Chapter 993 - Thriving under pressure

Hiding from the melting beam attack behind Pareth, Sofia thrust her left hand right into the red light.

She had wanted to just pull her hand out right away but there was already nothing left to pull out.

Finish off the honeycomb soon. Sofia thought for Pareth as she left the protection of his shield. She flew right into the red beam attack flying upstream straight toward the caster, the tentacular giant, [Singularity edict] protecting her since the beam had already damaged her once.

Flying out of the sanctified grounds range, she was weakened quite a lot, but the tentacled giant never saw her coming. When its attack died down, she was already above its tiny head buried between the mass of tentacles. There was already another giant nearby, as they all closed in on them, so she had to be fast.

What she thought was the head looked more like a wart or a strange mushroom, butthe instincts given to her by her title clearly pointed toward that thing being the monster’s weak point.

Landing at the thing’s base, she swung her scepter at the ‘neck’, which was thick like a castle tower. Chunks of thick skin and flesh were blown clean off, but it was still just a dent, and if there were bones inside of there, she could not feel them.

The monster’s riposte was swift, its crown of tentacles reorganised themselves, and much smaller, pinpoint red beams started fusing, attempting to cut Sofia to bits. She managed to avoid most of the beams, but both of her wings got clipped almost instantly, too big to protect.

It’s still avoiding itself.

The monster skillfully fired the beams at Sofia in angles that hit the gaps between its other tentacles, but this constraint was its undoing. It gave Sofia an easy way to predict how to dodge. Some still touched her, but none managed to land a truly critical blow.

Loud booms could be heard in the distance, the entire city shaking from the battle and the giants’ mere presence.

She only had to continue smashing her scepter into the neck while running around it and the giant would soon–

A dark shadow suddenly obscured the sky. One of the largest giants, shaped like a flesh potato with a large smiling mouth and entirely too many protruding arms, was falling from above.

The tentacled giant always avoided the others with its attacks, but it was not given the same courtesy. It and Sofia were both crushed to death by the falling mass of flesh.

At the bottom of a crater, inside of a pool of molten flesh and rock, the flattened mithrium helmet was first to pop back into shape. Over the next three seconds, Sofia’s body was reconstructed, pushing the stagnant magma away. She woke up to the searing heat scorching her demonic skin, and immediately tried to fly up, only to find herself stuck, the way up completely blocked. She tried punching up through whatever that was, but the surrounding magma made it hard to exert enough force, so she quickly abandoned the idea.

Her regeneration outweighed the continuous burn of the magma, but healing too much was not a good thing.

Still in her numb sorrows form, the magic she had access to was very limited so she had to change plans. Plunging deeper into the magma, she reached out to rip space open. Jumping through, she entered the spiritual plane, a wave of magma entering with her. The molten matter spread around the foggy spirit plane and quickly became strange, weirdly fizzling out of existence. Sofia paid it no mind, quickly flying down into the ground to escape the deafening screams of the countless souls right above her.

The potato-like giant that had crushed her was the thing still blocking her way up.

I’ll die again if I get too close.

Sofia was forced to plunge deep and run, despite how slow moving in the spiritual plane could be, she tore through space again half a minute later, reappearing closer to Pareth in the ruined city.

At a glance, it was no longer the same. The single crash-landing attack from that one giant flattened the entire region, buildings, trees and hills, all blasted away by the collision. The only things standing were Pareth and the giants.

I still have all my things. The thrall died… The honeycomb looks dead.

Pareth was currently standing his ground one against three between the teleporting triangular giant, the lanky ice-immune one which had been injured by Sofia’s thrall, and a third one that Sofia could only describe as a humongous mass of flaccid flesh which seemed to be the only one getting injured when Pareth attacked the others.

Since all the other giants were coming, the priority was reducing their numbers. Sofia rushed to Pareth’s side, flying straight into the legs of the lanky ice-immune giant, hoping to land a decisive blow. But the lanky giant saw her coming, one of its long blade-like arms slicing through the air in her direction as she approached at full speed. The distraction bought Pareth some time to riposte against the teleporting triangle, while Sofia simply [Regret]ed her way out of harm’s way, directly into one of the deep wounds left behind by her thrall’s efforts in the monster’s arm.

The wound was deep enough that her aura could reach the bones. Without hesitation, she used the bone to pull herself in through the flesh, once again entering one of the monsters’ skeletons.

Doing her best to ignore the screaming souls’ damage on her own, Sofia first grabbed her own heart out of her chest, dumping it right then and there like a poisoned-blood bomb, and started pushing through the bone marrow to make her way up the giant’s arm.

Her blood apparently started inflicting enough soul damage to provide so much needed healing, allowing her to confidently climb up through the bone. Hitting the end of the bone, she had to plunge through the synovial fluid between the bones, thinking to herself how curious it was that these abominations still followed such basic anatomy, and rapidly make her way to the monster’s chest. Every so often as her heart regenerated, she ripped it out again to leave more of her corrupted blood everywhere.

Grinding her teeth because of how loud the screaming souls were getting, Sofia found the creature’s chest cavity. There were no organs there, only a huge ball of hard flesh suspended mid-air by hard tendons.

The core must be in there.

Her entire body was in pain from the constant soul damage, but she kept her eyes fixed on the prize.

“Let’s see who’s the fucking parasite now!”

Sofia jumped onto the suspended sphere and tore through it like a feral animal, clawing and biting through the flesh. Until she could feel the core. Grabbing her dagger, her arm plunged straight toward the center of the giant’s core. The blade eventually hit something that was even harder than the rest, Sofia let go of it and pushed deeper, her arm sinking all the way in up to the shoulder. She grabbed onto the thing the size of a skull and forcefully pulled it out.

The giant stumbled, everything shaking, but it was not dead, yet.

Sofia wasted no time observing the large esoteric marble that produced all of the creature’s mana, instead, she got rid of it. She reached out for her [Roaming free] mark, which was still inthe strange dark dimension from earlier when she fought the fake leviathan, and just dumped the core there. It was like turning the lights off in the giant’s brain. The souls all stopped screaming. The giant heavily started to fall.

“Fifth one down.”

My mana is almost back to full as well.

While the giant fell, Sofia reverted back to her regular demon form and called the nymphs to pull her out of the wreck through the spiritual plane.

Pareth was in a bad position. Despite Sofia taking a giant out, he was still one against three, a new, Spider like giant having joined the fray, using its long legs to stab at him while firing all kinds of corrosive acid spells.

The flesh mass giant looked almost dead, it was absorbing most of the damage the other giants would take, its flesh darkened from absorbing all of the cursed blood Sofia had dumped into the other one. Despite that Pareth still had to avoid its constant charges, as its sheer mass made it dangerous.

All the while, Pareth kept attacking the teleporting triangular giant which seemed to have the weakest defenses to maximise his damage.

You’re getting too injured, use the heal soon! Sofia ordered. Knowing that Pareth would never use [Greater Heal] on himself if she did not force him to.

Analysing the situation, Sofia made her plans on how to proceed, knowing the fallen giant she had just killed would rise as her thrall soon, but she was once again interrupted. The potato-like abomination that hadn’t moved since killing her earlier was starting to vibrate strongly, all of its arms firmly anchored into the ground, suggesting it was about to jump again.

Shit, Pareth, jump on the spider!

Sofia and Pareth both abandoned everything to rush straight into the attacks of the giant spider-like monster.

They both took brutal hits as they threw caution to the wind to get closer to the monster.

The ground shook. The sky darkened.

Sofia’s eyes landed on Pareth, she grabbed him into her storage, then she looked up.

The giant was about to crush her again, despite her being above the spider giant, it showed no signs of caring for the other giants’ lives.

She disappeared.

Sofia reappeared high into the sky, very far away.

Perfect aim.

So far a single one of the giant parasites had fully kept its distance, showing no signs of approaching, it was one of the flying ones, silently hovering above a distant mountain range.

Now she was right above it.

Pareth.

He appeared in front of her. She used her aura to catapult him straight down as she prepared a skewering bolt.

Impale this horror!