I sprint from the bunker, coughing on plumes of smoke that hung over the air. Ardenidi adjusted her scarf, hissing under her breath.

  “So much for more survivors.”

  The nightmares had hit the ground with unimaginable force, blowing solid rock apart in waves, pelting the countryside with scattered droplets of liquid metal.

  “At least he took out all the other monsters,” I muttered. There was a tiny white orb, which I considered grabbing, but at this point, a few points of exp would only waste time.

  Sharon hovered above the nightmare, covered in a mash of glowing metal. The mana enveloping him had become so dense that softer purple hues crackled visibly like lightning, arcing around his body.

  {Nightmare : (-35m) 483m Hp}

  The nightmare launched itself from the earth, splitting open gouges swollen with lava, sprouting hundreds of thin arms in a net around Sharon.

  Blinding energy flashed out and the arms vaporized.

  Sharon vanished, followed by a clap of light and heat so bright that night appeared like day, shrieking with mana.

  {Nightmare : (-350m) 133Hp}

  Riot flickered through the falling arms.

  The whole city erupted into fire. Magical fallout pushed any remaining storm clouds beyond the horizon, vaporizing the melted slush at the monster’s feet.

  Sharon brushed the dust from his black-stained jacket. “Anything else?”

  The monster opened the only head it had remaining, collecting every scrap of its mana into a vortex of pure energy.

  Sharon rolled his eyes. “Alright. I’ll make it quick.”

  The fairy descended behind the nightmare, back turned. Slowly but steadily his growths of twisted metal and weaponry blew apart like glitter. His wings shrank, bit by bit, until they could barely keep himself airborne. He stumbled to the ground.

  {Sharon : Finishing touch I: [{Nightmare : (-133) 0 Hp}]

  The nightmare split down the middle, splattering across the sandy plain.

  Everything, everywhere, was stained deep black.

  “SHARON!” I shouted, waving my arms. “GOOD WORK!”

  “Why thank you. It was nothing really—”He snapped toward me, clenching his hands. “Grind! You were supposed to be back up!”

  “It’s not like you needed it,” I chuckled.

  Sharon grit his teeth, limping toward us, retracting his fragile wings into his back. “Do you see me right now? I haven’t had a fight like that in…” he started counting before giving up. “Oh whatever, mortal. All’s well that ends well.”

  He looked back at the smoldering carcass, liquified into a pool.

  Ardenidi scowled. “Spit it out.”

  Sharon let out a sigh. “That was too easy.”

  “You fought it for what, five hours straight?” I asked, smacking him across the back. “What kind of a fight were you expecting?”

  “It’s just a big, dumb thing,” he snapped. “That nightmare didn’t have the slightest idea how to use its power, Grind. No idea, whatsoever.”

  I blinked. “So?”

  “That’s weird!” He wiped his hands on my shirt, muttering to himself. “Stats have to come from somewhere. Even if the majority had come from scaring the people in this city, the Nightmare already had a billion by the time it got here. But how could that even be possible? All it did was swipe at me, and continued swiping at me, until I killed it. It has the stats to move far faster than anything I could manage, but it just…doesn’t. It had borderline no intelligence. That thing was just a big, stupid punching bag that I smacked around over and over until it ran out of hitpoints.”

  He rubbed his pudgy chin. “Don’t even get me started on how it’s casting a spell like Riot over the entire town. From this point forward, we need to be exceptionally careful when dealing with these infected monsters.”

  I was sprinting toward its carcass.

  “G-Grind!” Sharon sputtered. “HEY! I killed it! I get the stats!”

  “I can’t hear you!” I laughed, smacking the giant's foot. “Besides! I won’t take anything you could use!”

  {You have used Reaper Merchant Hunter of Death (Reaper Harvest) V}

  I cackled mischievously, rubbing my hands together. “Come to papa.”

  {This unit is ineligible for Reaper Harvest V}

  I stared.

  Then I blinked, before continuing to stare.

  “What?”

  Ardenidi helped Sharon reach me.

  He snorted. “What are you doing?”

  “My powers give me new abilities when I harvest ancient enemies,” I grumbled. “So…what’s wrong with this one? This guy’s got to be pretty old, right?”

  "Haven’t you heard a thing I said?” Sharon huffed. “This is a tiny nightmare that obviously got a lot of stats faster than it could learn to use them. If I had to guess, there must have been some event before this which this punk harvested the fear from.”

  I pursed my lip. “Kizota got killed.”

  “The turtle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The one from the third area?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Grind, things from the third area are really, really hard to kill.”

  “I know.”

  “And they told this information to students?” Sharon groaned. “That would do it.”

  “I’m pretty sure the news was leaked somehow,” Ardenidi said, walking up to the two of us. “None of the teachers were even here for the day. As far as I know, it’s from someone’s friend’s reliable source. Maybe it’s not even true.”

  “Possibly,” I said. “So, in summary, the news of Kizota’s death was either faked or leaked, and people started freaking out, causing nightmares like this to pop up and attack.”

  “But nightmares aren’t usually so destructive," Sharon muttered. “Keep in mind, they get stronger the more fear they have. Even if they’re stupid, they try to keep people alive, in order to gain more fear in the future.”

  Sharon was breathing noticeably heavier than a moment before. His skin had paled too, and his eyes were more red than usual.

  He must be tired.

  I fidgeted. “Guess this fight was kind of a let down.”

  Ardenidi and Sharon nodded.

  “To think so many people would die to such a big, stupid enemy,” she hissed.

  “Well, there’s always the bright side.”

  I started sprinting. “Hey Sharon! You wouldn’t mind if I took the loot, would you?”

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  He staggered after me, shouting at the top of his lungs. “YES I MIND!”

  Orbs popped out of the giant, splashing in the layer of cooling rock and metal. Fortunately, the orbs didn’t seem to mind the heat, bobbing cheerfully up and down, begging to be added into my system.

  I clamped up one of the giant’s feet, leaning over the side, straining to Reach any of them. Unfortunately, they had drifted too far away.

  Sharon smirked, stretching his wings out again. “Foolish boy. Only flights can reach those now.”

  Reach.

  Hmm.

  I bent down and Reached, constantly switching to the furthest, largest chunks I could get my hands on, generating a current molten liquid that dragged the stats along for the ride, similar to how pulling the rug under a person moves them toward you.

  Except the rug is a hyper viscous liquid film and the person is the scattered remains of a monster strong enough to wipe a city from the map.

  Sharon massaged his forehead. “That’s…that’s actually really smart.”

  “This power is way more useful than I thought it’d be,” I stated, plucking the first orb and cracking it in half.

  {Grind : (+10k) 10k Hp}

  I counted the zeros.

  Then I checked one more time, just to be sure.

  “That’s pathetic,” Ardenidi grumbled. “Shouldn’t it have one billion health or something?”

  Sharon frowned, counting the bobbing orbs. “There’s only about a thousand of those. For the record, that’s one tenth the amount this monster should have dropped, not to mention I’m assuming only one stat’s drops, but the Nightmare had at least seven that it used against me.”

  “Maybe nightmares gain fake stats,” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nightmares convert intense negative emotion into stats which it actually uses. They should all be real.” He pulled a white exp orb free as it bumped against the corpse.

  {Sharon - Arcfairy of Carnage}

  [Progression to Gold : +(0.01%) 10.2%]

  “You two can split the loot. It won’t make a hint of difference to me.” Sharon kicked the Corpse, grumbling to himself. “Stupid infected monsters and their stupid lousy rewards.”

  I pulled in more orbs, eventually making some kind of progress. Since I really didn’t need the Exp, I just gave those to Ardenidi, which she used to reach Lead.

  {Grind : (+10k) 100k Hp}

  {Grind : (+5k) 39k Str}

  {Grind : (+10k) 11.6k Dur}

  “This feels pretty anticlimactic, doesn’t it?” I asked.

  “It’s a relief,” Ardenidi shrugged. “Sometimes a monster is just a big, stupid object. At least it’s finally over.”

  “Right.” I smiled, grabbing another orb. “It’s finally over.”

  The orb in my hand floated into the air, followed by the hundred or so remaining orbs, exp and stat alike, flashing like stars in the sky.

  Ardenidi glanced at me.

  “That wasn’t another one of your secret game-breaking abilities, was it?

  “Nope.”

  “Should we grab those?”

  “Yeah probably.”

  The ground rumbled. Blobs of elastic black material stretched out of the corpse like telephone wires, crossing over the sky, snatching orbs. Within the lake of black biomatter, veins bulged, growing bone and muscle.

  So far, I hadn’t seen a hint of decay on the nightmare’s body.

  But this thing was dead. Right?

  Which could only mean one thing.

  It had a second stage.

  Ardenidi grabbed me by the collar, launching us with repeated mushroom explosions, to the relatively safe bunker’s mountainside where Sharon was lying down.

  He had one hand on his head and his eyes closed.

  “I’m out.”

  I glanced in his direction. “Uh…what?”

  “Of mana,” he sighed. “It’ll take another five hours before I fill it back.”

  “So you can’t fight this thing?”

  “Not a chance.”

  An enormous spine grew from the corpse, pulling flesh along the rungs. Muscles wrapped around bones, creating additional growth, expanding into a newer, thicker body.

  The blood ran from my face.

  “Guys?”

  A second spine had emerged from the dead Nightmare.

  It formed bone, then muscle, then skin, expanding into a much slimmer form, this time with additional growth in ridges along its spine.

  This Nightmare was growing wings.

  Sharon laughed through gritted teeth. “That’s a new one.”

  The two Nightmares pushed apart from one another with a sound like stripping hot tar from plastic wrapping.

  {Nightmare Aviator}

  [High Osmium]

  [200m Hp 100m Str]

  [This unit has been afflicted with {Unknown Affliction}]

  {Nightmare Beastmuncher}

  [High Osmium]

  [800m Hp 50m Str]

  [This unit has been afflicted with {Unknown Affliction}]

  Their sheer weight split the earth beneath their feet, draining molten liquid. If there were any buildings left standing, those would have been flattened in an instant by the immense, crushing mana between these two monsters.

  “They’re smaller,” I whispered.

  Each of them were still larger than most skyscrapers, but then again, skyscrapers barely came to the giant’s knees.

  Sharon leaned forward. “Be careful. Their eyes are different.”

  [Outershell of [Husk] has been punctured.]

  [{Unknown affliction} has applied [Proliferation : Hyperplasia]]

  The Aviator flung its wings wide open with a screech.

  Sharon sighed. “You mortals try not to die. I’ll be taking a nap if you need anything. And try and keep your fight away from the bunker.”

  He grabbed us by the collars and effortlessly tossed us over the entire city.

  Ardenidi jumped off my back, snatching the Nightmare Aviator’s tail feathers. “This one’s mine!” She shouted. “Kill the thick one!”

  I landed like a meteor, knocking down a brick wall.

  Despite my noisy entrance, the nightmare hadn’t yet noticed my presence.

  The substantially larger creature opened its mouth and started picking at its teeth.

  What it was picking from them, I had no idea, given that its teeth had been created less than a minute ago.

  Actually, now that I was looking closer, something about its teeth seemed—

  The monster pulled a section of its jaw out like a child pulling apart string cheese. New bone bubbled up, snapping back into place, leaving the monster with a slit of bone, which it hurled at me, erasing a chunk of the road for the next mile.

  I shivered. “You things are disgusting.”

  Disgusting or not, I just had to hit him.

  Glowing light covered my hand.

  “Please don’t be fast please don’t be fast please don’t be fast—”

  A solid beam of yellow and red energy caught the monster in the face, blowing a hole through one side of his body to the next.

  “YES!” I laughed, checking its health.

  {Nightmare Beastmuncher}

  [800m Hp 50m Str]

  The hole immediately re-formed, having been created solely to make my blast pass harmlessly through.

  But my beam wasn’t done just yet.

  The manifested energy stopped in midair, folding inside out as the stream of energy reversed—

  Passing through another hole, this time in the monster’s stomach.

  “NO!” I groaned, punching the floor. “C’mon! Why can’t my fights just be quick and simple one-sided victories!?”

  The Beastmuncher stepped forward, pushing the basin of hardened lava one inch deeper. Another step, and the ground sank drastically, splintering beneath us.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Timeout!”

  The Beastmuncher hesitated. It laid a foot on the ground, giving it a couple taps.

  I gave the ground a few taps myself.

  “We’re probably over an open area in the sewers, if not a cave system, which would be pretty dangerous given how much molten rock must’ve drained into it,” I stated. “You don’t want to fall down there, do you?”

  He paused.

  The Beastmuncher took another step and the ground gave out.

  “STUPID MONSTERS!” I shouted before the earth swallowed me whole.

  We fell into a cavern connected with sewer tunnels, all of which was currently overflowing with molten rock and metal.

  I crashed into a flat stone outcropping, denting my head.

  Meanwhile, the Beastmuncher was belly-up in the molten liquid, noticeably relaxing.

  I tensed, waiting for his next attack.

  He glanced at me, thought about it, before just rolling over and falling asleep.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Guys?

  We have a thousand pages.

  *Happy dancing in the background since big numbers are fun*

  Thanks for sticking this far!

  // {Notice} //

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