Chapter 101: Thermal Expansion

Staring down the gargantuan beast charging towards him, Joe could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins, but it wasn’t because he was scared.

It’s time to show you the guts of a true player!

He pointed his sword skyward, feeling the limitless energy pouring down on him from his familiar spirit, the determination in him grew.

“Eat my [Evil Blade—Wave…”

Bang!!!

A mushroom cloud erupted from where the barren giant slammed down his fist, and Joe was flattened to a pancake.

When the barren giant stood up to go gank the other players, Eleena threw a beam of white light in Joe’s direction.

“Greater Revive!”

The light hit Joe’s mangled body and suddenly he was up and running with his full health bar intact.

“Barren giant, your daddy’s back!”

Bang!!!

“Greater Revive!”

“The same trick won’t work thrice…”

Bang!!!

“Greater Revive!”

“I’ve got you all figured out, I just have to roll forward…”

Bang!!!

“Greater Revive!”

“I thi…”

Bang!!!

“Greater Revive!”

“Wai…”

‘Bang!!!’

“Greater Revive!”

…

…

…

“Nice job, thanks to Joe keeping the aggro on him, we’re ready now! Eleena, wait until the barren giant comes over to us before reviving Joe, he’s probably lost a few levels, we’ll give him the last hit later.”

After Joe’s noble sacrifices (read: multiple deaths), Edward had finally finished his preparations.

The girl with the silver twintails nodded, setting the cola bottle in her arms aside and followed Edward’s orders, not immediately reviving Joe after he (once again) became a pancake.

As Edward had predicted, the barren giant started to make his way towards him and his group of mages.

Earth elementals really had rocks for brains, its actions were clumsy and predictable, it was basically the only thing holding them back, with their power and their numbers, even the dragons might have to keep their distance.

“Knockback units, ready!” Edward had already explained his plan in the forum, and the players cooperated, all of them in their positions ready for Edward’s next orders. Edward shot a fireball to the sky, signaling his players to take action. Players popped up from behind the giant, not waiting for its reaction before using their strongest abilities on the back of the giants head—they weren’t abilities that dealt a lot of damage, but they were abilities that packed a strong punch!

With bits of heavy metal ore growing throughout its chest area and a naturally higher center of gravity, the barren giant was easily toppled by the collective strength of the players, falling forward into a ditch Edward and his mages had only just painstakingly finished and sending muddy water splattering above it.

Edward knew that even with the help of their abilities, he and the other players couldn’t dig a hole deep enough to hold the barren giant in such a short amount of time, even fifteen meters would be pushing it let alone thirty, so he changed his measurements and decided to create a hole only three meters deep, but twenty meters wide and thirty meters deep, this way a short barrage from the mages would do the trick. He then got a player reclassed into a Tide Caller to fill the ditch with water and waited for the barren giant to come.

As soon as the barren giant fell into their makeshift pool, all mages started using their ice-elemental abilities, instantly freezing the water…

This was Edward’s plan, since they couldn’t use crowd control abilities to stop the giant, they had to go back to basics!

Ice was almost as hard as concrete, an icy prison was almost impossible to escape if half of your body was frozen solid.

“Now!” Edward threw a lightning ball towards the enemy’s eyeball.

The other players quickly followed suit, focusing their attacks on the giant’s eye.

But it wasn’t having any effect, all of them only dealing the minimum damage of 1 health point!

They hadn’t noticed because they were too far away, but the barren giant’s eye had a crystalline layer over it that was even stronger than armor!

Edward fumbled—’We’re screwed, why isn’t the eye its weak point?’

A layer of ice only three meters deep wasn’t going to hold the barren giant for much longer, but Edward and the other players were all out of ideas.

At this point, Gou Dan started to speak up, “Wait, Edward, check the forum!”

A new post had just appeared on the forum by the user ‘Call me Ball’, the post suggested using thermal expansion to break the crystal barrier on the barren giant’s eye.

Edward quickly looked up how one did this ‘thermal expansion’ thing.

“What do you think?” Jessica asked him, “It feels a little weird…”

Before Edward could reply, one of the barren giant’s hands broke free, sweeping across the ice and turning some unlucky players who couldn’t dodge in time into minced meat before swinging at the insolent little nothings that dared to cross it!

The Saintess-in-training Eleena was the first to react, quickly casting her Sacred Barrier and successfully blocking the giant’s attack! A few beads of sweat formed on the silver-haired girl’s forehead, it looked like the attack was more powerful than she had anticipated.

The other mage players tried to freeze the barren giant’s hand on Eleena’s barrier, but that was going too well.

“We don’t have time to hesitate, trying it out won’t make the situation any worse than it already is! Everyone with fire abilities, attack this thing’s eye!”

Edward had a pretty decent reputation among the players, so those that could followed his orders and aimed their abilities at the barren giant’s eye.

Just as the transparent outer layer of its eye started to turn red from the heat, the barren giant finally escaped its icy bonds, its humongous body slowly rising, the frost clinging to its rocky exterior falling off like a shower of snow.

“Do it!”

Following Edward’s command, the Tide Caller players shot their ice beams at the barren giant’s singular eye.

Not a moment later, a web of cracks started forming on the barren giant’s eye’s unbelievably strong shell!

Just this alone took a solid chunk of the barren giant’s health bar! The giant wailed out in pain as it tried to turn tail and flee.

“Attack! Don’t let it get away!”

Even without Edward’s lead, the player’s weren’t going to let this opportunity go to waste, everyone gave everything they had, their enemy’s health bar was visibly getting smaller.

Finally, Joe, who had been revived during the chaos, climbed up the barren giant’s arm with the help of some other players, dashing up its arm to where it was covering its eye with its hands, he looked for a slit in its fingers and stabbed his sword right on through!

Thick blood suddenly erupted from the wound, drenching Joe who still laughing smugly.