When Auto-Battle Isn't Enough
The fact that "conversation" was even a valid interaction with a raid boss monster made me check the minimap on pure reflex.
Red dots — clear enemies — the thought barely formed before the small angel exploited that brief hesitation, rocketing up to the solar plexus of my transformed, enlarged body with an ominously flickering dark-purple flame wrapped around its hand, and swung.
With the transformation active, my physical stats should have been pushing five thousand — but with zero defense modifiers, no, with defense converging on the negative, that single blow shattered the transformation outright.
The damage and impact all scattered as the slaughter energy forming the transformation dissolved, but there was no helping the cooldown before I could transform again.
The Wheel rose above my head like a halo and began to spin, and the one thousand twenty-four chopsticks arrayed behind me like a nimbus accelerated along its rotation, fully locking into combat stance.
Even if Auto-Battle was obviously unusable against a raid boss, I hadn't grown this far just to roll over and take an eok-kka event lying down!
"Equipment Swap!"
I swapped over to the boss-monster-exclusive gear saved in my quick slots. Outwardly, the only things that changed were the accessories and the weapon in my hands, but every stat modifier and equipment effect applied in full.
At the same time, a Humanity Clone slammed the consumable slots, automatically dumping every consumable in the inventory at once — temporarily boosting attack power and critical rate, raising attack speed and evasion, and jacking up resistances and immunities.
In that same instant, the raid boss that had surrendered itself to the dark-purple Abyss closed the distance and delivered a blow that the consumable effects blocked cold, locking it into a stagger — and I brought the massive scythe in both hands straight down with Spoon activated on top of it.
The angel's wings, which had moved a beat too late to wrap around itself, were crushed under the scythe. Metal and dark-purple blood sprayed out as the angel lost its wings and plummeted toward the ground like a shot.
"...Fuck, seriously."
I couldn't land a follow-up because even in that state, the eyeballs hanging from its wings burst while still firing lasers that punched holes clean through my body.
I regenerated with slaughter energy, burned consumables to scrub the debuffs, and was just shaking myself off when the angel rocketed up from the crater with a boom and swung a thrashing torrent of dark-purple tentacles. I countered by hurling the Wheel above my head straight at it.
The Wheel, wrapped in blood-red slaughter energy, spun as it shredded the dark-purple tentacles and slammed into the angel. Confirming with that alone that my attack power exceeded the angel's, I twisted in shock as I belatedly noticed a red dot closing in while hidden among the tentacles.
"Aaagh...!"
"Query: No Golden Core inside the body?"
"Get lost!"
Ignoring the angel's puzzled question as it thrust a hand through my solar plexus and groped around inside looking for a Golden Core, I built a slaughter-energy hut from the blood freely pouring out of me and detonated it on the spot.
The bomb's power was pathetic, but the angel obediently pulled its hand from my chest and backed off, licking my blood with its tongue and tilting its head.
"Confirmation. Half-baked Transcendent species?"
"Fuck, my legendary armor...!"
Confirming that the legendary-grade chest piece I'd slotted for raid boss fights because I was too cheap to risk the durability had been shattered by that single blow, I cursed and unleashed a rain of Chopsticks — only for them to be blocked again by lasers from the eyeballs flashing dark purple on the one remaining wing.
Gritting my teeth at the sight, I drew on the power of Laws this time, enlarging the epic-grade scythe, and with a prayer that its remaining durability would hold, I activated Spoon and swung the slaughter-energy-blazing scythe.
"Uh—?"
A pure white flash filled my vision for an instant, and as if time itself had been cut, the angel had somehow closed the distance and was already above my head, lifting its foot to stomp down.
Uh. Am I... dead? No — dying?
Pinned to the ground, unable to move properly, I writhed and thought blankly.
My stats were higher.
But the raid boss was stronger.
I had more slaughter energy.
But the raid boss was stronger.
So why did I lose? Simple.
"Fuck, seriously... this shitty-ass... game...!!!"
Because without Auto-Battle, I didn't know how to fight properly. The moment I couldn't just crush things with overwhelming stats, vast slaughter energy, and Master skills, it was a fight I was always going to lose.
"Don't you fucking dare!!"
The Wheel spun, opening the entrance to my Mental World, and began pouring out the vast Sea of Slaughter in earnest.
Just opening the entrance unleashed a storm of slaughter energy and killing intent so fierce that the dark-purple torrent wrapping the approaching angel was completely shoved back.
The map's sky was instantly dyed blood-red as if burning with dark-crimson slaughter energy. The Wheel — the entrance to the Mental World from which the slaughter energy flowed — shone like an ominous red sun, illuminating the darkened world as the killing intent poured out and became clouds spreading in every direction.
Language became characters. Characters became power. Together with the red slaughter energy they took physical form, twisting the principles of the world into manifestation.
In a world dyed blood-red, the single word aimed at the only purple thing remaining — the raid boss angel — shattered the dark-purple lasers being fired and struck the angel dead-on. The angel, a puppet, a living doll, nearly an inanimate object whose Golden Core power had plummeted, nevertheless witnessed death.
"Negative. This unit has already experienced death."
But essentially it was nothing more than a doll, and moreover an angel that had been destroyed once and revived by the Abyss — it wasn't so weak as to obediently die again from a single word. It tried to move once more.
Its body froze.
It didn't understand that this was from the fear of death, but the angel that had noticed poured dark-purple Abyss torrent from its body to shake off the fear and tried to reboot — and in that brief gap.
Having forced the Mental World into manifestation and filled the surroundings with slaughter energy and killing intent to rapidly complete a Tetris, Yu Hee collapsed the Tetris like flipping the switch on a bomb powerful enough to blow the entire map away.
Map-wide annihilation
It was a monstrous blow that scorched the entire map — a power that permanently evaporated the entire Sea of Slaughter she'd poured out in the previous strike, a horrific consumption.
In the silence of the ruins, collapsed face-down in exhaustion, I gritted my teeth.
The minimap no longer showed any red dots.
But no experience came in.
With most of my power spent on that last blow, what could I even do? Use spiritual power at this point? As I thought that, a dark-purple portal yawned open in a corner of the ground before my eyes, and the battered angel limped out on one dragging foot.
"Verdict: The transmission must be severed."
It had dodged by diving into the Abyss and coming back out.
My True Name Dharma Treasure, the Wheel, had spent so much power that even drawing slaughter energy from the sea was difficult now, and if I pulled more slaughter energy to use here, an entire layer of the Sea of Slaughter might collapse.
The moment I thought about giving up and calling for help—
You're really going to give up?
So is there some other method? The raid-boss-exclusive gear is destroyed, the slaughter energy is almost gone and I'd have to permanently consume it, and none of my skills even work.
Giving up this easily?
If you're going to do that, we'd rather play the game ourselves.
No. More precisely — I will.
From within the Golden Core's interior, one of the Humanity Clones carefully tried to take control of the body. I could have lightly ignored the request of something that was nothing more than a past life — and not even a complete one, just a fragment of a Mortal's humanity.
But for a moment, the image of a Humanity Clone one-shotting a field boss clearly rose in my mind, and I obediently stayed face-down, just blinking my eyes, transferring my consciousness to my True Name Dharma Treasure, the Wheel, and weakly settling above the body's head.
The body that forced itself up using even spiritual power on limbs that wouldn't move properly — no, the Humanity Clone — opened its mouth.
Instead of Yu Hee, who was startled by those words defining herself as something other than a Humanity Clone, it was the raid boss monster that answered.
"This unit's designation was R-1004."
Crunch, crack — the body, unable to regenerate from lack of slaughter energy, was screaming, and even as I frantically used consumables that weren't working properly, the Humanity Clone — no, Reason — finished its leisurely self-introduction as if oblivious to my anxious heart, then gripped the empty air and took a stance.
Dark-purple torrent exploded outward centered on the angel, and this time the map began dyeing itself dark purple in reverse. Just as I tried to pour even the faintly regenerated slaughter energy through the Wheel to block it—
In the map dyed dark purple, a small golden radiance began to bloom.