I charged at Mine once more. He raised both freshly regenerated arms to defend against the attack, but my claws passed through and slashed right across his chest, making him scream in immense pain.
Still, he didn’t drop Arisu. If anything, the chain only grew tighter around her, making her grunt. This wasn’t for long however as he countered with a punch to my face which I couldn’t even feel.
Amused by the turn of events, I started to slash at him rapidly with no sort of remorse. Then he summoned a shadow fiend that stopped in its tracks the moment it recognised me as its enemy.
From the looks of things, shadows are incapable of fighting against me. Most likely due to my peculiar position. Did the Queen of Shadows really favour me that much?
That wasn’t what was important now. I continued my merciless onslaught at his soul and whenever he tried to put Arisu in front of him, I easily moved behind him to continue attacking. He tried a chaos energy burst, but I simply absorbed that and converted it to mana to increase my dexterity and speed to ensure I could avoid Arisu no matter how tiny the gap was.
He had no real way of countering, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t figure out what I was doing soon.
However, now that he had rendered [Relentless] and [Undying] ineffective, it was the first time in a while I actually acknowledged the kind of stamina drain using skills took.
Unique skills took certain things to be used, but [Energy Transcriber] took stamina and apparently quite a bit of mental pain tolerance, both of which I had a lot to spare. But with THE rapidity with which I was dodging, using mana and slashing, the stamina drain became somewhat noticeable.
For some reason, no mater how much I slashed at his soul, my attack wouldn’t work. All that happened was that he screamed in pain and tried to counter, but it never worked. Angry, I increased my frequency, but it was to no avail.
‘It’s like his soul is immortal.’
‘That can’t be the case. No matter how great a soul, it shouldn’t be immortal!’
‘W-What m-makes you say that?’
‘The very fact that there are skills designed to kill souls in the first place. And remember that the Necromancer burnt through all the souls in her orb to power up?’
They all gave somewhat correct answers, but if souls weren’t immortal, why the heck wasn’t he dead yet? I’ve slashed at him for 5 minutes straight, yet he was still alive.
Seeing that nothing was working, I decided to withdraw to a safe distance.
‘Agent?’
<<I’m still investigating. However, he most likely possesses some sort of soul protecting ability>>
‘You think Soul Armour can protect me for as long as his skill did?’
<<No. You would have been dead by the first minute>>
That confirms that either my attacks simply weren’t doing any damage or he had a stronger soul protecting skill. Either way, taking away the ability to cause physical damage had put me in an even tighter spot, especially since he could possibly copy [Soul Maimer] at any point.
‘Wait, it’s been quite a while.’
‘Why hasn’t he copied [Soul Maimer]?’
‘D-Does his skill h-have a cooldown?’
‘Or copy limit?’
It was odd, but if that was the case, I could attack him without reservation before the 10 minutes were up. Something about this revelation put my heart at ease. As if a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders.
Again, I closed the gap between us and brought my claws in for a sweet murder, but what I got was a claw to my stomach. And one that hurt like hell. One that shouldn’t have hurt due to [Pain Nullification] and [Pain Resistance], but it did.
“Ow! Ow! Ow! That hurts! That really hurts! Goddamn it!”
I fell back and rolled around the ground. I hadn’t felt this kind of pain in quite some time and I wasn’t used to it, neither did I plan to ever get used to it.
While crying in pain on the ground, I saw Mine smiling viciously at me. Was he holding back this entire time so I wouldn’t suspect him then he could strike at the last moment? That’s a vile play.
He brought his claws down on me, but I moved out of the way. Mine was hot on my tail though and started to attack like a wild beast without any form of mercy. I attempted to restrain him using shackles made of ice, but he used his chain to smash right through them.
I tried blinding him, but light didn’t seem to affect his cognitive ability. [Paralysing Vomit], [Dragon Elemental Breath], [Bubble Space] and [Space Isolation]. Nothing seemed to work on him as he would simply power through all of them with little to no side effects.
With [Mithril Body] I had increased my speed so the best I could do was dodge, but even then he was gaining ground on me.
‘Let’s try this!’
Akira suggested [Dark Mirror]. We activated the skill for barely a second and my head almost exploded.
[Dark Mirror] was a skill that made me half of what the creature I was scanning was. This included physical attributes and thought processes. This bastard’s mind was clouded with greed.
He simply kept mumbling Mine, Power, Hungry, Wealth, in the most annoying manner ever. I was wondering why I couldn’t read his mind, but now I was happy that I couldn’t.
The skill was deactivated quickly, but that split second was more than enough time for Mine to land his second attack. My body exploded with unrealistic pain as I crumpled to the floor, tears streaking down my face and saliva drooling from my mouth.
He jumped in to finish the job, but the shadow fiend he summoned earlier jumped in the way, taking the attack and allowing me to recover.
In the end, using soul attacks became my worst possible idea. Still, that was the only way to beat him.
‘Come on, guys. We need more solutions!’
‘It’s not that easy when even soul-destroying skills barely cause him to flinch.’
‘I-Is it p-possible that w-we’re going about this in the w-wrong way?’
‘What do you mean?’
Before Akkun could give his suggestion, Arisu’s pained cry echoed through the virtually empty mountain. He was reminding us that he still had Arisu as a captive.
This was getting annoying since that proved that he could think. Yet when I tried to learn his thought process, it was like a rabid animal. There’s no way a rabid animal was smart enough to even taunt me like this, right? Especially with those unbreakable chains that follow commands of his.
‘Chains that follow commands of his… It’s hard, but definitely not a soul weapon.’
Unlike Ulva’s soul weapon or the others I had collected, I couldn’t see a shadow behind the soul weapon which meant the chain clearly wasn’t sentient.
‘What is it, Tori?’
‘Akkun is right. We’ve been trying to break the chains this entire time, but what if we went after the skill that allows him to control the chains in the first place?’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, once we figure out what skill it is that’s controlling the chain-‘
‘Guys!’
Akkun yelled at us, clearly frustrated by something.
‘What is it?’
‘Uuh, um, what if the chain isn’t an item, but a skill?’
‘That’s insa- hmm, that could work, honestly.’
We changed our tune immediately the moment Akkun suggested this. It actually made the rest of us feel stupid for not thinking about it earlier. Then again, Akkun was us and we were Akkun so on a technicality, we thought about this.
‘You got any other thoughts?’
‘Um, I’m not sure about it.’
‘Eh? Just say it. It’s not like we’d laugh at you.’
‘O-Okay. W-What if M-Mine was actually a s-skill and n-not a person. I-It would explain w-why the sy-system failed to rec-cognise him earlier.’
…
‘You’re really dumb, aren’t you?’
‘Hahaha!’
‘That was a nice one.’
We ended up mocking him and his face turned red.
Either way, I realised I had been going about this whole scenario wrongly. With the way the chains were and the fact that I couldn’t scan them, Akkun could be entirely right.
If that was the case, then I had a possible way to beat him.
‘Guys!’
‘Understood!’
‘U-uwa! This is scary!’
‘Don’t die!’
We were thinking the exact same thing without having to communicate. I mean, we were all the same person.
Three clones of myself appeared before me and we all jumped Mine, with the full intention to kill him.
Akira went for his legs, as Akkun and Kira went for both arms. I jumped in to the chains and activated [Skill Alchemy] as well as [Weak Constitution] and [Remorse]. The goal was to transfer the skill [Weak Constitution] and to affect the skill that controlled the chains.
The end result was given to us in the form of the sound the chain being dismantled, and Arisu falling to the ground with a light thud.
Immediately, I teleported her out of the location while Mine was screaming with what I could call ungodly pain.
The moment I had confirmed she was gone, the others returned to my head and I created a gap between us. The clone bodies were shredded and Mine looked at us with golden eyes glinting with the lust for revenge.
<<Ten minutes are up>>
Now that Arisu was gone, I was free to use skills that had a wide area of effect with no remorse.
A clicking sound went off in my head as [Devil Form] activated.
