[LitF] 23. Imagine Dragons (Patreon)

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[A/N: This chapter is almost two times the length of the average one. Enjoy!]

Nine dragons flew at Arthur while casting spells at him.

The two firemancers threw fifty fireballs at him that looked and felt like miniature suns. They released so much heat that Arthur's flying weapons would've melted even hundreds of yards away if he hadn't immediately increased their melting points. He would also have died if his robe didn't protect him from the heat.

On the bright side, the heat also vaporized the water jets that the aquamancer dragon tried to throw his way.

On the not-so-bright side, it set the three incoming tornadoes and countless wind blades afire, increasing their destructive potential.

The biomancer's green mana connected with every dragon to strengthen them.

The geomancer approached the ground and prehended the earth when it was three hundred yards away. Thousands of earth and rock spikes came flying at Arthur.

On the bright side, he could assume that distance was the dragons' maximum mana reach. Every incoming spell had been formed that far away from the dragons. He had an advantage.

On the not-so-bright side, enormous weightless shadow spikes grew from the insides of every earth spike. That was one of the powers of shadowbenders that scholars had only theorized before: make their shadows capable of affecting physical matter. These dragons clearly had many tricks up their sleeves.

Lastly, purple space mana and silver time mana created layers around every dragon, increasing their speed twofold.

Their magic wasn't the only issue. The dragons had also entered a battle formation. They were taking him seriously.

The shaper, chronomancer, and biomancer were in the middle of the dragon group, providing support. The two firemancers, the aquamancer, and the aeromancer were at the front. She shadowbender hid at the back, and the geomancer flew underneath them.

While the geomancer was currently the most vulnerable target because it was slightly separated from the others, getting close to the ground would hinder Arthur's maneuverability. So he prehended the pieces of metal under his robe and flew upwards instead, dodging the incoming spells—

No, he didn't elude the spells.

They all changed directions and came for him. They were homing spells—another thing that was only theoretically possible but had never been seen or accomplished.

The prince didn't despair. He increased his speed. He broke through the sound barrier, which was positively uncomfortable but not harmful. His body stats were low but still ten times higher than an unawakened person.

Neither the spells nor the dragons moved as fast as him—at first.

The spells remained slow, but suddenly, the white wind and silver time dragons surrounded themselves with even more of their mana and started moving only marginally slower than he did.

That was astonishing. The dragons had a lot of mana but were also huge and heavy. Mass mattered when using magic; the mana expenditure to make them move that fast should be out of the charts. It was already costly enough for Arthur to also bring his seventy swords, eighty rotating disks, and two hundred metal spheres with him.

The mighty display of magic would've made the prince retreat if not for his Mana Sight. Thanks to it, he saw that the dragons were special but didn't ignore all rules of magic. No matter how good their elemental affinity or how much they might understand the laws of nature, they spent a lot of mana for that speed burst.

Arthur had moved slightly diagonally in the monsters' direction to avoid being trapped by the cave wall behind him, and the dragons had taken the chance to get closer. By the time they were five hundred yards away. The chronomancer had emptied two-thirds of its mana, while only half the aeromancer's mana pool was left. The prince still had over eighty percent of his mana remaining.

The monsters' intent in getting closer to him was obvious: denying his mana reach advantage. They didn't even need to hit him. If they could pin him down until the others arrived, he would die.

So, while approaching, the dragons sent multiple spells all around him, primarily toward the direction he was currently moving, to block his path. The aeromancer cast wind blades. The chronomancer created small packages of time mana that were invisible to the naked eye. Arthur had no idea what they did and would definitely avoid them.

He kept flying quickly and, to test the waters, prehended a sword to meet the wind blades.

The latter were made of highly condensed air that moved fast internally in an endless loop. They were also enspelled for extra sharpness. Arthur likewise made his swords sharper and, more importantly, sturdier.

The wind blades cut through the metal anyway.

Thankfully, the spell lost a big chunk of the mana fueling it, which told him that while a single sword wouldn't stop the wind blades, three would.

Arthur didn't test the time spheres, though. For now, he pretended as if he didn't know about them.

The aeromancer kept creating wind blades, mostly to block Arthur's path, but some also focused on him. The ones targeting his surroundings weren't homing on him yet, but they might if he got too close or after time passed. At the same time, the white dragon created multiple hurricanes behind it and its chronomancer partner, a six-hundred-yard wall of wind death, to prevent Arthur from entertaining any thoughts of moving past them.

The hurricanes evidenced what Graham had once told Arthur: one of the advantages the Fated Races had over dungeon monsters was experience. Monsters weren't seasoned fighters. They were created with a base intelligence and never trained. Arthur would meet seven other dragons if he tried to go past the aeromancer and chronomancer. He wouldn't do that. Not only did the aeromancer waste mana with that move, but it also got in the way of the other dragons.

The seven obstructed dragons roared. In a fit of rage, they breathed fire on the offending blockade, producing terrifying flaming tornadoes.

Arthur smiled and counterattacked.

He sent fifty metal spheres and twenty disks at about twice the speed of sound, the fastest he could do, against the nearest two monsters.

That wasn't fast enough to fool the chronomancer's spells. The invisible packets exploded whenever Arthur's weapons got close. They created a maelstrom of time in the region, and his projectiles slowed to a crawl. It only lasted a few moments but allowed the aeromancer to deploy a barrier of condensed air to protect the two monsters. The dragon also sent dozens of wind blades to meet Arthur's projectiles. The chronomancer, too, deployed a thin invisible time wall behind the wind barrier.

Neither party had stopped moving as everything happened. The dragons were gaining ground on Arthur. They were now only four hundred fifty yards away from him.

The wind blades and time spheres—the ones who hadn't exploded to stop his attack—were finally close enough that Arthur needed to deal with them. Unlike the dragons' opening salvo, these spells moved even faster than the dragons, who were still consuming much of their mana to maintain their speed.

There were seventeen blades targeting the path he meant to take. Forty others were homing on him. Lastly, nine time packages were only a hundred yards away.

So, the prince pushed himself to peak speed—two times the speed of sound. The fast acceleration hurt but not enough to do lasting damage. Moments later, he was beyond the dragon's furthest estimations of how far he could've reached, far away from the incoming spells.

At the same time, his prehended projectiles reached the air barrier—and went through.

The laws of nature on air, gravity, and momentum were some of the ones Arthur had studied the most after metal. They were the most significant hurdles his metal weaponry had to overcome to reach his enemies. He knew how to resist or deny most of what air could do, greatly lowering how much mana he had to spend to accomplish that. If the aeromancer's barrier's air particles weren't so condensed, his projectiles might've ignored it altogether.

They didn't ignore it, but his disks and metal spheres only slowed down as they went through. He also accelerated them again right after. They were prehended objects, not spells. He could affect them freely.

The time barrier was much more effective. Arthur's projectiles completely stopped for a moment.

He wanted the metal pieces to keep going but didn't know how to make them move in a place where time was stopped. Thus, his training and experience worked against him. He immediately, unconsciously, pushed more mana to get the job done. That's how magic worked when the mage didn't know enough to accomplish what they wanted. Even with his high mind stats and sensory skills, he took a few moments to stop supplying extra mana. It was much wiser to wait for the more mana-costly time barrier to disappear instead of forcing the issue.

He wasted ten percent of his mana just like that.

The chronomancer dropped the barrier right after Arthur stopped trying to push through it. As expected, the monster had used even more mana than Arthur and now had only a fifth remaining. Time magic was as costly as Arthur had been told.

The prince immediately prehended his weaponry forward again. He had never removed his intent strings from them. The aeromancer had had enough time to erect a new air barrier five times as thick as the previous one, but Arthur still managed to push his metal bits through it.

Only to meet yet another time barrier.

However, the prince now knew his training had worked against him twice. First, when he unconsciously pushed extra mana into his projectiles to get the job done. Then, when he stopped as soon as he noticed he was burning through his reserves too quickly.

Magic was costlier depending on the element, how much mass it was dealing with, volume, and, to a lesser extent, the involved energies, like kinetic. The chronomancer's time barrier was currently only affecting empty, originally unmoving air. By insisting on pushing his projectiles through it, Arthur would force the dragon to increase its mana expenditure while his own wouldn't grow as much. The harder he tried, the worse for the monster.

So, when his projectiles stopped, he kept feeding them mana to continue.

When prehended magic opposed prehended magic, the rule of using more mana to accomplish something might cause a mana-loop—literally, a loop where each side tried to defeat the other by throwing more mana to solve a problem. Arthur used mana to have his projectiles move through a place where time had stopped. The dragon used mana to stop time for his now mana-empowered projectiles. Arthur then used more mana to also move through the mana-empowered time barrier. The dragon then used more mana to stop Arthur. And so on and so forth.

The process wasn't instantaneous, limited as it was by each party's mana output capacity, but it was still fast. Mere moments later, Arthur had lost over twenty percent of his total mana.

But he succeeded.

The dragon spent almost all its time mana before giving up. The time barrier disappeared. Arthur's projectiles shot ahead.

This time, the aeromancer created a protective tornado around the two monsters and sent dozens of wind blades at Arthur's weapons. The prince's prehended objects ignored the tornado's pushes, and he let the wind blades destroy whichever weapons they had targeted.

That close, the dragon had no trouble targeting the small metal spheres. The wind blades cut through orbs with ease. However, his metal disks weren't as easily dealt with.

Arthur's serrated metal disks didn't just spin; they spun ridiculously fast. Much faster than even the air particles in the dragon's blades. That made up for any issue with their sharpness. The seven wind blades that met them head-on were split instead. Only the ones that targeted the flat of the disks could destroy them.

Regardless of the destruction, plenty of projectiles remained, especially the ones going at the chronomancer, which was trying to run away.

The silver dragon had a sliver of time energy left and used it to make itself faster for an instant. Its limbs quickly covered its face while it moved a dozen feet away so quick that it looked like teleportation.

Unfortunately for it, a dozen feet weren't far enough, and Arthur's spinning disks could do what javelins couldn't: cut through dragon scale. He moved them towards the dragon's exposed neck, focused on the slightly weaker space between scales, and pushed.

The disks created an opening, and his spheres followed. They ravaged the dragon's insides as they moved toward its brain, where he moved them around with abandon.

As the dead dragon started falling, its limbs stopped covering its face, and Arthur took his projectiles away from its skull through its eyes.

The aeromancer still believed it could defend itself, so it put up a better fight. It released thousands of wind blades at once from its head, destroying anything in front of it. All of Arthur's projectiles targeting that dragon were destroyed.

It roared in victory but had forgotten about the weapons that had just killed its companion. Arthur's disks and spheres sneaked into the dragon's back. He wanted to bring them to the monster's head but feared it might notice something wrong by prehending the air around itself. He didn't want to risk wasting time cutting through scales, either. So, he pushed his weapons through an opening close to the dragon's tail that was meant to be an exit, not an entrance.

The dragon wailed in pain and despair as Arthur's weapons made short work of its insides as they moved to its brain and killed it.

Thirteen down, seven to go.

The tornadoes behind the monster dissipated, as they had been maintained by prehension. The wind blades and time spheres were still coming for Arthur, though, and would remain so for as long as they had enough mana to sustain them. He kept moving fast to avoid them. Fortunately, the other spells previously cast by the other dragons had already consumed all their mana and dissipated.

Speaking of the other dragons, with the tornadoes gone, Arthur realized they had fulfilled another function: blocking his sight.

The dragons hadn't waited in place for Arthur to kill the others. The two firemancers and the biomancer had moved left, the aquamancer and shaper had moved right, the geomancer suddenly dug out of the earth below Arthur, and the shadowbender was nowhere in sight.

They were all only six hundred yards away from him.

The geomancer was alone—unless the shadowbender was with him somehow—and would be much easier to deal with than the shaper, who also had the support of an aquamancer. So, Arthur flew straight down despite it meaning losing some maneuverability potential due to getting closer to the ground.

The dragon was also flying straight at him—and it brought gifts. Thousands of rocks, every one of them much bigger than Arthur, floated around the dragon. It shot hundreds of earth and rock spikes came at Arthur. And millions of rocks of all sizes left the ground to cover the monster dragon, like armor.

The prince was surprised. He had never seen any monster do that. Or awakeners, for that matter; they wore armor, not rocks. Even the scholarly knowledge he had reviewed only dealt with theories of pushing the elements to the limit, not other practical usages like this one.

He had to assume those rocks would be much harder to cut through than ordinary stone. That was annoying. But now that he had started going down, he couldn't change targets. He would be surrounded if he tried to go anywhere else.

Arthur prehended a sword to meet an incoming earth spike. It easily cut through. The rock spikes fared much better until he used a trick Tamara suggested when they discussed this fight: vibration. It cost some mana because he didn't understand it very well, but his vibrating swords quickly pierced and shattered the rock spikes.

The prince kept going down, and his floating swords met the floating defensive rocks closer to the dragon. His weapons failed to destroy those stones. No matter how much he vibrated the metal, nothing happened.

Fortunately, his spinning disks fared much better. They cut through with relative ease.

Unfortunately, the disks became a heap of useless metal when they struck the dragon's rock armor.

The tactic Arthur had employed against the chronomancer wouldn't work here. A mana-loop would be disadvantageous for the prince. The earth element was slightly less costly than the metal one, to begin with, and his mana reserves were considerably lower than the dragon's.

He had cut through the monster's prehended floating rocks because it hadn't cared to enter a mana-loop for them. However, the dragon wouldn't easily let go of its final defense, the stone armor.

But Arthur didn't despair; he had a plan.

He kept going, and the dragon kept coming.

The prince dodged or cut any incoming spikes. The dragon reacted by also shooting the floating rocks at him, and he likewise avoided or cut through them. When he was close to three hundred yards away, the limit of the dragon's mana reach, he activated the Intent Denial skill.

Every spell already coming at Arthur kept coming, but the prehended spikes and rocks started falling down as soon as he got within fifty yards from them, his skill's range. The dragon realized something was wrong and tried to escape. It used almost all of its life mana to change its body direction, taking an impressive sharp turn that ignored momentum. Then, it moved away as fast as it could using its prehended rock armor, just like Arthur flew supported by metal bits. The monster moved considerably faster like that.

But Arthur moved much faster than it did. It clearly had never cared for delving deeply into the laws of nature on acceleration and speed.

To the dragon's credit, it had enough willpower that the rocks a dozen yards away from it remained firmly in place when Arthur's Intent Denial covered them. Its intent strings weren't so easily thwarted.

To the dragon's despair, Arthur kept approaching, and Arthur's skill was stronger the closer a foreign intent string got to the prince. Once he was a dozen yards away from the floating rocks, they also fell, no longer prehended.

Intent Denial wasn't absolute, though. It became harder to deny an intent string the closer it was to its wielder, too. Even when the prince was five yards away from the dragon, its rock armor remained firmly in place, unshaken.

But those were rocks. The dragon hadn't perfectly melded them together, a glaring oversight. There were plenty of gaps for him to take advantage of. The prince had only gotten closer because the holes between them were small enough that he couldn't see them from afar or maneuver his projectiles too well in the confined space, especially with the dragon moving around.

The monster tried to morph its rocks into spikes to get to Arthur, but it was too late. His spheres found crevices, infiltrated the rock armor, and traveled into the dragon's eyes and brain.

Another dragon down, six to go.

Arthur deactivated the Intent Denial but didn't stop moving. He changed direction to the next enemies. He would rather face the two firemancers and one biomancer now, but they were too close to the walls. He had already given up on some maneuvering as he approached the ground, so he had to go for the aquamancer and shaper next.

He had a third option, getting away from both parties, but it would give them time to regroup. He definitely didn't want that.

Both dragon groups had already thrown—and were still throwing—spells at him.

The shaper's spatial blades and big spatial balls seemed to distort space. Arthur couldn't make heads or tails of them. They looked like faulty space somehow, twisting and bending light in weird ways.

The fireballs and water jets came from opposite directions this time, far enough not to interfere with each other. The firemancers created the fireballs by pulling the flames from their bodies—they couldn't just create fire out of nowhere. As for the water jets, the mists at the top of the cave gave the aquamancer enough water to work with.

Arthur was moving away from the fireballs, so he ignored them. He also didn't try anything against the water jets yet, though he was heading toward them. Just as his spells could keep going even if his metal weapons were partially molten, a water jet would continue even if he cut it down.

As if the jet spells weren't enough, the aquamancer also created dozens of prehended new jets, using them like whips or tentacles. They remained within three hundred yards, a defensive measure awaiting Arthur's attacks and approach.

The prince paid limited attention to the water. He was more worried about the spatial attacks. Would they be as weak as the time packages or pack a meaner punch?

Killing the shaper was his top priority. Space was costly, but not as much as time. The dragon had already spent a fifth of its spatial mana but had plenty remaining.

Arthur struck a spatial blade with a prehended sword. His weapon was cut through as if made of hot butter instead of metal. The enemy spell barely lost any of the mana fueling it. He sent another sword at the spatial ball, and it went through the orb, which ignored his weapon.

The prince frowned. He couldn't fight something he didn't understand. He sent half a dozen metal spheres to fill the space packets.

He meant to make the spheres explode, but there was no need. The spatial ball reacted as soon as it was filled, likely due to reaching some threshold or activation trigger.

Space impossibly exploded both outwards and inwards at the same time. To Arthur's Mana Sight, it looked like the spatial ball expanded until it became a sphere fifteen yards wide while simultaneously contracting until it was gone. Then, it winked out of existence. Witnessing the paradox gave him a light migraine.

The explosion happened in the blink of an eye. To his normal sight, it looked like his spheres had just vanished. He also lost connection with them, as if they were too far for his intent string to reach.

That was absolutely scary.

He couldn't even assume the fifteen-yard explosion was the limit of every incoming spatial package. Each looked like it had as much mana as the others, but he was being constantly surprised by the dragons' abilities.

Level 95 monsters were nothing to scoff at.

Supposedly, no one had ever slayed a dragon. At the beginning of this combat, Arthur thought it was a lie. He had killed a few easily enough.

However, it made sense if the Fated Races had only fought shaper dragons before.

The monster's next action also explained why no one ever survived to tell the tale. No matter how far an observer who wanted to gain intelligence might be, they would never be far enough to escape an enemy who instantly teleported beside them. To make matters worse, said enemy could also take control of the surrounding space and prevent an observer from activating any teleportation ability of their own.

That's what happened now. Arthur was still over four hundred yards away from the dragons when space twisted. Suddenly, the shaper appeared only one hundred yards away from him.

The prince immediately activated his Intent Denial—and none too soon. A mere instant later, anything beyond his skill's range ceased to exist. He witnessed space itself around his Intent Denial spherical zone shatter like glass, and then, nothing.

The dragon had prehended the space Arthur occupied, the surrounding area, and obliterated it.

At least, that's what he guessed had happened. He could see nothing beyond his bubble but doubted the dragon had destroyed the entire dungeon. It was a simple matter of light not going through non-space.

He was glad the spatial bubble he was in could remain stable despite being disconnected from anything. He had no idea how that was possible. More importantly, he hoped the dragon didn't send him to a spatial pocket or something, like spatial storage.

Even more importantly, Arthur had to stop moving at once, or he would enter the empty region. The issue was that he moved too fast and had too little space to decelerate. He couldn't—

Oh!

In a bout of inspiration, he used his Lifelock skill on himself. It removed all his momentum and held him firmly in place. It wasn't even uncomfortable.

The uncomfortable part was watching what was—or wasn't—around him. Arthur's mind struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. The non-existing space wasn't the darkness of outer space. He couldn't even compare it to black, the lack of color; even color couldn't exist without space. He was surrounded by something beyond his wildest imagination. Yet, a moment later, his high mind stats replaced that lack of everything with blackness, or he might actually go mad from staring at it.

Only about one hundred of his projectiles had been in the bubble. His intent strings hadn't been destroyed, they could exist even in that void, but it felt like an infinite abyss without end. He lost his connection with the weapons outside his bubble. Whatever wasn't with him was either destroyed or beyond his reach.

The non-existing space didn't remain for long. A moment later, the world beyond popped back into existence, though Arthur found he had shifted twenty yards upwards. Space had mended itself but wasn't exactly the same as it had been.

The incoming spells that should have reached him had also disappeared, from fireball to water jet. Clearly, touching on non-space had been beyond what their magic had been created to accomplish.

His trouble now was the purple dragon close to him. It had spent two-thirds of its remaining mana between teleporting closer and destroying space around Arthur but still had plenty left. It could cause the prince a big headache if it used its abilities at the wrong time, especially if he was locked in battle with other dragons.

Fortunately, it didn't get away to play the long game. Unfortunately, it instantly created hundreds of spatial blades and big spheres—spells, not prehended magic—all moving quickly toward the prince. It emptied almost all its remaining spatial mana for that, believing it would be enough to deal with the human.

Arthur was currently standing still and didn't have enough time to dodge or protect himself from the homing spells. Not from all that. At least not if he only used his metalmancy.

Thankfully, he had skills for such emergencies—blessed be the ones who had envisioned his build.

The prince pulled himself back to gain some extra distance for defense. It would take a while to accelerate, but this close, every inch mattered. He even pushed the metal bits he used to fly around hard enough for them to bite into his flesh.

At the same time, he moved most of the one hundred projectiles within his Intent Denial zone closer to himself. He would need them.

The space-destroying magic had obliterated another hundred of his weaponry. The remaining hundred fifty were falling to the ground beyond his Intent Denial zone, and he quickly prehended them. A moment later, the shaper dragon used what little mana it had left to lock them all in place.

Arthur didn't care. Killing the dragon now would change nothing. He had to focus on the incoming spells instead.

He sent fourteen spheres to one of the space balls to test them. He divided them into two groups of seven. He wondered if he could make the space orb explode and destroy all other spells.

The first seven spheres to get inside didn't trigger an explosion. Fortunately, the other seven did.

The good news was that the explosion range remained fifteen yards.

The bad news was that the spatial spells caught in the explosion area weren't destroyed; they kept coming none the worse for wear.

The terrible news was that the spatial balls had a greater tolerance before being forced to explode; previously, six spheres had been enough.

Arthur had feared that. That was the reason he had held his weapons back. There were too many spatial balls with a higher tolerance than before, and he would lose whatever projectile he used to trigger them. He would have to explode them all together, but his weaponry was limited. What if he spread his weapons too thin, and it wasn't enough to destroy all orbs?

He couldn't miss any one of them. Being struck by a single spatial ball would spell his doom. He didn't believe his armor or lifesaving skills would help him survive a spatial explosion.

Therefore, the prince would destroy as many spatial balls as possible before resorting to his weapons.

He put forth a plan to accomplish exactly that. The first step was activating his Mana Shield. The A-tier weighted mana skill created a transparent bubble that could extend as far as twenty-seven yards around him. He deployed it at maximum range.

The spatial skills reached the barrier—and broke through. The blades lost about five percent of their mana, while the spheres' loss was barely noticeable.

Arthur didn't give up. He deactivated the skill, then reactivated it a foot closer to him than before. Graham had taught him that trick, which was only usable due to his high mind stats and thinking speed.

Once again, the spatial spells' mana dimmed down slightly. Arthur could tell he would eventually get rid of the blades, but the spheres would require extra measures.

All spells moved in unison. It was a small blessing. If some had been further ahead than others, his Mana Shield trick wouldn't have been as effective. He would've been forced to deploy his shield for longer periods each time, thus letting the spells get closer, or to focus his defense on the closest attacks, thus not weakening the ones behind.

Once more, he redeployed his Mana Shield another foot in. The effect was the same. He kept going until the spatial blades had no more mana to keep going and blinked out of existence.

The remaining twenty-one big spheres were coincidentally twenty-one yards away from him.

Time for the next step. Arthur activated his Psychic Shield mind skill just an inch before his newly reformed A-tier Mana Shield. The skill was an active one, so it had a cooldown, meaning he could only use it once during this defense. Using it while the spatial blades had been around would've been a waste. A defensive skill's power was divided between all attacks that struck it simultaneously.

The Psychic Shield was S-tier, unlike the A-tier Mana Shield. Active skills also had a much better stat-to-effectiveness ratio than weighted ones. Therefore, despite Arthur's total mind stats being only a third of his mana stats, his Psychic Shield was over twice as powerful as his Mana Shield, stat-rating-wise.

Then, that power was condensed, making it even more potent.

Psychic Shield and Mana Shield had similar descriptions. However, the latter created a defensive sphere around Arthur, while the former formed a sixty-by-forty-yard oval fixed barrier he could place within a hundred yards. The focused defense made it overwhelmingly stronger than the all-embracing Mana Shield.

More powerful or not, the spatial spheres also went through his Psychic Shield as if it wasn't there. Even so, the skill had done even more than he had expected: the spatial balls lost half their mana to go through it.

Arthur wasn't done yet. He had one last skill to use before resorting to his weapons.

He activated his Telekinesis mind skill.

It was S-tier but weighted. Together with the difference of mind and mana stats, its stat-to-effectiveness overall rating was less than half the A-tier Mana Shield's. Moreover, it wasn't a defensive skill, so it didn't excel at that. Its repelling power was only between one-fifth to one-fourth as good as his Mana Shield.

However, Telekinesis produced a moving formless, sheet-like limb. While the limb couldn't hold or push the incoming physical-yet-also-non-physical spatial spells, he could keep the limb inside them, moving together with them, occupying the same space. Thus, he forced them to constantly spend mana to go "through" his skill.

The only regrettable part was how the sheet could only stretch so much. The balls weren't all nicely packed together. The most Arthur could use his Telekinesis against was seven.

While doing that, he also kept reforming his Mana Shield closer and closer. Skills from the same awakener never interfered with each other. His Telekinesis easily went through the Mana Shield.

The tactic worked wonders. His Telekinesis forced the spatial balls to consume a lot of mana. His Mana Shield was also much more effective now that the spatial blades were gone.

Mere two yards later, the seven spheres exploded. Like before, the explosions didn't affect the other spells. Part of his Telekinesis skill was consumed, but he simply deactivated and reactivated it.

By now, the remaining thirteen incoming orbs were nineteen yards away from Arthur. He only had enough space to destroy another batch before resorting to his projectiles. The most he could do this time were five balls. The others were too far apart.

Another two yards in, the five spells also exploded.

Nine spatial balls were now seventeen yards away from Arthur.

Finally, the prince pushed all his nearby swords, disks, and spheres into the last spells. He made as much metal as possible enter every ball at once. They exploded too fast, so he couldn't mess up his timing, or he would lose the weapons meant for other spatial orbs.

Metal occupied spatial ball.

The eight spatial balls exploded at once.

The prince had refused to consider another possibility while defending himself, but now he had no choice: what if the spatial explosions compounded themselves? He would just die. There was nothing he could do.

Thank Fate, they didn't.

The eight explosions came and went at once. There was no sensory feedback other than visual as the purple mana got a yard away from him, then disappeared.

The prince didn't even breathe in relief. He still had six dragons to kill. There was no time to waste.

He deactivated his half-destroyed Mana Shield and Telekinesis, stopped moving away from the shaper dragon, and pushed himself in the opposite direction.

Twenty swords, forty disks, and ninety spheres remained outside his Intent Denial zone. They were still locked in place by the purple dragon. However, his spatial mana was almost—

No, not almost; it was gone.

The spatial lock disappeared, and Arthur moved his weapons toward the shaper and the aquamancer. A lot had happened after the shaper teleported, but it had all been fast. Although the aquamancer had kept getting closer to him, it was barely five hundred yards away, just inside his mana reach.

The shaper, now lacking spatial mana, found itself mostly defenseless. It tried to move away while protecting itself with its body. It curled, its limbs and tail protecting all its apertures, then further protected by its wings. It didn't even dare to flutter them. It kept itself flying using its life mana.

It was useless. Arthur's spinning disks pierced its scales and made short work of its brain.

Meanwhile, the aquamancer used whip-like water jets to stop Arthur's weaponry. The prince could ignore air spells well enough, but this dungeon had no underwater combat. Therefore, although he had studied how the water element could get in his magic's way, he lacked practice and the honed ability that only experience could teach him.

The dragon's two dozen whips contained high-pressure water in constant, fast movement. The liquid was perfectly contained. After reaching the whip's extremity closest to Arthur, it turned inwards and moved back in the middle of the three-yard-wide jet.

Arthur first believed that it might work against the dragon. If a metal sphere got in the middle, it might keep going without issue. He was quickly disabused of that notion. The monster could change how the water in the jets moved and where it returned through.

The whip's construct also showed its brilliance when big objects got inside it. The pressure forced Arthur's blades and disks into turning sideways, then the opposing flows made short work of the objects.

The dragon was devious. It let Arthur's weapons get deep into the whips before destroying them. While the remaining metal scraps were still prehended, they weren't as useful when broken down.

About half the prince's weapons were destroyed like that. Not everything had been inside the jets, but the dragon moved the jets quickly after springing the trap. The water had no trouble pushing Arthur's metal projectiles back. He might be able to force the issue with enough mana, but entering a mana-loop with only a third of his mana pool would be suicide.

Instead, he was forced to kill that dragon the tested way: he flew as fast as he could toward the aquamancer, using his Intent Denial skill against it.

The dragon counter-attacked by turning the tip of its prehended water jets into ice spike spells as soon as its intent strings were about to lose space. The homing spikes were three times as tall and wide as Arthur.

The aquamancer had also learned from the shaper. The closer to Arthur a spell was cast, the harder it would be for him to dodge. They all appeared two hundred yards away from him.

But this time, the prince was in movement, not standing still. The momentum provided him with new maneuvering possibilities. The ice spikes were nowhere as fast as the spatial spells, either.

Arthur cut incoming ice spikes with his remaining swords and spinning disks. Surprisingly, the ice was more challenging to cut than the geomancer's stones, but he destroyed enough of them to gain the space needed to dodge the remaining ones by moving faster than sound in different directions. Any spike that missed him made a wide curve and came back to follow him, but they were too late to protect their creator.

There were too many ice spikes, though, and they were too big. He had to be efficient. Cutting each down took a few instants despite how fast he could move his weapons. He only pushed the cut ice parts apart enough to unmake the spell and moved to the next ones.

Everything was going well, but then Arthur messed up.

He blew up a spike in half and pushed the separated parts away. He was less than an inch off-target to force the spell to stop working. Magic didn't care. The ice spike kept coming.

He noticed it while he was already in the middle of dodging another spell. He had to decide whether to sacrifice a limb or reveal one of the trump cards he had prepared in case the aquamancer showed a specially hard-to-cut barrier.

The prince obviously chose to show his trump card.

He unsheathed the orange sword he had received as a reward after killing the golem boss on floor 94 for the first time. He pushed his mana into it.

Angry white flames materialized, instantly vaporizing all ice within ten yards.

Now that he had revealed the sword, Arthur no longer wasted time dodging. He shot towards the aquamancer full speed ahead.

The dragon seemed to have met its nemesis. It widened its eyes and roared in fear as it turned back to escape. It didn't even put up a fight anymore. If it weren't a monster, Arthur might've felt bad about piercing the fleeing enemy's eyes with spinning disks and making short work of its brain. But it was a monster, and he felt nothing.

He retrieved his weapons from the corpse and immediately turned to the last three visible enemies: two firemancers and a biomancer.

The biomancer had cast no spell against him yet. Either it couldn't or was more intelligent than all other dragons and was saving mana. It was likely the latter because the firemancers were also finally taking him absolutely seriously.

They didn't throw homing fireballs at him anymore. They only cast fireballs meant to go far and wide around him. They had already filled his surroundings while he fought the shaper and aquamancer. Arthur bet the fireballs were on a timer; they would come at him from all directions after a while, leaving him no place to retreat.

It was a good thing that he didn't plan on retreating.

The prince had ten swords, twenty disks, and forty-five spheres remaining. It should be enough to deal with those three. He moved straight at them, and they kept coming, too.

Arthur destroyed the remaining homing ice spikes with his flaming sword, then stopped feeding it mana. The flame died, and no lingering heat remained on the blade. He sheathed it.

The three dragons didn't attack him directly as they approached. They wanted to get close to him as fast as possible. Anything that forced him to stop to dodge or defend would only delay their approach.

Of course, Arthur wouldn't give them what they wanted. Once he was getting closer, he slowed down. By the time they were five hundred yards away, he was already starting to accelerate backward.

The red dragons had been correct in not wasting mana throwing fireballs at him. The prince didn't have as easy a time against firemancers as he had against thunderbringers, but it wasn't too far off. He increased his remaining weaponry's boiling point as much as he could. He didn't make them harder to melt as he had against the first fireballs at the beginning of the fight because the metal would touch the flames this time. It would be a waste of focus and mana against the flames of level 95 monsters.

Then, he shot all but ten disks at the incoming enemies.

As expected, the firemancers produced flames with temperatures Arthur had never seen before. His weaponry was immediately liquefied. Yet, he kept the prehended molten metal going.

One of the firemancers ridiculously tried to throw a punch at the molten blobs. Arthur swiftly controlled his prehended metal with his mind, dodged the attack, and had no trouble piercing its eyes and brain.

As for the other firemancer, it just... gave up. It didn't try anything. It just stood still, defeated, as Arthur killed it.

The biomancer also tried to fight his molten blobs, but unlike the firemancer, it succeeded at first. Green life mana glowed brightly in its body and made it faster than even the chronomancer had made itself. It was only a mild surprise; biomancy wasn't as mana costly as chronomancy, after all.

The green dragon's closed fists struck the molten metal blobs fast and hard. Arthur had trouble keeping the first blob together but solved it by turning the prehended liquid metal into magnets. It cost considerable amounts of mana, but not as much as ignoring the laws of physics that demanded his blobs turned into countless separated drops after the huge fists struck them.

The biomancer tried to approach the prince but was forced to keep stopping and defending itself from the projectiles that struck from all directions. Yet, Arthur also wasn't gaining an advantage. The biomancer protected itself surprisingly well, and his weaponry—or what remained of them—couldn't find an opening.

So, Arthur unsheathed his two swords, held them in his hands, and sent his ten remaining metal disks at the dragon. Using them would consume less focus than cooling the molten metal down and into the right shape.

The monster had made its scales plenty sturdier than natural. The first disk to get punched got torn and broken down. It only created a small gash in its fist. Another disk had been following close behind the first and widened the gash. The third finished opening it enough to get inside the dragon's body.

Arthur was used to his projectiles easily ravaging monsters' bodies from the inside, but the biomancer was defiant. It used spells to heal itself quickly and even morph its bones into forms that got in the disk's way. All the while, it still punched Arthur's other projectiles. The internal barriers stopped the disks' advance to a crawl, but three other spinning disks soon found their way inside.

The dragon then made even its flesh hard to cut through. Fortunately for the prince, it also made it much slower. It couldn't punch as fast as before.

When that happened, Arthur first targeted its head, but the dragon dodged. Only the arm with the disks was slow. The prince was forced to pierce the dragon's arm with everything he had and go from there.

It was an uphill battle. The dragon gave it its all. It resisted for minutes. Even Arthur's Psychic Shield got out of cooldown.

The prince had to dodge the firemancers' remaining fireball spells once their timer was up. He also deactivated his Intent Denial zone because it consumed mana stats, and he needed them to keep fighting. He didn't want to do that because the shadowbender was still out there somewhere, but he had no choice.

In the end, the biomancer died without Arthur being sneak attacked by the shadowbender.

The massive corpse fell, defeated, on the ground.

Only one dragon remained.

Arthur activated his Intent Denial again, moved quickly to the room's entrance, and replenished his weapons stock. Then, he flew quickly toward the next room.

The shadowbender had completely disappeared. Even the prince's Mana Sight couldn't locate it. It looked like the dragon expected him to forget about its existence, but Arthur wasn't that stupid.

Had they been in his home world, things might get tricky. However, any monster in a dungeon, hidden or not, acted when a delver headed toward the next room.

Arthur was still halfway through the enormous room when the entire place was encompassed by a vast spell. Darkness rose from the floor, walls, and ceiling, like a box closing on him. Everything it touched disappeared into a darkness so deep that even his A-tier Night Vision passive mind skill couldn't pierce.

Arthur probed it with some metal spheres, which he prehended into producing light. They were useless. As soon as they touched the darkness, they disintegrated. The very darkness inside them broke them down from the inside.

The prince decided his best bet now was to stay still and wait.

There was no running away from that attack this far from the room's two exits. He would have to go through the darkness no matter what. He wouldn't die at a touch; his armor would protect him—probably. But could he even fight back after all his equipment, except his robe and maybe his flaming sword, was destroyed?

Arthur would rather stand his ground and prepare for his last resort than try to fly away and be intercepted, weaponless, by an invisible enemy.

Only, he couldn't use said last resort in a chaotic fight. The move took all his focus for many seconds, leaving him defenseless. If he didn't give his all, the enemy would notice something wrong and either flee or kill his inattentive ass. It was an all-or-nothing move.

Now was the only time he could use it. The shadowbender wasn't attacking. Instead, it was sneaking around. And, well, if his attempt failed, he could still try to escape.

Then again, he still had his defensive skills. Maybe they would be enough. When the darkness was within range, he activated his Mana and Psychic Shields.

The Psychic Shield lasted a few seconds before being destroyed. The Mana Shield was gone in an instant.

What that sliver of hope gone, Arthur knew there was no more reason to hold onto his weapons. He was just wasting his mana. He let go of them, and they disappeared into the darkness below.

He still waited a little more. His failed skills and lack of weapons would make the dragon overconfident. He needed that. The monster had to get closer.

Finally, when the darkness was fifteen yards away, the prince pushed his four free intent strings outwards. Theoretically, no one could feel another being's intent strings, but he wasn't taking any chances. His strings pierced the darkness and weren't destroyed. After they had survived in non-space, he had been confident they wouldn't be affected by that darkness.

Arthur extended the four strings as much as he could. His head hurt terribly, but he had to do it. He had to find what he was looking for. Then, he moved the strings around as fast as possible, trying to cover as much of the surrounding space as possible.

The shadows were less than ten yards away when Arthur finally found it: metal.

All biological beings the Fated Races had ever found had metal in their bodies. Humans had around 2.5%. The prince didn't know a dragon's ratio, but he found enough for his purposes.

Arthur couldn't attack yet. The shadowbender was cautious. It had entered his mana reach range but was still at the edges, approaching slowly, unwilling to deal with surprises.

But it did approach.

Arthur waited until the shadows were five yards from him. The dragon wasn't as close as he'd like, but it would have to do. He believed his equipment could resist the darkness but wouldn't needlessly risk his life.

It was the moment of truth. The prince disconnected his fifth intent string from every metal piece keeping him afloat except the one under his armpit. He was left in the air in an awkward position, but that was all the focus he was willing to put on his safety, and only because he didn't want to test the darkness. Then, he extended that last string into the dragon, too.

Once his five strings were in place, he prehended as much metal as he could from the dragon's tail and pushed it toward its head, pulling every bit of metal on the way. He kept his pulling "net" as wide as possible, going through veins and arteries, flesh and bones, organs and tissue. Up his intent strings went, accumulating tiny deposits that became a fist-sized mound of dust when they reached the monster's brain.

The dragon tried to escape as soon as it felt something wrong, but Arthur used two skills. Lifelock stopped the dragon when he was midway through beyond his mana reach, forcing it to start accelerating from the beginning. Lifesteal took 726 vitality points from it, weakening it a little.

Meanwhile, one of his intent strings used the accumulated metal to ravage the monster's brain, another worked to take more metal away from the gray mass, and the others took as much as they could from its head.

The dragon tried to put up a fight but failed. It could prehend the very darkness inside its skull but not target the metal grains without hurting itself. The one time it tried, it created a two-inch hole in its brain that only hastened its death.

At last, it followed the other dragons to whenever dungeon monsters went to after they died.

Alas, the encroaching darkness was a spell. It would keep going for as long as it had mana to fuel it. Arthur tried to use the flames of his sword against it but to no avail. The blade wasn't destroyed, but the flame was, and it illuminated nothing within the darkness.

Moments later, the shadows swallowed Arthur whole.

His boots, sword sheaths, cape, one longsword, and even his helmet disintegrated. Only the sorcerer's robe and enchanted sword remained. It might not be much, but he was alive, and that's what mattered.

He breathed in relief. He had—

He couldn't breath. The darkness had destroyed even the air in the room. Arthur quickly prehended all the metal bits underneath his robe again and meant to rush towards the room's entrance before he suffocated.

Fortunately, there was no need to.

Golden light pierced through the cave's ceiling. It was a beam visible even through the dark spell. It pulsated once, and the shadows unraveled, revealing a perfectly rectangular cave chamber devoid of absolutely anything. Air from both openings rushed into the room. Arthur took a deep breath.

The golden beam wasn't a coincidence or Fate saving him because he was special. It was one of the things he always expected to see when he cleared a floor.

The biggest, most beautiful, and most intricate treasure chest Arthur had seen to date materialized midair before him. It was royal blue, golden, and silver and as tall as him.

「 Achievement: Dungeon Clearer

Tier: C

Reward: +24 stat points

You cleared your first dungeon!

Dungeons invaded your world; you invaded them back. Monsters attacked you; you fought back. You never stopped, only advanced. Ultimately, not even a dungeon's elites could prevent you from achieving righteous retribution for everything this dungeon has done to your planet. You shall clear any obstacle standing in the way of your grand fate. 」

This dungeon's last floor had only one room: the boss room.

Arthur froze in shock, then raised his head to the skies and released a roar of triumph. He had done it. He had one year left and would gain a non-stop stream of level 95 monsters to kill.

He could do it.

No, not could; would.

He would reach level 100 and bring victory to his people.

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