Swoosh! Bam!

  I decide to let him strike first, or at least let him try to do so. With his sturdy club he takes a clumsy down swing at me, only for me to easily dodge it and since he couldn’t keep his balance after the swing, he ended up falling to the ground, hitting face first in the cold tiles. Well, with a simple head smashing, I smash his head with my foot. To my surprise it was sturdier than I expected but nonetheless, I was still able to destroy it without much effort. Next one.

  I turn around and unfortunately the other two are now shoulder to shoulder basically, either they stumble into each other or it’s a tactic, although the first one seems to be the correct one. Whatever, what I have to do is the same, defeat the two of them. Now, what should I do? I can easily defeat them with a magic spell... Now that I’m thinking about it, I could try to see their magic resistance as these are a new type of Crystal monster. Yep, I will be doing that then.

  “Let’s start small and increase as we go on. Firebolt.”

  I don’t have to incant anything, spell out any words into the world, wait for a magic circle to gather magic energy, nothing at all. I simply raise my arm upwards and point the palm of my hand towards one of them. The very next moment a magic circle appears in front of my hand, one that has symbols written on it, indicating several things with it, but that is for another time. It has a red colour to it, telling anyone that sees it, that the element of said magic circle, that in this case, it’s Pyro or Fire in other words. The magic circle is slightly bigger than my manly hand and a fraction of a second later a ball made of fire appears, one that is exactly the same size as the magic circle, a Firebolt.

  Woosh! Fire noises!

  It’s a simple D rank spell. I launch said Firebolt at the monster in the right, my right to be precise. Of course, the stronger you are or simply, the more magic energy you have, the strongest the spells in general will be or can get. Though in this case I simply match the spell strength to their level, B- rank roughly. I did say that they were B rank but upon closer inspection they are far weaker than the Crystal Knights, making them B- rank. The Firebolt hits the monster square on its chest, he’s unable to dodge or do anything really, seriously, those guys have barely any balance at all, so much so that he tried to move sideways only to move forward leaving himself exposed to the Firebolt. But what follows next picks my interest.

  Blast!

  The Firebolt hits him however it does not explode or go through him, instead it pushes him backwards until he hits something, in this case the wall behind that was easily 10 meters from him. The moment he hit the wall then, the Firebolt exploded and with it, destroying the monster completely. As you can probably expect, I was not expecting this reaction, this is too many “expect” in a single sentence but I was expecting it to explode upon first contact, as I would expect. The monsters are made of the same Crystal material as the previous ones and I can attest to that because I crushed the skull of one of them. Weird reacting but nothing that I cannot experiment more on it, I do have another one left to deal with after all.

  With the same hand, I point it towards the other one. I once again gather a bit of my magic and focus it on the palm of my hand, mere moments later another magic circle is formed. The same element as before, though the magic circle itself is much bigger than the previous one indicating a stronger spell will come out from it. Another Pyro spell, a Fireball to be precise. A Fireball is also a ball made of fire, but much and I mean much bigger than the Firebolt. Its power as anyone can expect is also several times greater, raking the spell at C rank. If I increase it to B rank, it will probably consume the monster with its flames in mere instants before anything else happens. The temperature of the Fireball should be around 700 degrees but what makes it even more dangerous is the explosion that follows the impact. One that is somewhat powerful at that. If for some reason these 700 degrees do not consume you the explosion will surely blast you away. The monster is no exception.

  Blast! Whoosh!

  The sheer high temperature seems to not do anything to him, but the explosion surely does, exploding the monster into small pieces. Since I increase the Fireball power until it reaches B rank a small shock wave follows the explosion. Well then, everyone has been taken care of. Just to be sure I use my Magic Sense skill to see if someone else is hiding and to scout a bit, in this case, I’m seeing which door will lead me forward. From where I came from, the wall in front of it has two doors, one to each side. One of the monsters came from a mirror that was right in the middle of the doors.

  “Now, which one will lead me forward? With magic sense I can say that, the one on my left has nothing behind it, literally. The one on my right is filled with monsters.”

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  Now I have quite a dilemma, don’t I? Not really, I’m more than forced to go to the right and face all of those monsters. From here, I can say that they all might be the same type of monsters as the ones that I have just defeated.

  “Welp, not much of a choice, now do I?”

  Having accepted my undeserved fate, I decide to keep moving, walking up to the door in my right. I forgot to say but I still have my barrier up, not for much longer but it will last for another 2 minutes, a little more than that actually. Anyway, I enter the room and I’m greeted by four of them this time around, four of the Crystal Knights to be precise. I don’t have much time to think about anything as two of them quickly run up to me. They still have the same setup as the previous two, a shield and a sword. The other two however, have a different set of weapons. Still weapons for closed combat but purely focused on offensive. One of them has a longsword while the other has a great axe, both of these weapons are made of the same materials as themselves. Once again, I’m yapping about stuff that I shouldn’t, at least for how close those two are to me. Like, they are really close.

  Swoosh! Swoosh!

  Without any hesitation at all both of them take a swing at me at the same time. Another brilliant display of teamwork, not only they give each other enough space to do so, each one of them is somewhat covering each of my sides. The one on my right is about to cut my right arm off while the left one is doing the same thing but to my left arm. If I dodge to any side, I will get hit right in the middle of my chest, probably getting killed in the process. Thank god I know what I’m doing, in other words, I simply jump backwards a bit dodging everything in the process. But with this I now have my back against the door and yes, it’s locked. Hmm, I’m starting to think that this might have been their master plan and I have felt for it. This is amazing actually; these Crystal Knights really work well together and they are smart per say. Not that it matters in a face of this much disparity between our powers. Rather than waiting for their next move I instead dash forward, going past them and getting closer to the other two at the back. I will dispose of these two first then I will worry about the other three, yes, there is that odd mirror badly placed in the wall in front of me, still a bit away from me though.

  Bam! Bam!

  I didn’t give them any time to react. With two quick, precise and somewhat powerful jabs, I destroyed their heads with them. The first one was the one on my right. I dash a bit forward towards him and then I hit him right between his eyes, if he has any, my fist goes right through its face, cracking the rest of the head with it and of course, defeating him in the process. The other one I basically do the same thing, the only difference was that he was somewhat ready to intercept me however, I was a bit too fast for him. Just as I finished this spectacular 2 combo, the monster in the mirror decides to appear, this time however, it has gravity magic all around him. Because of this, he is floating around with much more control and balance. Did he improve with our last encounter? Is that even possible? Well, it is, if these monsters are created by someone rather than being created by the world itself. Now I have more questions. Moving on, it’s not like they are going to answer them.

  Pow! Bam!

  This one also has a halberd and although he has much more control over his movements, he still is quite slow. Yep, I don’t have to worry about him at all, just those two running up to me. Nothing has changed, a second or so later both of them are up in my nose but before they try to do anything I hit one of them with a clean uppercut destroying his head in the process. Then with a quick spin I lift my right leg and as I do so. I hit the other one with the back of my shoe right on the side of his head and as you can guess, I decimated his head. With this, only the floating one is left.

  While I was occupied dealing with these two, the floating one got close enough to me. Since he has more control of his movements this time, I wonder how he will attack. And so, with this brilliant and not dangerous at all idea in mind, I let him take his swing.

  Swoosh!

  He lifts up his halberd as high as his weird arms allows him to, then from there with all of his might he takes a down swing. Two things with this, the first one is the speed at which he does so, it was much faster than I anticipated. The second one is the power behind it, it’s a little less than what I was expecting. I do say this because I actually caught the tip of the blade with my two fingers, stopping everything with it. Don’t worry, with the barrier up I simply modified it in such a way that allowed the blade to get stuck between my fingers and without physically touching them, hell, it didn’t even touch my armour. However, even after witnessing this, there is no surprise on his face, no fear, despair, nothing at all. He tried to remove the halberd backwards but it only ended up being a useless struggle and even then, I didn’t feel a single drop of emotions from him.

  Fire noises! Blast!

  I quickly raise my left arm towards him, my right hand is a bit occupied so that leaves my left-hand empty. From there I face the palm of my hand towards him, a fraction of a second later a magic circle appears and from it, another Firebolt is shot towards the floating guy, hitting his face dead on but this time it went right through him, exploding at the wall behind him. I used a bit more magic with this Firebolt, ranking it at a B+, however it ended up being too much as it didn’t even explode once it hit him, going right through him in this case.

  “I see, so the floaty one magic defence is between B rank and B+ rank. A little more than the Crystal Knights.”

  What a nice conclusion to reach if I say it myself. Not that they are that strong but that is only against me, for your average adventurer the story is much different. Moving on. I once again use my Magic Sense skill before making any decision. This time there is only a door apart from the one that I came from and this time around, there aren’t any monsters past that door. It does make me a little suspicious about traps but once again there isn’t much of a choice so I walk up to that door.