Chapter 211: Reaching the Heavens Part 17 Part 1

A black and white spiral collides with Kutanid’s body. This should be able to do the trick here. After all, this attack is the thing that managed to slaughter the Alter Ego of Nightprowler Luukan…… However, it seem that it would not be so easy as we all thought it would be.

Eight towers…… No, those were eight tentacles. Each tentacle was thick and at least several meters long, and they all wrapped around the Armageddon fired by Rei.

Of course, Armageddon is a skill effect, so there is no way that you would be able to grab it or block it by any means. However, that was exactly what was happening here at the current moment. Eight tentacles wrapped themselves around the beam of Armageddon and tightened all around it, squeezing it.

「No way…… That’s impossible……!」

Even though the Armageddon was supposed to be the strongest offensive skill this game had to offer, right about now its effect was crushed by Kutanid’s tentacles as if it was basically nothing. But how did it managed to do that? Did it dispersed the damage somehow? Or maybe it was that the tentacles had separate HP bars and they took the majority of the damage onto themselves?

Kutanid managed to crush Armageddon, but it did not do that without paying a heavy price for such feature. As a result of Armageddon’s attack, Kutanid’s eight tentacles were now completely loose and motionless, falling down onto the ground and crushing the Coliseum seats underneath their mass. Also, Kutanid itself seemed to be exhausted.

But this is the only thing that matters here: Armageddon was unable to defeat Kutanid. It got squashed away and Kutanid was still alive and kicking right in front of us.

「Let me down, Alva! Go retrieve Rei instead!」

「But why me!?」

「You are probably the only one who can manage to pull away that heavy armored knight purely by force alone!」

This is bad, this is bad, this is seriously really bad! Certainly, the cooldown to be able to use skills again goes into effect regardless of the fact if the attack was successful or not, and the fact that it was actually rendering our main attacker pretty much useless was troublesome. Even more: super troublesome!

「Everyone, retreat! Put as much distance in between us and this thing as possible!」

Not to mention that I was still in the sh*ttiest position of us all here. I needed to patch myself up quickly, but with everything that’s been going on here I was unable to do so. As a result, I started to retreat with an astonishing one HP left on me.

Looking back, Alva was swimming fast towards me, dragging behind Rei who was now holding a greyish sword and the armor that looked as though it was dragged through the earth and mud.

「Time for the emergency strategy meeting!」

For now, we had no other option but to retreat from the Coliseum before Kutanid would regain its composure and went after us with all it had.

「I am so sorry…… The tentacles appeared so suddenly out of nowhere, and my aim was off because of that……」

「No need to torment yourself over it. Let the bygones be bygones. For now, we must focus on what to do from here on out.」

This is not Rei’s fault in any way, and everyone knew that. There was no way that we were going to blame her. At that moment she was the only one at the frontline, and she gave it everything she had. And honestly, if so many tentacles appeared seemingly out of thin air right in front of you, everyone would be scared. Even I. If anything, we should all praise Rei for not getting scared and backing away.

「Alright, for starters, let’s all assess how worn out both our weapons and armor are.」

「…… The magic bow is approaching its limit. I estimate that I can fire twenty more shots out of it at best.」

「If I limit myself to Rust alone, I can cast my buffs several more times.」

Mold and Rust are approaching their limits…… It’s possible that they did not prepare for this all too well because they were returning to the game and were a little bit rusty.

「What about you, Akitsu Akane?」

「Umm, let’s see…… I can only use my Hidden Blade Jutsu from now on…… I am truly sorry for being so useless!」

「It’s not that anyone here is angry with you or is blaming you for anything. For now, tell us more about your equipment situation, so we might know what’s going on.」

「Right! I have used up all of my recovery items and the only real projectile I have left on me is my Dragon’s Breath.」

「I see…… You see, Akitsu Akane, I won’t lie to you. Both Rei and I have used up our trump cards. To makes matters worse, Rei’s equipment got demolished as a result of her using her trump card, and I have burned out of my healing items in order to patch myself up.」

「D-Doesn’t that mean that we are all in quite a pinch right now……?」

「Yes, quite a pinch indeed. I still have some firepower left up my sleeve, but right here right now…… Akitsu Akane, you may be the one who possesses the highest battle potential out of all of us.」

「W-Who, me!? Really!?」

「Easy there, and calm yourself down. Alright, now take a couple of deep breaths…… Okay, have you calmed down? You must have, right? Right, so right now I want you to think, think long and hard. About your trump card. You must have one, right? And it should be quite powerful right about now, since you must have leveled up quite a bit after that battle with Luukan, right? Your trump card.」

「I-I think that you try to put way too much responsibility on my poor little shoulders here!」

That’s right, the amount of responsibility resting on your shoulders will be quite heavy. Maybe even so heavy that it might end up breaking you to pieces.

As far as NPCs are concerned, it’s just what you would expect. The only exception here was Alva, because it turned out that his sword was some sort of a special weapon, one that you could use MP on in order to recover its lost durability.

Right about now, all of the players (me included) were looking at Nereis with a really sloppy eyes. It would certainly be nice to possess a weapon like that.

And finally, there was Rei who was so down in the dumps that it was actually hard to look at her. I have never before seen her being so depressed.

「So…… how are you feeling?」

…… It might sound harsh coming from me, but right now in her current state, Rei was nothing more but a dead weight to us.

Not to mention that she had suffered a penalty for failing to meet Armageddon’s conditions. With her equipment in shambles like that, Rei’s stats plummeted down all across the board, and the worse part was that right now she was unable to change her equipment into something else.