It turned out that farming Aura against a monster significantly stronger than himself was extremely lucrative. A single run of Accelerate, no more or less than twenty heartbeats at its current level, yielded over 10,000 Aura just from making quips that only he could hear. Combine that with the flashy moves he was throwing in, and his tally went shooting up.

Or it would have been, if he wasn't immediately spending it on new Spells and adding them to his Ultimate Shot with Combine. Sigil Detonation was the first, simply because it was at the top of the list, and it left behind a small rune in the spot his shot struck, which he could detonate with a snap of his fingers. It wasn't a huge explosion, but every little bit of extra damage surely helped.

John kept himself on the move constantly, always ensuring he had Flash Step primed and ready to go, keenly aware that the monster was too fast for him to dodge even in Accelerate. His only answer to its speed was to literally teleport away. After adding Sigil Detonation to his Spell, he found himself immediately having to utilise the Skill, as the monster had evidently decided that marked its turn to attack.

The worst thing was, it hadn't moved. Didn't even look at him. But the moment John saw the sphere of coruscating red light appear above its claw, he threw himself into Flash Step as far as it could go, giving himself as much distance between himself and the monster as possible. Unfortunately, escaping the attack wasn't so simple.

The sphere took flight. At first, it was slow, but it quickly gathered speed the longer it was in the air, and it homed in on him no matter where he went. Eventually, John had the bright idea to fire his Ultimate Shot at it, hoping to pop it.

When it abruptly expanded to ten times its original size—and it had been bigger than a monster truck's tire to begin with—he worried he'd only made things worse. However, it vanished immediately, leaving John blinking, confused. Until he saw the semi-spherical dent that had been cut into the ground where it had overlapped. It had annihilated the ground without making a sound.

John looked at the monster warily, and found it staring back at him, not moving to attack. There was a gleam of anticipation in its hellfire eyes, giving a "what did you think of that?" vibe.

Evidently, he wasn't the only one showing off.

John forced himself to smirk. "Heh. Not bad. You're pretty strong, aren't you? This is getting interesting."

+1000 Aura

For his next trick, John decided to feed a more powerful Spell to the growing amalgamation, and quickly picked out something from Level 4, so the Ultimate Shot would finally get a level upgrade of its own. He ended up choosing Vector Lash, picturing a scenario where the giant monster got flung across the room. After a 10,000 Aura outlay, he wasted no time in letting loose another barrage.

The monster could have easily dodged, but instead it watched the projectiles approach with a kind of animal-like curiosity in its eyes. They struck with the usual bursts of steam and ice and decay and electricity and light, and there was definitely more power in all the aforementioned with the Spell levelled up to 6 now.

His fantasy of throwing the monster into the far wall as it had done to him didn't manifest, sadly, but he could assign a target the moment his Ultimate Shots fired, and the monster was dragged a few metres in that direction, even with its attempts to dig its legs in and anchor itself. They scored deep furrows in the ground, awful shrieks of metal echoing through the cavernous room.

John was keeping on the move all the while, firing multiple shots every second. He kept the Vector Lash aspect of the Ultimate Shot aimed in the opposite direction from his comrades, so the monster was constantly being dragged away no matter what angle he hit it from. His Aura was starting to rise massively even without quips, so he could only assume either his comrades or the system itself were impressed with his performance.

The crab allowed this to go on all the way until Accelerate finally finished its cooldown. Only then did it mount its second counter-attack. Once again, it manifested a sphere of red light above its head, its hellfire eyes rolling towards him and narrowing in mirth.

John glared back, but didn't have time to do much else, as the sphere abruptly shattered like a glass bauble, and all the shards started to race towards him. He Flash Stepped away as far as he could once more, but the red shards started coming at him once again the moment he exited the technique a good few dozen metres away from his previous position. Seeing how the shards stabbed deep holes into solid ground, he knew he couldn't let any of them hit him. Accelerate was still on cooldown, however, and would be for several more seconds.

Trying his best to show no fear, he launched a series of Force Pushes at the oncoming red shards, alternating hands as fast as he could. They weren't moving at the greatest speed. In fact, he was pretty sure he could have pitched a cricket ball faster. That didn't make them easy to deal with.

His Spell stopped plenty in their tracks and sent them tinkling to the ground, where they stabbed straight down like falling stalagmites. But there was a vast number of them, and the stream was drawing inexorably closer despite his efforts. He tried to pair the Pushes with Heat Vision, which detonated the shards into red shrapnel that rained down ahead of him, but it was ultimately slower.

Holding back a grimace, John sprinted to the side, keeping up his Force Pushes with one hand, while launching fireballs with the other. They were about equal in efficacy on the matter. Which was to say: they weren't going to be enough.

Of course, it didn't help that he'd overlooked a crucial aspect: the effect hadn't been visible when he'd been standing still, but the moment he began moving, the shards curved in the air to follow him. John cursed under his breath, knowing he should've seen it coming.

John wasn't ready to resign himself to the inevitable just yet, though. If he couldn't dodge, and he couldn't deflect them efficiently enough, then he'd just have to hide. Hiding oneself in an open room with absolutely no cover shouldn't have been possible, but John had long ago added the solution to such a problem to his repertoire, and he dropped both Spells in order to pull it out in both slots.

Shadow Stream. Huge swathes of darkness erupted from his hands, blanketing him in moments. Then, he set the shadows to unfurling ahead of him while he came to a stop and crouched down low. The world turned graphite greyscale.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

And the monster's hellfire eyes kept following the progress of his shadows, with its hail of red shards matching its attention. Did that mean they weren't actually tracking, and it was just controlling them? Hard to say.

Either way, the shards sliced through the area John should have been and kept going, scoring deep lines in the floor. John held his breath until the last piece of the former sphere passed by, wondering if the crab monster had the intelligence to realise no blood had spilled.

He supposed it didn't matter. Dismissing the darkness and rising to his full height, John crossed his arms and smirked at the monster. "Your aim kind of sucks, huh?"

+2000 Aura

The battle settled into somewhat of a rhythm after that. One could almost say they were taking turns. John would add a new aspect to his Ultimate Shot, and the crab monster would reply with another trick from its locker, always related to its red sphere in some manner, like it was matching him.

First, John added Tempest Sphere to the amalgamated Spell, which essentially created a large storm cloud that followed the trajectory of the projectile with a little delay, striking the monster with a whirling spherical maelstrom of bullet-like rain, scouring wind, and miniature flashes of lighting. It added disappointingly little, since most of those aspects were already covered by previous Spells.

The crab responded by smashing its red sphere straight down into the ground, only to cause a red wave of superheated rock to roll out. John was forced to Air Step over it, and the floor was left steaming in its wake. When he landed, the crab was leaning forward, watching him with rapt attention, radiating curiosity.

"Not bad," John said. "Maybe you might have been able to singe the soles of my boots with that one."

+2000 Aura

Next, John decided to seek out aspects Ultimate Shot didn't already have. Thunderous Roar did exactly as the name suggested, giving his projectile a backing track of rolling thunder as it speared through the air on the way to its target. The sound was near deafening, and even the monster seemed to cringe back from it, but it left no more damage than usual.

However, the crab definitely took inspiration from the attack. His next sphere soared in an arc overhead, not even coming close to hitting, but it detonated on its own with a sound like the world had been cracked in half. There was no physical component to the spell, but he felt the vibration created by the spell deep in his bones. It put him off balance, and he had to sink to one knee, gritting his teeth.

After he recovered his composure, though, he managed to snark, "So noisy. We're going to get complaints if we keep this up."

+2000 Aura

Unfortunately, there was no way to decouple a Spell from the Combination once it had been added, so his next shot carried with it the same rumble of thunder. However, it also boasted a new aspect: Verdant Hell.

John hadn't known what to expect from the Spell when he chose it. His only thought was that it brought something new to the table, rather than stacking up fundamentally the same elemental effects with different names. Pretty much anything would have surprised him, but he was sure there weren't many possibilities that would have taken him off guard as much a seeing an absurd overgrowth of plants burst to life where his Shot impacted, radiating outwards like a rapidly-growing rainforest.

Every plant one could name was present in miniature: trees, bushes, grass, vines, flowers. It was like seeing a time-lapse of an entire year's growth in an instant, all populating a circular area with a diameter of about two metres.

Verdant Hell really lived up to its name. He couldn't help wondering what the Spell would have looked like if he had taken the chance to work with it on its own. Now he'd never know.

The crab once again sought to emulate him, but its spell was nowhere near as impressive in scope. Its red sphere lashed out bullet-fast, and only John's paranoid diligence let him Flash Step away in time to dodge it. Even then, he couldn't put all his power into the movement Skill, only throwing himself directly backwards five metres or so.

That was enough to let him bear witness to a twisted range made of red spikes erupt from the ground where the sphere had just struck. They were obviously styled to look like mountains jutting out, with the largest at the centre of the formation positioned exactly where John would have been standing. It was taller than him by a good foot, and many of the examples around it weren't much smaller.

Most importantly, the 'mountains' spread at least ten metres around where John had been standing, and they speared up beneath him the moment he came out of his Flash Step.

He didn't have time to acknowledge the pain in his legs. He just slammed the requisite Aura into Talent the moment he understood what was happening, then Air Stepped upwards and backwards with all his strength, throwing himself into an ungraceful dive. Ninja kicked in, allowing him to roll with the fall somewhat, but it still smashed the air out of his lungs, and he was more than a little unsteady as he rose back to his feet.

The crab monster's hellfire eyes looked him up and down, then curved upwards into that crescent shape once more.

After that came a red flesh, and for a moment John thought the monster had decided to do away with their little game and attack out of order. None came, though. What it had actually done turned out to be far worse.

John hadn't been under the impression that he was dealing mortal wounds to the monster by any stretch of the imagination, but the signs of the damage being done had been buoying his confidence. Seeing the chunks of metal rotted away, frozen, scorched, scoured, and burned had been encouraging.

Now, the monster stood there as if none of that had ever happened. Its red metal carapace was pristine.

John slumped his shoulders. "I suppose I can't call foul play, all things considered," he said. "But still. Fuck you."

Up above, the three great eyes were trembling. Their hourglass irises were fixed on him, and there was no doubt in his mind that they were taking great amusement in his plight.

A wave of indignation surged up within him. All this time, he'd been working his ass off, going along with this nonsense demand that he act 'cool' at all times, with the knowledge that something out there was deriving great joy from his discomfort. The feeling that this was all a game, at least to some nebulous observer, had been building. To a degree, he could handle that. He could put it out of his mind with the knowledge that there was no easy way to get to whoever the fuck had implanted this ridiculous system in his head.

But seeing a monster, the architect of so much human misery and death, enjoy watching him?

No. Fuck that.

John took aim at the nearest eye before he could think better of it. The blue eye was almost directly above him, barely a hundred metres up, and it froze the moment it understood his intentions.

The Ultimate Shot sailed through the air, only just slow enough for his naked eye to track, and far too fast for anyone else to do anything about. A howling vortex surrounded it. A bolt of lightning trailed it. A mighty rumble of thunder announced its passage. Ice, fire, necrotic rot, light, and plants burst out upon impact.

And the eye popped like a balloon. An omnidirectional shockwave of blue energy erupted through the air.

Only to come to a halt and draw backwards. For a moment, John's heart dropped as he feared the eye was about to reform itself.

Instead, much to his surprise, the blue energy all rushed towards him. So too did the white stream of pulsing that had been feeding the eye all this time.

The number in the corner of his vision started rising. Rapidly.

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