Chapter 137 - Into the Fire

With charred skin and blinded eyes, Nova could only rely on his ears to detect the incoming monsters soaring through the sky. It was, in no uncertain terms, a dire situation. His flesh still smoldered from the rocket spell's backlash, and blood seeped from cracks in his burned skin. Every nerve screamed in protest.

‘These birds better not be as strong as that guardian! If they are… Well, it would be bad.’

Seeing no easy way out, he started gathering essence once again. The short stay on floor ten had already taken twenty percent of his capacity, but there was nothing else to do when the situation demanded it.

The essence gathered on his back this time, slowly spreading out across his burned flesh, forming intricate patterns outside his damaged skin. Each rune blazed to life as Nova forced them into existence faster than should have been possible. Pain lanced through his shoulders as the magic fought against his wounds.

With intense concentration, Nova formed a spell formation he had been looking forward to since he arrived in this world—one he had used more than nearly any other.

The final piece of the formation locked in place, and with it, a massive sphere of translucent energy grew outward like a soap bubble made of pure will. It kept expanding until it reached a distance of four hundred meters in all directions.

[You have created the skill: Sphere of Nova (Grandmaster - 100%) {Grade 12}]

[This spell is an extension of your every sense, letting you have complete control of essence inside the area. Every movement is sensed with perfect clarity, and any usage essence is clear in your mind.]

‘Thank god! With this, I should be able to respond to most threats.’

The sphere was like gaining a hundred eyes and a thousand hands all at once. Every mote of dust, every current of air, every living thing within four hundred meters became crystal clear to his enhanced perception.

The sphere arrived only moments before the first flying enemy entered its border, giving Nova a clear image of the assailant. The creature was massive—easily the size of a house. Blue feathers caught the sunlight as powerful wings beat against the air, and a set of piercing yellow eyes were locked on his position.

‘A damn Thunderbird?! And it has well over a million Soul Power, god damn it!’

The hair on his arms stood on end. Nova wasted no time, only putting up a quick barrier to shield himself from the natural static electricity that was forming around him. The Thunderbird's mere presence was charging the air with deadly voltage, a passive effect that would cook him alive if left unchecked. But as long as one is aware of it, it becomes a minor issue—unlike the actual attacks the thunderbird could unleash.

Nova’s essence converged straight above the bird as it approached, shooting a ball of pure flame into the path of its left wing. The greatest effect of the Sphere of Nova was its ability to use essence freely inside it, letting spells fire from every direction.

Pure fire shot downward like a falling star, striking the creature's wing before it could react. Flame spread across blue feathers in a brilliant burst of orange light.

The Thunderbird screeched in surprise, stopping its charge toward Nova to flap its wings and rid itself of the flame.

But why should Nova wait? His regeneration had already given him part of his vision back, and now he could see patches of light filtering through his damaged eyes.

The next ball of fire materialized from behind the Thunderbird, striking it squarely in the tail and setting fire to its tail feathers. The creature was now thoroughly enraged, releasing another ear-splitting screech as the sky above them began to darken. Thunder rolled across the heavens like the voice of an angry god.

‘No!’

Few creatures knew how to take advantage of the natural forces of the world, instead using their essence alone to attack their targets. But the Thunderbird was different—it used its magical power to influence the raw forces of nature itself, calling down the full fury of supercharged lightning upon those who dared challenge it. This was why they stood above all other flying beasts, on top of the food chain.

In a desperate last-minute defense, Nova summoned the broken pieces of his metal armor from his storage ring, positioning them in an arc from above his head to below his feet. The metal would serve as a makeshift conductor, hopefully guiding any lightning strike through the armor pieces instead of through his flesh.

The principle was simple enough, provided one understood the basic properties of electricity—which surprisingly few people did, at least in this world. Nova had taken advantage of that fact many times in the past, like in his fight with Morten, where the man's metal weapon had become his downfall.

But when electrical energy reached certain thresholds, it became impossible to predict its exact path. The power grew too hungry, too eager to find any available target, abandoning the path of least resistance in favor of pure destructive intent.

‘400 meters should give me a tiny bit of time to react! I’ll need to be lightning fast, at the very least!’

His body ached in every conceivable way, and tiny flakes of charred flesh peeled away from his skin with each movement he made. But this was no time to care about pain.

‘One wrong move could mean the end here… I might need to use my amulet.’

Then it arrived, moving faster than the thunder that would follow in its wake. A lightning bolt as thick as a tree trunk shot straight toward Nova's position, carrying enough raw power to vaporize a building.

His hand flew to the displacement amulet, which had now fused into his skin. Despite the damage it had suffered, the device was still radiating faint magical energy. It cracked under his grip, crumbling to smoldering fragments as it activated. 

The magic displaced him exactly three meters to the side before the power source exhausted itself completely. And the flash of light was only fifty meters away now.

‘FFUck!’

In a final, desperate gambit, Nova manipulated the air currents above him to create a path of reduced resistance leading toward his scattered armor pieces. It would not do much other than increase his chances.

The lightning bolt split in two once it reached ten meters above him, with the main force traveling toward his scattered metal pieces while a smaller branch continued straight toward his already charred body.

The secondary bolt hit him with intense fury, contracting every muscle remaining in his burned frame while electrical fire raced through his nervous system. He could feel individual muscle fibers burning inside him as the current traveled from his outstretched right arm down to his right leg, following the path he had deliberately created.

It was the least dangerous course the lightning could possibly take, carefully avoiding both his heart and his brain—the vital organs he had protected by extending his limbs in the final second.

The armor pieces that bore the main force of the lightning bolt turned to molten steel in milliseconds, then the superheated drops were scattered in every direction by the electromagnetic force. Glowing metal fragments whistled through the air like deadly rain, some hitting Nova.

‘Aagh! Gah-ahghly fuCK!!’

Twenty fireballs materialized in the air around the struggling Thunderbird, each one blazing with desperate fury as Nova poured all the force he could muster into the assault. He could not survive another lightning strike—no matter how resilient his regeneration might be, it could not restore life to a corpse.

The great bird screamed in rage and desperation, trying to bat the incoming projectiles away with its massive wings as it wheeled through the air. But the effort was futile since every fireball had been programmed to track its movements with relentless precision. One by one, they struck home against blue feathers, turning magnificent plumage to blackened ash and searing through flesh beneath.

The combined impact of all twenty fireballs managed to tear open the Thunderbird's chest in a devastating explosion of force and flame, killing the legendary creature in an instant. The massive body went limp, beginning its long fall toward the forest below.

‘I should have done that from the start! Although, I didn’t know if it was alone back then. Now I’m pretty sure.’

The excruciating pain was finally starting to become manageable as his supernatural healing worked to repair the damage. His skin and eyes were nearly restored to normal function, though the internal burns in his arm and leg continued to throb.

‘Aah, Anny will definitely have to absorb the heart before coming out here. Every place is lethal!’

Now that Nova could see clearly again, he turned his gaze from the falling bird carcass down toward the ground far below. What he saw made him blink in confusion and wonder if his restored vision was somehow malfunctioning.

‘Okay? That’s… unexpected.’

Nearly everything around him was pure blue sky—and not just above him. Even below was mostly blue and eternal sky, broken only by a substantial patch of forest directly beneath him and a distant city connected to it several kilometers away. The land stopped abruptly at the edges, like it was a lonely flat planet floating on nothingness.

‘That city… is where Millie is. So that’s where I’m going. After picking Anny up, of course. And getting dressed.’

Since he was still falling toward the ground at considerable speed, Nova summoned his sylph wings and took control of his descent. The small cabin he had emerged from just minutes ago stood near the far edge of the forest, positioned as far from the mysterious city as possible.

‘Ahh, she’s gonna ask me how it went… I can’t tell her it’s safe out here. But as long as she absorbs the heart AS FAST AS POSSIBLE it should be fine.’

He had forgotten to give her the heart before leaving, but it was no problem. She could just come out of the starting area and absorb it there. He could guard her. No problem.

Ch.136 --I-- Index --I-- Ch.138