John had no time to appreciate his achievement, or make sense of the massive influx of souls he was receiving. The instant the blue eye popped, the crab monster stopped playing around.

Before he could even react, it was in front of him, slamming one of its great claws down like a hammer. A max-power Flash Step took him twenty metres back, but that bought him less than a second of respite. The moment he emerged from the Skill, the monster was on him again. There was no transition between there and here. The crab didn't even blur. It might as well have teleported, from his perspective. Maybe it even had its own version of Flash Step.

John activated Accelerate, and only that let him somewhat see the giant claw coming. It was too fast to dodge entirely, but he managed to manoeuvre his body at the last second, diving to the side so it only came down on top of his legs rather than pulping his entire body.

The damage was so complete that John didn't even get to register the pain. If he hadn't witnessed his own legs being crushed flat beneath the giant claw, he might have thought he'd gotten lucky and dodged it entirely. He rushed Aura into upgrading Vitality to Level 7 before his nervous system could send any distress signals, however, and launched himself into another Flash Step.

As he was sprawled on the ground, he could only carry himself a few metres away, but that was all he needed. Shadow Stream occupied both his Spell slots once more, and he set to unleashing vast quantities of darkness. The world turned greyscale once more as oily smoke engulfed him. He kept the twin streams up, flailing his arms to spew darkness in every direction, making sure the crab had no inkling of where he'd gone.

The monster itself was at the edge of his darkness, its eyes perfect circles. From the way it had reacted instantly to the destruction of one of the eyes, he'd been expecting it to radiate fury like a feral guard dog. Instead, it merely seemed focused. Dedicated, almost. It was clear the monster was here to guard the eyes, and it evidently hadn't been taking that job seriously, massively underestimating the human it faced as it indulged in a petty little competition. Now, it was no longer messing around.

As if to prove that statement, it summoned five of those sphere above its head. John couldn't see colour in this state, but knew it would be a deep red. At the same time, its jaw yawned open, and a laser beam speared straight into John's darkness, directly at the spot he'd started in.

Luckily, John wasn't dumb enough to remain still. His black cloud had already grown large enough to move around in, and he'd placed himself at the far edge, away from the monster. Still, the shockwave of the laser's impact buffeted him, knocking him slightly off balance. The monster must have been counting on that, because it launched all five of its orbs a mere heartbeat after the laser struck.

Accelerate allowed him to see the orbs coming. Four of them moved to the corners of a square surrounding his darkness, while the fifth headed straight for the middle. They struck the ground with large bursts of energy, which were followed by waves of burning rock twice John's height.

Luckily, it had shown him this attack before, and John anticipated what was coming. Still, he wouldn't have been able to do much about it without Air Step. His high Agility stat let him time his leap to the right moment, curving his body over the lip of the wave like the world's best high jumper. The problem was, there were five waves, moving at inconvenient intervals. Air Step came in clutch there, allowing him to vault a second wave without hitting the ground. After that, though, he had to let himself touch down before he could use Air Step again, and he resigned himself to the inevitable.

His feet hit the ground. He bent his legs, leapt upward with all his strength. He managed to get himself in the air. Tried to curve his body as he had before. But the wall of burning rock was too close, too fast, and there were two of them moving at different angles, owing to the multiple waves that had been activated at slightly different times. He had to use Air Step to take him higher, but that only let him dodge the first wave, leaving him exposed to the next as he came down.

John grit his teeth, preparing himself for pain. He tried to leap this one again, but barely got off the ground before it slammed into his lower half once more. The air rushed from his lungs. The greyscale world spun over and over, until it suddenly wasn't greyscale anymore. 6400 Aura into Level 7 Strength solved the damage the wave had dones, but he knew he was only in for more, and with only 5000 Aura remaining, he wouldn't have enough for another heal, not yet.

The impact of the wave had thrown him out of the cloud of darkness. He saw a hunk of red metal bearing down on him in his peripheral vision, the monster undoubtedly intending to spike him out of the air. A blind Flash Step took him back towards the cloud, but the Skill was far less effective while he was mid-air—it was called Flash Step, after all, not Unlimited Teleport.

He ended up only a few metres away from where he had been. It was enough to dodge the monster's initial attack and halt his uncontrolled spin through the air, and a quick Air Step even let him put himself the right way up. But then he was falling half a dozen metres to the ground. To add insult to injury, Accelerate ended.

Real time rushed back in to meet him. With it came distant human shouts and avian caws. No time to figure out what they were up to; John pivoted in the air and aimed twin streams of darkness towards the crab monster's face as he fell.

The monster bulldozed right through it, coming straight for him, seemingly using its own body as a battering ram, this time. He suspected the only reason he saw it coming was because it didn't want to use its full speed while temporarily blinded. It had no way of knowing this was just a desperate gambit, and not part of a trap.

Shit.

For all intents and purposes, he was about to be hit by a speeding bus. Desperation sent him trawling through his Spell menus for something, anything that might soften the blow he knew he couldn't stop.

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Unlocked Earthen Armour

-1000 Aura

Rock sprung up from the ground in the blink of an eye. Its colour and consistency was incongruous with the stone it had come from, a deep earthy brown rather than the bus-floor grey of this room. John didn't care. Bits of earth crumbled away as it rose, forming smooth, crude armour that instantly attached itself to him.

He didn't know how much of it had managed to assemble by the time the monster slammed into him. It felt like it might as well have been nothing.

Numbness engulfed him. His vision went white. There was no sense of momentum, no vertigo. Not even pain. He felt like he was floating in a white void, and he was sure, at that moment, he was dead. The monster had killed him. Ran him over like a common pedestrian who crossed the street at just the wrong moment.

Except that number in the corner of his vision was still rising. It was in the tens of thousands now. On a whim, he slotted Summon Undead. Even casting it as fast as he could wasn't enough to curtail the rapidly rising number. The only indication it was working were the occasional stutters.

+1000 Aura

+1000 Aura

+1000 Aura

Huh, he thought. I wonder what's going on out there.

His Aura kept rising, going up in ticks of one thousand every few seconds. It spoke volumes of his sluggish mental state that it took him until he'd hit 15,000 Aura to realise he now had more than enough to give himself a level and heal up. Even after that, his brain still needed a little longer to do so.

Increased Agility Level 6 -> Level 7

-6400 Aura

Usually, healing his body with a level up could be described as an extremely pleasant affair. Ecstasy, nirvana, and bliss were the kind of words that felt appropriate to throw around.

This time, there was a mere return of sensation. Like he'd gone from non-existence to remembering how to feel. From intangibility to tangibility. A ghost that had regained a body.

John came back to himself in a massive pool of blood that mingled with shreds of fabric, bone, and bits of meat.

It was a bit disturbing to think about, so he tried not to.

Luckily, there was plenty of distraction before him in the forms of hundreds of zombies swarming the crab monster. It was sweeping them aside with its claws, sending up massive sprays of gore, but the mob was relentless in throwing themselves at it. Naked as the day they were born and shambling along like they barely had a lick of strength in their frames, none of them could hope to actually harm the giant metal crab, but they served as an adequate diversion anyway, bogging it down with busy work by grabbing onto its limbs and clambering all over it.

They were surprisingly hardy, keeping going even after taking serious damage. Anyone familiar with pop culture knew the deal: the only way to kill a zombie was to destroy its brain. These zombies seemed to take that a step further, regenerating any damage that left their brain intact. Was that a natural quirk of these zombies, or was his Summon Undead ability diverting his soul count to healing them? Either way, they were an effective distraction.

The green and yellow eyes were watching the proceedings with a kind of twitchy nervousness, darting from place to place as if paranoid about the next attack. At the other end of the room, he could see his comrades rushing towards the eyes, taking pot shots that the crab monster was reaching to slap aside. Another distraction. It wasn't even glancing in his direction.

John took his opportunity, lifting his arms and taking aim at both eyes. Two Ultimate Shots roared out. With the thunder aspect of the Spell, they were hardly subtle, and the crab monster immediately turned and launched itself to intercept them.

But even its incredible speed wasn't enough to stop both projectiles. Not when the two eyes were so far apart. It took the projectile aimed for the green eye on the chest, but the other sailed past it, slicing straight into the yellow.

John revelled in the trembling terror visible in its hourglass iris as the Ultimate Shot punctured the monstrous eye. It popped like the world's biggest balloon, expelling an enormous quantity of dense, yellow energy. The wave blasted out, then speared towards John, slamming straight into… wherever it went. He didn't really care. For now, he was more interested in the stream of white light that diverted towards him, and the number in the corner of his vision that was now rising even more rapidly.

He grinned as he added Summon Undead into both slots, then started casting as fast as he could. Before his eyes, shimmering white silhouettes took shape, then formed into grey-skinned zombies, each one naked as the day they were born and utterly hairless. They turned as one and shambled towards the enemy without needing a word of command.

He was a bit disappointed that they didn't drag themselves out of the ground like something from a horror movie, to be honest. But he supposed he couldn't complain too much.

In seconds, there were thousands of them swarming the crab monster, spawning faster than it could slaughter them, even after it started lashing out with lasers and spheres and other magical tricks.

"Two down, one to go," John said.

+2000 Aura

With plenty of Aura to play with, John quickly upgraded Accelerate, Flash Step, and Air Step to Level 5, barely glancing at the expenditure.

John activated Accelerate, then Flash Stepped fifty metres in one go, taking him to another angle. The crab monster watched him, but couldn't afford to move to stop him, since that would leave the eye exposed for the others to destroy, and the zombies were hampering its full mobility.

For the first time, hate burned in its eyes. It hadn't taken him seriously, and now it was paying the price.

When John Flash Stepped to a new angle again, though, something unexpected happened. He fired his Ultimate Shot once more, this time only using one before moving on again, hoping to send a barrage from multiple angles and catch the monster out.

However, the crab monster didn't move to block the projectile. It just stared at him as his shot roared towards the green eye. In the second or so it took the shot to reach its target, the crab extended a claw towards John, then lifted the upper half of the pincer.

The message wasn't exactly cryptic, but John wasn't sure he believed what he was seeing. He blinked several times, but the image before him didn't change.

Did it just give me a thumbs up?

Even as his shot burst the final eye and sent a wave of green energy cascading out, the crab monster never took its eyes off him. Its eyes curved upwards. Its mandibles writhed. A red light enveloped its body, then brightened until the details of its form were obscured.

"You win this round, little warrior," a sibilant voice hissed into his ear. "We will meet again."

And then the red light was gone, taking the crab monster with it.

Silence fell on the cavernous room, and darkness quickly followed it.

+25000 Aura

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