Chapter 109: Best place to improve
When she saw him after death, it felt different.
Death could see it now, the many things she had missed about him.
He was not a simple boy as he seemed. To someone he looked at his closely would realise he was unfathomable.
To her, he now looked no different from a Divine Being forced to level up like us mortals.
This twisted her view of him. If he had previously been just a friend, after death, she realized he was now something more to her.
She now wanted him for herself...
And when she realized it, she understood: if that were to happen, then all the side characters must disappear. Otherwise, she ran the risk of forever being stuck as a side character herself.
Why stay limited to being a side character when she could be the female lead?
....
As Night sat on the throne, he didn’t know what was going through Death’s mind.
If he knew, he would be happy that she had always remembered the past, but also worried about the current her.
If he knew, he would only shake his head and say, "My Natural Calamity Physique is working overtime."
Night waited until he felt his realm had stabilized and the soul artifact was refined enough.
Looking at his gathered friends, he said, "Let’s fight as a team. I will be the one giving the instructions."
The others nodded.
Lucy agreed with him, adding, "That’s how a summoner fights."
...
The monsters on the battlefield realized something was up, and they formed a small group amongst themselves.
On their side, Lucy and Zero stood at the lead, while Death summoned the Undead Knight beside them.
Standing at the front, the Undead Knight held a shield and a short sword in each hand.
The Skeleton Light Eagles were spread around the area to act as scouts.
Eve and Lilith stood behind them as supports. Death stood at the side of Night’s throne, holding her scepter. She would be providing support and commanding the skeletons.
Two sages, the main body and the clone, were at the flank, covered in Stone armor. It seemed distance was not an issue for this ridiculous skill.
Two Water Bulls and two Armoured Fire Lizard attacked them.
Sitting on the throne, Night used the Hive Mind and his senses to scan the battlefield.
At his command, the Undead Knight and Zero clashed head-on with two of them, while the two Sages attacked the other two.
Lucy entered the shadows, while Eve and Lilith both fired at the Water Bulls. Death attacked the Armoured Fire Lizards with death bullets.
The Water Bull’s charge was blocked by the Undead Knight’s shield. Before the Bull could do anything else, Eve and Lilith’s bullets arrived, killing it immediately.
The Undead Knight didn’t pause. As per Night’s command, she rushed to the other Water Bull that clashed with Zero.
Zero froze the water, and at the same time, shadows appeared and held it in place. Before the Bull could do anything, the Undead Knight’s sword beheaded it, killing it instantly.
While this happened, the Armoured Fire Lizard fighting the clone Sage was sneak-attacked by Lucy, who struck from the shadows.
She appeared, enlarging her size, and killed the Armoured Fire Lizard in one bite.
Seeing all this, the other Armoured Fire Lizard tried to back away after watching its companions die, but Death’s spell slowed it down and drained its life.
On top of that Light Eagle skeletons blocked its skills from time to time.
Finally, it was killed when Lucy appeared again, eating it in one bite.
Looking at this display, the surrounding monsters grew uneasy, leading them to form bigger groups.
And just like that, unlike before when it was a fight between two armies, it now became a fight between three groups.
But slowly, as the bodies piled up, it became Night’s group versus the monsters from the four Dungeons.
....
The Undead Knight switched to two short swords to improve efficiency. It was the most effective tactic in the fight; she moved with a finesse that made even Sara whistle.
Lucy was now using her Shadow Aspect with abandon; she would be here one second and on the other side of the battlefield the next.
Because of the EV he had piled up, Night was getting more and more lax with its usage.
Death had turned a good bunch of corpses into skeletons and used them to assist the others.
At some point, the clone Sage got careless and took a hit, disappearing with a puff. Only for the real Sage to pull two hairs and create two new clones. These were a lot more stable than the first. It seemed she had improved a lot during the fight.
Eve and Lilith had also improved their control over the Nanobot artifact, and now they were holding not one, but two guns in their hands.
There was never a question about their aim, but somehow, it was getting better. They went from aiming precisely to predicting the monsters’ moves.
It seemed they had collected enough data from the fight. Their bullets, once finding their mark, would return to them.
Night also took information from them to improvise his strategy.
Death had also improved. She used some form of wide-area spell that darkened the entire battlefield. From then on, anytime a monster died, it released a burst of death energy that targeted nearby monsters and weakened them.
It was not obvious at first, but as the fight went on, they got to see the results.
Their deaths somehow seemed to be empowering her, which in turn made the skeleton monsters, skeleton light eagles, and the Undead Knight stronger.
Zero didn’t improve much, but it was understandable since this was new for her, and she was not using her innate skill that let her create clones. If she had her clones, the fight would have been a lot easier.
The one who improved the most was Night himself.
It didn’t just shock him; it shocked [Dream] and [Blaze] as well.
As he sat on the flying throne, he used its skills to designate his friends as Allies and the monsters as Enemies, empowering his friends and weakening the monsters.
The Ruler skill that enhanced his cognitive abilities helped him improve and issue instructions at an enhanced rate.
If this were all, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but Night went ahead and started cultivating.
For some reason, it felt right. He figured that if he only cultivated during his downtime, it would obviously take a long time, so he wanted to see if he could cultivate all the time.
According to the techniques in his memories, it was possible. However, when multitasking, the cultivation speed would be slower, much, much slower.
When he first sat down to meditate, it progressed normally. In fact, because of the throne, he was able to guide his friends and cultivate at the same time.
Then Night thought: if it’s just meditating, why doesn’t he deepen it?
The last time he did that in the forest, right after escaping the facility, he had attracted a lot of monsters. But right now, they were surrounded by monsters anyway.
So he did it. He deepened his meditation, and then it happened.
Unlike before, when Night was covered in his domain, nothing happened to his body outwardly. This was thanks to [Dream] fixing his body and, of course, the enhancement from his Natural Calamity Physique.
Ominous as it was, the Natural Calamity Physique had strengthened his body and stabilized his foundation to a ridiculous degree.
Immediately, Qi started flooding into Night. [Dream Sutra] was already an Immortal-grade Cultivation technique (equal to Divine Grade), which meant his cultivation speed was already abnormal.
But when he deepened his meditation, the speed increased, not two times, not ten times, but by a hundred times.
Even [Dream] was stunned, wondering if it was even the same technique.
In an hour, he went from Qi Awakening Stage 0 to Qi Awakening Stage 12, and he had already accumulated enough Qi to break through to Foundation Building.
If not for [Dream] stopping him, he might have broken through already.
Still, for a Cultivator, this speed was ridiculous. It took others years, and some even decades, to reach where he did in a single hour.
And as his Cultivation improved, his ability to guide his friends improved as well.
Not wanting to waste time, he used the Qi to temper his body. Although [Dream] said he could rely on his [Body Modification] Skill to speed it up, Night figured he was cultivating anyway, so he started doing that as well.
As Qi moved through his Nadis, he guided that same Qi through his bones, muscles, tissues, and organs.
He also used Nightmare Fire as per the instructions and started refining his body.
Night expected it to be painful as mentioned in the techniques, but instead, it turned out to be a pleasant experience.
As the Qi moved, he felt his body grow stronger, and it seemed the Natural Calamity Physique played a major role in it.
It seems the old saying is true: Fortune and Misfortune go hand in hand. His Natural Calamity Physique was a perfect example of this.
Shaking his head, Night continued cultivating and fighting at the same time...