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Edge of apocalypse 79
🕑 Added 2023-07-05 12:40:51 +0000 UTCAlbert began to perform the sequence of mental procedures necessary to successfully teleport. He went through them all with incredible speed, quicker than he had ever managed to, or even thought possible. However…
[Teleportation denied.]
The shield was back online. The clouds reformed instantly, and right as the thunderstorm resumed spewing down torrential rain and lightning, the roar of the dragon shook the valley with more power and hatred than ever before. The monstrous entity was malformed and misshapen, having healed as quickly as possible, and when it detached from the tower it started to disintegrate and lose cohesion.
Yet, it shot up into the air and dove down to where Albert was recovering from his failed teleportation. It shed its damaged shell, and all the misshapen scales went yet again to form a crown around the dragon’s head so that as it descended onto Albert, it also fired them one after the other like a machine gun.
“Albert.” The grandpa in his ear spoke. “Albert!”
Albert shook himself out of his pain-induced stupor. Failed skill backlash was never easy to recover from, and [Mental Fortress] did nothing to help out on that front. Perhaps he really needed to split the skill and allow it to grow more.
“Albert!”
“Yes! Yes!” He said, and immediately activated Bullet Time again and teleported to safety.
Almost too late. The teleportation was halted due to the high magical density of the dragon impacting the ground where Albert stood, knocking him out of teleportation space and sending him rolling in the mud. The impact from the dragon crashing also sent a wave of compressed air and water that almost knocked the wind out of him.
He struggled to push himself back up. Everything was hurting. But he refused to dull the pain with a skill. With a groan, he took a stance and once again readied himself to face the dragon.
“Albert!”
“What do you want????” He snapped. He was up and fighting, what did the old man want?
“Your mother!”
“What???” Albert complained. It almost felt like Lloyd was making a ‘your mom’ joke at the most inappropriate of times. Perhaps he was, but not voluntarily, because was he meant was something else.
Quest: Impenetrable Barrier I Complete!
· There is a barrier surrounding the Pillar, making it inaccessible from the outside. The overabundance of magic makes teleporting inside all but impossible. There is, however, another way.
· Distract the Stone Dragon until reinforcements arrive.
· The head is rotten, but the men are good: The mission will be considered a failure if all the HDF agents perish.
· Reward: Dodge Level Up – Mana Crystallization Level Up
Mana Crystallization Skill level up!
· I: Coalesce mana into crystals with a max capacity of 1FU. The crystals will decay after 10 hours.
· II: Capacity increased to 2FU.
Dodge Skill level up!
· II: Upon reaching a flow state, you become able to dance around and dodge incoming strikes. Attacking and taking hits will disrupt the flow state.
· III: Activate to gain Elusive status for five seconds. Elusive status grants you immunity to all projectiles.
Oh. Now it made sense.
“She’s at the edge of the field with a nuclear warhead.” Lloyd said.
“Really? A nuclear warhead?” Albert asked. He could almost not believe it. How did she—
“Yes. Really. But there is no delivery system. There was no time. You will need to figure out how to transport it close enough to damage the dragon.”
He thought about it. What a conundrum. He wished he could fly. The next best thing was using teleport to appear in mid-air, thanks to the last time he climbed the dragon having added some mid-air positions to his map. But then what?
There was a way. A silly way. But a way nonetheless.
Dodge! It was the answer! Now all he needed to do was bait the dragon into unleashing a breath attack on him.
“Will the weapon be powerful enough?”
“That’s the other problem.” Lloyd said. “You need to make sure you hit a soft spot.”
New Quest: Impenetrable Barrier II.
· Your mother has arrived, carrying the solution to your draconic issue. There is a little delivery problem, however, one you will need to overcome.
· Destroy the Stone Dragon and gain entrance to the Pillar.
· Reward: Firelaser skill video.
Albert nodded. It was not a problem. He had a plan in mind.
The dragon had recovered from planting itself headfirst into the ground, shaking free of the several meters of stone its head was embedded in. It rose once again to the sky, coiling twice as it drew a figure eight in the air before preparing to slam its tail down to flatten Albert where he stood.
Albert teleported to safety, also taking stock of where his mother was with the payload. The dragon seemed to follow his gaze and spotted the truck Samantha was driving, staring at it.
“I don’t like this.”
It shot forward. Towards the truck.
Albert’s eyes grew wide. He knew that he needed to act and quicky, diverting the dragon’s attention from the truck and back to himself. He teleported as close as he could, in the middle point between the dragon and his mother, and began to fire. With one hand he cast fireball after fireball, of which one every five was the empowered version of the fireball and did considerable damage, while with the other hand he held the heaviest weapon he could and fired directly at the dragon’s head.
The barrage of magical and actual bullets was too much for the dragon to ignore this time. It didn’t have its armor anymore, and every shot chipped away at its defenses, exposing the inner layers of stone and causing holes that were taking longer and longer to close up. Wherever the fireballs hit, the stone was cooked and superheated, and regeneration was even slower.
The dragon readied a breath attack to once and for all put an end to its source of nuisance: Albert.
This time, however, it seemed like Albert had no more fuel left in the tank. He just stood there as the dragon roared, an expression of fear and defeat on his face. The breath attack, the strongest the dragon had ever unleashed, was so powerful that it made even the mighty beast pause to recover from exertion.
Albert stared at the incoming attack. Then he, along with everything in a 50 meter radius around him, became a crater buried in a cloud of dust.
He was gone.
The dragon could have a moment of respite from all the constant attacks, before it had to deal with the only foe left to defeat in the valley. Then, all would be over, and it could rule—
Suddenly something, like an ant, crawled onto its back. It could feel the sensation like an itch it could not reach to scratch, moving about on its back and jumping from scale to scale. The dragon roared in anger and directed all its floating scales to deal with this new nuisance, uncaring of the fact that most of the scales simply stabbed its own body and that the nuisance didn’t seem to care. It only wanted it gone.
Then the nuisance climbed to its back and reached a place where the dragon had been hit by an artillery shot. It hadn’t quite healed properly since the last fight due to a later fireball having melted the stone around the hole.
The nuisance climbed inside.
Then the nuisance was gone.
No doubt it had fallen down and perished.
Albert reappeared close to his mother. He was the nuisance of course, and not some other hidden enemy like the dragon thought. It could be understandable, though, for the dragon didn’t know that Albert had been faking it when the dragon attacked him with the breath attack. It had been all part of his plan, as he wanted to make the dragon think he had died. Instead, he had entered the Dodge state of Elusive, and simply shrugged off all the damage and teleported away when the dust was too thick for anyone to see inside.
He then grabbed the nuclear warhead, teleported in mid-air to a point he had already been during the last fight, activated Bullet Time to maximum power with custom physics and maneuvered until he landed on the back of the dragon. From there, he climbed to the hole, deposited the bomb, and left.
“Fireworks time!”
A blinding light was all that could be seen when the nuclear warhead exploded. By the time the eyes adjusted and the mushroom cloud was visible, the shockwave had reached the truck and knocked it over, for a moment robbing the two people there of their cover. Then, pieces of the dragon started raining down.
[Mana]: 43FU + 32/hour -> 98FU + 45/hour
“Holy sh—”
Quest: Impenetrable Barrier II Complete!
· Your mother has arrived, carrying the solution to your draconic issue. There is a little delivery problem, however, one you will need to overcome.
· Destroy the Stone Dragon and gain entrance to the Pillar.
· Reward: Firelaser skill video.
“There is no time to celebrate.” Albert’s mother said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We will have all the time you want for that later. Now, go inside that pillar and find the egg. Quick! The Pillar is almost fully materialized.”
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