Chapter 285 - Tower Defence (part 3)

There was no stopping for my spells now.

No matter how many beasts tried to climb the walls of the tower and reach me with their jaws or claws, they were all pushed back by round after round of my shockwaves, while I continued to lay fire on them with my fireballs.

After a few attempts at launching weak class spells, I realised there was no point in doing so.

Those beasts that approached the pinnacle of the spirit realm, were able to protect themselves from those powerfull attacks of mine, while the cannon fodder was dying from my normal spells just as fast.

Casting fireball after fireball, shockwave after shockwave, barrier after barrier… I lost track of time.

I could only see the field filled with a neverending swarm of the monsters below my vantage point, no matter how many of them I managed to slay.

At some point, I got so used to the constantly raining down spells, I even considered leaving it all to the automating tools of the system, hoping to take a look at the current growth of energy points for my tower, but when yet another attack of those strong beasts almost made me fall through the window once more, I decided against it.

No matter how easy it is for me now, this is still a battle to the death. If I lose focus even for a moment, there is no guarantee that something terrible won't happen!

While I wanted to keep my vigilance to the maximum, after what seemed like hours, I was unable to maintain my complete focus anymore.

Despite my best efforts, my thoughts started to wander, completely impervious to the constant onslaught and choir of pained cries of the beast at the ground level. At this point, I couldn't help but realise that not only was the mana not drying up despite the parasitic core allegedly sucking it all up from the land nearby, but I didn't receive any notifications about gained experience at all!

It was like all the monsters I was killing every second were just illusions, instead of true, tangible living beings!

I didn't want to think too deeply about the implications of those two events happening at the same time.

My courage was too lacking to think about the scenario when I would be unable to constantly replenish my mana and use it up just as quickly for the sake of keeping the pain away. At this point, I started to understand why soldiers at war didn't hesitate to commit crimes.

Right now, just the thought of the full scale of the agony from my body being ripped apart cell by cell was far more than enough to make me ignore even the mother with a toddler on her arms if she were to appear in the middle of the place I was targeting with my spells!

All I really wanted, for now, was for this madness to finally end, and my pain not going back ever again!

CRASH!

After continuously hitting the wall over and over again while their brethren were dying like cannon fodder they were, one of the beasts finally managed to put a dent on the wall of my stronghold.

With a victorious roar, it raised the morale of its brothers in arms - can I even call the beasts like that? It's not like they are carrying any damn weapons! - putting a new vigour in the dispirited beasts, that once again rushed over against the tower.

"Are they stupid? But I can't keep ignoring those fellows."

After hours of spamming the spells against the neverending horde of enemies, I even started muttering to myself. Without Eve to my side, the loneliness started hitting me hard. I hope I won't just turn Bonger into my only talking partner anytime soon!

With the new aim of my offensive, I switched my focus from the small fries and gathered enough mana to cast a sunflare in one go.

What was surprising, when I started pouring it out of my hands through the mana crystal on top of my mage's stick to the fireball in the air, despite free world energy rushing back to my body, I hardly felt an itch from it!

Considering how this kind of infusion caused the whole entropy problem in the first place, should I assume that allowing for my healing to change was the right choice?

Nevermind that, I need to make sure that the tower won't crumble now!

Infusing the fireball with just a bit of my intent and coating it with several layers of weak barriers, I moved away from the window and allowed it to start falling down.

Instantly immersing my consciousness with the stronghold creator tool, I didn't even look how much points did this tower gathered thought the time fo this fight, but bought all the barrier defences that I saw in the toolbar and shielded every single level of my tower with it, obviously, underground levels included.

Even with how fast I was trying to finish this task, I couldn't help but notice that despite all those upgrades, the limit was still nowhere to be reached!

Waking up from my momentary trance, I instantly moved my consciousness to deploy as many barriers around myself as I could.

No matter how great those upgrades were, the second level of the tower still had windows and I didn't want to test whether they were included in the barriers!

Before my body even managed to fall down on the ground from the lunge I executed right before attempting to modify the tower, a cacophony erupted outside.

My entire world turned bright once again as if a new, ultrahot star appeared way too close for this world comfort!

I need to figure out how to defend myself from the effect of my own damn spells!

This was the last thought before my consciousness, tortured for so long by the pain, fear of losing Eve, and constant, long exhaustion from the fight, gave up and faded away.