The Apocalypse Grinder - Chapter 301

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Ronan barely registered the multiple plip noises before a dozen holes opened in his body. He started to use Suture Wound but at that moment both bosses attacked, leaping at him in an attempt to prevent him from recovering. Ronan cursed and let a few mana bolts fly, keeping the magic-weak kaiju at bay.

Unfortunately they did little against the boss that had magic immunity. He was forced to conjure a sword and do his best to defend while bleeding from the gaping wounds that had opened up across his body. He failed to mount a real defence, due to the fact that missing large parts of his muscles made movement a challenge. The boss slapped him out of the sky and he smashed into the ocean once more.

This isn’t looking great. His health points had tipped below the halfway mark. They weren’t going up faster than the wounds drained them. Suture Wound was expensive, costing more mana than usual to seal the various wounds he’d sustained. Ronan was really pissed off. The bosses were overpowered enough when it came to physical combat but the magical water attacks were something else.

Ronan was starting to believe he would lose this battle. Not that he had high hopes from the beginning but the combination of his massive arsenal of skills and his discoveries in magic had given him a faint hope of victory. That had been snatched away violently by the appearance of the twin bosses and their most recent assault. The plip attack had been annoying and painful at best before its metamorphosis, but now it was truly life-threatening.

Ronan couldn’t complain. He had been begging the system for a real challenge for a long time, and while it had taken the intervention of an administrator to actually give him the fight he’d been longing for, Ronan wouldn’t be remiss in enjoying every single moment of it.

With his magic proving ineffective against one of them and his physical attacks entirely hopeless against the other, Ronan was at a loss for how to win the battle. Then he had a brilliant idea.

The bosses were diving down into the ocean, leaving him with very little time to actually come up with a plan for how to deal with them, but he felt that his idea was workable. His earlier revelation about his conjured weapons notwithstanding, they would be the perfect tool to deceive the twin bosses and finally land a devastating blow. While they were mana constructs, the damage they dealt seemed ineffective against the physical-immune boss, yet was a major threat to the magic-immune monster. But that all changed when the rest of his skills came into the picture.

Ronan was going to rely on his lucky class and the favour of the fates to pull the wool over the eyes of two level 500 kaijus. It would either end in his violent and rapid death or a glorious victory the administrator would be shocked senseless by. If anything, doing that to one of the system’s agents was enough of a reason to take the risk.

Right before the twin bosses crashed into the waves he leapt upwards, racing into the air as fast as he possibly could. Whatever he did after figuring out his battle plan, staying in the water would only put him at a disadvantage. It was their terrain and his physical strength was dulled by the resistance of the endless ocean against his swings.

He only made it about 500 metres into the air before the bosses realised he’d made a break for it and followed after him, bouncing off the empty air like a pair of prehistoric pinballs. He grinned. The more focused they were on him, the less likely they would be to notice what he was about to do.

Ronan continued to run into the sky. The bosses were closing on him fast but he didn’t mind. He just wanted to keep them distracted. As he leapt from one mana platform to another—which were far more stable now that he was using a part of the conjure weapon spellcasting process to ensure they didn’t break after one use—he also conjured the biggest spear he could possibly manage with his current proficiency.

He had pushed it far over his last few iterations and that was showing. Whereas before he could only form a medium-sized spear with an ordinary tip, he could now make the shaft about nine feet long, a very reasonable length for a proper spear. As for the tip he was even able to refine the sharpness, using his mana against itself like a whetstone. That was only possible thanks to his Sorceric Bastion of Purity sub-class and the improved affinity for pure mana he’d gained through it.

Unfortunately he couldn’t take it to the very pinnacle of his understanding of magic, because the twin bosses were fast catching up. It was time to enact his masterplan. First of all, he needed to really drive home to the two bosses what each of his attacks could do, and which ones they weren’t affected by. He stopped suddenly and spun, driving the spear downwards at the physical-damage-immune boss, not using any of his skills and just his raw strength.

It didn’t stop in its charge, simply crashing against his spear. While its scales barely trembled from the blow, it wasn’t able to overcome the immense momentum Ronan had put into the strike, leaving them at a stalemate.

The boss snarled and slashed with its claws. Ronan was forced backwards, leaping away into the air as he and the boss disengaged. A raising of his hackles warned him of an impending attack from the other boss. He formed a conjured shield while leaping forwards into the blow. It struck his shield, and after a half-second of pressure, shattered it. It connecting earlier than the boss expected, combined with how much the shield had weakened the attack, meant that Ronan only suffered a few shallow cuts to his chest. They stung like hell and started to bleed, but he retreated while sealing the wounds.

Both bosses were relentless. The first was already charging at him for another attack while the one who had just clawed at him was making a second pass. He went on the offensive.

The spell-immune boss seemed shocked when Ronan surged forwards and struck out with his spear. It spun on its heels and started to bounce away, but he was too quick. The spear slashed across its flank, tearing a chunk of skin and flesh away. Scales scattered in the wind, glittering in the faint light of the system-forged sun. He couldn’t revel in the minor success, however, because the other boss was on the move. He tossed a few mana bolts at it while they danced across the sky, letting it know that he wasn’t entirely helpless against it.

Slowly but surely the bosses adapted. Ronan wouldn’t claim to be beating them, but he was surely holding his own in a fight against two enemies that vastly outleveled him. He would have been furious if he couldn’t do at least that much, given the rarity of his class. He doubted anyone was supposed to earn something like Paragon Fate-Dancer while still in the tutorial.

Unfortunately the bosses were nothing if not resilient. Ronan was caught off guard when he thrust his spear at the magic-immune boss to deal another blow and the boss suddenly vanished. A fraction of a second later it reappeared and his spear struck its scaled torso. It bounced off harmlessly.

They switched places? That’s absurd. He had no time to complain about the latest overpowered skill the twin kaijus displayed, because the boss that had absorbed his blow leapt forwards and thrashed through the air while swinging two sets of claws at him. Ronan bounced away while fending off the slashes with his spear. It wasn’t too difficult, but he realised that it was time to put his strategy into action.

If anything, their ability to change places should work in my favour. If I can bait them into doing it right before my strike lands… The plan evolved in that moment. Even on the verge of defeat, a grin curled the edges of his lips upwards. Ronan glanced at his resources. About a quarter of his health points remained, along with half of his mana and two-thirds of his stamina. The latter was always close to full thanks to his litany of abilities to keep it topped up. It wasn’t great, but it was enough to do what he needed to do.

Ronan suddenly stopped. Both bosses took a fraction of a second to react to the sudden change of pace. A fraction of a second too long. Ronan stepped onto a newly formed platform and bent his knee slightly, before erupting forwards while thrusting his spear with extreme prejudice towards the boss that was magic-immune. However, this time he activated Magic Strike, Arcane Piercing Strike, and Surging Strikes, as well as both of his enchantments. He also tried to tell his mana to not… glow. It didn’t really work, but it dulled the tell-tale coating of mana that accompanied that set of skills.

The boss snarled in annoyance, but didn’t move. Then its body blurred. Ronan smirked inwardly. The twin bosses changed places and his coup de grace connected.

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