81
1047 Words
The monster was a hundred feet away and sprinting at them when it started to shriek.
The attack immediately popped Matt’s eardrums and nearly made him stagger to the ground from the pain and disorientation, but he remained on his feet and moved to intercept the monster.
Susanne had blood running down her own neck and shoulders, but she stood next to him.
A dozen feet away from them, the Fishman pushed out a hand and emitted a blast of water that Matt suspected was [Water Jet], an equivalent of [Flamethrower].
He didn’t want to spend the needed Genesis Energy to deflect or block the blow, so he sidestepped and circled the monster, trying to draw its attention so his team could attack it from behind.
It almost seemed to work. His flanking maneuver grabbed its attention, and the monster turned to face him, allowing Susanne to rush forward. Matt thought they would be able to kill the monster without spending any Genesis Energy, but just as Susanne was reaching blade range, the Fishman jumped.
Seeing that, Susanne started moving to intercept it where it would land, but the Fishman kicked its legs and swam through the air as if it was water.
It reached a height of fifty feet in an instant, then opened its mouth to scream again.
This time, Matt’s spiritual sense screamed that he was in danger. Just a second later, several fish came out of the barrier that protected them from the ocean water. Like the Fishman, they floated in the air as if it was water.
Liz sent through their AI’s, “Aster, kill the Fishman. Everyone else, keep the fish away from him and buy her the time she needs.”
Matt was aghast at the six oversized fish swimming through the air.
Two looked like a variation of tuna, but they each had a bright orange stripe down their flank, and their bodies flickered as if not entirely in reality.
The next fish to come out was a shark of some kind, and its teeth and fins glowed with Genesis Energy in some reinforcing spell.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth fish were minnow-looking creatures, but they were beyond fast, and Matt could only see them in the brief moments that they stopped before darting off again. Despite being smaller than the other fish that had answered the call of the Fishman, they were still as big as his hand.
Matt was still confident in dealing with them and was flying toward the shark when a shadow passed the barrier of water.
Seeing the size of that monster, his mouth went dry.
It only got worse when the monster broke through the water and entered the air.
A one-hundred-foot-long eel swimming through the air was a truly horrifying sight.
Matt called over his AI. “I’ll hold off the eel and try to keep the shark’s attention.”
Without hesitation, he activated [Cracked Phantom Armor] at a low setting but was ready to flare it at a moment’s notice. With his spiritual sense tuned to the slightest hint of danger, he bounded forward toward the shark.
The instant before he reached it he cast [Mana s***h], which lashed out in a golden arc and opened a gash in the shark’s rough flesh. Having hurt it, Matt became the focus of its attention, but that was exactly what he wanted.
Pushing his Concept to the limit, he flew at the massive eel and repeated his actions.
The Genesis Energy was nothing when compared to their lives.
Still, the attack that opened the shark’s side up left little more than a scratch on the eel’s flank. Matt wasn’t disheartened by the lack of damage and flew at the eel’s body, trying to impede its charge toward where Aster was trying to kill the Fishman.
With his spiritual perception spread, Matt watched the shark dart at him from behind and waited until the last second to move backward and toward the side, cutting out with his sword at its open mouth.
The blow landed with a satisfying impact and cut a grave wound in the shark’s mouth and flank.
Blood flowed, but before he was able to capitalize, Matt was forced to activate [Willow In The Wind] to dodge the open mouth of the eel as it tried to bite him in half.
As the body of the beast flew just feet past Matt, he activated his new gloves.
Gravity came under his control, yet it did nothing to stop the massive beast or even change its direction.
But that wasn’t his goal.
When the wound on its side passed him, he flared gravity, and flesh ripped as the eel’s weakened armor was attracted to his gloves.
The eel screamed in pain, but even as it tried to swim away, it tore more of its flesh off its side.
Before he could follow up, the shark returned, and he was forced to deactivate his gloves and fly away in an evasive maneuver.
He was just gaining distance between himself and the shark when its tail began glowing with Genesis Energy, and its speed increased to a level that even his enhanced mind couldn’t follow. Trusting decades of battle instincts, he put his blade in a defensive position between his chest and the shark. It was a good thing, too, as the shark seemed to teleport at him with its jaws wide open, trying to shred him to pieces.
His sword got caught in its mouth, preventing the monster from landing the hit, but it seemed unbothered, biting down with everything its spell-enforced teeth could muster.
Matt concentrated and cast [Flamethrower] from his head. Casting a spell didn’t have to come from the hands, but it was humanity’s instinctive nature to do so. It just came more naturally to cast from there.
But at the same time, every kid, deep down, wanted to be a dragon. Matt was no exception, and it had made Luna’s lessons on casting from the rest of his body all the easier to grasp.
He didn’t need to actually exhale to ‘breathe’ fire, but a torrent of golden fire flooded from his mouth into the sea creature’s open jaws that were still trying to bite through his sword.
- Writer
