One Last System

'Isn't this the first time for me to watch Mia fight?' I thought, suddenly realizing the small detail.

Thinking back, I never really had the chance to watch her perform.

Back at the Skyladder's sect, the most she did before my eyes was to stand up to a biased elder. During the time we have split apart, I obviously had no means of checking how she fights or even seeing how she trains.

And even after we reunited, I was the one who bore the brunt of all the fighting, a limited as it was.

Mia's fist struck. And right at the point of impact, it became so heavy that the space itself started to crack under the pressure.

'What?' I shrugged when I noticed this small detail. Then, I could only look at Mia with nothing but awe.

'I have to use a special spell to disturb the space like that, and she can do it with a simple punch?' I thought, shaking my head as Mia's image turned from cute to cool in my head.

And then, the monster struck by Mia's fist, flew away, a huge chunk of its mana-flesh left, stuck between several sets of my barriers.

'This is going rather easy,' I thought before sending another surge of mana towards yet another monster.

And just like before, the effects were as cinematic as they were devastating.

"Can you pass me that blob of mana?" I shouted over to Nadia.

"Sure thing," she replied, matching her words with the rhythmic attacks of the combo I taught her.

Her right fist struck the monster from the side. Her left hand uppercutting the mass of its mana. Then, all of its shapeshifting flesh shifted to the left under the force of her right-legged kick...

Only for Mia to kick at the now exposed core from the left, separating it from the mass of mana that made the monster up.

'Four done, three more to go,' I thought, raising my eyes towards the next opponent.

"ROAR!" A short cry reached my ears. And at the very same instant, all three remaining monsters rushed ahead.

"Huh?" I moaned in surprise, shocked by the sudden attack.

Two monsters took the lead. The one that I noticed as different hid behind them.

On its own, it wasn't a bad tactic, to let one's underlings take the brunt of the attacks while preparing an attack capable of breaking my defenses.

But this wasn't the case at all.

Instead of focusing on the defense, the monsters at the front simply tore through my barriers ahead, using the energy of their very own bodies to cancel out the energy of my barriers.

They paid roughly ten percent of the mass of their mana for each step they took deeper into the field where I deployed my barriers.

'I need to ramp up my game as well,' I thought, finally activating my wardens... or rather, the sentinels that all my wardens turned within the sphere of influence of my mage's tower.

A flurry of small yet potent magic al attacks followed.

They appeared like a series of tracer bullets spewed out by some early kind of a machine gun. Yet, all those magical bullets amounted to, was chipping away at the already exhausted energy of the monsters at the front.

'This can turn out pretty tough,' I thought, gripping down the handle of my spear. 'I didn't expect I would come to use this spear ever again,' I thought a moment later.

Contrary to Mia, who followed the path of true mastership centered around the repetitions of simple movement and aimed at reaching the absolute peak of the mystery of doing so...

Compared to Mia's path of development of her own choosing, I was more of a wildcard.

Back as a contractor, I used my spear to fend off for myself. Yet, as my power grew, I quickly adapted the tools and skills more suited to my new potential.

But that didn't mean my spear lost any bit of its power!

"ROAR!!!" the strange monster uttered its cry again, this time holding it for a far longer time.

And then, right as the two monsters at the front feel to the ground, reduced to nothing more but their cores...

The cry of the monster was cut short. And its massive jaws suddenly appeared right above my face.

'Fuck,' I thought, slamming two of my sentinels into the monster while simultaneously leaping to the side.

CRASH!

The attack came way faster than I expected. In fact, it was way faster than it actually should be.

Even with all the means, I used to make my escape easier, I could still feel blood trickling down my thing.

It appeared that my leg ended up catching up on one of the monster's massive teeth...

Teeth that appeared, only to vanish after the attack and turn into plating all over the monster's back.

'This one is on a whole different level,' I thought, slamming mana into my wounded leg to at least stop the bleeding.

Yet, the monster gave me no time to rest, forcing me to jump away right away.

"Damn, it's been a while," I allowed myself a short sentence as I jumped yet again to avoid another attack.

But this time, when I landed, I didn't bend my knees and threw my eyes all over the place to locate the next place to retreat to.

The three times that I gave ground to the monster weren't just a bunch of frantic attempts to escape the danger. They were all a part of a battle plan that I hatched when the fight started.

And now, with just enough distance away from the monster that I then translated into time, I tightened my hold over the handle of my spear.

'I wonder if it will work, I thought, infusing my weapon with more raw energy than ever before. As a result, I could feel the materials that the weapon was made from starting to crack apart, unable to hold such an insane amount of mana.

But I didn't need this spear to last for long. Sure, it was my momentum of pathfinder and the things he taught me...

But there was one more aspect to the battle.

Now that only a single monster was left, Mia didn't hesitate to rush toward it. And with my constant retreats, she was now dangerously close to his aberrant!

'It's time to end it,' I thought when I realized the materials of my horny spear of a newbie reached their absolute limit.

A single name appeared in my thoughts. The monster finally locked on me, once again turning into a leech-like form and aiming its massive jaws in front of me.

'Precise strike,' I thought.

In an instant, the energy within the spear swirled. It started to circulate from the tip of the blade to the bottom of the handle, quickly forming a delicate, barely noticeable aura outside of the spear.

I didn't even need to swing the weapon to realize that although appearing delicate, the aura created by the flow of energy could cut any and all matter of this world.

And wasn't the massive leech-like monster in front a perfect target to test the potential of this skill?