Chapter 991 - Grade 2: Apocalyptic

Sofia felt a certain sense of awe watching the gigantic figures rise from every corner of the city and the horizon. The doors monster and fake leviathan had been nice appetizers, but this felt like the real trial was finally getting started.

The parasited citizens and animals amassed together, piling up into amorphous masses of flesh, fusing into new beings, titanic shadows obscuring the sky.

Counting the number of colossal enemies present here just for her, she played with the dagger in her hand.

[Title changed to ‘Giant Slayer’]

[Title change function is locked for the next 24 hours]

[Giant Slayer]: Through wits and determination, you have again and again fell foes far beyond your size or capability.

Effect: Gain the temporary passive skill [Eilor’s Battle Instincts] when battling enemies of monstrous size.

[Eilor’s Battle Instincts]: Processing +300%, Instinctively notice weak points, Aftershock resistance, Knockback resistance, Damage against giants is maximized.

As she lost the effect of the [Idol] title, Sofia keenly felt her body grow weaker but her mind much sharper.

Some paltry health regeneration is not going to help me here anyway.

Mana accumulated freely within the tall creatures, and they likely still benefitted from some esoteric powers in addition to that.

Let’s get this show started.

“Pareth. What’s the maximum range on your new skill?”

Pareth raised a whole hand.

“Five kilometers? Good start. Use my mana. After that… We stay loosely in range for the sanctified grounds and demon form. I doubt we’ll get the luxury of fighting together.”

Pareth closed his helmet’s visor, having acknowledged her decisions. Planting his sword into the floor, he started channeling his skill, draining mana from Sofia by the million.

The closest colossus was already in range, hundreds of meters tall, it had a spindly, barely humanoid shape, like a giant half molten candle of flesh and skin. It had no face to speak of, but Sofia could see the glare of the evening sun reflecting on the human-looking teeth of its long vertical mouth, and the tension accumulating into its four freakishly long arms.

Its mere presence invoked in Sofia an actual feeling of disorienting pressure.

As though ignoring the situation, the Abereth silently floated up into the sky.

I cannot let this thing interrupt Pareth’s cast.

Sofia jumped down from the building, taking her demon form mid fall, she softly landed on top of a smaller, sturdy-looking tower, using it as her foothold to jump up toward the giant. The tower cratered and collapsed after her jump.

One the giant’s four cocked-back arms moved. It had no eyes but it could clearly follow Sofia’s movements, the abrupt movement of the massive arm made the air scream, it aimed to slap Sofia out of the air like one would swat a fly.

So fast!

Sofia corrected her flight path to avoid it, but the giant was by no means as sluggish as it looked when it slowly rose from the surface earlier. A large maneuver for Sofia was a micro-adjustment for its arm.

Regret? No. Let’s see.

Two explosive rods of plasma appeared in Sofia’s grasp as the gigantic fingerless hand closed in on her.

She braced for impact and, at the last moment, spun to slam both bolts into the palm of the hand before they could collide. The two explosions helped lessen the impact but the hit was still devastating. Sofia was sent flying, her flesh torn and bones shattered.

Health : 6 002 201 /15 122 005

Good. I can feel myself getting stronger already.

It had been a perfect opportunity to evaluate the monster’s strength with starting to stack [Crystallized Suffering]. Quickly stabilizing herself and readjusting her trajectory to speed right back up toward the giant, Sofia instantly straightened her bones with her aura, letting her regeneration take care of the rest.

Behind her, an entire cone of the city had been destroyed, blown to bits by the airborne shockwave of the giant parasite’s singular hit, but she was too focused on the enemy to notice that.

That barely hurt it…

Another arm quickly came her way in the same fashion again, this time she stopped mid-air. The arm adjusted its trajectory, then she used [Regret] to change her position and speed as though she had never stopped in the first place, flashing past the striking hand.

Sofia flew in a straight line toward the monster’s ‘head’, aware it would not have enough time to strike her away again.

The scepter in her hand took the form of a long greatsword, and just an instant before the collision, bony hands sprouted from her half-reconstructed armor, and she disappeared.

Sofia slashed directly through the monster’s soul in the spiritual plane. She carved a path though a tide of screaming amalgamated souls, leaving a sizable laceration in the creature’s ‘soul’ before urgently reappearing in the physical plane.

The pressure Sofia had been feeling from the beginning were the screams of the millions of souls. It was only a potent discomfort while she was in the physical plane, but every instant she had spent fully in the spiritual plane listening to those screams had felt like excruciating torture, splitting her own soul apart. If not for [Vessel of ancient evil] healing her soul by the same amount of damage she herself inflicted, that half of a second she had spent in the spirit plane might have been enough to claim her life.

I knew it couldn’t be that easy. Sofia thought, landing on the creature’s shoulder and starting to run down its arm.

That did decent damage.

Behind her, a thick black mark marred the giant’s skin, like the trace of a deep necrotic wound, the result of the soul damage.

I need a lot of momentum to strike like that again.

Pareth needs a few more seconds, it looks like.

Thankfully her successful attack meant the giant’s focus was fully on her.

As she ran along the giant’s arm with long jumping strides, she was suddenly stopped. A hand had grown from the arm’s skin, grabbing her foot just as she stepped on it. She was instantly pulled-in and swallowed by the giant’s flesh.

Inside of the giant, she felt the pressure mounting rapidly, her soul being torn apart as she tried to take a hold of the giant’s bones, buried deep under layers and layers of stringy flesh that wrapped around her and tried to pull her body apart.

Her cursed blood spilled, tainting and weakening the flesh, but she was still trapped, like a drowning child, getting pulled deeper and deeper, physically too weak to resist.

She only pretended to fight it.

So what if her health was dwindling?

Soon she was close enough. The creature’s massive bone, finally in reach of her aura despite it being blocked by the tearing flesh.

Long tendrils sprouted from the bone, piercing through the flesh and latching onto her, pulling her in deeper. While her soul was being torn apart, Sofia entered the bone. She expanded the thick bone from inside, pushing aside the marrow, carving herself some space to stand, the strange flesh tried to invade the bone in pursuit. Sofia opened just a tiny slit through the bone and stabbed it with her sword. The initial damage was minimal, but the solar burst tore through the arm from the inside. Sofia was instantly back to full health.

Damage to the nearby souls also weakened their screams and the pressure on Sofia both. It was a tiny victory.

Then, Sofia’s instincts screamed, although she did not understand why. Her reflex was to start channeling the [Nova Legacy Beacon] just in case.

Her body was reduced to dust. Even the helmet, which had survived, had not been enough to save her, VPPV’s one-hit-kill protection was the only reason she was still alive. It had all been so sudden that she had not even felt pain. Her first instinct was to look through Pareth’s eyes.

The giant had used both of its hands from its other side, and crushed Sofia between them, severing its own arm.

Fuck.

She had no time to finish her channeling of the beacon, the thousands of invisible screaming souls finished tearing her body and mind apart.

When Sofia reappeared three seconds later, she was no longer trapped between the giants’ hands. It had already moved on, taking a long step forward and raising its massive arms toward Pareth.

Absolutely not!

Sofia quickly rearranged her divine core as she flew toward the monster’s back.

[Mockery of the Divine], Speed!

With her sudden burst of speed, Sofia dove through the spiritual plane again. She struck upwards, cleaving directly through two of the monster’s arms.

The arms lost strength and the giant flinched, but the fourth arm remained locked onto Pareth down below.

It’s weakened enough, now! Impale!

A black flash struck down from the sky, a calamitous monolith striking down and crushing the giant from above, piercing it from top to bottom. The giant was split open, it teetered under the weight of the monstrosity now living inside of it. It was no longer the parasite.

The monster fell backwards, annihilating more of the city in its wake. The flesh split open, the souls rumbled. Sofia’s cursed blood was also running up its mangled arm stub, corrupting it from the inside.

Its skeleton started to move. It no longer wished to obey its body’s designs.

One down.

Sofia looked around.

Fourteen more to go.