Chương 270

Trapped within the distorted space, the light had built up a mighty charge in mere seconds, but was now almost invisible as it thrummed between his hands. Orion slammed his foot down, dropping the parameters for [Event Horizon]. As the barrier was released, the goblin horde, fueled by their unnatural rage, lunged at him from every direction. At the same time, he released the light, and, with nowhere else to bounce, it exploded outward in a spherical shockwave.

The swamp water vaporized on contact, forming a thick cloud of hissing steam. The goblins in the front were incinerated before they could even scream, while those further back were hurled into the surrounding trees, their flesh scorched and their berserker rage extinguished by overwhelming pain. When the steam finally cleared, the muddy basin was eerily quiet. A few surviving goblins scrambled into the underbrush, broken.

Only the last Hobgoblin remained standing, though that was more a testament to its Trait's strength than to its resilience. Red steam wafted from its charred skin, and it growled, maddened by pain. Slowly, it stepped toward him, showing it was not yet done, but Orion was no Paladin. He cared naught for last stands and honorable duels, so he nailed the monster with [Gravity Cannon] after [Gravity Cannon] until it was little more than paste. System Notification Personally defeated [Ironwood Hobgoblin] x1 [Lv. 98] Participated in the defeat of [Ironwood Hobgoblin] x1 [Lv. 96] Personally defeated [Ironwood Goblin] x74 [Lv. 48-55] Achieved Light Refraction without crystals! +412, 000 Exp Level Up! He exhaled, his knees wobbling as the adrenaline receded. He was now level ninety, with just ten more levels to reach tier three. He dismissed the lingering fragments of his exoskeleton, and the sudden absence left the evening air cold against his skin.

His two watchers appeared nearby a moment later, and a wave of healing light washed over him, mending all the bruises and aches he'd accumulated during the day.

"That was well done," Asteria noted, surveying the smoking swamp.

"You recognized you were at a disadvantage and turned your weakness into a multiplier. Yes, I do believe you deserve to rest tonight." I don't think I could have kept going even if I wanted to, Orion thought, though he kept that to himself. His mother seemed determined to push him to his limits, and he didn't want to provoke her into sending him off when he was so exhausted. They made a sparse camp on a high, dry branch overlooking the basin.

Orion barely remembered eating his rations before exhaustion pulled him into a deep, dreamless sleep. The next morning broke as pale light shone through the canopy. Orion woke sore, but his connection to the Field thrummed with energy, and he leaned on it to restore his energy by filling himself with light mana. It was no more than the effect a double shot of espresso would have had in his previous life, but considering what awaited him, he'd need all the help he could get.

"Today will be your final test before we have to return to camp," Asteria announced, tossing him a fresh waterskin.

"There is a Troll Shaman in this region. A true third-tier creature, nothing like the weaklings you just fought. I will not point it out to you, but I expect it to be no problem for you. Find it, track it, and kill it." Orion nodded, slipping his adamantine glasses onto his face. He fed a steady stream of mana into the frames, powering up the Arcane Overlay. Tracking a natural monster in its own environment required a different approach than hunting Iron State machines.

There were no alchemical thruster trails here. Instead, Orion looked for anomalies in the Field. From what he remembered of their fight near Valderun, Troll Shamans constantly drew on the surrounding nature to fuel their spells and regeneration, creating a distinct inward-flowing current of life mana. Back then, he'd barely been able to survive its wrath because others had drawn its attention, and even then, it was only because he'd resorted to [Gamma Ray] that he'd managed to kill it. He could do it again.

The spell was very taxing, but he had grown a lot since those days, and he was pretty sure it would be even more powerful now. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Yet he dismissed the possibility outright. Yes, it would count as a kill, but it would defeat the entire purpose of this training. He needed to be more than a glass cannon, so he wouldn't resort to it unless he absolutely had to.

It took him some time, but eventually he found the subtle distortion that led out of the swamp and deeper into the untamed forest. As much as he had hoped for a quiet stroll, the deep woods were fiercely territorial. An hour into the trek, a pair of Poison-Weave Spiders dropped from the canopy, their mandibles dripping with paralytic venom.

Orion didn't even break his stride as he triggered a repelling vector, throwing the first spider off balance, then seamlessly chained a compressed gravity disk that cleanly severed the second spider's thorax. The fluidity of his new combat heuristics made dealing with Tier Two monsters feel trivial, but he kept his guard up, knowing it would take just one mistake for this trip to turn into a tragedy. Even his mother couldn't heal a severed head. System Notification Personally defeated [Poison-Weave Spider] [Lv. 59] Personally defeated [Poison-Weave Spider] [Lv. 64] +47, 300 Exp That's less than I expected, but then again, it was barely a fight. It makes sense that weak monsters give much less exp, or everyone could climb to tier five by farming low-level areas. By midday, the ambient life mana had grown denser. The trees here were even taller than those in the west, their bark almost metallic. When he tapped a knuckle against it, it rang like true iron. Getting slammed into that will hurt.

I need to be careful about where I am during the fight, especially if the Shaman can wield nature magic as powerful as my readings suggest. That was something he hadn't had to deal with last time, but it made sense for a druidic caster to be empowered when surrounded by such mighty flora. Orion stopped at the edge of a wide grove. At the center, kneeling before a shrine of petrified wood and bone, was the Shaman.

It was an imposing, lanky creature, its gray-green skin covered in glowing tattoos that mirrored the forest's root systems. His Arcane Overlay insisted that those would be trouble. There was mana trapped within them, much like in an enchanted object, yet it was applied to a living creature.

He'd never seen anything like it, but thinking about it, the practice made sense, even if he suspected it was accompanied by excruciating pain as external mana was forced into the body, and likely even more consequences, or everyone would do it. Ironwood Troll Shaman - Last of the tribe Class: [Nature Shaman] [B-rank] Level: 121 Mind: 410 Attunement: 780 Body: 650 Traits: [Troll's Vitality] [B-rank]; [Deep Root Connection] [B-rank]; [Flora Empowerment] [B-rank] The Shaman's head snapped up.

It hadn't seen Orion, but with an Attunement that high and within a grove thick with nature mana, it had likely felt the subtle shift in the Field the moment Orion inspected it. Slowly, it rose from its crouch, looking almost peaceful as it raised its bone staff, if not for the baleful red eyes seeking his position. Then it brought it down, and the ground beneath Orion exploded. Spear-like roots shot upward in every direction, faster than any beast he'd faced yet.

Orion activated his gravity skates, hurling himself backward just as the roots pierced the space where he'd just been. The Shaman rumbled something in a guttural tongue, and the air in the grove filled with a yellow mist, something [Hypotheticism] told him was toxic spores meant to take root in the lungs. Orion began circling clean air around himself, chaining a continuous positive vector beneath his boots to anchor himself as he dashed sideways.

He fired three rapid bursts of light from his hands, striking the Troll squarely in the chest. The beams carved black trenches across its torso, but it didn't even flinch. Its tattoos flared, and the ruined flesh hissed as it knit back together in less than a second. So beyond [Troll's Vitality], it managed to further enhance its regeneration. Great. More vines erupted from the ground, joining the others in their chase.

Now that the monster could see him, they were converging on his position, and Orion knew he wouldn't be able to avoid them for long. A thousand cuts won't work, he realized, skating beneath a sweeping wave of animated ironwood branches that sheared the top off a nearby boulder. I have to go big from the start, or it will overwhelm me. While he wasn't used to being on the back foot, he did have a way to handle situations like these.

Born of his [Falsifiability Criterion] trait, he had developed a spell capable of tearing apart the fundamental structure of matter and magic, provided he fully understood the target's composition. His light spells flashed, burning more of the wood and leaving a few cuts on the Shaman, but it was clear they wouldn't be enough. For this, he needed [Null Laser].

Still, to build the formula, he needed to study the frequency of the Shaman's life mana and the cellular regeneration of its flesh; otherwise, it would simply be a more powerful bolt of light. That was exactly what his mother had been trying to steer him away from, but he intended to integrate her teachings into his own methods to create a whole new style from the start, and it seemed he'd get a baptism by fire. Thus decided, Orion began turning his plan into reality.

He darted between the towering trees, using low-power gravity wells to redirect his momentum at impossible angles. Lasers flashed, sometimes powerful enough to carve through ironwood, and sometimes barely containing any heat, more meant as distractions than as any true attack. [Gravity Cannons] roared into existence, breaking through thick branches as easily as cardboard. Yet the Shaman was relentless, and as the fight dragged on, it increasingly revealed the vast power gap between their tiers.

The earth churned, roots lashed out like homing missiles, and the toxic mist thickened, forcing Orion to constantly cycle the air around his face and stay on the move, limiting the processing power he could devote to his studies. Every time he caught a glancing blow from a root, the impact rattled his bones, and only [Light Exoskeleton] enhancing his Body stat saved him from being instantly crushed. But with every impact and every dodge, his glasses recorded data and fed it to the CC.

He watched the Shaman heal from a glancing gravity disk that had ripped a chunk from its arm. He applied [Hypotheticism], tracking the wavelength of the emerald mana as it repaired the tissue. He analyzed the composition of the bone-staff channeling the spells. Got you, Orion thought as the Crystal finally completed the structural analysis.

The Shaman seemed to have had enough of their game of cat and mouse and raised its staff high with both hands, the Field roaring as it prepared to collapse the entire grove inward, intending to bury Orion. In a move he was pretty sure surprised everyone watching, he made one last jump and planted his feet at the center of the grove.

He immediately cast [Event Horizon], anchoring the sphere of warped space tightly around his body, but instead of filling it with standard light magic as he had for the goblins, he wove the formula for [Null Laser]. Feeding the spell all the knowledge he'd gained about the Troll's regenerative mana, he encoded the structural weakness of the creature's tough skin into the beam's parameters.

Sensing he was doing something new, the Shaman roared, and a tidal wave of earth and roots surged toward Orion, threatening to swallow him whole. Inside the spatial dome, [Null Laser] fired, refracting infinitely against the boundaries of [Event Horizon], building up until it turned pitch-black, rimmed with stark white. Just as the sunlight was blotted out by the nature tsunami, Orion dropped the spatial containment and thrust his hands forward.