Lev opened fire with his galecannons on the smaller bubbles, mildly surprised when the bullets actually powered through the heat sphere and landed on the monster's hide. Granted, they thudded onto it without even a scratch, but he wasn't expecting even that much.

The retaliation was a giant wall of fire that suddenly appeared in front of the monster before it flew at him. Keeping an eye on its aura, Lev brought his walls in front of him and darted to the right, away from where he could feel the monster rushing at him.

He had to scramble to fire a lightning slash when the monster exploded through the flames instead, eating a full slash in a crackling blast. The attack might as well have done nothing except slow it down slightly, which was enough for Lev to make distance while keeping his armor imbued to a near-breaking state.

The gecko didn't spare him a single instant before it was on him again, maw wide open to both take a bite out of him and burn him to a crisp. Two thick ropes flew out of his bubbles, passing between its serrated teeth before going taut.

Contrary to Lev's expectations, it actually slowed down, shattering the ropes in the process. He took advantage with five lances packed to bursting with lightning, each successfully landing on its large head.

That has to hurt, he thought while making distance, not going too far from the bubble Sherron and his team were in. I used like a quarter of my level 250 self's pool.

Reality begged to differ. A wave of fire dispersed the aftermath of his lances, revealing a monster mostly unharmed and thoroughly pissed. With a deafening trill that burned his ears somehow, it solidified fire underneath its feet before lunging at him. Hundreds of meters vanished in an instant, and it was all Lev could do to fire a giant lightning slash at its face while backtracking at full speed.

The giant monster tore through the attack with ease, mouth already wide open with flames gushing out.

Eight walls were in its way, blocking the short beam of fire. Huffing in annoyance, the gecko bit down on the shield just as it was infused with a large amount of lightning. Lev was waiting for that and commanded it to explode inside the monster's maw, getting a screech of pain out of it for the first time.

Quickly flying back in a circle, he landed directly below Sherron and waited for the monster to right itself. Lev knew that it wasn't going all out before, which was about to change.

Here we go, he shivered in equal parts fear and anticipation when a tide of aura washed over him. Somehow, he could feel the auras of his team trembling in his bubble through that, matching his own state quite well.

Sherron's presence was the only reason he wasn't flying away at full speed. Keeping his own aura hugging his body, Lev formed several barrier glaives around him as dozens of ropes slowly came into existence inside the bubble. Getting an idea, he melded one end of ten ropes with the bubbles each, turning the spherical constructs into a node for his mental control.

He wasn't given any more time to prepare when dozens of fireballs came to life around the monster. All of his enchanted shields were immediately deployed, outnumbering the projectiles as they shattered one by one in large explosions, blocking the attacks at the cost of their lives.

More shields formed in the meantime as Lev raised his palm, firing an overloaded lightning bolt at the monster about to launch a beam at him. His walls immediately arrayed themselves in the way when the monster remained unscathed, only for the first to shatter on impact.

Hastily, Lev reduced the area coverage of the walls and layered them on top of each other. Slowly, three more of them broke under the extreme heat before he was ready to counterattack.

Small barrier spheres formed around him, spinning rapidly as they dug through the ground. Coming to a rest a few meters deep, Lev hoped the monster wouldn't target them as all the glaives surrounding him rose straight up. Stargazer taking the lead, he swung downwards.

Eight giant lightning slashes followed his actions, the strongest of them originating from Stargazer. As they flew forward, tens of ropes flew out of his bubbles and tried to wrap around the monster's limb. Lev made them descend in waves, knowing the monster's heat sphere was only flared in bursts.

The first two waves of ropes were easily disintegrated by its sphere. Several more barely resisted melting and were coiled around the monster's back legs. It slowed down for a moment as they creaked under the pressure.

Then the monster stopped. Craning its head, it looked at the blue constructs trying to inhibit its movement. A burst of fire mana drilled into them, eating through the ropes at a structural level and disintegrating them into shards that quickly dissipated into nothingness under the ruthless fire mana.

Lev gulped. Definitely no melee.

It turned around slowly, eyes locked onto Lev's. The staredown gave him enough time to prepare all of his projectiles and start launching them in the same second. A rain of arrows infused with only lightning followed, and his first suspicion was proven correct.

More than two dozen infused arrows reached the gecko at once, spread out to target the entire body. The heat sphere exploded outwards, disrupting several in an instant. However, with each deflection, the zone lost some of its strength, failing to stop the last five arrows in that single move.

That would've been a good thing, if it wasn't rushing him like a bullet train. The arrows didn't even leave a mark as they harmlessly exploded on its back, and Lev was doing his absolute best to stay ahead of the charging monster. Feeling a small buildup of mana, he immediately threw himself upwards, dodging the gecko's lunge by a hair's breadth.

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A wave of heat stressed his armor's lower section, just by being in the mere vicinity of the heat sphere. Lev didn't pay that any mind and brought his bubbles closer, finally finding an opening. The monster stopped its own momentum with a localized blast of fire, the heat not hurting it in the slightest.

Now!

Dozens of lances overloaded with lightning flew at it, possessing enough strength to level a small town. Both his pool and Stargazer's reserves had been taxed heavily by that. Ropes snaked forward, still attached to his bubbles, and attempted to tie up the monster's limbs.

Just like before, Lev had divided his assault into several waves. Dashing ahead, the gecko barreled through the first set of ropes and formed dozens of highly compressed fireballs. They zipped forward like wasps, and Lev had to run away immediately when they tracked his position.

Over three dozen shields hovered around him, half of them controlled by his willpower and the other half actively. Some of the fireballs exploded against the constructs, but most of them pierced through his enchanted shields, requiring him to reform them rapidly.

The task was made especially difficult by the continued assault on the monster itself. Lightning roared out of his converter in large amounts, the channeling taking a massive toll on his body. Ropes were imbued with the crackling element as they darted forward before another heat wave, most of them successfully coiling around its legs this time.

A roar made Lev lose control of several of them, but the rest had done their job. Like the cracking of glass, his ropes started giving in to the pressure as the monster freed itself, only to be engulfed by a large wave of lances. It still reacted in time, releasing a giant burst of fire mana that made several of his projectiles explode before reaching it.

That started a chain reaction, one he observed while darting between his walls and shields to keep the fireballs at bay. When the first lightning lance burst open, the wild lightning mana travelled to other lances, destabilizing their forms as well. All of them lost shape in a split second, leaving behind a massive net of lightning that still travelled forward at the same speed, washing over the monster in a giant explosion.

A wail of pain made Lev stagger mid-air, almost dropping in the way of one of the last fireballs. He controlled his flight in time and threw a lightning slash at them, making the attacks explode a few meters away. Even then, his lungs burned from the extremely hot air, telling him in no uncertain terms what was going to happen if he went closer to the gecko.

Another wave of fire cleared the flames tinged with lightning, and Lev watched with horrified fascination as several drops of blood slowly dripped to the ground, taking much longer in his slowed Perception.

He had actually made the monster bleed.

Yet all of that had only netted him a few drops of blood.

Healing mana slowly coursed through his battered body. More than a fifth of his and Stargazer's pool had been thrown at the monster, and he didn't even have scars to show for it. The damage had already healed.

It's just pain, he repeated in his head, the words coming to him from the tournament. It's good training.

More barrier orbs drilled into the ground as he stopped holding back the flow of mana. All of it went solely to the lightning converter, infused into every single one of his constructs in equal amounts to keep up a more consistent pace. Restoration mana struggled to heal the quickly mounting damage, so he lowered the output slightly.

The monster lunged in the same predictable fashion. Dozens of fireballs followed it this time, except it came face to face with an orb of lightning infused with so much mana that it shone like a bright blue star.

Befitting a third-threshold monster's reaction time, it stopped itself and veered to the right, where another two orbs burst out of the ground. Caught between three of them, an uncontrolled wave of flames roared out of the monster's body just as the orbs exploded.

Three sources of lightning battled against a single tide of fire, slowly but inevitably washed away by the intense heat. Lev was betting on that and immediately capitalized on the weakened wave, piercing it with ropes infused with lightning. Their improved speed allowed them to quickly wrap around the monster's whole body, and with a titanic push of his mind, a river's worth of lightning mana was shoved into the ropes.

Wild as it was, the lightning immediately sought out the monster's conveniently wrapped body and seared its way inside. A cry of agony burst out of its mouth, along with a bloody mist, before it all shattered as a massive lightning slash landed on its face.

This time, the monster's roar was more reminiscent of a tortured scream, rattling Lev's teeth from the sheer loudness. Small streams of blood flowed down its head as it burst out of the lightning storm, forgoing all semblance of calculating instincts.

Two small bubbles followed the monster as ropes regrew out of them. Another barrage of fireballs formed around it, this time outnumbering Lev's defenses twice over.

He remained calm, still. None of its previous wariness was present in the gecko's eyes as it flew in a straight line, leaving a wide trail of fire. Once again, ropes darted downward to wrap around its form, baiting an early use of the heat wave. Lightning lances joined in next, dozens of them flying at it from all around.

One more wave of flames exploded outwards, repelling all of them with even higher might. When there were less than two dozen meters between them, five lightning orbs flew out of the ground, all of them centered around its head. The monster's eyes narrowed for a brief instant as the fire spikes on its back turned blue.

Lev's heart sank at seeing the change, and he quickly gathered all the lightning mana in his constructs into Stargazer and fired a large slash. It flew forward, throwing him back from the sheer force of its origin, and he quickly increased his speed to create distance.

He hadn't even flown for a few seconds when time slowed down to a crawl, giving him just enough time to bring all of his shields and remaining walls in front of him. They stacked around him as his bubbles flew higher and higher, avoiding the expanding sphere of blue fire just enough not to melt outright.

Lev however, wasn't as durable. Remembering the outcome from past fights, he took a deep breath of the still breathable air and closed his eyes. The world became searing heat and shades of blue as the fire blasted his constructs, shattering all of his shields and stressing the walls to their limits.

Another three of them shattered as a cone of blue fire roared out of the wave. Lev quickly abandoned the remaining walls when the fire ate through them way faster than he could repair them. Ducking underneath, he imbued enough lightning in his armor to blacken the flesh on his arms and legs while running away at full speed, while his Perception returned to normal.

The cone followed his movements, its predictable trajectory the only reason he could even avoid it. Twice, it almost engulfed him, and that alone made chunks of his armor slough off, melted beyond repair.

Thankfully, the burst of blue fire seemed to have taken a large toll on the monster's body, going out after only a few terribly long seconds. It breathed out a plume of fire before straightening again, giving Lev enough time to repair his armor, reenchant it, reform his shields, enchant them, and reform his walls with the resilience formation.

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