The Systemic Lands

Chapter 573: Day 5,049 (2) – Aerial Dance of Attrition

An intense lance of fire targeted the air ship. The summoned monsters in the way were instantly dusted and the airship was hit. It took damage, and quickly maneuvered out of the way as the monster moved to intercept it, while I was right behind.

As I closed in on the monster, it stopped and turned around. Force barriers sprung up in my path, which I maneuvered around using Air Burst. It was tempting to try and hit the monster with an annihilation attack, but I knew better than to try something like that at the start of this fight. The distance I was at was too far away to ensure I took down the monster, and I didn’t want to waste my energy with such a large-scale attack that wasn’t assured to hit.

The monster went back to the ground, and I kept right with it, closing the gap, so it couldn’t hide in some dark corner under the massive boulders. Michelle kept up the summons to circle the area. Occasionally sending one in.

Captain Francis had managed to slow the airship down enough and keep it circling. It hurt my soul how many points it was burning at the moment and the damage, but I wasn’t about to let this chance go. If the monster escaped from us this time, it would be a nightmare to pin it down again.

The monster shot out of the ground, into the air. It had let its stealth completely drop. Its humanoid crystalline form was disturbing, and showed the last remnants of the things humanity. Despite its power and adaptability, it had failed in its strategy whatever it was.

That lack of strategic thinking was what allowed me to have confidence in our eventual victory. The fact it had been stuck in conflict with the super sword for so long, confirmed the monster lacked common sense. Repeating the same thing over and over while expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

As we went back up into the air, its attacks were less powerful but more frequent. Michelle put summons in my path for me to reorient myself mid-air with, so I didn’t have to use Air Burst. It was something we had done and practiced in the past, but it wasn’t worthwhile most of the time. Very few fights lasted over 20 seconds. A full minute was the kind of fight I didn’t forget. This was true in fights where it was the same monster over and over again.

This fight was completely different. It was a battle of attrition. Michelle and the airship had enough crystals and points to last this fight three times over. While they were burning a lot, it wasn’t the bottleneck on our side, rather my energy was the biggest concern.

The monster didn’t engage in pitched drawn out battles. That was something we had picked up on while investigating it and talking about the previous fights. It used hit and run tactics, it wasn’t a brawler. Every time a fight would turn into a direct brawl, it would retreat and regroup.

There was no staying at range and bombarding a target either. Even when that would have been the best tactic to use. This implied their was a limitation with the monster. Since it had most likely come from a human, that implied energy limitations. Monsters as far as we could tell, had no energy limitations. There were usage constraints, but not energy constraints. Summons played by different rules, which was why it had been confusing and required testing.

A captive monster, would spam an attack like clockwork, over and over again. While the higher level monsters had more variation, they were still stuck in the same rut. But this unique monster, had a massive range of skills and had most likely been formed from a meta-point. This implied there were energy limitations.

As I observed the monster, I could see the energy density within it slowly decreasing. That was all the confirmation I needed that we were on the right track to beating it. Constantly wearing it down and keeping up the pressure, to not give a moments rest or the chance to recover. While my energy reserves would be pushed, once things settled with the airship and Michelle’s perimeter, she was able to provide aerial foot and handholds.

Each use of Air Burst took 50 energy. I had X energy and gained back 200 per minute. That meant I could use an Air Burst every 15 seconds and still break even in terms of energy. Unfortunately, the battle was a bit more intense than my energy regeneration and I needed to make about 8 mid-air course corrections per minute.

That was where the summoned monsters came into play. Michelle used cheap disposable level 1 summons, rather than something like the Infinite Block. The risk of the monster incapacitating her through a summon was too great, and losing a high-level monster would be a huge loss. Better to have disposable monsters scattered about.

Using them to maneuver, would dust them, but every bit of energy saved on my end was a huge help. Michelle coming in clutch once again. Our respective combat abilities complimented each other very well. Her use of monsters in a wide area, compared to my direct engagement.

We hadn’t been able to level that combination fully in the last battle when we first found out about the monster, but now that we could, it was absolute domination. That didn’t mean there were no risks, but that there was no good way to win or escape by our opponent. We had been fighting togeather for over a decade.

That kind of trust and synergy, wasn’t something that was easily done over a short period of time. I trusted Michelle to move her summons and handle her end and she trusted me to keep the monster directly engaged, so it couldn’t target her. While she was on the airship, she was vulnerable while focusing on so many low level summons.

If I had to fight against this kind of strategy, it would be impossible. I watched as a flying summon sent out burst of fire. The monster was forced to twist around the attack, but still took some damage. Right before it could grab onto the summon, Michelle cut the tether and it turned to dust.

This scene kept repeating over and over, while I kept right behind the monster, sending an occasional Acid Shot to make sure it paid attention to me. The damage and energy drain were slowly accumulating. The fact it was using less skills, and using skills in a more targeted manner, showed our attrition strategy was working.

It kept maneuvering, trying to get away, get position, lose me so it could go into hiding, and counter attacking. If this were an actual person doing this well, I would have called them a combat savant on the level of the Divine Empress. The problem was, even if you had great ability, precision, a range of skills, a battle one on one was a lot different than a team battle.

While the monster was getting better, it was losing energy and taking more damage. It had to keep up a base level of speed to avoid me and the occasional attack I sent its way. While tempting to try and rush things, that would create an opening I didn’t want to happen. We had a winning strategy, better to stick with it long term, rather than trying to rush victory.

My years of fighting had let me develop patience for something like this. I hated fighting this way. It had nothing to do with honor, or fairness even if this was a very unfair method of combat. No, what really annoyed me was how long it took and how much attention I had to focus on the fight.

Grinding monsters tended to be very repetitive after the first one or two times. The monsters didn’t have any new tricks to show. Once their tricks and attacks were figured out, it was just repeating the same strategy over and over.

This monster, however, adapted. While it clearly wasn’t able to learn strategy, it could grasp tactics, combined with an understanding of my team’s combat methods that only improved over time. That was why I wasn’t about to let the monster go no matter what. The risk of us struggling much more in a third confrontation was much too high. If we couldn’t end it now, then we would be unlikely to ever kill it without a massive change in how we were fighting it.

Another method would have been to gather up a lot more summoners from my Empire and use them all at once. Just dog pile the super monster to death. As I dodged a return beam of fire, I decided that would have to be the next strategy if we didn’t win this fight.

After two hours of constantly chasing the monster and keeping up pressure, it finally made a critical mistake. It wen to land on a boulder, but I had used Acid Shot towards its landing point, having predicted it. This forced the monster to use a skill to create a platform to push off to the side.

That movement put it in range of a barrage of brown slimes. Growing roots shout up everywhere trying to grasp the monster, but it kept darting out of the way and counter attacking. Acid Shot. It took a bit of a hit on its outer thigh from my skill. This was the first time it landed, and there was more than just superficial damage.

A portion of its leg was melting away. It kept dodging, but it was clearly struggling now. Like a hunted animal, that was putting up one last bit of fight before a predator, leapt on it and took it down. Intelligence, teamwork, and not giving up were the keys to winning. That last one was something I had learned from the Divine Empress. You weren’t defeated until you were dead.

Still, I didn’t order Michelle to move in summons for a finishing attack. I was going to force the monster to make the first move. I wasn’t going to make a mistake while we were winning to win slightly faster. A winning strategy was a winning strategy, since it forced one’s opponent to react and change what they were doing.

We could have been fighting for three days, and I still wouldn’t have changed things, as long as my side was coming out ahead. This monster was too tricky and frustrating to give it an inch of room to breathe. I smiled as it took more and more incidental damage and spent more energy to keep up its speed.

It also didn’t escape my notice, that it was drawing energy from the air more heavily than before. Either it was improving over the course of the battle or was becoming more desperate. Even the most injured of animals would bite before the end, and I had no doubt that a human and monster fusion would do something similar.