Chapter 49: Level Up! [1]
Back in Seris’s dorm, the female servant couldn’t look away from the glass sphere.
Its surface shimmered, showing the battlefield in real time, fire across the slope, lightning tearing through the air, two enormous beasts crashing into each other while a dark-furred bear and a white fire wolf held their ground between all of it and one person.
"My lady..." The servant’s voice came out smaller than she intended. "First he was fighting like a warrior. Then he started using elemental attacks like a mage. Now he’s commanding two beasts at once." She watched Glacius block a Dragon’s claw with its body. "What class even is he?"
Seris’s gaze hadn’t left the sphere.
"Honestly?" She rested her cheek against her fist. "I don’t know."
"...You don’t know?"
"Not yet."
She watched Pyrion dart between the Dragon’s legs, too fast to track cleanly.
"It feels like Alden was never supposed to exist." Her voice stayed even. Thoughtful. "Yet every time there’s a wall in front of him, no matter how massive it is..."
The corner of her lips moved.
"He finds the smallest crack and slips through."
The servant watched Glacius take a direct hit and stand back up anyway.
"...I see."
She didn’t say anything else.
__________
The Dragon’s wings hammered against the ice wall in steady, crushing impacts.
BOOM!
Cracks ran across the surface. Glacius’s whole body shook under the force of holding it. Its claws were buried in the ground, not because it had chosen to dig in but because it was the only thing stopping it from being pushed back entirely.
BOOOOM.
More cracks arrived. The frostfire at its neck dimmed slightly with the effort.
Alden stared at its back.
"You can actually do something like this?"
Glacius looked over its shoulder. Then it raised one enormous paw and gave him a thumbs up.
Alden’s mouth twitched.
"...You’re proud of yourself, aren’t you."
The teeth flashed.
He couldn’t help it. He grinned.
CRACK.
The grin disappeared.
The wall split from top to bottom in one long fracture. Glacius turned back immediately. The Dragon’s claws punched through the barrier and the whole thing exploded — shards of ice flying in every direction, Glacius throwing both arms up to shield its face.
The Dragon stepped through the collapsing wall.
Its golden eyes found Alden immediately.
"Oh great."
He stepped back. The Dragon’s throat began to glow.
"Not again—"
ZZZZT.
Lightning crossed the battlefield from the left.
The Thunder Ape was already there. Its fist wrapped in violent crackling electricity, coming straight at Alden’s head.
Glacius spun on its heel.
FWOOSH.
A curtain of frostfire erupted from its jaws, meeting the incoming fist head-on. The Ape’s punch punched through the frost, but the ice that formed across its arm in the impact slowed it just enough, Glacius caught the fist on both paws and dug in.
BOOOOM.
The ground cracked under both of them. Glacius slid backward, carving two long grooves through the snow, and held.
The Ape pulled its arm back. Lightning surged through its whole body. It twisted and swung its other fist in a wide arc.
Glacius ducked. The fist passed over its head and hit the mountain behind it.
Rock and ice sprayed outward from the impact.
Glacius didn’t wait. It drove its shoulder into the Ape’s chest and the Thunder Ape actually went back a step.
The Ape’s feet slammed down. Electricity ripped outward from where they hit, spreading across the ground in branching lines.
Glacius jumped.
The lightning passed under it.
Meanwhile Alden had exactly one second before the Dragon’s glow became a problem.
A white-orange blur cut across his vision.
"AWOOO!"
Pyrion came in from the side, not in a straight line but weaving between the flames the Dragon had already released, using the gaps between streams to close the distance without getting caught. It hit the Dragon’s jaw in a short burst of speed that snapped its head sideways.
The Dragon’s breath veered up and scorched a line across the sky instead of the ground.
Pyrion landed on its neck. Claws raked across the scales. The Dragon roared and whipped its body, and Pyrion launched off just before the tail swept across the slope.
WHOOOM.
The tail hit nothing but air.
Pyrion landed clean.
On the other side of the field—
BANG.
Glacius and the Ape locked again. Lightning crawled over Glacius’s arm. Frost spread over the Ape’s. Neither let go.
Then the Ape headbutted Glacius directly in the face.
THUD.
Glacius staggered. The Ape grabbed its shoulder and swung it like a thrown object.
BOOM.
Glacius hit the ground, rolled, stopped.
"Glacius!"
The Frost Bear pushed itself up immediately, arms trembling. Still getting up.
Alden looked between the two of them.
Pyrion back on its feet, flames lower than they should be. Glacius upright but slower than before.
’They’re keeping up.’
’Against two monsters at ranks I have no business being near.’
He looked at his own hands.
’And I’m standing here healing them between hits instead of actually fighting.’
He pulled up his status.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
NAME: Alden — Level 20
EXP: 15,420 / 16,000
Combat Power: 75
Rank: D+
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
’D+.
I have Breath, Prediction, Predator’s Instinct, Razor Claw — and I’m still D+ against things at this tier.’
The mountain shook under another exchange.
He opened Soul Forge.
His eyes went to Spider.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Selected Blueprint: Spider
Selected Concepts: Glow + Razor Claw
Compatibility: 29%
Warning: Crafting Stability Unstable
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
He stared at it.
’In games, throwing more materials at a craft usually raises the success rate.’
He adjusted the configuration.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Selected Blueprint: Spider ×5
Selected Concepts: Glow ×5 + Razor Claw ×5
Compatibility: 51%
Crafting Stability: Probable
Configuration has a moderate chance of remaining stable.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
’It’s like a coin flip.’
BOOOOM.
The mountain shook, he looked up.
A lightning bolt tore across the battlefield, not aimed at Pyrion or Glacius—
Aimed at him. His pupils shrank.
’Predator’s Instinct — cooldown.’
He had no time to move.
A massive shape stepped in front of him.
"NO! GLACIUS—"
CRACK-BOOOOM.
The lightning hit Glacius square in the back.
The flash was blinding. For one full second the whole slope was white.
Then Glacius hit the ground.
THUD.
Alden was moving before the echo finished. He dropped beside the Frost Bear, both hands going to its side.
The frostfire was almost completely out. Smoking wounds across its back where the lightning had hit. Its breathing had gone shallow and heavy, each exhale pushing against the ground beneath it.
Its arms were shaking. It was trying to get up.
"Don’t move—"
Alden pressed his palms flat. The black smoke flowed.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Soul Healing Activated]
HP: 18 → 23 → 29 → ...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
It was going slow. He gritted his teeth.
Behind him, Pyrion was still fighting, flashing across the Dragon’s line of sight, dragging its attention away. But its flames had dropped to barely anything. Its movements were shorter.
Both of them were fighting for him.
Getting ground down so he could stand here with his hands on a wounded bear.
He looked at his own hands.
’I’m the weakest thing on this mountain right now.’
The Dragon turned. Its golden eyes found him through the smoke.
He stood up slowly. His hand stayed on Glacius for one more second.
"Hang in there."
Glacius looked up at him.
Alden turned to the Soul Forge.
’If it works, I have another fighter. One more body in this fight. One more chance to change how this is going.’
’If it fails, I lose fifteen fragments and gain nothing.’
He looked at Glacius. At Pyrion. At the Dragon closing the distance.
The uncertainty left his eyes somewhere between one breath and the next.
"Whatever happens," he said quietly.
His finger hovered over the interface.
"This decides everything."
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Proceed with Crafting?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
He looked at it.
"It’s do or die."
"Proceed."