Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 185: Night into day

There is no hesitation as my mana swirls through my body and powers up the skills I need to use. It moves with all the confidence I feel and is fed to the skill that transforms it and reaches out from my body toward the fireball flying at me.

The giant ball of flames pauses in the air and returns to its round shape. I push more; my mana resonates as I take over the flames with my usage of [Redistribution] and [Resonance].

How hard can it be to deal with a few monsters that are around level 160 from what I can feel? How can they compare to Cinderbear from Beyond and his control over the heat his body generated?

At the same moment as I take over the blue fireball, my golden orb explodes down there as ten Flame Legion Ants try to take it over. Their mana moves, tries to weaken it; they try to absorb the orb, they try to dissipate it.

Nothing works, and just a moment before reaching them, the orb expands and blazes up into an explosion of bright golden flames that devour everything.

A golden light turns the night into day for just a short moment, and then heat follows. Snow immediately turns into vapor without turning into water first. The ground cracks under immense heat and turns into something that reminds me of lava.

The heat immediately evaporates the closest ants, dozens of them, and the ones further away are set ablaze.

I absorb the heat that reaches me and recycle it, feeding it to the blue fireball I took over. It expands and threatens to explode, but I take control of it and force it under my will.

[Resonance] breaks through the bottleneck and finally reaches level twenty at the same moment as I make the fireball smaller. And smaller. The color is still blue, affected by the mana of the ants, but now there are streaks of gold going through it; it's now as big as an orange.

The attack continues, and the surviving ants climb up the mountain, still, hundreds of them left. The monsters are not scared, not hesitating as they throw their bodies against me at the top of the mountain.

Streams of blue flame with golden streaks blaze into the night, continuing to burn all the ants that get too close. The amount of heat the orb packs is incredible, so I continuously funnel it and shoot it out in a stream that devours and sets ablaze any monster that gets too close, constantly sending flashes of light into the area.

[You have defeated an Ant Warrior - lvl 95]

[You have defeated an Ant Warrior - lvl 97]

[You have defeated a Gravity Ant - lvl 135]

[You have defeated a Phantom Ant - lvl 145]

[You have defeated an Ant Warrior - lvl 95]

[You have defeated an Ant Warrior - lvl 101]

[You have defeated a Phantom Ant - lvl 148]

...

Notifications continue to ring, and I only pause to invest all the stat points I am getting from level-ups. It takes what feels like a long time, but the last ant finally dies, and I stop my flames, which I had to feed with my own energy as I depleted the ones from Flame Legion Ants.

The air continues to shimmer, still hot from all the heat that was released. The air is hard to breathe. My throat is parched, and I can feel how dry the air and my skin are.

I reach out and pull as much residual heat as I can and start creating a new orb while checking notifications.

[Lvl 132 > Lvl 135]

Side quest is also updated again. Side quest: Defeat 800 ants.

The amount of shards I am getting seems like it shouldn't be so "easy" to get. Sure the system won't nerf it? Anyway, I quite lucked out with my opponents, didn't I? But yeah, who told them to be so flammable and weak for their level? Well, at least to me they are weak. Something tells me that other people might have a bit more trouble with them.

But the plan is simple. Get as much as I can out of this before things turn to shit. Knowing the system, something will mess up fairly soon, and I will have to make some changes. The system just hates me having some fun. Maybe I will lose my left arm again; maybe some Deer ant will pop up, or some were-ant monster. I wouldn't be surprised at all.

My mana encompasses the area as far as I can, and this time I detect only a single ant. A smaller variant I didn't see up until now. That ant stands at the top of the mountain quite a distance away from me, and when I move closer, the ant activates some skill and disappears to the edge of my detection range, watching me.

Looks like they have swapped tactics after Flame Legion Ants did nothing against the attack they saw me use the most—my flames.

I try shooting a javelin at the scouting ant, but the monster disappears the moment I do so and once again watches me from the edge of my [Perception]. It's too far so I can't see what class or level it is, but from seeing how it keeps a distance, it's sure to be at least a bit over 150.

Okay, let's collect more thermal energy before another wave comes at me; the little scout can watch.

As before, I find one of the taller mountains and sit on top of it. I use Mana Regulator and allow more of my mana to flow into my Kinetic Mana Heart and then transfer all energy it generates into thermal energy.

It doesn't take that long and two more ants appear on the edge of my [Perception] and continue to watch me.

After a few more minutes, it gets annoying, them just looking at me.

Okay, I will fuck you up.

I stand up and prepare to throw myself at them when something hits me. A skill.

A moment later, mana washes over me and the orb I was compressing until now gets out of my control.

Uh, oh.

The orb explodes and a blast of dark yellow flames fire up against me. The entire amount I was collecting up until now gets expelled at once and I slip into [Focus] and knowing that my [Redistribution] wouldn't be able to handle all of this heat at once, I activate [Resonance] instead.

Space itself shimmers around me as I resonate and weaken and cancel all the heat that is expanding from the exploding orb near me. I am able to reduce the impact by a lot, yet I still feel burns covering the entirety of my body as I am thrown away from the explosion.

My body crashes on the ground and continues to roll down the mountain until I absorb the kinetic energy of my fall and immediately create armor around my body. Just in time as the ground under me bulges and two heads of ants bigger than before bite at me.

One of the ants bites its mandibles around me and the armor around my body cracks and barely holds on before I send a pulse of resonating mana along the blade of the sword I pull out and cut off the mandible.

I do not stay on the ground and instead push myself high into the air.

But they have expected that.

There is already something like a web encompassing the huge area around me. The mana it contains isn't that large as they created it quickly, but there are multiple layers to it and it seems to have disrupting tendencies.

I shoot flames against it, but the moment I do so another wave of mana washes over me and the flames that left my body get out of my control and just die off in the air.

Quickly, I detect the monster that did that and instead of flying up, I change direction and push myself towards that monster. But even that seems to be somewhat expected and two ants step into my way.

Ants of a similar size to the others, yet their bodies are covered in weird symbols that radiate mana and glow in a white color.

The moment I get close, these ants charge at me and their carapaces easily deflect my mana projectiles, and their mandibles get filled with mana and with an effect similar to my [Armament], they elongate and double up in size. Large mandibles made of mana that, even without checking, I immediately know are immensely sharp.

I reduce the amount of thermal energy inside me that I kept high to heal myself, and instead, I turn it back to its original form and a thin cone of kinetic energy hits one of the ants and explodes half of its head.

The monster staggers backwards and white glowing symbols on its body start to glow even more, and its head starts regenerating until it's fully healed. Right after, some of the white glowing symbols on the ant disappear.

Interesting.

I dodge their attacks that are much faster than those of the other ants and continue to throw kinetic energy at them. This energy is not canceled, unlike thermal energy.

Both ants that have carapaces covered in white glowing symbols attack me in tandem and continue to block for each other. When I explode the legs of one of them, the other one pushes me hard until the other one regenerates them.

They quickly learn to expect attacks with kinetic energy and every time I move my sword, they jump back and wait for the right chance, almost as if they feel the resonating mana that coats the blade.

Their physical stats are really high, so it's hard to absorb the movement of their bodies.

Soon, they find a chance and I get thrown away by one of them; the second one uses the opportunity and jumps at me with mana-filled mandibles wide open, while the other one circles as if to attack my back.

My mana resonates and the mandibles dissipate to the ant's shock, and its normal mandibles just snap a bit in front of me.

More mana flows into my sword, and I slash it against the ant's face, which gets split in half. The symbols start glowing and [Resonance] halts the skill long enough for my kinetic energy to explode half of the ant's body.

The ant´s body falls down, and the symbols flicker one more time before the ant dies.

[You have defeated an Ant Sentinel - lvl 181]

Without hesitation, I turn around and this time I do not hold back. I've seen everything I wanted and have an idea of how their skills work. Mana resonates in the area while two large mana arms reach out from my back and grab the remaining ant. It´s easier now that the ant´s symbols have lost some of their glow under the influence of my disrupting mana.

A following blast of kinetic energy finishes the monster.

[You have defeated an Ant Sentinel - lvl 178]

[Lvl 135 > Lvl 136]

Having dealt with the duo, I boost my body and continue to run towards the place where the ant that keeps messing with my flames is.

The net over my head continues to strengthen more and more, and the spacing in between is finer. The net covers a massive area, and I see hundreds of ants that enter the edge of my perceiving scans and continue to feed it. They all work together, and only a few ants maintain the skills while others feed them their mana. Something that all ants share allows them to work together in such a way.

Just as I reach the annoying ant, another ant phases out of the ground; it nearly looks like its body moves through the material like earth. That ant touches the one that messes with my thermal energy, and both of them sink into the ground and their mana signature disappears.

Then a giant net around me sets down, and a pulse of mana is sent through the area.

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