{Nico's 1st person POV}
The air felt weirdly still for a second.
Like the whole island was holding its breath.
"Here they come…" I muttered.
I didn't even get to finish the sentence.
Because a guy, no… a glowing runic knife with a guy attached to it, erupted out of the darkness like a horror movie jump scare with a shit-eating grin on his face already mid-swing.
But he wasn't aiming for me.
He was aiming for Nom-Nom.
Bad life choice.
Because the moment he breached that invisible line she considers "my space," her instincts snapped awake like a trap springing shut.
And then -
- BOOM.
Her fist met his face with the sound of a bowling ball hitting concrete.
And the man was "knocked back".
Nah, he was driven into the ground, headfirst, like she was planting a goddamn tree.
A crater formed, and leaves fell. And somewhere a bird died of second-hand embarrassment.
The man blinked up at us, dazed, blood trickling from his nose, clearly processing the fact that he had been out-sped by a 'dragon' who wasn't even trying.
And then-
- Fwip-
-he vanished again, swallowed by the darkness like a guilty cat fleeing the scene.
"How is he doing that?" I muttered.
-Ding!
{Shadow Affinity. And the technique he is using is called Shadow Steps.
Host, that technique makes him incredibly dangerous at night. But a Greater Dragon should have the reflexes to handle that.}
Nom-Nom cracked her knuckles at that, eyes gleaming like she had just been handed dessert.
"Master?" she asked.
"Alright…You handle this one…" I exhaled hard before slamming all my MP into the cloak, "…I'll keep the others busy!"
- FWOOM—!!
And my body snapped upward into the sky.
The wind roared past my ears as I shot toward the four signatures moving toward me.
How did I know exactly where they were?
Easy.
At the top of my vision, the System's dynamic compass bar lit up like a video game HUD:
[ • • • • ]
SOUTH
1.0 KM
Little red dots.
Marked Hostile / Aggro'd Targets.
"Neat," I muttered. Except for the minor exception that if I died here, I ain't respawning.
Precognition pulsed in my skull, like a steady heartbeat of MOVE WHEN I TELL YOU, MORON.
I also kept a chunk of mana aside for Ice Pebbles, feeding the rest into flight.
At 700 meters, I could see faint lights between the trees.
At 600 meters, I felt the mana swelling.
At 500 -
-BOOOOM—!!
A massive sphere of roaring blue fire tore through the night straight at me faster than sound, like a comet-sized "screw you" launched with religious enthusiasm.
Precognition shoved my nerves sideways, and I obeyed, jerking left before the inferno roared past me, exploding somewhere behind with enough force to flip a whale.
"Holy-!" I hissed, snapping upright and reflex-fired faster than thought.
-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-!
Fragmentation Ice Pebbles launched in spiking, screaming sonic cracks toward the four approaching signatures.
For half a second, I thought I'd hit something.
Then -
- FWOOM-!
A massive green dome of light erupted under them, tanking my shrapnel like the world's smuggest turtle shell.
The explosions burst harmlessly across the surface before scattering frost like glitter.
"Right..." I muttered. "Of course they'd do that."
And the next moment, Precognition foretold me getting cooked medium rare before another smaller and faster fireball, tore toward me like a sniper shot blessed by a sun goddess.
I dove with everything I had as the fireball shrieked past my shoulder, missing me by inches and detonating upward in a flash of burning blue.
"Okay…nope. Not doing this head-on." I coughed before shooting upward, cloak screaming at full thrust.
"Higher…" I hissed as another fireball brushed past me.
"Higher…" I barely dodged another.
And I went even higher, until the night sky swallowed me and the forest turned into a dark smear far below with a lit dome in the middle of it.
I cut the mana feed to the cloak down to just 1 MP/sec, levitating there before I shoved the entirety of my remaining 54MP capacity into one spell.
And a few heartbeats later, a single, colossal boulder of an Ice Pebble formed in front of me.
I held it for a heartbeat.
And then, I let it go.
Letting gravity add the velocity I didn't have the MP to.
That giant unstable mass of ice dropped like a frozen meteor, screaming through the sky as it fell straight toward the glowing green dome.
The dome brightened in response before -
- BOOOOOM-!!!
It hit like a glacial asteroid, sending a shockwave of frosty dust across the canopy, bending the trees violently under the force.
The dome wavered and dimmed for a brief moment before lighting right back up.
"Tough little bubble," I muttered. "Alright… round two."
Another ball of blue flames came screaming at me, but with precognition and this much distance, I dodged it quite easily.
I kept feeding just enough mana into the cloak to hold myself mid-air, and began shaping another Ice Pebble.
But this time, I made a massive Fragmentation Ice Boulder.
Every inch of that thing was violence.
Took more than a few seconds to form, and once it was done, I simply let it drop.
And it fell, gaining more speed with every meter.
And then:
BOOOOOOOM—!!!!
The explosion tore the forest apart.
Shards the size of fists blasted outward at supersonic speeds, ripping a clean gouge through the forest.
Trees were shredded, split, or straight-up uprooted by the frost blasting across the ground in a sweeping wave that left the earth white and sparkling.
And when the haze finally settled…
The dome was still standing. Flickering, yes, but still standing nonetheless.
While I... grinned.
"I can do this all day~" I said, hands already gathering mana for another.