[MA] 139. White Cubes (Patreon)

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[A/N: 4/5 chapters from last week. The next one should come out tomorrow.

Also, if you read chapter 137 before today, April 19th, I went back and added something I had forgotten: AP gain when killing rift dwellers.

Here's the relevant excerpt right after Shen kills the first gnoll:

| Gnoll (E) | 7,419,064 → 7,419,189 AP

It had been a while since Shen got AP for a kill like this. He had completed a lot of Bounties in the past two days, but it was usually him killing hundreds or thousands of people for no AP and then executing the actual target for tens of thousands. Getting AP like this—and the extra 25% from his Title was already included—felt nostalgic, reminding him of his time in the tutorial.]

Strategically, Shen noticed a few things in the opposing army.

The three hundred black obsidian monoliths, each a hundred feet tall, were evenly spaced among the army. Shen felt a kind of influence coming from the monoliths, each protected by its own area of influence and two others. They were more mobile than the cubes yet seemed the most stationary of all tools.

Not that the three thousand marble-looking white cubes, each ten feet wide, didn't look stationary enough. They were hard to push around as they couldn't float and mainly occupied the front of the army, a little behind the front lines. They were likely some manner of weapon, maybe artillery.

Most of the one thousand flying vehicles protected the monoliths closest to the front line, but each monolith had at least one flying vehicle around it. The gnolls expected Shen to not be able to go past the front line but were ready if he did.

The thousands of round war tanks protected both monoliths and cubes and also focused on the front lines. The enemy really didn't think he had a chance of getting into their midst.

Shen's Foundational Concept, the mist of War, Combat, and Sharpness, told him he could cut any armor the gnolls were wearing by expending only a little bit of qi. The war tanks would take considerably more, but he should still be able to make it in a single strike. However, it would take multiple of his best attacks to get through the flying vehicle's metal, and the monoliths and cubes felt impossible to scratch at all.

That last obstacle gave him pause.

Shen had accumulated a lot of AP on Earth but hadn't spent it because the stronger he became, the least he would benefit from killing the weak humans. Stepping on an ant didn't teach as much as fighting a rat.

Now, Shen faced an army of E-ranks in a world that should have D-ranks. Not only should he get as strong as he could to deal with the army, but he also should use the E-ranks as a whetstone to get used to his improved stats.

So, he stopped running and said, "Bring my resistance and agility to D+, and my strength to D."

| Purchased: Resistance Up (D) | -1,152,000 AP

| Purchased: Resistance Up (D+) | -2,304,000 AP

| Purchased: Agility Up (D+) | -2,304,000 AP

| Purchased: Strength Up (D) | -1,152,000 AP

| Remaining AP: 593,314 AP

For the first time, he prioritized his resistance over strength. He decided to play it safe.

The system held him for a few minutes, contracting and stretching his muscles, bones, marrows, tendons, tissues—everything, really. Even his brain had to be improved to let him see and react to things at the speed he moved.

Back when his agility had reached the D- tier, Shen had been sure he was one step away from the very limits of physical reality. Now, he could feel it in his very body. It touched upon some sort of natural barrier that couldn't be overcome with technology, knowledge, or creative physics. To reach the C- tier, he would need to fundamentally change his entire being in a mystical manner.

The F-rank had merely made him stronger than G-ranks. The E-rank had been the first threshold, requiring him to touch upon a Concept, which could be done with some luck and enough time. The D-rank was a more significant gap, as mastering a Concept required a lot of time and effort.

And Shen could now tell that the C-rank would mark an enormous divide.

But that didn't matter now. What mattered was that his speed and resistance reached the utmost potential of his rank, and his strength wasn't much behind. He still needed to learn to use the stats to the maximum, but he, fortunately, had whetstones waiting for him.

He resumed his sprint towards the army. He was even faster now and laughed in delight at reaching a new peak. He pushed his body to the utmost, delighting in the fact—

His Battle Sense detected something wrong.

Whatever it was, it was directly in front of him, and he was moving straight at it. He did all he could to stop. His knees cried as they were overloaded, but he succeeded.

Even as he stopped, he still had no idea what he was feeling just a few yards away. It was like a boundary of strangeness. This close, he could also feel it with his mana sense.

Shen approached it wearily and poked the thing he felt with his spear. The weapon went through the boundary and hit nothing, disappearing as if going through an illusion. He prodded more, and after feeling more assured of the wisdom of just going through whatever was there, he did precisely that.

On the other side of the illusion, Shen found a ten-foot-tall wall of spikes that completely surrounded the fortress. If he had kept running, he would've impaled himself. Small metal devices placed at intervals on the ground made the barrier invisible. He had to admit it was an excellent trap against people stupid enough to rush toward a fortified position.

Shen thrust his spear at one such device to see what would happen, and it stopped working. A small chunk of around seven yards became visible on the other side. Unfortunately, the device also turned into light, and he would be willing to bet he couldn't steal the others for further study. The Alliance really didn't want humans to take anything from this place.

He easily jumped over the spiky wall—with help from Zephyr for extra gracefulness—and moved much more carefully from then on. Not that it helped him detect the next trap.

The ground shook, and armies just like the one he saw dug up all around him.

He was boxed in the middle of almost a million troops.

Shen wasn't sure how much of what he saw was real. The enemy had shown it could turn things invisible, so building an illusion shouldn't be a problem. However, he had exactly zero experience dealing with illusions and would have to assume everything he saw was real. His Foundational Concept didn't detect anything with the things he looked at, nor did his Battle Sense.

His strategical mind suggested that attacking the army behind him was the best move. It was further from the fortress and whatever surprises it might have. Even if the enemy had trapped the surroundings, it wouldn't be as protected as their base. Moreover, the army behind him cut him from his path of retreat. Although he wanted to kill more and more, a corner of his mind had always been prepared to withdraw and return later if needed.

So he turned back and started moving towards the army that, from this perspective, was right before the spiky wall.

The route to that army should also be the safest because he had already gone through it and noticed nothing wrong. His Battle Sense had proved it could at least detect some measure of danger nearby. So he sped up to gain some momentum for his first attack.

Suddenly, the many white cubes from all armies just shot upwards. Shen immediately understood he had been fooled. He had watched the gnolls push the cubes with difficulty and assumed the objects to be stationary, but it was quite the opposite.

A dozen thousand white cubes covered the skies, creating a wall of pure whiteness.

Then they fell like a hammer from the Heavens.

Shen quickly estimated his speed versus how fast the cubes were coming and determined he wasn't fast enough to escape. He had to destroy the cubes or find an alternative.

Destroying them would be a tall order. Now with improved strength and agility, Shen estimated he could chip away at the cubes. It would improve as he got used to his enhanced stats, but that didn't help now. At this exact moment, regular attacks would do nothing to the cubes.

Shen chose to destroy the cubes anyway.

His tactical mind told him that digging a hole and hiding was the most cost-effective solution, but that went against everything he was and believed in. He existed to kill, and he needed to develop an aura. He wouldn't accomplish that by hiding like a coward.

Shen kept rushing toward the army between him and the portal.

In the skies, the cubes corrected their path to try to get him in their center. They failed; he was much, much faster than them. However, they created a wide enough plane that he still couldn't escape. To make things worse, the cubes in the opposite direction he was running started stacking on top of each other. Shen wouldn't just need to destroy one cube to free himself from them; he would need to destroy at least a few. Whoever had created—or maybe was controlling—that weapon knew what they were doing.

Shen would face this crisis like he had faced the last one, back when he had had to save Alicia from the warhead explosions.

He would push against Reality.

He hadn't mastered Sharpness back then, so his Foundational Qi would be stronger this time. Moreover, he had thought of ways of weaponizing the ability instead of just pushing it around himself like a turtle.

Shen filled his body and spear with Foundational Qi as the cubes approached.

They reached him.

He thrust with his spear diagonally upwards and jumped while pushing his qi outside his body and weapon. Then he willed Reality to bend to his will.

He was a master of War, and this was the closest he had ever come to it; he was facing an entire army on his way to besieging a fortress.

He was a master of Combat, and this was a pure and straightforward fight with the most primal stake: survival.

But more importantly, he was a master of Sharpness, and he demanded both his blade's edge to be infinitesimally thin and the world to accept that it existed to be cut by it.

His will pushed against Reality, and when it touched the cube, Reality slammed back.

Back against the missiles' explosions, Shen had faced heat, light, and pressure. While those were very physical things, they weren't solid matter. When his Foundational Qi struck the cube and demanded it to give way by getting split apart, Reality refused vehemently.

Shen pushed with all he had—all his strength and qi and willpower focused on the tip of his spear. Fortunately, Reality didn't focus back.

He already knew that Reality was very passive about enforcing its Laws. However, the longer he kept pushing, the more vehemently it would push back.

The point of contact gave way to his will, melting like ice before dragon fire. Shen's Foundational Qi weakened the very structural substance the cube was made of, then cut it into multiple pieces. He went through it and three others with no trouble, leaving on the other side without a single scratch.

His qi expenditure was absurd; half his qi was gone just like that in less than a second. But it was a useful card to hide in his sleeve.

The cubes slammed on the ground and kept there for a few seconds before flying again. By then, however, Shen was too close to the gnolls; unless the cubes were willing to sacrifice their own troops, he was beyond its reach.

The front lines were filled with armored gnolls holding shields. Shen anticipated crushing them with ease, but he had learned his lesson. He slowed down when he was about to step into a monolith's influence boundary.

Shen was glad he did that; as soon as he entered the monolith's area of influence, he was struck with powerful vertigo and tripped over himself.

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