One bullet.
"Let's see if that's enough,"
Hajime murmured.
He fired— straight line stretched.
From the outside, only a sliver of a second passed between trigger pull and impact. Inside Hajime's mind, that instant became a long, crystalline corridor of time.
Thought Acceleration roared to maximum, perception snapping into overdrive as his brain shifted into a state far beyond human limits.
Parallel Processing split his cognition into multiple simultaneous tracks, each watching a different detail of the battlefield.
The bullet streaked downward like a fragment of lightning—silent for an instant before thundering, compressed taur stone bullets, — falling along a trajectory his resonance had predicted for the fastest impact.
It hit the silver head square between the eyes.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Inside the stretched-out instant, Hajime watched the impact in obscene clarity.
The taur tip penetrated its scales and entered its core inside, then the bullet split in to two parts exposing the material inside which was made up sthar and blastrock mixture.
So the more mana it absorbs from its enemy body the larger the explosion would be, the round drank in mana, its spiral layers responding to the resonance pattern he'd pre-inscribed.
The halfway microscopic drop of flame rock dust nested in its centre trembled, then detonated inward, not outward—an implosion inside the bullet that then started chain as surrounding it was the now mana charged blast rock material.
The entire head of the hydra exploded of its neck.
The implosion collapsed mana pathways connecting the head to main body, the Silver head's control circuits had been shredded from the inside.
The core behind its eyes was still intact floating in the air where once its entire head stood, it began to vibrate in its place as if screaming —a note Hajime's resonance perceived as a twisting, white-hot coil of energy.
The Silver head began regenerating, shrieking without sound.
A white ripple exploded from the wound.
Space around its skull blurred and then snapped, mana and matter falling out of sync for a blink.
The neck convulsed, light tearing through its scales in jagged cracks that ran all the way up from the argent shell towards the hydra's torso.
Instead, the silver core began to unravel—then rewove. The fragmented energy folded in on itself, locking into a new configuration, as if Hajime's carefully tuned disruption had served less as a killing blow and more as a forced molt.
"Regeneration? No—Evolution," Hajime muttered, eyes narrowing.
Silver eyes snapped upward and locked onto him.
Thought Acceleration dragged that tiny motion out like a slow replay video, as he brought out his special pair gatling gun he made for moments like these when all he wanted was absolute destruction and he saw its slow but deliberate turn of their turrets on both his hands.
Hajime watched the hydra's muscles in its neck coil, saw minute shifts in Silver's pupils as they began to Shrink in apprehension. In one thread of his Parallel Processing, he tracked mana flow inside the skull began to tremble as if suffering from nervous cramps.
"Time to bring it down, the thunder"
Rat-tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat tat-tat...…
A thunderous, continues rolling barrage began to pour out from Hajime in waves, when his first pair of gatling guns began to overheat, he switched them out with another spare pair which in total he had 5 sets.
By the time he went through all the ten gatling gun the once pristine marble floor beneath and behind the hydra was no longer the same as it once was. The ground had sunk around the hydra, only the place where the hydra stayed was somewhat safe as the hydra took the brunt of the fire power.
He glanced at Yue beside him.
She was slack jawed by the destructiveness of these artifacts, while Hajime had explained to her what he made, northing prepared her for the live demonstration.
The hydra though full of holes began to regenerate OR rather evolving might be the better term as he noticed through his analysis and resonance scans that the destroyed parts were regrowing stronger than before.
Before it could fully regenerate. The silver core shot several thin disintegration blasts as if to stall him or buy time for itself to regenerate, he dropped from the ceiling a split-second before many razor-thin beam sliced it clean in half. To the naked eye, the beam was just a line of annihilation.
To Hajime's accelerated senses, it was a layered weapon: a compressed spine of void white disintegration wrapped in twisting threads of elemental mana colors—red, blue, green, silver, gold, and purple, that same aurora's radiance he'd already been blasted with once. Fire stripped away resistance, ice locked structure, wind compressed and focused, earth unlocked the layers, while the dark attribute threaded through the metaphysical, the light reshaping everything it passed through.
The massive stone plate he had stood on disintegrated into glittering motes.
The silver beam tracked him midair with precision, minor corrections angling the shot ahead of his fall.
Nexus Overdrive's time ran out. he wasted the 60 seconds and more in his craze while relishing the destruction he was causing with his rail-gun accelerated gatling guns.
This was only his base suite of enhancements—Air Dance, Aerodynamic, and Rift-walk layered together with Thought Acceleration & Quantum Calculation, feet finding invisible footholds in the air as he twisted into an almost unnatural arc.
Yue's voice cut sharply through the air.
"Let me help!"
She stabbed her scepter into the ground, movements fluid even in his accelerated perception.
All-element Amplification boosted her spells, Thought Acceleration and Quantum Calculation letting her adjust and alter the formula multiple times mid-cast to find any sort of elemental weakness. A second later a compressed vortex of wind detonated behind Hajime—not a blast aimed at the hydra, but a precise vector-adjustment thrust which pushed him forward.
The blast propelled him, as he dove into the hydra's beam.
Just as fast he tore through the other side near the neck of hydra and slashed it clean off with his Laser sword which he simply named the 'END BLUE' while there was still a hole in the disintegration beam space his body would've occupied. For a normal mage, the timing, speed, trajectory, these calculations would have been impossible. For Yue, who was layered with Thought Acceleration, Quantum Calculation, & Parallel Processing Hajime's motion and the arena's geometry into solvable equations, making him break through the beam's path was child's play.
Hajime retreated using lost echo, teleporting instantly beside her, boots screaming against the smooth stone which was in contrast with the other half of the room on the now regenerating hydra's side.
The Silver head's shape was already changing—streamlined, segmented, scales shifting like interlocking plates of liquid steel. The pattern on its forehead shifted, tiny runes flickering as elemental circuits rearranged themselves to incorporate the data of that last exchange.
"It's evolving again." Yue said quietly, gaze blank.
"Yeah." Hajime holstered Donner and pulled out 'Schlagen', the heavy railgun-enhanced long barreled rifle hummed in his hands as Lightning Field crackled along its frame.
"But I'm starting to get bored playing with this snake. We have already tested what we wanted so let's end this bastard." For a shuddering moment, everything slowed even further as they both circulated there mana in between themselves increasing its quality and effectiveness.
Hajime's Quantum Calculation abused every scrap of battle data so far: the hydra's energy levels, scales thickness ratios, regeneration rate, reaction speed.
Yue's skills like image-based skills filled in the gaps—Image Composition sketching trajectories for the shot he was about to make, Spell Melding pre-preparing counters she hadn't yet cast.
The Silver head hissed, gathering a large amount of mana for another aurora beam.
Hajime once again prepped only one bullet but this time with micro-adjustments in the mana pattern and prepping the rails with huge amount of electricity, correcting weaknesses Hajime's first shot had exposed. The heat intensified.
The world trembled at the sheer amount of mana concentrated in the barrel.
Hajime grabbed Yue's hand.
" United Will "
She squeezed back, without hesitation.
"Mm."
United Will surged—and then, on top of it, Resonance synchronization climbed to Tier 4's absolute limit, Nexus Overdrive sliding into place like a locked over-clocked cog once again finding purchase.
Shared perception overlaid their senses, Infinite Resonance wrapping their combined awareness around the battlefield like a web of crimson and gold.
A surge of power snapped through them like a second heartbeat.
The Silver head fired.
The aurora exploded forth, a river of prismatic death ripping across the arena. This time, Hajime saw a lot more than a beam: thousands of packeted micro-spells, each elemental strand carrying a different failure mode for any defense that would try to resist it directly.
Their barrier wasn't a dome this time. It was a blade.
Hajime and Yue shaped it together, mana pouring out along the vector their shared perception agreed upon. A thin, curved sheet of pure will—crimson from Hajime, golden from Yue, with the barrier's edged being yue's Azure blade spell—manifested between them and the oncoming aurora, not as a wall but as a deflecting plane calculated down to the last degree.
Quantum Calculation and Infinite Resonance broke the beam into components, mapping angles where even that annihilation couldn't fully negate momentum. their Parallel Processing handled the micro-corrections; Hajime's Sense Magic and truth Eye fine-tuned thickness and density in real-time.
The blade of light at the tip of the barrier though stationary still split the aurora beam down its center, bending it into twin streams that skimmed past them at the barrier's edge, shearing along the floor and then exploding harmlessly against the far walls.
The Silver head recoiled. For the first time… it hesitated. Confusion flickered in its eyes as mana stone inside its skull stuttered and vibrated in odd frequency's.
Hajime smirked. "You're not the only one who adapts."
Yue lifted her free hand.
Azure flames spiraled around her wrist like a vine, refined to their purest aspect. With All Element Amplification focusing her output, her Azure became the purest flames burning the scales of its body.
The Silver head attacked again—shot gunning dozens of prismatic bullets of annihilation this time instead of a straight beam. Each bullet carried a slightly different ratio of elements and a subtle twist of mind magic, probing, hunting for a chink.
Hajime shifted his grip on Schlagen.
"Keep it pinned!"
"Mm!"
Yue pressed down on her scepter. Mana pressure doubled, then tripled, her mana reserves fed by the logistics system the Divinity Stone jewelry Hajime had made for her. All Element Amplification ensured the wind and water components maintained perfect ratios even as she pushed them further.
The head strained, near metallic muscles bulging, scales warping as the Silver head commanded every attribute at its disposal to resist—fire melding the micro-cracks forming on the scale, ice hardening weak spots, wind trying to generate a barrier, earth reinforcing the base, mind magic reaching outward in a broad, unfocused attempt to shake their concentration, healing threads hunting for structural failure to repair.
Under normal circumstances, that kind of multi-attribute creature with evolving defense would have been unstoppable.
But evolution wasn't helping it here.
Because Hajime wasn't aiming for the head anymore.
Infinite Resonance had continued its silent tracing in his background thought processes. The hydra's head in the earlier fight. but when he activated Nexus Overdrive his mental capacity was also boosted along with the rest he reevaluated that map in a fraction of a second—removing false cores which was sitting inside its head looking pretty, cross-checking mana density with Sense Magic and Detect Magic, probing every anomaly the argent shell tried to hide.
Past muscles. Past the network that handled elemental routing. Past high-density mana nodules placed specifically to look like weak points.
There—A single, crystalline organ deep in the hydra's base, buried beneath overlapping plates of armor and bathed in a constant circulation of healing light.
Not a core.
A command node or a Heart like organ that works like a brain somehow.
All heads were it's extensions.
Silver too was but a decoy.
This hidden node was the true control, the heart behind the brains.
Hajime stabilized the bipod holding schlagen using transmutation.
"Hey, Yue."
"Mm?" she answered, breath steady despite the pressure, Thought Acceleration keeping the load of continuous casting from feeling like strain—for now.
"You know why I like headshots?"
She smiled faintly at his childishness, remembering the line from earlier, even in this accelerated slice of time.
"Because they only need…?"
"One bullet."
He fired.
This time the shot didn't go for the obvious target. Infinite Resonance and Quantum Calculation hijacked the bullet's "path" from the moment it left the barrel. Mana Manipulation and telekinesis wrapped around the round like a thin skin, allowing Hajime to nudge its trajectory only at key moments due to its immense speed.
Air Dance even provided micro-platforms made up of solidified wind currents against which he deflected the bullet, altering air density in patches so the bullet drifted exactly how he wanted it.
It curved—spinning through the wreckage of the arena, slipping behind collapsed pillars, grazing shattered stone that exploded behind it. It dove under the hydra's coiled body, hugging the floor so close that for a normal observer it would have seemed to skim it.
Then with a sudden burst of his telekinesis it snapped upward like a missile turning 90 degree. It didn't hesitate, didn't slow.
It skipped the floor under the argent shell, punching through the hydra's underside, ignoring decoy organs Silver head had grown in that brief window after its own evolution. Truth Eye flashed Hajime, confirming the node's precise position.
The bullet found the node.
The explosion was quiet.
More of a pulse than a blast all the work of telekinesis—a spherical collapse of force tuned to snuff, not shatter. Mana in the node inverted, its channels caving inward. For an instant, the entire hydra's network of elemental circuits flickered like a dying constellation.
All at once, every remaining piece of the hydra froze—then slumped.
The Silver head tried to rise——but to no avail, the light in its eyes going out.
Residual elemental mana still crawled over its scales in the shape of phantom flames, shards, gusts, and flickers of light, but there was no will behind them anymore.
Hajime walked over, every step measured, body still moving in accelerated perception through rift walk, while the outside world crawled through the final second of the fight. He had burned through nearly everything in his mana logistics system those compressed instants, but the window had been enough.
He placed one hand on the now-dull silver scales.
"Boss down."
Yue released a slow breath, her scepter dissipating. She let Thought Acceleration unwind carefully, managing the feedback so her consciousness didn't snap back too abruptly.
Her endless barrage of elemental spells, adjustments, and counters—all of that, from the first collapse to this breath of the hydra had occupied only a few dozen minutes.
Her astral dresses glow softened, settling back into her small form.
She stepped close, touching her forehead to Hajime's arm.
"Mm. One bullet." Hajime shrugged at her words.
"After sixty grenades, thirty traps, Tier 4 Resonance(Nexus Overdrive), time dilation, and you pinning it down while I rewrote its death flag."
Yue's eyes narrowed in a half-pout. "No. One. Bullet."
He smiled. "Yeah. One bullet it is."
Outside their accelerated perception, the arena reacted at normal speed still crumbling at some places.
Before they could relax further, the pillars surrounding the chamber lit up—not red, not blue, not green, but a serene gold. Layers of dormant sorcery awakened in precise, orchestrated order.
Arrays climbed each pillar in spirals, lines of light chasing themselves like liquid metal until they met at the ceiling. The remaining magic circles overhead—those that had slept through the battle to avoid interference—flared to life, interlocking into a single, enormous seal. The massive gate behind the hydra opened in a slow, majestic sweep.
Dust drifted from its edges in lazy curtains.
Beyond it, a pathway of floating platforms stretched into a brilliant abyss of light—the distortion of space so dense it looked like a vertical ocean, every "wave" a stacked magic circle.
The entrance to the True 201th Floor.
Yue leaned into him, her Thought Acceleration gone, time back to its normal flow. The disorientation only made the silence feel deeper.
"We go?" she asked.
Hajime holstered Donner.
"Yeah. but before that... " Hajime turned towards the now dead hydra.
He took it all into his inventory so he wouldn't forget to collect his spoils.
After that was out of their way they decided to leave the 200th floor.
They stepped forward together.
The door closed behind them.
And the light swallowed the arena of the boss that truly needed just one bullet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author: "Could I have some stones?"
Reader: "Geo traveler took the last of them — try asking the Statue of The Seven."
Author: kneels… nothing happens.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you like to support me and read advanced chapters, feel free to check out my patreon:
https://patreon.com/nexus0zero
And if you are in mood for some charity, feel free to support me at Ko-fi:
https://ko-fi.com/nexus0zero
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~