"Stay on the wall," I shout and propel myself far away from the others, right over the edge of the wall, and I start falling to the place in the city where we came from. Right in between ruined houses and empty streets.

The deer's mana starts to swirl around me, and I feel my shadow expand more and more, and soon enough the deer steps out of it and starts falling towards the ground together with me.

In quick succession, Tess's javelin filled with lightning stabs itself into its back, followed by even stronger lightning that uses the javelin as a lightning rod.

The monster roars, certainly feeling the attack, and for a moment ignores me, turning its eyes towards the top of the wall. I feel its mana move and before it can jump into Tess's shadow, my mana explodes.

[Disruption] boosted by [Mana Surge] hits the monster with the full power I can muster, and it cancels out its "jump", the monster once again turning to me.

Then we finally reach the ground, and both of us land somehow elegantly, without taking any damage.

The deer's mana shines from its antlers and the houses around us start to crumble, only for its debris to be lifted up into the air, floating around the deer. The debris is thrown at me in quantity and with a speed of a terrifying level, and to counter it I create a shield in front of me. The shield is shaped as an oval to make it as small as possible, I also make the front of it thinner and sharper, reaching a bit in front of me and cutting all the debris while thinner sides of the shield let the debris pass by me without the shield taking too much damage.

Debris just keeps coming and getting smashed against my shield I continue to strengthen with tricolored mana.

I feel a few more of Tess's attacks land on the deer and even Sophie's mana reaches towards the monster, stopping its attack for a few seconds, giving me a bit more time to fill my shield with mana.

Then, not unexpectedly, I feel my shadow swell and grow bigger, and to answer that I ignore it. Instead, I push even more mana inside my shield, and it starts vibrating, getting harder and harder to stop it from exploding.

When my shadow expands and the monster appears right next to me, I brace myself, strengthening my body through Symbiotic Transference, and propel myself with more force than before, sending me flying through the debris and smashing them apart with my strengthened body.

I propel myself a few more times in the split second, even hitting a few roofs and houses in my way.

Meanwhile, the tricolored shield behind me I created starts shining brightly, about to explode right after the deer fully steps out of what used to be my shadow.

Good, now let's see how you will tank this.

The mana inside the shield starts to turn into a shining white color and then the shield disappears.

Huh?

Instead of exploding next to the deer, the attack appears right behind me, in my shadow, transported there by the deer's skill.

I see, so that's how we play. I clench my teeth and rouse up my entire mana and then instead of running away, I reach out towards my shield that's about to explode and force it back under my control. A groan escapes my mouth, and my head feels like it's about to explode together with constant grinding that sounds in my ears.

My skills activate one after another, trying to force this monstrous mana back under my control, and I continue to squeeze the shield into a more manageable shape, an orb as big as my fist.

I force all of this mana into the shape that continues to fight against me and threatens to explode at any second, the tricolored mana swirling wildly inside the orb and shining brighter than before while letting out an audible hum.

Meanwhile, the monster's antlers shine once again and the houses around it crumble only to be lifted up and thrown at me and then halfway to be redirected to the sides as if a wave splitting in front of the wall.

A wall that is a young blonde woman.

Tess stands there, lightning cracking along her body while her mana continues to feed her [Psychokinesis] that doesn't push against the monster's much stronger skill, she just redirects it slightly, making it pass by our sides and hit the houses behind us.

Then a rain of dark blue orbs that I made for Kim hits the monster's head, barely doing any serious damage, but clearly pissing it off.

As I continue to try to stop my mana from exploding, I don't have time to feel the deer's mana, but it's easy to guess that it will try to jump into Kim's shadow. But before it does that, Tess's javelin stabs itself deep into its neck and then explodes with lightning mana that tears apart pieces of its Undead neck and that's enough to stop it from jumping away.

The monster turns to Tess and the world around us explodes. Entire streets and dozens of houses crumble in a split of second, hitting our bodies and throwing us rolling on the ground, and then they continue to fly high in the air, almost as high as the wall is.

At the same time, the monster's telekinesis reaches towards us and glues our bodies to the spot. The deer uses enough mana to ignore our bodies' natural barrier which should make something like this extremely hard to do.

With another pulse of mana, all the debris that covers a massive piece of the sky starts falling too, speeding up the entire time, pulled to the ground with the massive force of the monster's skill.

I elongate the orb hovering over the palm of my hand into a long, sharp shape, a javelin that's smaller than the one before, just that much denser.

At the same time, multiple things happen.

Another rain of orbs hits the monster.

Tess's mana explodes around her, and I feel her pushing against the pressure around and reaching towards the debris that is flying where we are.

And I also feel Sophie's mana reach towards the deer, and then the deer's eyes jump from me to Tess. As if the deer forgot about my existence.

My javelin flies at the monster, leaving a trail of mana in its path and then stabbing itself deep into its head without the monster even noticing it, its eyes still on Tess. Then I release my Mana Regulator to fifty percent and my heart thumps, sending vibrations of kinetic energy through my body, pushing it to its current limit and pummeling it.

First heartbeat.

Kinetic energy around me explodes and I propel myself towards Tess, immediately grabbing her.

Second heartbeat.

I use all the energy to propel us high in the air.

Third heartbeat.

The debris in our way gets pushed again and redirected by Tess, just enough force to change its trajectory and not hit us, and I use another wave of kinetic energy to propel us even faster, feeling the mana behind us expand.

We land on the wall, and I again activate my Mana Regulator at the same time as I start creating a shield of tricolored mana in front of all of us.

Then the javelin stabbed deep into the deer's head explodes, threads of tricolored mana untangling and slashing around, cutting apart the deer, and then an explosion follows. A ring of shockwaves immediately followed by a ring of fire expands in a split second into the massive area under the wall.

The shockwave destroys some of the buildings and the following heat melts the stones and any iron plating it reaches, and as the wave hits the walls it quickly follows its force and flickering waves climb on the side of the wall, until they reach the top and flames and vibrations continue higher, the side effect of it hitting us and pushing us a bit further from the edge.

I notice Isabella weakening the heat, and everyone endures the shockwave on their own.

For a fleeting moment, silence ensues, and immediately after there is an immense sucking force as the air rushes to fill up the void left after the explosion. The now-dead body after its head exploded gets folded and squeezed and pulled to the place where the javelin used to be, followed by more and more debris, flames, and air that rush back in.

As before, all of this takes just a second, explosion quickly followed by implosion. The only difference is that this one was even stronger than the one I used against the Undead Aberrant Deer, not being left with any other reasonable choice after my attack got flung against me.

"What a shitshow," I sigh. It doesn't matter what I do, it almost never goes as we would like it to go, and in the end, it all comes down to improvisation. But there is no point in complaining, I don't think it will change.

I cancel out the barrier of my mana and for the last time, I look down at where the explosion started, then I turn around to check on the others. A few of them are shaken and barely standing, either because of their help during the fight or the aftereffects of it.

Izzy is smiling, and I nod at Sophie. This time the mind manipulator missy really did help. But what's with them? Why do you have to look at me like this? It was just a small explosion. Everyone should be capable of something like this at around level 100.

As my eyes skim by them, I notice a weird movement on the edge of the wall behind them. Something flickers there, and then a massive paw with each claw as long as Isabella reaches up and grabs the edge of the wall.

My mana starts to move again when a giant head pokes over the top of the wall.

The head of a giant bear with one eye missing and terrible scars across its decaying body.

[Undead Bear - lvl ??]