From Grim's finger, a dot of light that quaked unstably while draining the highlights from the blue sky to apply them to Grim's grinning face, and armour appeared.
It charged quickly, mobilising the mana and Null Life Essence that was stored within Grim's Granted Armament and compressing them in a form that the respective skill required.
A dashing royal blue dot with a thick haze of shivering white.
As the bird reached a meagre two meters from its target, its eyes showing a certain degree of uncertainty in light of what it faced... Grim fired!
"Aggrante."
The skies suddenly turned so bright that nothing alive could have seen clearly what occurred in the next micro moment.
And since that was the case, the great creature that faced the actual attack did not see anything, though it did feel the hellish might of the throng of force which beat into it cruelly!
From the ground, a straight, extremely fast stream of light could be seen darting over the island towards a destination several kilometres away as the sky made a noise akin to falling meteors dropping heavily onto the crusted world!
It was quite the sight.
Grim, while still falling, laughed.
"Yeah, that got you, didn't it?" he said.
The great monster wasn't unharmed after that. He had seen it.
Aggrante was that powerful.
"What's with that kid and being so wasteful with energy all the time? Didn't you restrict our uses of Aggrante and Limited Granted Warp, boss?" Kenno asked while looking irritated at the skies.
"It's fine. The reserves are still abundant enough to allow such usages. Besides, I only restricted the use of your Granted Armament skills for parlour tricks. I'm actually glad Grim is choosing to rely on the armour for now instead of using his Hidden Class abilities," Replicus said.
Aggrante was an offensive skill that came with every version of the Granted Armament that Replicus had made. It had three degrees of strength – Singlefold, Doublefold, Triplefold – each of which Replicus forbade the Unlimited from using unless absolutely necessary. Even the basic form could corrode natural resilience and the artificial defences of low Mythical grade treasures if applied well enough.
As for Limited Granted Warp, it was a teleportation ability of the Granted Armament that allowed Unlimited to rush to Replicus' side immediately or transport themselves wherever they pleased.
Kenno raised a brow.
"Would you have us join that white dog on the spending spree then?" he asked, seeing as the boss wasn't upset about the excess use of energy reserves.
"No. You don't need to. All I need right now, is to figure out the nature of this creature..." Replicus said. It was clear that he was concerned about the creature's effect on the water.
How and why was it dyeing everything black?
Pherdanta, seeing where her master was gazing, spoke up.
"Has the Sacred Forest been affected too?" she asked him. She had seen the dark shadow the creature cast on the forest earlier.
Had that been permanent as well?
The gears in Replicus' mind churned.
Right. The forest. He had almost completely overlooked that previous attack.
*
While the others were analysing what was on the table, Grim was enjoying himself.
Since the dark creature had been sent so far by his Aggrante, he had used another Limited Granted Warp which soaked him a greyish light and transplaced him to the far side of the sea just in time for him to see a steak of roaring right pass overhead and into the waters a kilometre away with moist boom.
Grim grinned.
He covered the distance quickly, and dove into the water after the dark creature.
He saw its body, which had a sizzling, glowing red scar and indentation on its neck flap its wings furiously, getting ready to rise back up to the surface.
'You really are resilient...' Grim thought at the sight.
The creature was seething with fury. Its mood only became worse when it saw him, and it opened its beak wide.
A great trembling caused the water to heat up immediately.
What then followed, was a fierce darkness that washed over the water, turning it inky black in a few short moments.
A glaring burst of Primus also coursed along, and before everything was masked completely, Grim sensed the lives of all the aquatic creatures nearby disappear. He didn't know whether it was because his senses were cut off, or if the creatures had just up and died immediately.
'It's most likely that my senses have been suppressed. This must be its primary form of attack, but there's something else...' Grim frowned.
Right now, there was silence. Terrible silence.
Grim could escape whenever he wanted, but he decided to wait.
What would be the creature's next move after it cut off its target's senses?
As expected, Grim felt as though he was being watched. It was more like intuition than sense really, but this wouldn't have fazed him nearly as much as it did moments later.
It was natural for the bird creature to be able to see him in its domain of darkness, but...
The set of eyes looking at him, felt different.
Grim narrowed his eyes.
What was more like a faint feeling, then turned into absolute certainty.
Something was watching him from the darkness, but it wasn't the great dark bird.
...
Suddenly...
A deep red image appeared before Grim!
It was circular, but odd slanted.
It was... was it... an eye?!
Its curve convinced him of what it was, and the dull radiance of it, which was more than just reflective colour smashed into Grim like a physical blow to the head!
'Damn it!' Grim cursed.
His mind spun.
The light pierced through his eyes and stroked his brain!
Quickly, in order to halt the effect, Grim closed his eyes... but the light still cut through his eyes.
The eye kept staring into his pair.
...!
Worse than that, Grim felt his body get squeezed firmly, as though he had been caught within the grip of a large hand!
No. It wasn't an analogy!
He was indeed caught!
The Unlimited grew wary, but his mind also spun to figure out what was happening.
The darkness he was trapped in... It was like a...
'...doorway?'
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺