Chương 296: Chapter 284

Left. Right. Left. Right. A step forward, a cut to the right, back to the center. The dance of death, the tango of terror, occupied all their attention. Katie, for once silent and not energetically yelling about crazy things, went about demolishing their enemies with gusto. Her (somehow) mechanized greatsword tore through the deluge of alien-looking voidlings that came at them at ever-increasing numbers.

Sam made sure to use most of his spells as his sword danced through the crowd of ravenous monsters intent on consuming the two of them, but as time went by, he noticed that those 'simple' elemental spells – even boosted by this considerable power – were becoming less and less effective. It was as if the void was learning… Slowly, but surely, his and Katie's elemental attacks stopped working.

Leaving angry welts instead of bisecting the rushing monsters that just kept getting bigger and bigger, until they didn't even do that. Naturally, one would ask the question why they tried to use those spells and skills until they became completely ineffective. Mostly because every time they dipped into the void and used those spells to kill the monsters wanting to eat them, the entire chaotic primordial soup around vibrated and started to 'birth' more powerful monsters.

It was a careful balancing act of trying to destroy the monsters while making sure the void stayed still. The first voidlings, when they stepped on the desolate rock, came up to his knees with thin arms ending in sharp claws, wicked teeth, and one to two dozen eyes. Ears were optional. Sometimes they had tails with teeth, spikes, or spikey teeth or spikes with teeth on them. As Katie and Sam were moving around the destroyed area, keeping each other safe, the monsters grew to around the size of a healthy cow.

Strong arms, bulging with thick muscles, the veins creepily visible, claws long enough to count as daggers, and with enough heads to see in four directions at the same time.

"To your left!" he called out and instantly heard as Katie simply spun her apocalyptic greatsword, which was soon followed by the squelching sound of a voidling getting pulverized.

"Duck!" Katie exclaimed, and Sam ducked even if he couldn't see or sense anything coming. Then he watched as Katie threw a smaller voidling over his head, straight at a new one that was just beginning to materialize, somehow fusing the two together. For a moment, he marveled at the incredible image of a monster with two legs on the ground, two in the air, and four arms waving around in panic as the two heads vanished in the fusing event.

His senses were maximized as he weaved through countless strikes, focusing both his eyes and Mana Sense on the area around them, as well as at the boundary between the destroyed tower ruins and the churning primordial chaos, hoping to pinpoint the monster spawns. So far, it hadn't worked, but at least nothing had managed to backstab him. Though he admitted to himself, it was mostly because before anything could backstab him, they would have to go through Katie.

It was a nice feeling to know that his friend had his back. Once more, reaching for the void, he coated his sword with it and sent it toward a monster that was charging straight at him. Then he watched as the chaos around them trembled and spat out a monster that landed with a thud, kicking up dust that had covered this forgotten surface since who knows when.

It had four legs, looked like a beefed-up version of some kind of fantasy rhino, and its horns, of which it had three in line on its forehead, and a few dozen along its spine and knees, started spinning like a drill.

"Katie! A new one! Drill Rhino!"

"Can I ride it?"

"What are your feelings about drills of doom?" Just as they finished the exchange, the new monster reached them with its charge, causing Sam to jump out of its way. He cut into the thick hide with his sword, its edge enhanced by the void, then as the monster swept past him. Katie simply slammed her sword into the ground, summoning dozens of spikes made out of eldritch energy in concentric waves centered around it, that traveled away from that point before piercing through the voidling.

They ignored it as it began to vanish and jumped to another mostly empty spot, crushing one lone voidling of the smaller variety, their backs once again together.

"We can't continue like this…" he whispered.

"Why? I quite…ugh…enjoy it!" Katie replied while grunting as she smashed apart another monster.

"Too inefficient!" he replied, frowning a little as he took a small breather.

"Well, haven't you learned some super-duper cool magic?" Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"We didn't really go…into…that…" he trailed off as he realized he was being kinda dumb. The Void Lady didn't really give him spells, but they did discuss applications. Resisting the urge to facepalm, he turned his head a little sideways, still keeping the monsters in his sight.

"Cover me for a second, please!"

"Sure thing!" Katie practically chirped as she instantly began to shine with red eldritch light that slowly engulfed her before shooting out to seven spots around her and Sam, creating shapes made of the same red light that slowly took her shape, but with a red filter. The copies all had manic grins on their faces, and the moment they appeared, their greatswords were all buzzing eagerly before they threw themselves at the equally eager monsters.

Sam contemplated asking why one of the clones had cat ears, but in the end, he decided to let it go. Instead, he closed his eyes and began to focus.

'Right. Nothingness. It's easy, just use it to turn reality inside out and then not get consumed by it,' he mused to himself as he reached for the mana in his Mana Core. After bringing the void to the foreground, he spent a moment just letting it rest and trying to ignore the cackle, as several clones of Katie (and the girl herself) were brutalizing the enemy. Not that he pitied the monsters, but it was still disturbing on some level.

'She really needs to get some other outlet aside from this game…' Void was nothingness, yet it existed. It consumed, yet Sam wasn't consumed by it. He controlled it, shaped it. Yet, at the same time, nothingness surrounded him, protected him, and comforted him with its reassuring weight. He used it in spells, usually flavoring them with the void, but he never really did anything big with it.

Maybe because he got used to only using his sword and smaller spells, or maybe he was worried about what fully unleashing the void would do. He wasn't really sure, but now that he was in the actual place, between dimensions, where collateral damage wasn't really the issue, that block vanished into thin air faster than a parfait when Katie was hungry. It was time to flex a little. In Magic Unbound, there were a lot of different ways to categorize spells.

You could categorize them based on elements, casting time, target time, and so many more. But the simplest categorization that most people agreed on was the usability scale. Personal spells were things one used on their own body or near it. Ranged spells were things that traveled away from the caster. Area effect spells were, as the name implied, those that affected an area. That could be a small patch near the caster, or an entire country.

Next were the Team Killers, Army Killers, and Country Killers, which were rather self-explanatory. Most of the buzz around the forums was about Sam using personal and ranged spells to destroy teams. Something that most people thought was almost impossible. Those spells, while they had casting components, could be cast silently and easily with some practice or talent. However, when it came to Team, Army, or Country Killers, the requirements to cast them went up exponentially.

The requirements could be anything from requiring multiple people to cast, to needing some insane materials, or chanting some kind of poem. Anything really… So, what he was trying to do was to skip that entire step of needing insane requirements and cast a Team Killer on his own. It should be possible with several of his skills, enhancing his abilities, and adding his own talent in the game's magic system would also be helpful.

He let out a small breath, then tensed his entire body and, with an incoherent yell, opened the faucet on his mana to the maximum. The void mana began to gush out, and with tremendous effort, he grabbed hold of it and began to shape it, ignoring the rampaging clones and terrified monsters born from primordial chaos.

At first the 'air' in front of him trembled, nothing interesting happening, then slowly as his efforts kept more and more void mana trapped in the same spot, the air began to change into a hollow made out of nothingness that began to grow and grow, until it was the size of a well-inflated beach ball. Not wanting to go too complicated, he began to shape the ball of void mana, until the outer shell slowly turned into hexagons.

Then, with another flex of his will, those hexagons turned into triangles before quickly multiplying, covering the entire surface of the void mana, until he was basically holding a very blocky-looking ball made of extreme nothingness. Feeling his mana starting to strain, his regeneration barely able to keep up, he grunted, then looked up and found Katie's form.

"Fire in the hole!" he called out and simply launched the ball in the middle of the dense crowd of monsters, barely held back by the spastic collection of Katie and her clones. Trusting him, Katie simply threw herself back, landing on her back, transitioning into a roll, then twirled around and threw herself forward again, before starting to roll away, just as the ball of void mana landed. Sam felt the magic straining against his control, but instead of holding, he simply let it go.

He felt his body relax just as something happened. There was no sound or explosion, yet monsters near the epicenter were simply erased without any force affecting them, while those farther away were collapsing as triangle-shaped holes appeared in their bodies. He watched as the effect propagated through the crowd before the monsters began to fall over. Sadly, another wave appeared, much bigger and meaner.

Katie rolled next to him and popped up into a gymnast stand, body straight, legs closed, and hands held to the side.

"Heck yeah! Finally, those classes were useful for something!" Then she turned toward the monsters, and a bloodthirsty smile appeared on her face.

"Can you do it again?" Sam looked inside, expecting his core to be strained, cracked, or otherwise affected. He was exhausted, yes, but that was mostly because of mental exhaustion.

"Probably…"

"Cool. But I will make the noise for it, as it isn't great without it!" Sam opened his mouth, then closed it, and instead he focused on the magic, summoning the ball of hollow void again. Surprisingly, it appeared much easier this time. As he went through the process again, Katie stood there next to him, making noises with her mouth that she thought his magic should have made.

Sam ignored her for the moment and launched his void segmentation explosion at the charging horde of giant monsters the size of school buses and trucks.

"WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!" came from Katie.

"ZUP! PFFFFFFFF! PINK!"

"That's a color…"

"No! That's the sound metal makes when it hits other metals."

"I think you mean plink."

"Could be…" They watched as another batch of monsters was erased and more appeared in their stead.

"Boy, you need to get faster with that because I don't think we can survive otherwise…" Katie stated, as countless eyes, shining with rage, lust for battle, and endless hunger for everything and anything, focused on them, and the void let out a soundless roar. Sam could have sworn the ground that was floating around the sea of chaos began to tremble under his feet. With an oft-repeated sigh, he reached for his magic and began to summon his new spell.

'If one didn't work…then maybe more explosions would be better?'