Chapter 59: The Lawnmower, Grey Slurry And Silver Light

... Rank 4 Phase-Stalker from head to crotch. The monster had been phasing through teacher attacks for an hour. The moment the acid blade touched its shell, it became solid. The force cut it in half before it could react.

Two halves hit the ground. Both melted into grey goo.

Alvian walked through the courtyard like a man cutting tall grass. Easy, wide swings of his sword sent acid blades into the crowd. Every swing killed dozens of monsters.

He wasn’t struggling. He was mowing them down.

The beasts didn’t understand what he was. They attacked on instinct. Rift-Hounds jumped for his throat. Voidcrawlers tried to phase their sharp jaws through his chest. Phase-Stalkers tried to stab him from behind.

Their attacks bounced off, slipped away, or melted on his Clearwater Coating. A Rank 4 Voidcrawler tried to phase its jaw through his armor. The moment it entered his defense field, the jaw vanished. The monster shrieked as its main weapon turned into grey dust.

Alvian cut it in half without slowing down.

He calculated every swing perfectly. Angle. Force. Essence cost. Kills per attack. He optimized every action instantly. He wasn’t thinking about the fight. He was just solving a problem.

[DING!]

[Kill: Rank 3 Rift-Hound. Base EXP: 25. Roll: 12x. Total: 300.]

[DING!]

[Kill: Rank 3 Voidcrawler. Base EXP: 30. Roll: 4x. KP +1. Total: 120.]

[DING!]

[Kill: Rank 4 Phase-Stalker. Base EXP: 50. Roll: 45x. Total: 2,250.]

The System popups became a blur. He wasn’t here for EXP. He was here to kill every monster that came out of the Rift.

The students and teachers watching from safety were completely silent.

They had been fighting for their lives against monsters that passed right through their attacks. They had watched friends die. They had held dying classmates while the horde kept coming.

And this boy—the E-Rank Clearwater student everyone made fun of at the Awakening Ceremony—was walking through the horde like it was nothing!

Helen Croft was bleeding on the ground. She propped herself up on her war-hammer and watched. She remembered his six-second Combat Assessment. She remembered her cut-in-half desk. She remembered thinking, "I don’t know what you are."

Now she knew.

He was a walking disaster, and he was on their side.

Darius Magnus sat bandaged and bleeding behind a broken wall. He watched with pure horror. He had spent the tournament laughing at Alvian’s E-Rank Talent. He had called him trash. He had told everyone that Clearwater was useless.

Now he was watching that same Talent melt an entire army.

Everything Darius believed in—that Talent Rank decides a person’s worth—was destroyed in five minutes of silver blades and melting monsters.

A pack of twenty Rift-Hounds tried to attack Alvian from the side. He turned, swung his sword once, and turned twenty bodies into forty pieces. The silver blade didn’t slow down. It kept going, cutting a deep line in the mud and melting everything it hit.

Another group attacked from the right. Thirty Voidcrawlers rushed in with clicking crystal legs and phasing jaws. Alvian coated his sword again and swung. The acid blade broke their phasing right before the force cut them in half.

Sixty pieces fell to the ground. The grey goo on the floor grew deeper.

His Essence was dropping. Every Severing Sword Aura blade cost Essence. Combining it with Clearwater Coating cost even more. He spent eight Mana per swing, and he was swinging every few seconds.

[Mana: 128 → 100 → 80 → 60.]

He calculated the numbers. He had enough Mana for about ten more swings. After that, he would have to use basic acid strikes and hand-to-hand fighting. He needed to make every attack count.

The monster numbers were falling fast. Hundreds turned into tens. The courtyard was turning into a graveyard of melting bodies.

The smell was sharp, chemical, and clean. The acid didn’t leave rotten bodies. It turned everything into basic materials: rock dust and grey sludge.

A student hiding behind a pillar threw up at the sight and smell.

Alvian didn’t care. He swung again. Another group of Voidcrawlers vanished. More grey goo joined the pool on the ground.

The last group of monsters made a desperate charge. Forty mixed-rank beasts ran at him all at once. They had learned that single attacks failed, so they tried to swamp him with numbers.

Alvian set his feet. He coated his blade. He swung three times quickly.

WHOOSH. WHOOSH. WHOOSH.

Three silver air blades crossed over each other, cutting through the group from different angles. The first swing hit the front line. The second hit the middle. The third hit the monsters trying to run away.

Forty beasts turned into eighty pieces. The grey goo pool grew thicker.

The courtyard was clear.

[DING!]

[Kill count this fight: about 200.]

[EXP gained: ~90,000 (banked).]

[KP: 53 (+1 from a low roll).]

[Mana: 128 → 88 (40 spent on 5 Severing Sword Aura attacks).]

Alvian stood in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded by grey goo and melting remains. His sword dripped. His defensive aura steamed. His breathing was calm.

Then the Rift pulsed.

The sound changed. The hum grew into a heavy thudding, like massive footsteps. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

The ground shook with every hit. The surviving students grabbed onto anything nearby. Helen’s war-hammer slid across the stone as the shaking almost knocked her down.

Alvian looked up at the Rift. The tear in reality was pulsing with bright light on every BOOM. Something huge was pushing its way through from the other side.

He analyzed the energy coming from the Rift. The power level was much higher than the Rank 3 and 4 beasts he had just killed. This was a completely different threat.

[DING!]

[WARNING: Rift energy rising.]

[Incoming threat: Rank 5 Calamity Boss.]

[Estimated Level: 75.]

[Recommendation: Host should turn on Gambler’s Delay now.]

[Also, Host should get a bigger sword.]

Alvian looked at his chipped sword. The metal was cracked worse than before. The blue glow was fading. It had carried him through everything, but it was breaking.

He held it tighter.

Then he activated Gambler’s Delay.

[Gambler’s Delay: ACTIVATED.]

[Saving base EXP from all new kills.]

[Release command: "Spin."]

The EXP bank started at zero. Whatever was coming out of that Rift would give a massive amount of EXP. He needed every point he could get.

The loud thudding grew louder. The Rift opened wider. A giant foot, black as glass and crackling with spatial energy, stepped out.

BOOM.