Chapter 568 - This could work

The black spear pierces the heart, drawing in its mana. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, the heartbeat weakens, but the heart stays alive, continuing to feed the spear. The heart produces more mana than I can generate right now.

The spear pulls mana from farther and farther away, including the nearby mana batteries and the pillar on the opposite side of the room with the smaller heart.

At this point, I'm sure I wouldn’t be able to take control of it even if I wanted to.

I watch the spear pulse with a grim rhythm, twisting the mana around the dying heart, and the thought of trying to wrest control makes my skin crawl. I stand there for a moment, taking in the ominous display, and realize that this mana was never meant for my hands. It is a sign of a power that exceeds even my current understanding and something I have gained only thanks to so many things coming together.

I clench my fists, steady my breathing, and decide to step away. I leave through the same door and hallways as before and reach the surface of the island.

Flying high into the air, I dedicate part of my mind to keeping track of all attendee signatures and then stretch Ley Lines into the area where most of them are. Following that, I tie one Line to a javelin I shoot down towards the surface that is miles below.

Then I teleport through the [Ley Line] and appear near a Normal difficulty attendee. He doesn't even notice me, fighting for his life against the beast.

I steal his kill and use Wrath Dance to reach him. I put my hand on his shoulder and a pulse of mana breaks through his defenses before he even notices me, and I teleport him down to the surface through the [Ley Line] I have stretched there.

There is no need for me to collect negative points for the attendees.

I teleport again and appear in front of an Easy difficulty woman wearing glasses and holding a spear in her hand.

“I... I know you, you are that psy...” Before she can finish, I reach her and, more easily than before, send her to the surface.

The next one I reach is a man from Hard difficulty. He turns to me as he detects my presence, and as I take a step towards him, he steps back.

“Hey... what you... stop! Stop!” he shouts and swings his mace at me.

I let the mace hit me, and a small trickle of mana flows into my reservoir as my unique passive activates. As with the other two before, I disrupt his mana and teleport him away.

I repeat the process with 39 more people, taking only a few minutes during which I also kill any monster that enters my detection area. Even so, thousands of beasts remain—some deep inside the cave system, some in the ruins, others in the caves at the bottom of the floating island or in the forest.

Before leaving the island, I look with Mana Wavelength Iris towards where I left the black mana spear.

The place seems like a whirlpool, pulling mana from an ever growing area. And the island is already slightly tilting.

I'm sure that when it falls from a few miles high in the air, most of the beasts will die. When the black spear destabilizes itself later, it should cause an additional explosion. And I made sure to modify the spear in a way that will cause this sooner or later.

Flying through the air, I quickly check the timer. Around 9 hours still remain out of a 10 hour time limit.

I move towards the sea, and the storm on the horizon is even closer now: a dark wall of clouds and constant lightning. Passing over trees, reach rocky plains, and then a beach full of light red sand. There, nearby, another one of the special grade beasts calmly waits.

The Onyxscale Hydra sprawls across the pale red sand, its massive body shifting with slow, deliberate movements. Its deep black scales have a faint sheen, like volcanic glass, their jagged edges resembling sharpened stone. Thick muscles ripple beneath its armored hide, each movement sending a dull grinding sound through the air.

Seven heads rise from its body, each distinct yet eerily similar, their horns curving in different patterns. All of them share the same facial features, differing only in the color of their eyes.

Waves crash against its tail where the sand meets the sea. Lightning arcs through the water that touches the beast. In the distance, a storm stretches for miles, its lightning splitting the sky. The Hydra remains still, its heads twisting in perfect sync, waiting for something or someone to challenge it.

Landing on the sand, I slow down to a walk and reach a group of people standing at the edge of the forest, observing the beast from two miles away.

“Yo,” Maya greets me first.

“Hey,” I answer back.

“You are bleeding from your eyes,” she mentions.

Instead of answering, I just wipe the blood with the sleeve of my shirt and ask, “Why are you guys watching?”

I gesture a greeting toward the young Korean girl who fought alongside Baek, a few people from Hell difficulty, judging by their signature, and my old friend BenDover, who moved behind the trees the moment he detected me.

Maya shrugs, “That hydra knows about us, but the fucker is too lazy to attack. We have come here just in time to watch how it destroyed a group of 5 people from Hell difficulty, right, Kang Jiwon?”

Maya puts her hand on the head of the young Korean girl and ruffles her hair.

Kang Jiwon watches her with an emotionless expression but doesn't do anything to escape.

“Miss Knight, please stop,” she asks.

That only makes Maya ruffle her hair more, and she turns to me, “Is everything fine?”

“Yes, no problem.”

“If you need any help...”

“I know. I will ask.”

“Damn Na… Noname, you know how much I hate this situation, right?”

“I can imagine.”

“Anyway, that woman in the yellow shirt is your sister's right hand,” Maya points at the woman who is listening to us.

Her signature is one of the stronger ones here. Maybe a Beyonder as well? No, I pause. Clearly a Beyonder—she's just hiding her mana really well.

Around 25 years old, she is short, just slightly taller than Lily. Her eyes are blue, her hair is raven black, and a thin choker rests around her pale neck. I recognize it as an item, and there are a few more similar items around her wrists.

There is no weapon on her, and as Maya said, she is wearing a yellow shirt. On that shirt, there is a print of a black cat with a grumpy expression holding a cup of coffee.

It's safe to say that the shirt is from Earth.

“My name is Gloria,” she greets me.

“Hello,” I greet and turn back to Maya. “You should leave this one alone and collect as many points as you can instead. I attached [Ley Line] to you, so pull on it if needed or if someone attacks the beast.”

“You aren't going to kill it now?”

I shake my head. "It's likely too strong for me to kill quickly or without making sacrifices. I'll return to it later after I check on the other beasts."

Before leaving, I take a mental note of the battlefield layout as I survey the group, then I lift off again after sending a small thermal orb toward where BenDover is hiding.

A blast of golden flames erupts, and he immediately dashes deeper into the forest without stopping or looking back.

The Hydra is strong. Much stronger than the beast I just killed. The entire time, at least one head watched me, its eyes not leaving me, not even for a moment. No one here other than Gloria has sensed it, but the Hydra has been constantly scanning us, watching our mana signatures, and estimating our power.

And I don't like the fact it hasn't attacked yet, even though according to the system message it should be more aggressive now. I don't like that deep intelligence in its eyes.

Mid flight I move my eyes up, toward the enormous island floating a few miles in the air.

Floating almost right over where the Hydra is.

I see.

This could work.

***

An hour later I leave the ruins inside the floating island, using yet another black mana javelin to destroy what powers it. As with the previous one, now it starts absorbing all the mana in the area and gradually destroying whatever keeps it afloat and its failsafes.

The first island I did it to is still in the air, but where it previously floated smoothly, it now rocks from side to side, and the enormous crystal point from its bottom is cracked.

I estimate another hour for it to crash. A few minutes before it does, I will need to clear the landing area of attendees as much as possible. The island isn't that high in the air, so the impact likely won't be too strong, but it should be enough to kill a lot of tens of thousands of beasts on it.

It's highly possible I won't get as many points as I would if I killed them myself. There's also a chance I won't get any points at all, though I doubt that. The system rewards people based on their performance and uses that phrase often. It knows how to split the experience when multiple people work together to kill monsters. Even so, this isn't the tutorial floor but the tournament, so it might work differently, and it would be foolish to rely on that.

I blast away another beast, a long snake like creature with a dozen pairs of legs, which likes to phase into the ground and attack from beneath.

When that king of beasts materializes, it takes a moment before its defenses reactivate. A short but very fatal weakness.

I reach the side of the floating island and jump off it, reaching the bottom part with all the roots piercing it and a huge crystal nearby. On that side, I form a thermal orb that I stabilize as much as I can and start filling it with thermal energy through just a slightly peeled off seal on the Ignition Heart. I embed that orb into the rock around it, which starts to melt, and use heat resistant threads I knit together to anchor it to the wall.

Then I start layering mana threads around it in the form of inscriptions, not dissimilar to the dissipation nodes I have on my palms, soles, and my back, the ones I made in case of extreme buildup of thermal energy inside my body because of the Champion's heart.

I make this inscription powerful enough to last at least a few hours and add some simple controls.

Lastly, I set up defenses around it and barriers to hide its signature and for a few minutes, I continue to pump thermal energy into the thermal orb and then lock it, to fill it more later.

I pause, observing what I've done. The setup is crude but effective, and after a few more checks, I look down at the ground far below, at the pale red sand, the sea with its growing waves, and the black hydra nestled there.

Then I lift off and head toward where I detected the third beast.

***

Next Chapter