RinoZ
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Chapter 1153 - Overwhelmed
🕑 Added 2023-04-29 05:45:17 +0000 UTCSomonax’s face is twisted into a permanent grin, her needle-pointed teeth as long as a man’s arm flashing in the red light. From her back, the thousand wires spring, each connected to one of a thousand blades.
I’ve used almost all of my Altar energy to tie down Torrifex and Pyrixan for the moment, but I’m doubtful those two bombs will be strong enough to kill them, which means I need to make the most of this two-on-one time I have with this demon of endless slaughter.
[Alright, Al. If you’ve got anything left to give, you better give it now. I’m going to run in and see what I can get done.]
[I will try.]
I’m keen to give him a motivational talk, a bit of the ol’ ‘there is no try’ stuff, but I don’t have it in me right now. I knew running headlong into the tier eight demons was going to be tough, but right now, I feel like I’ve unleashed everything I have and they’re just taking it. Once my Altar runs dry, they’ll be able to squash me like a pancake at festival time.
Time to go for it!
Somonax grins… or… just maintains her normal expression, as I turn and rush directly at her, launching a barrage of compressed stone spears as I do.
Those blades make quick work of the projectiles, shards of stone go flying in all directions as each spear is detonated when cut. I knew she’d be able to defend herself, all I wanted to do was tie down at least some of her limbs as I made my approach.
Dash!
I lunge forward with all my speed the moment I pass within the range of her wires, and it’s a good thing I do. From a dozen different directions, hundreds of those gleaming red blades slash down and the best direction for me to dodge is forward.
Even so, I get a few slices on the rear-guard for my trouble.
Seriously? Why always the commercial zone?! Doesn’t matter, push forward.
The barrage of stone spears continue, and each one is expertly shattered by a slash from the demon. She’s not even moving her body at the moment, because she doesn’t have to. I can’t hurt her unless I get closer, and doing so plays right into her strengths.
My future-sight antennae are on fire as I receive tingling warnings of hundreds and hundreds of individual movements at once. Even with so many brain constructs to process the input, I’m struggling to keep up!
I roll to my left, leap forward, drop low, then rush forward again, my claws gripping so hard I rip chunks of stone out of the ground every time I change direction. The closer I get, the faster and more concentrated the blade attacks become, until I feel I’m facing a storm of swords rather than a demon. She’s basically making a solid wall in front of me! I can’t push forward without getting cut!
Well, time to put the gravity compressed diamond to the test. I didn’t harden my defences this much to shy away from a few little slashes!
Here we go!
Six legs blur as I rumble toward the enemy, my jaws pulled back ready to bite. Immediately, a rain of blades comes down on me, battering into my carapace a thousand times a second.
Oof!
I stagger, but continue to move. From behind, a concentrated hyper-beam of burning light erupts from Al, spearing toward the demon. Somonax tilts her head and gathers her blades, parrying at the last second, slicing through the mana.
A chance!
VOID CHOMP!
The jaws of dark light manifest themselves and begin to close on Somonax, but the demon doesn’t seem afraid.
THUNK!
Two hundred swords come down together, concentrating their force on a single point as they attempt to stab through my carapace. The force of the strike sends my legs splaying wide and the underside of my carapace slams into the ground, but I maintain my attack.
For her trouble, the demon has managed to sink her weapons almost thirty centimetres into my carapace, almost enough to get through, but nobody wins a prize for ‘almost’!
Eat mandibles you grinning demon!
With a thunderous roar, my jaws slam shut, but I don’t get the feedback I was looking for. What happened?!
I cast about wildly until I realise where the enemy went. She’s above me! She jumped out of the chomp?!
Spinning in the air, Somonax pulls her thousand blades together, forming them into a gigantic point that she aims straight at my midsection before plummeting down with the force of a comet.
I still can’t believe how fast that dodge was. Not only is she so crazy strong, she’s fast. Dammit!
Well, I can be fast too.
Empowered Dash!
My Altar is gasping for energy at this point, but I zip from beneath the strike a half-second before the demon lands, smashing the rock and sending boulders and lava soaring into the air.
Holy moly! That was close….
Wait a second, is it getting dark out here, or is it just me? My minds spin as I try to keep up with everything happening and the sheer overload of sensory information, along with managing my constructs and spells as I cast for something I can use to my advantage.
The gravity bombs have burned out and expired, which means Torrifex and Pyrixan are free once more and I didn’t manage to land so much as a mandible on Somonax.
Stupid demons, why do they have to make this so difficult?!
From behind me, a dark cloud rises into the sky and my poor ant heart sinks in my chest. What at first seems like a pillar, towering a kilometre into the sky quickly transforms into a tidal wave that curves down toward me.
I can hear the rushing sound as a wall of air is pushed back into me by the overwhelming ash cloud.
Where the heck did this come from?! Pyrixan was holding this back all along?! That’s cheating!
My minds churn and I create a barrier of stone that wraps over me into a hollow dome that I frantically reinforce just before the ash breaks like a wave and washes over the battlefield, burying everything in a layer of ash.
Immediately I can feel my defensive stone begin to collapse as the power of destruction consumes it like a potent acid.
My mind constructs burn as I pour every ounce of mana I get my hands on into reinforcing the stone and thickening it. Anything to keep that damned ash from touching my shiny carapace!
Comments
Paragon
Just when I was forgetting, I’m reminded that Anthony is definitely half-insane. 3 Tier 8’s at once???
Icharris
But certain death at the hands of these peak tier 8’s is the answer? It just doesn’t make sense. It goes behind recklessness to just feeling like any way he can win is purely plot armor. Clearly Invidia is up to something but now apparently a T6 is going to turn the tables on 3 tier 9’s??? All I can think of is a gate to summon more ants to charge up Anthony which is probably the least plot armorish way to resolve this without breaking the entire novels power system.
Icharris
Yeah I mean how will they get more dangerous? Do you know how long Anthony took to evolve to tier 7 and how much it set off the seers senses. If any of these tier 8’s tried to evolve to tier 9 on the third layer it would probably take a year. In that time Anthony and let’s could be maxed out tier 7 and still have some time to spare. I just don’t see where this risk is coming from with the establishment that evolving takes such long periods. Heck the way would probably end before a tier 8 can evolve to tier 9.
Gardor
He also just got a bunch of recommended passive skills from Granin that he seems to have devoted zero effort towards leveling, seems like they would be a relatively quick way of increasing his combat ability. Like he's already mentioned how the battlefield is too chaotic, which was what one of them addressed, and having a skill to make his future dodging more effective seems like a no brainer vs. the demon with a thousand swords.
alt31415
For sure they're gonna have Stratum 5s. There was one Stratum 5 that broke through into the 2nd stratum waaaay back during the second wave.
Gonvas
Anthony said he went after the T8s and didn't just wait it out because he was worried about the 4th stratum nest. In the 4th stratum, the monsters are more powerful, can reach higher tiers with no problem and there's a real chance that 5th and 6th stratum monsters make their appearance.
Centuri
But it should be kept in mind that the ancients are becoming more desperate for the twentieth ancient to take their place.
alt31415
I mean, it's implied Garralosh was prevented from descending for decades. For Anthony it's been what? A week? Not even that? I hardly think it's urgent.
Anthony Romanov
You are forgetting that Anthony has the Calling. He is in in constant Pain that increases the longer he stays at 3rd level! The first big boss reincarnated lizard went Insane because Legion was preventing her to descend to lower levels. Anthony is on borrowed time! Either he deals with the Threat NOW or have no choice other then to descend to 4th level and leave Colony to abandon the 3rd level to 8th class demons and it be catastrophic to Colony's future.
Gopard
Thanks for the chapter!
Gopard
While that is true, ANY fight near the colony would give Anthony much better chances and here he is not only isolated from the Colony but also in an extremely hostile environment. AND I disagree that this is the "only shot" they have, Anthony and the pets growth' is much higher than that of those tier 8 demons, I personally think they should've turned around just before engaging and basically return while also keeping up the killing, then should the demons persue he can always turn around and fight in a place closer to the colony because his Altar range is obscenely large any way! It's one of the easiest tactics in war to CHOOSE THE BATTLEFIELD WISELY WHEN POSSIBLE and in this case it's the three Heralds that want to "cleanse" the Stratum of the Colony and thus THEY need to force the fight at some point and with Crinis and Tony due for evolution soon Anthony should have been able to either drag this cat and mouse out until that point or force a fight on HIS conditions!
BelligerentGnu
I mean, this one is pretty dam obvious. The three tier 8s are only going to get more dangerous, and if they're not stopped, there goes the colony. It's not dumb, he's taking a risky shot because it's the only one he has.
alt31415
Oh boy, here we go! Whatever plan Indivia's got going, he better hurry.
Andrick
I think I understand why Anthony ran into this hopeless situation; however, I’m also kind of confused. He’s been maturing but sometimes he does dumb stuff, like insult the mother tree for no reason
Koala Man
Epic :)
Koala Man
Protectant and crew ? I get they wouldn’t last anywhere near the big guys , but if they went and got reinforcements more ants = more alter fuel ? They wouldn’t need to get close to the fight because it has a decent range
Wensber
Last chapter implied a surprise attack/trap was being prepared.
M Afxarr
Still unsure why Antony made this seemingly very rash decision to tackle all 3 of them at once. Hope he comes out eating a bellyful of their biomass. Thanx for the chappy RinoZ
Findell
Chapter 1152 -> Chapter 1153
