Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 876: What is it planning?

We find Maya and Min-Jae inside a barrier with 20 or so Easy difficulty lynthari. I feel my head beginning to hurt the moment I see those cat-eared, cat-tailed, overly curious, and uselessly tall creatures.

Apparently, it’s pretty easy to enter the barrier, you just need to push a little bit, so we enter as well. The feel of the air inside is like traveling from a sauna into a well air conditioned room. Well, if said sauna were at risk of setting you ablaze.

Looking down at the ground, I see a few barrels filled with water and food that the lynthari are still chewing.

“We bought some resources from the corporation we met along the way and shared them with these guys,” Min-Jae says after greeting everyone as we awkwardly shake hands.

I notice the Korean boy is already getting taller than me and make sure to recheck a few times, even looking to see if he’s wearing some kind of platform shoes. But there’s just no trick to it. He’s just gotten taller.

Well, his mana reserves are trash, so that is still an overwhelming win for me.

There are a few missing days in Maya’s memory and that of the uselessly tall boy as they tell the others about what happened and about how they ran into the Labyrinth in an attempt to hide from the Adjudicator.

Everyone automatically blames it all on Lissandra. Deservedly so. But there’s something different about this. Both Maya and Min-Jae feel… off? It’s difficult to describe, so I run checks over them multiple times and compare their signatures to their previous ones. And, of course, even then, my cursed [Perception] skill refuses to level up.

Still, I find them the same, just stronger. Especially Maya feels sharper, more determined, and directly stronger than before. Meanwhile, Min-Jae is… I don’t really know. He’s also slightly different or something. After all, I’m no expert here, so I watch Izzy as she checks them over, I am sure she’s in the best position to do so. Her [Empathy] and her personal knowledge of them will take care of that, and I am sure if something’s wrong, she’ll let us know.

Meanwhile, I continue to perform checks trying to confirm that they’re not mimics, possessed, or ghosts, or something like that.

During it, Min-Jae sits next to me and, annoyingly so, without him realizing it, he’s sitting on a boulder even taller than the one I’m sitting on, leaving him even taller than before.

“The checks you’re running on me are getting more and more intrusive,” he says with a slightly tired smile.

“I want to be sure,” I tell him.

“I know,” he nods, pausing for a while before carefully asking, “And what if I wasn’t me? What if I am a copy or some monster that killed the real me?”

For a while, I pause as well, giving it a thought before saying, “If something killed you to take your place, I would kill it. If you were already dead and had come back as a copy of yourself, I have no idea.”

“Would you hesitate at all if my killer behaved and looked like me?” Min-Jae asks.

“I would make it quick.”

For some reason, he nods, as if confirming something. As he stands, he says, “I think I wouldn't be able to do that.”

“That’s okay.”

He adds with a smile, “Yes, I think that’s fine too. Thank you.”

I watch as he leaves me and walks towards the others. My eyes react to my will, burning in my sockets as I watch his back. I watch every slight movement of mana around him. How the ambient mana reacts, how his own mana leaks, and all the imperfections I’ve ever noticed in his mana control.

Even then, I find nothing, so I blink a few times, and my eyes calm down as I filter out the information I’m taking in and restrict it a little, something I’ve been doing ever since Lissandra broke Elian’s spy glasses.

Instead, I look past the barrier around us and over to the white glowing dome encompassing the entire planet. As always, I observe individual parts of it, still careful not to overwhelm my brain by seeing too much, though as time passes, I peek deeper and deeper.

“Psst, human,” a voice next to me sounds, and I decide to ignore it.

It takes a few seconds until that voice sounds again, “Are you deaf, human? Human. Human. Yes, you with the pretty eyes. Humaaaaaaaaan. Humaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. Huma-”

“What?” I interrupt and look to my left, where the lynthari girl, maybe 10 years old or so, crouches behind the boulder along with a boy a few years younger.

“Teach me your ultimate killing technique. Our Hell difficulty attendees always said they have one, but refuse to share!” she says.

“No.”

“I thought you would say that. But! I’ll offer Timas as a trade! You can pet his head and scratch his ears. Look, he’s widely considered to be one of the cutest lynthari to ever live!” she says as she pulls the boy closer.

The boy looks at me with big blue eyes, contrasting with his black hair, cat ears, and tail. He blinks a few times and gulps before making a shy smile and twitching his ears.

“Aaaaaa.” In the end, it’s not me, but the lynthari girl who fails to resist and takes him into a hug, rubbing her face against him. “So damn cute!”

As she regains her bearings and lifts her head to talk to me, I’m already gone, teleported away, landing next to Izzy. I place my hand on her shoulder and whisper to her, “I need your help.”

“Sure!” she says without hesitation, and we walk out of the barrier back into the hot desert. Sophie notices us leaving but does nothing to stop us.

Outside, I create an orb, place a mark on it, and sling it around us, and quickly feed it more speed until it whistles loudly as it pierces the air. I gradually stretch it into a sharp, aerodynamic projectile and add weight to it, and the sound it makes starts to change as the speed increases.

When I finally launch it, I add a boost of kinetic energy to it, causing it to crackle in the air, sending a shockwave booming out around us.

Then I wait for a while and look into the distance where it flew with my eyes before nodding and putting my hand on Izzy’s shoulder, at which point she lowers her natural barrier, and I teleport us towards the mark I placed on it.

This place looks like any other spot in the desert, but I look towards the sky as this time I compress mana until it passes the threshold and turns black. Then I launch it towards the sky and wait.

“Nat…” Izzy says in warning, “I hope you aren’t-”

“I am,” I confirm to her.

“Sophie’s going to kill you.”

“Only if she finds out.”

“I’m going to tell her.”

“Well, that is unfortunate,” I say with a shrug.

Together we watch as the clouds in the sky stop moving and an area dozens of miles wide starts to grow darker and darker as the clouds inside begin to concentrate rapidly.

An immense pressure lands on us, making the hair on the back of my neck rise and my body feel cold, as if I were starting to shake with fear. Still, even then, I face that pressure. My own mana blazes into the area, not even trying to resist the pressure directly, but by bending like a tree in the wind as I protect myself and Izzy.

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The dark clouds covering the sky as far as I can see are pierced by the bright white light, as a deep, suppressed roar shakes the planet and the clouds above take on the faint shape of a one winged wyvern.

The enormous shape covering what feels like the entire sky speaks, in that way it always does, that the system can’t seem to translate.

I wait for it to finish before saying, “You know I can’t understand. I wanted to ask what you’re planning to do with this place.”

Once again, that sound reverberates, like the sound of a breaking mountain falling into the lake, and this time it sounds annoyed or maybe angry.

“What do you think?” I ask Izzy.

“I-” she starts, furrowing her brow in concentration.

But before she can finish, I let all my mana explode around us, carefully weaving it so that not a drop touches or damages Izzy. It erupts like a blazing flame, swirling into a protective whirlpool as I channel the raw mana to face the presence pressing down on us.

The pressure intensifies as I compress and concentrate my mana. It flickers violently, like a flame fighting off a hurricane or the surface of a lake struck by a shockwave. My mana shifts into a tricolored hue, with white and golden streaks flashing at its core.

For a few long seconds, I feel as though my mana might escape my control at any moment. Yet, I continue to feed it, fully releasing the seal on my Ignition Heart, as I look towards the sky in cold determination. I don’t hesitate or worry and focus solely on protecting the two of us.

Then, as if from nowhere, the pressure vanishes. Released from the crush of that weight, my mana surges outward, expanding and blanketing an area the size of a small city.

It almost looks as if it is over, but as tons of sand rise all around us, the pressure returns with greater intensity than before.

[Eclipse - lvl 74 > Eclipse - lvl 75]

[Eclipse - lvl 75 > Eclipse - lvl 76]

[Weave - lvl 32 > Weave - lvl 33]

[Weave - lvl 33 > Weave - lvl 34]

[Manifestation - lvl 52 > Manifestation - lvl 53]

The area around us instantly turns black and white as I expand my domain, leaving only the colors of mana within. In [Focus], I watch it all happen, regain control of my mana, and quickly pull it back from that wide area to our position. The crown above my head dissolves, adding another huge chunk of mana to the fray.

Again, it’s my mana that moves like a torrential tide, splashing through the space, washing over both of us, and shooting out to meet the pressure. Luminous particles of mana scatter away after each clash, only to be pulled back to me. They merge with everything I’m already channeling, feeding the flood I’ve surrounded us with.

After another five long seconds, the pressure is gone, this time fully, and the voice from the sky speaks again.

I look down to my right at a now pale Izzy, who stands close to me, holding onto my clothes.

My eyes activate to their fullest as I use the full capabilities of my new body. A long wound opens on my palm, spraying out a stream of deep red blood with particles of white and gold swirling within.

“Nathaniel,” Izzy whispers somewhere in the background.

With ease, I move all the mana gathered around us toward the blood, which stretches into the shape of a javelin.

I grab the weapon, one of my legs slides back as I take a stance, and I reach out to throw.

The javelin shoots ahead and disappears immediately, and with it, all of my mana, as I watch as a straight line tears a path through the sky, leaving what looks to be deep gouges in the air. A line of blood red with gold and white peeking from inside, and faint blue and purple leaking out around it.

[Empyrean Lance - lvl 59 > Empyrean Lance - lvl 60]

[Empyrean Lance - lvl 60 > Empyrean Lance - lvl 61]

[Empyrean Lance - lvl 61 > Empyrean Lance - lvl 62]

[Empyrean Lance - lvl 62 > Empyrean Lance - lvl 63]

[Empyrean Lance - lvl 63 > Empyrean Lance - lvl 64]

[Weave - lvl 34 > Weave - lvl 35]

[Weave - lvl 35 > Weave - lvl 36]

[Manifestation - lvl 53 > Manifestation - lvl 54]

Then, there’s silence. Everything feels as if it has stopped moving.

The pressure feels different now, it is as if a heavy weight is pressing down on me while a powerful wind blows against my face, whipping my hair around.

I continue to look up, unblinking and without hesitation, as the clouds weave themselves back together again. They erase what remains of my attack, they become denser, forming a dark shape of a one winged wyvern formed out of clouds that lowers itself to the ground, with its building-sized head coming to a stop right in front of me.

That voice, akin to breaking stone and thunder, sounds again, this time deep and deliberate.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, and honestly, I don’t think I give a fuck anymore,” I answer and take a step forward. “I came here to speak, if only because I think even you have to acknowledge that your ass would still be rotting on the 12th floor without me.”

I take another step, making sure to stay between Izzy and the clouds.

"Yet, here you are, behaving like an ungrateful dick. Like total fucking trash. Sure, push me around, play these silly games to pressure me or whatever form of tactic you think this is, but do not fucking mess with my people."

That deep voice vibrates, and the clouds reach closer, almost touching me, so enormous that it almost won’t fit in my field of vision.

“I said I have no idea what you’re saying, but I do know a bitch when I see one,” I mutter, feeling blood in my mouth as I give a smirk and stare the clouds down. “How did it feel, having to rely on her to get out? Not even a human, but the imitation of one, created by the system.”

One of my eyes bursts open, and I close it.

Both of my hands twist, stretching until they break and contort in ways they probably shouldn't.

“So scary,” I say, pushing through even as my tongue explodes inside my mouth.

Amused by that, I give a smile, showing my teeth as blood flows from the corners of my mouth down to stain my shirt.

The clouds freeze as they stand. A loud roar follows as they spin around us before shooting back towards the sky.

Just a second later, everything is back to normal as if nothing ever happened.

The temperature within my body increases as I use the heat from the still unsealed Ignition Heart. That heat activates my Heat Resonance Restoration passive, which spreads through my body and heals me faster with the rise in temperature. With how high the heat generated by my heart can be, I’m healed very quickly.

My tongue regrows inside my mouth, giving me an extremely odd feeling. My arms twist and snap back together. Thanks to my low constitution, the healing is near instantaneous. The problem is with my traits. My eye, the function of my body as a mana vessel, and my blood take longer, clearly showing just how high-grade their tiers are.

But as always, I don't need them. Even if I lost everything, I possess enough confidence and arrogance to know I’d still be doing just fine. I gained all of this myself. I control it all, and it’s the result of my own mind and effort.

Only once I feel more restored do I glance at Izzy with a question: “So what do you think? What is it planning? Should we try to ditch this planet as quickly as possible?”

Izzy looks at me with an expression that makes me add with a smile, “Don’t worry.” I reach out and caress the top of her head as I once did years back on the 3rd floor. “It was just playing with me. It hates the system and humans, so I was expecting that reaction, and I was fairly confident it wouldn't kill me, because of Liss and Diligence.”

“You know I’m not a child anymore,” she says and tries to push my hand off her head, but I reinforce my body and continue petting her.

“How cute, our little Izzy is an adult now,” I tease her, but through our touch, I sense something, so I ask, “What happened to your Burning Blood?”

“It changed and evolved.” She gives up and, with the expression of an angry kitten, stares at me. “It’s Glacial Veins now, and it cools down my body because of Noodle’s evolution, and that’s a good thing, now that our fragment is a part of us, and threatening to cook us alive.”

“That is cool, you’ll have to let me test it. And, so, the wyvern?”

She gives up, “I think it just wants to leave, Nat. It’s so tired and angry... for now, it doesn't want to cause trouble, I don’t think. But once it is free...”

“Well, that will be someone else’s problem then. Just like Starless Sky.”

“Aren’t you worried about how it could affect us?”

“You know my feelings.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” I snort and let go of her head. “First, we’ll have to clean up our own backyard... or, to say it more accurately, empty the septic tank. We’ll just have to take care of the rest later. You have to start thinking longer term, Izzy. Just like my sister apparently has.”

“Are you going to start talking about how cool she is again?” Izzy sighs as I start walking towards our group.

“Yup.”

“You want to walk back and talk about silly stuff to calm me down before we return to the others.”

“Yup. Is it working?”

"Perhaps."