Free Web NovelChapter 136: Boss Fight 4
Ten minutes had passed since they launched their coordinated assault, and the situation had only spiraled from bad to completely hopeless.
Juna blurred through the air, her wings leaving trails of faint light as she drove a fierce barrage of kicks against the monster’s armor. Every strike landed perfectly, targeting the joints and exposed plating, but the sheer difference in raw stats made her attacks completely useless. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm
Loccy rushed in right behind her, using her single wing to propel herself forward with terrifying physical momentum.
She swung her fists in wide, devastating arcs, throwing everything she had at the creature’s chest, but the dark red aura surrounding its body easily absorbed the force.
The monster wasn’t even trying to dodge.
It simply stood there, letting the two girls unload their best attacks before lazily swatting them away like annoying insects
A single backhand sent Loccy tumbling violently across the ruins, while a casual kick caught Juna in the stomach, forcing a pained gasp from her lips as she crashed heavily into the wall.
Hajin yanked on his chain, pouring his mana into the links to forcefully pull the monster’s arm backward, preventing it from stomping on Juna.
’This isn’t working,’ he thought, his chest heaving as sweat dripped down his face, ’we have been fighting for a while and we haven’t left a single scratch on this thing.’
The monster was just toying with them. It wasn’t using its terrifying speed or its devastating hammer strikes anymore, simply dragging the fight out to watch them exhaust themselves.
The Captain was completely out of the equation. He had collapsed against a pillar a few minutes ago, his Zone broken and his body completely paralyzed from the overwhelming strain of deflecting the monster’s earlier attacks.
It was just Hajin and his summons left, and they were losing badly.
Loccy slowly pushed herself up from the rubble, her body shaking while Juna struggled to even stand on her legs. Both of them were taking entirely too much damage, their internal cores fraying under the sheer pressure of the monster’s aura.
"Dammit," Hajin cursed under his breath, his jaw tightening as he looked at the two girls.
If they took another clean hit, their bodies would shatter completely, and he had absolutely no idea if they could recover from that kind of damage.
He didn’t think twice, instantly cutting the flow of mana feeding into their physical manifestations, triggering a forced unsummon.
Juna and Loccy froze mid-step, their bodies immediately dissolving into motes of golden light as the connection severed.
"Master, what are you doing!" Juna yelled, her eyes widening in pure panic as her legs vanished into golden dust.
"No!" Loccy screamed, reaching out toward him desperately before her voice was cut off completely, her entire body shattering into light and returning to his core.
The ruins suddenly felt incredibly empty, their presence entirely gone as Hajin stood alone.
The monster tilted its head, its aura bleeding lazily into the air while it watched the golden light fade away.
"Giving up already?" it asked, its deep voice completely calm.
H did not answer, keeping his eyes locked on the creature while the silence stretched between them.
"I have to admit, I am incredibly disappointed," the monster continued, taking a slow step forward. "When I first smelled the resonance of your mana, I thought you were special. It is entirely unique, chaotic yet pure, something I have never tasted before. I actually thought you might provide some entertainment."
It stopped a few feet away, looking down at him with its black visor.
"But you are just a coward hiding behind borrowed power," it said, the aura pressing down heavily on the surrounding air.
"The moment the fight turns against you, you send your familiars away to save them, standing there trembling instead. You don’t have the physical strength to match me, you don’t have the technique to deflect me, and now you don’t even have the numbers to distract me. You are nothing but a complete disappointment with a pretty scent."
Hajin stared up at the creature.
He looked at its perfectly pristine armor, at the sheer, suffocating weight of the aura leaking from its body, and then he thought about everything that had happened over the last ten minutes.
He thought about Helen’s devastating ice attacks completely failing, the Captain’s perfect kinetic parries doing zero damage, and his own chain getting effortlessly swatted away.
Then, he started to laugh.
It wasn’t a dry chuckle or a nervous sound. It was a genuine, echoing laugh that bubbled up from his chest, cutting straight through the tension of the ruins.
"Haha," he laughed, throwing his head back slightly while his shoulders shook.
’That absolute fucker Kenny,’ he thought, wiping a stray tear from his eye. ’He lied to the council about what wiped out his squad to cover up whatever actually happened.’
He lowered his hand, his eyes locking back onto the creature while a completely unhinged grin spread across his face.
’The Royal Court labeled this a seven-shard gate based on his bullshit story,’ he thought, feeling the raw, terrifying pressure radiating from the creature. ’He never even saw the boss. If he actually ran into this thing, he wouldn’t have made it out with his life, let alone just missing an arm.’
The monster stopped bleeding its aura, its head tilting slightly to the side as it watched him.
"What exactly are you laughing about?" it asked, its calm tone finally cracking with a hint of genuine irritation.
He finally stopped laughing, letting out a long, heavy sigh as a thick cloud of golden mist slipped past his lips.
"I am laughing because I realized how badly we prepared for this," he said, his voice dropping into a calm, hollow tone. "But I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore."
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, his mind flashing back the Goddess. They had talked about his purpose in life, his role, and the overwhelming difference in power between him and the monsters tearing the world apart.
But she hadn’t just healed him and sent him back. She had given him a gift to help bridge that gap.
He opened his eyes and the ground beneath his boots instantly vaporized into a fine powder, the sheer force of his movement breaking the sound barrier as he exploded across the ruins.
The monster didn’t even have time to widen its stance or raise its arms to defend itself before Hajin was already inside its guard.
He drove his fist directly into the center of its black visor.
The impact did not send the creature flying backward. Instead, the raw, concentrated force of the blow traveled straight down, instantly crushing the monster’s metal frame directly into the ground beneath it.
The ground violently caved in around them, forming a massive crater as a shockwave tore through the surrounding ruins, completely flattening whatever rubble was left standing.
He stood over the crumpled creature, his fist still buried deep in its visor.
For the first time since the fight started, the dark red aura surrounding the monster flickered and died. A thick stream of black, corrupted blood spilled out from the cracked metal, pooling onto the ground.
Hajin slowly pulled his fist back, his breathing perfectly steady while a strange, intricate golden mark burned brightly on the back of his hand.
The glowing lines slowly started crawling up his forearm, etching themselves into his skin like liquid fire while the golden mist continued to pour from his mouth.
[Goddess Resonance: Unlocked]
[Warning: User core cannot sustain maximum resonance indefinitely.]
[Time Remaining: 19:59]
