“There, did you see it?” Gabby asked without moving her eyes away from Cynrik.
“Yeah, I think it’s Backlash from the skill.” Brance quickly explained the skill description for [Lightning Armor] to Gabby, causing her to wiggle her nose left and right cutely as she mulled over the information.
“If he is already seeing effects like that after only two and a half minutes, then by the time he reaches three or even four minutes, it will begin slowing him down. Knowing Big Bro’s pain tolerance, the issue is that he will likely ignore the signs of Backlash and write them off as muscle fatigue.” Gabby analyzed.
[Cyn, pay attention to your body.] Taking in the information from Gabby, Brance alerted Cynrik to his situation.
[Tsk, who do you think I am? Benny? I already noticed I was feeling resistance with my attacks. My arms and legs are freaking out after releasing a chambered attack, but with the force of the collision, the muscles go back to normal, like a spring.] Kicking off the ground and flipping, Cynrik dodged several angry tailwhips and returned fire with a flurry of kicks, making his opponents spit teeth as he connected with their jaws.
However, when he threw the last kick, Cynrik’s right calf cramped up, and he nearly fell when landing. If not for his situational awareness and being close to a pillar, he would have ended up right in the line of fire of several pissed-off and aggressive dinosaurs.
Instead, he leaned back, gripped his calf with his right hand, and kicked off the pillar with his left leg, lunging forward and tackling one of the dinos still under (Burn).
“ANNK RAHNNK,” the creature cried as Cynrik barreled into it full force and pinned it to a pillar while punching it repeatedly in the ribs.
-You have dealt 2035 damage to your opponent.-
-You have dealt 592 damage to your opponent.-
-You have dealt 718 damage to your opponent.-
-You have dealt 323 damage to your opponent.-
-You have dealt 906 damage to your opponent.-
[Get ready; I’ve got most of them down to 5k already, I am deactivating my skill in 15 seconds, 3 minutes is my limit, for now, any longer, and I’m pretty sure my body will start going out of control more frequently like just now.] Pushing off the injured creature, fracturing its ribs further, Cynrik bounced backward and made a break for it toward the trap.
Luckily, he had injured most of the RaptorBasilisks so severely that most of the twenty-four were either laying on the ground moaning weakly or just straight up unconscious.
But to Cynrik’s surprise, when he looked over his shoulder, he had seven dinos chasing after him.
Wearing a smirk on his face, Cynrik deactivated [Lightning Armor] precisely three minutes after he first activated it and was suddenly overcome with a wave of exhaustion as the excess Lightning Mana particles evaporated from his body in purplish steam.
His physical features quickly returned to normal, and his shoulder-length black hair cascaded around his neck and shoulders. And after letting out a loud and exhausted sigh, Cynrik pulled out a hair tie from his inventory before tying his hair into a ponytail and leading his Aggroed opponents into the confinement area.
[The rest are up to you two. I left you guys the cripples and weak, but there are still 17 left over, so figure out how you will split them.] Leaning forward and drawing his dagger from its sheath on his back, Cynrik threw it toward the top of the pillar in the far corner and, after jumping back and forth for a few seconds, perched himself on top of it, high above the panting and tired dinos.
‘Fuck I burned a lot of Mana testing those skills out, and I still have a handful I didn’t get to use.’ Cynrik complained to himself as he pulled up his stats and noticed the loss of resource stats.
When he first unlocked his new Affinity, he had recovered all his MP as a reward, but it began dwindling the instant he started using [Charge].
-Tier-0 Lightning Affinity Skill [Charge]-
-Category: Active Mana Gathering and Conversion Skill .-
-All Skills need a power source. For Lightning Affinity Users, that power source isn’t the particles themselves but how you harness Lightning Particles and convert them into usable energy.-
-This skill allows the User to use the Lightning Mana stored in their Codex and the Ambient Lightning Mana in their body, effectively allowing the User’s Body to keep more Mana than initially possible.-
-More Ambient Particles are required to convert them into [Charge] counters, and drawing in and converting Ambient Mana Particles will drain the User’s Stamina.-
-Cost: Converts Mana collected into [Charge], 1 Charge= 25 Of User’s Own Mana Particles, or 250 Ambient Mana Particles.-
-Cooldown: Once you stop charging Mana, 2 minutes.-
Using the skill, he lost over 3k MP to bring his [Charge] counter up to 201. So from the get-go, Cynrik had practically burned the free 5k Mana that, if he didn’t Evolve his Fire Affinity, wouldn’t exist.
Next, he used [Lightning Armor], which burned 2500 MP, followed by [Flash Steps], taking away 1800 MP.
After that was [Discharge] costing him 750, and lastly [Lightning Javelin] took 1500. So the total amount of MP he lost fighting those 24 RaptorBasilisks, was 9,550, or a little over 70% of his Mana Pool, leaving him with only 4k in the tank.
Not to mention his muscles were continuously twitching now that his [Lightning Armor] had been deactivated. Luckily Cynrik hadn’t tried pushing himself to the absolute limit of five minutes; otherwise, there is a good possibility that he would have been utterly fucked.
Heaving another tired sigh, Cynrik withdrew two Mana Potions from his inventory, uncorked them, and guzzled the clear liquid down, restoring himself back up to roughly 60% before gazing down at the seven creatures huddled around his pillar trying to climb up.
Tossing them a smile and wave, Cynrik activated [Spectre Concealment], downed a Health potion to curb the muscle spasms, retrieved his dagger, and lept down to the ground behind the dinos.
[Are you guys in position? Time’s almost up, and we need to keep going. Gabby and You only have three kills each, so you guys can bolster your numbers to catch up to my 15. Just be prepared; we have 48 of these bad boys spawning next round, and I can’t see the clock from here, but I’m pretty sure there are 18 minutes left on the clock, meaning we wasted too much time, and I kind of fucked up the counts.]
[Who’s we, Gabby and I sure weren’t the ones wasting our time spamming new attacks for literally no reason other than to alleviate boredom.] Brance retorted as he walked up and activated [White Dwarf], making five equal-sized marbles and rolling them around in his palm.
[LISTEN, it was totally necessary…even if I did burn 70% of my Mana pool…to test out five of my eight new skills. I needed to know the extent of their strength for future planning. Bah, whatever, hurry up and kill your targets. When the next wave starts, we go batshit crazy and pick them off as fast as possible.] Cynrik replied as he activated [Charge] and began converting Ambient Mana at the cost of his Stamina while supplementing when need is with his own Mana.
His Stamina was still looking good, so that meant he could burn some of it without worry. Plus, of all the potions he had in his inventory, it was the Stamina ones that he had barely used so far.
Outside of the trap, Brance rolled his eyes and motioned for Gabby to close her eyes.
Receiving the signal, Gabby stopped working on creating [Psychic Disks], of which she had a small army of floating behind her, and tightly shut her eyes before covering them with her hands and moving behind a pillar for good measure.
Once Brance was sure Gabby was safe, he took a deep breath and hurled all the marbles one after another, ensuring that all eight targets were within range.
BBBBBBBBBBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM
It barely took a second for the five milky white spheres to travel the 10-meter distance between him and the RaptorBasilisks before a massive explosion rocked the entire room, nearly making Gabby and Cynrik fall over.
[WHAT THE FUCK BRANCE! WARN A GUY BEFORE YOU START BLOWING SHIT UP!] Cynrik howled into the mind link as he patted his chest. The explosion had nearly scared him silly.
But Brance ignored his brother’s angry rant and focused on the rolling notifications.
|You have successfully Killed 3 Level 10, Early Tier-2 Virtual RaptorBasilisks.|
|You have successfully Killed 2 Level 9, Early Tier-2 Virtual RaptorBasilisks.|
|You have successfully Killed 3 Level 11, Early Tier-2 Virtual RaptorBasilisks.|
|You have received 80 Obelisk Kill Points.|
|You have received eight KCPs (Kill Counter Point).|
|Total KCP = Eleven points.|
|You have received 8 10000 Essence, XP Crystals.|
|You have received 48 Merit Points.|
|You have triggered the Respawn Timer; (16) Virtual opponents will be generated in one minute.|
“GABBY NOW!” Looking away from the notifications and seeing that the bright flash had subsided, Brance alerted Gabby it was her turn. On cue, the girl rolled out from behind the pillar and launched over 30 disks, each connecting with her desired targets, reaping the remaining creatures of their lives.
|Your Teammate has successfully Killed 4 Level 10, Early Tier-2 Virtual RaptorBasilisks.|
| Your Teammate has successfully Killed 3 Level 9, Early Tier-2 Virtual RaptorBasilisks.|
| Your Teammate has successfully Killed 2 Level 11, Early Tier-2 Virtual RaptorBasilisks.|
|Your Teammate has triggered the Respawn Timer; (18) Virtual opponents will be generated in one minute.|
Nodding and motioning for Gabby to run over to the southwest corner of the room, where Cynrik was previously posted up, Brance jogged over to where Gabby had spent the previous rounds and waited for Cynrik’s kill notifications.
Back in the trap, Cynrik clicked his tongue, manifested seven golfball-sized Blue fireballs, and wiped out his seven enemies in one go before ignoring the notifications and jogging outside of the trap.
When he was clear of the high walls, he noticed that Gabby was in the far corner of the room, and Brance had posted up in the spot they had first teleported.
[Oi, why are you swapping positions?] He asked while crossing his arms and pouting.
[Shut the hell up; your decision-making authority has been revoked for the duration of this challenge. Your dumb kill-stealing ass is banished to the trap area.] Brance spat as he watched the particle cloud expanding near the ceiling.
[What kind of backward bull shit is that? YOU WILL RESPECT, MAH AUTHORITAH!]
[Shut the fuck up, fat ass, and get back to your damn corner! There are 48 bogeys inbound, and we don’t have time to argue; we just burned another minute.] Turning his head away from Cynrik and watching the particle storm descend, Brance took a deep breath and began channeling all three of his Affinities.
-This series is exclusively published on WebNovel if you are reading it anywhere else…You Wrong, Fam. PS Check out the discord, https://discord.gg/dcxKNJEMwg-