Lev returned to the bubble under the disbelieving gazes of his teammates. They were deathly quiet, only staring between him and the aftermath of the lightning slash.

"As I was saying," Lev took the lead, acutely aware of their fear through their auras. "That is usually what I end up doing, because most monsters I will face are too strong."

"… How much mana was that?" Kayla asked after a few seconds of silence, too curious not to.

"Hmm. Like a hundredth of my pool?"

"And that's usually not enough?"

Lev remembered how ineffective his entire pool was against the beetle, only managing to kill it because of electrocution.

"No," he answered plainly.

Many different kinds of monsters were coming their way, most notably the wraiths zipping through the air. Lev waited until they were inside his manipulation range, firing some overloaded arrows at them once they were.

Too fast to dodge, the monsters could do absolutely nothing when the arrows exploded inside their ethereal forms, leaving behind a core and a notification each. Two upside-down round shields easily caught the cores and brought them to Lev, who stored them in his ring.

"Wraiths were quite annoying at first," he explained to his team with a small smile, no longer in his armor. "But once I noticed how vulnerable they are to mana-based attacks, killing them became a breeze."

"What level were they?" Amelia was predictably the one who asked.

"Three hundred."

A frown crossed her lips after hearing that, but she quickly remedied it. Lev almost raised a brow. Perhaps he didn't need to worry about his teammates not realizing his 'lies,' after all.

"Other than that," he grinned widely. "I have some constructs I need to test for the first time. Let's hope they don't blow up."

"What?" Kayla instantly asked.

"Hmm?"

"Blow up?"

"Yep," he nodded excitedly. "First time trying out the lightning cannons. Relax though. They are on the other two bubbles."

Kayla nodded, already half a step behind Jack's wide back. The warrior himself looked wary, whereas Amelia was already looking forward to the destruction. Lev liked the way her brain worked.

Focusing on the four constructs, both the smaller bubbles tilted forward, aiming the turrets towards the ground where more monsters were rushing them. The main bubble kept flying on their route, its speed slow enough for his team to stand straight and observe the show.

A small trickle of lightning entered the input runes of the cannons, transferred smoothly through the mana teleportation features of his barriers. Once Lev felt that the cannons were at 20% of the maximum they could hold, he adjusted their barrels in their fixed horizontal rotation until they faced the small group of trolls below.

Each… dart of lightning shot forward with a shrill whistle, leaving the barrel with a small crackling boom. Empowered by his class skills, the projectiles reached the monsters faster than they could react, all four of them landing on their intended targets.

Except, all of them also missed the intended destination. One troll lost its arm from the small explosion on the ground, far from dead. Another two had large holes in their bellies, pretty much lethally wounded. The last one only earned a deep cut on its leg, the attack almost missing it entirely.

Overall, the projectiles were quite good if they could wound level 170 trolls without much trouble. Next up, he once again charged the cannons with half their capacity and fired.

This time, the lightning bolts actually looked like lightning bolts. They snaked forward as a blur, reaching the trolls with the same whistle, blowing small holes through their torsos. Lev had to do a double-take when the monsters staggered for only a moment despite the following explosion washing over their backs.

A bit too much penetration power, not gonna lie, he grinned and upped the lightning input to full. Only when the cannons were close to bursting did he shape the mana into a bolt again before firing it, mentally letting the attack extend on launch so that the power was packed in the entire long bolt instead of a single dart.

All four of them this time found their marks, exploding immediately on impact. The previous ones had pierced through the troll bodies, too stable to lose cohesion from that collision. These ones however, were much wilder in comparison. They blew up in a small storm of lightning, instantly surging into the bodies of the monsters and frying their insides thoroughly.

"What about the… cores?" Jack hesitantly asked, realizing that the cores probably exploded to fuel the lightning.

"Gone," Lev chuckled. "Reduced to atoms."

"Atoms?"

"Never mind. Next up, are arrows and lances… I doubt you guys can even see them move."

They didn't know either, so he decided to test it. Infusing fire into a few dozen arrows to make them shine with bright orange colors, he fired them at the distant direbears.

Loud roars of pain reached them when the monsters were set alight, the damage minimal due to their innate resilience to all forms of harm. They were still weak however, and he proved the point by killing them with one precisely fired lance each. The projectiles weren't even infused with any mana.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"So," Lev asked the still-impressed company. "Did you see them?"

"Only the afterimages," Amelia answered this time, eyes glued to the result of the fire arrows. "That wasn't a lot of mana even for your level, was it?"

"Nope," he replied easily. "I have a bonus that increases the potency of explosions by a large amount."

The next hour passed with Lev casually massacring all manner of monsters, some of them higher leveled than him. Just like the tournament, his team's surprise slowly melted away, giving way to weary acceptance that yes, their team leader was just that strong.

Lev was scanning his surroundings leisurely when a hidden Sherron initiated a telepathic connection.

"Lev, look to your left," she sent, the message tinged with a small bit of concern.

Left? he turned towards the grand forest, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. His teammates also perked up at the abrupt movement, the question written on their faces.

Seconds passed in silence as Lev tried to find what she was pointing towards. Randomly, his eyes found a patch of very distant trees that seemed brighter than the others.

What is that? he wondered, not feeling anything from that direction. That changed rapidly as the bright spot came closer and closer, and he didn't need the vast, smoldering aura to know that it was a third-threshold monster.

"What will you do?" Sherron asked, aware of what he was talking about with his team earlier.

Lev didn't answer, thinking about all the possible futures as fast as he could. The monster was gigantic, if the charred trees being uprooted in the distance were any indication, and winning was not an option. He wasn't nearly strong enough to beat something like that, and if the aura wasn't exaggerated through some means, the approaching monster was stronger than the executioner beetle.

Even worse was that this monster was straight up lethal, not a threat like the ones he wanted to show his team. Even those inexperienced hunters knew that something of the fire monster's caliber was far beyond a Master, no matter how strong Lev was.

I don't want to lie, he thought to himself. His aura, concealed inside his body, shivered in affirmation, resonating with the truth.

It hadn't even been that long since he talked to his team about dangerous threats, yet Lev already found the act revolting. It felt wrong on so many levels, and the chance to fix that had just presented itself.

Sure, his small speech was going to be rendered nil. Not only was he going to struggle to even wound the monster, but killing it also remained nearly impossible. Even then, he was going to do his best and actually stand his ground against a third threshold monster, which was going to send a completely different message than the earlier talks.

"I might have deceived you guys a little earlier," Lev voiced, shoulders slumping once the decision was made. "Killing monsters isn't nearly as difficult for me as I made it seem. Instead of explaining with words, I would rather you guys give it some thought after seeing this. Just don't take it the wrong way."

"Take over the bubble," he sent to Sherron, making the driving formation's controls obvious with pulses of mana. The moment her control took over, he left through a small hole in the bubble, the other small bubbles following him as he transferred all the hundreds of stacked projectiles inside them. Arrows and lances quickly flew through small openings, all of them checked with a pulse of mana to determine the integrity of their enchantments.

Finding nothing amiss, Lev waited for the monster to come to him a few dozen meters above ground. It was barreling through all manner of greenery alike without slowing down, leaving a giant trail of fires in its wake.

When it finally exited the endless treeline, Lev's throat went dry. The monster was beyond large, nearly twenty meters in length as it walked on all fours. Spikes of raw, concentrated fire adorned its long spine, like a long crown on the gecko's body. Black in color, orange dots and four orange stripes ran along the length of its body.

Most alarming of all was the sphere of extremely high temperature that followed it around. Nearly ten meters in every direction from the gecko, the air was itself was almost set aflame, charring the grass and the ground the moment they were within the sphere's range.

[Flamerbreather Gecko - Level ????]

The result of Identify had yet to settle in when Lev was already bringing his eight total walls in front of him, the resilience enchantment running at maximum capacity. Almost like a blur, the gecko opened its mouth and exhaled, firing a beam of fire twice his size at Lev.

All eight shields joined together in a large shield stood arrayed in its path, the distance between them large enough to react comfortably. With a deafening boom, the concentrated fire landed on the shields and dispersed into waves of flames to the sides after failing to pierce through, effectively blinding him.

The beam quickly ate through their durability even when distributed between three walls, requiring Lev to repair them to the best of his ability and dump a truckload of mana into the enchantments. His mind strained to keep up with the onslaught, but a distant part of him still wondered how good of an opportunity that was to train his willpower.

Without thinking much about it, he also made willpower join the repairing, marginally increasing the speed.

Ten seconds later, his breathing was slightly heavy when the flames finally cleared, revealing a gecko that merely observed him from afar, its eyes maddened like monsters but possessing instincts far more dangerous.

It opened its mouth, releasing a thunderous trilling sound that made Lev recoil from the physical intensity. The sound was supposed to be short and concise, only for its rumbling throat to turn it into a roar of a predator.

The monster's aura followed, trying to coerce him into submission. A near-physical weight settled on his shoulders as a battle of willpower ensued. Fortunately for Lev, he had no plans to give up and easily pushed away the aimless pressure, mostly because the monster was using it without any finesse. Things would be far more dangerous otherwise.

When its attempt failed, it finally roared properly and threw the full weight of its aura at him, now ready to tear the human apart. Lev flared his own in response, immediately finding it easier to breathe in the terrifying presence of the monster.

Fire, regeneration, range, speed, he noted the four most obvious strengths from the clearly displayed aura, and the last one became obvious when it lunged. Lev was already prepared with a crap ton of lightning mana imbued in his armor and quickly dropped to the ground. Not wasting a moment, he quickly ran further away from the bubble in the distance, unsurprised when the gecko easily stopped its charge and changed direction with a blast of fire.

It opened its mouth, and his walls once again met the fire attack. This time, he knew how to repair the damage quicker, keeping them from breaking outright, though just barely.

All around him, the ground was set alight just from the heat of the attack. Lev's mostly-functioning skinsuit also struggled to keep his body's temperature stable, the monster's fire too powerful.

Speed is manageable, he observed, still not retaliating. The monster was far too dangerous to rush in blindly. He needed to know more. Going by the intensity of the fire beams, going anywhere near will be a death sentence. I'm 101% certain it can raise the output of its sphere, and that will immediately roast me to death even inside the armor.

For confirmation, he infused a few arrows with lightning and fired at the monster, constantly on the run in circles to not go too far away from the bubble and Sherron. The projectiles streaked forward as blue blurs, reaching the monster in a blink.

Sparing the arrows a single, derisive glance, it flared its sphere for a split second. It quickly ballooned to three times the size and launched a shockwave of superheated air, easily disrupting and destroying the incoming projectiles.

Yeah… Lev exhaled, already dreading what was to come. My poor body isn't gonna like this.

Such was life.

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