There was a huge difference between monsters that flew with wings and monsters that used magic to defy gravity, and that difference could be summarized as either a need for or lack of forward momentum. Magic-users could do things like hover in place, fly backward, or even fly upside down. Things with wings generally could only move forward, and if they stopped, they dropped.

Halifex was the second kind of flyer, but Velik planned on treating the battle like the divine beast was capable of controlling his flight with magic. After all, there was no rule that said a monster could only be one kind or the other. If any monster had that capability, it would be a divine beast whose animal form had wings.

[Inevitable] had grown immensely in the last few days, mostly due to having [Air Walk] as a component. Now that it was a skill and not just an enchantment, it had a vast well of mana to draw from, and he’d flooded it with essence to upgrade it with instructions to make it more efficient for use. It was by no means a perfect equivalent to flight, but Halifex wasn’t going to get away with bombarding him from the sky.

Velik raced upward, leaping forward with each step like he was climbing giant-sized stairs. Bolts of nearly invisible dark magic sliced through the air with each flap of Halifex’s wings, forcing Velik to shift course more than once. Below, craters left pock-marks on the ground where the spells struck and detonated.

It was only when he got close enough to throw his spear like a javelin that Halifex flipped in place and started to really fight back instead of just shedding bombs made of dark mana behind him. Shadowy claws formed all around Velik, dozens of small, razor-sharp hooks, and slashed at him. There were far too many to dodge and nowhere to go to escape, but they were all individually so weak that Velik just burst through them.

Most of the magic missed him, instead slicing through the empty air behind Velik, and the ones he deliberately ran through were too weak to do more than draw lines of blood on his skin. The regeneration inherent to his [Divine Wolf] immediately sealed those wounds back up. It wasn’t until a rush of mana slammed into him that Velik realized [Magic Eater] had blunted the damage from the spell.

Undeterred by his lack of success, Halifex started flying at crazy angles, pivoting randomly every second or two and taking off in another direction. The whole time, pulsing black pinpricks of mana filled the air around him, some of them hanging in space and others shooting out in random directions.

He certainly is on theme for being a creature of the night, Velik thought to himself as he chased after the giant bat. But he’s not the only one who gets stronger when the sun goes down.

Dancing through the field of magic billowing out from Halifex, Velik closed the distance and stabbed his spear into the monster’s back. Halifex responded exactly how Velik expected him to—by shifting into the shadow world. It was so expected, in fact, that Velik actually beat him there, having started the shift while he was still thrusting his spear out.

That was when he discovered that there were more mana pinpricks on the other side, and in different positions, too. Some of those positions were inside Velik’s own body, and those ones immediately went off, forming small spinning orbs that shredded muscles and bones. Or at least they tried to. Velik’s physical stat was too high for that, and the motes he’d accidentally triggered quickly ran out of mana without doing much in the way of damage.

Then Halifex appeared, just in time for Velik’s spear to pierce the bat’s abdomen. Velik shifted the shape when it punched out the back side into something with a large hook on it, then jerked the spear closer to him to pull the monster in. The tactic even worked for a moment, but then Halifex shifted back into the real world again.

They pair went back and forth over and over again, Velik relentlessly pursuing the divine beast and tearing into his body with ever-increasing speed. Halifex formed shadowy constructs to defend, to stall, and to create distance between them, but Velik was more than willing to bleed a little in order to get another hit in. His regeneration was superior to Halifex’s in every way, and the way [Magic Eater] was keeping his mana reserves topped off, he wasn’t worried about running out of power any time soon.

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While they fought, essence shifted and warped inside Halifex. Every few seconds, he’d spit out some new ability that forced Velik to make snap judgments about its deadliness. He would then either take the hit head-on or slip past it some way, whichever let him keep his prey within range. Sometimes he guessed wrong, but Halifex never tried to flee, so there was always the next opportunity to catch back up again.

“That magic resistance of yours is annoying,” Halifex snarled. “But you’re not invincible.”

“Neither are you.” Velik accompanied that simple statement with an attempt to punch his spear through Halifex’s skull.

An explosion of dark energy rippled out in every direction, forming a sphere twenty feet across with the divine beast in the center. Velik was pushed back and, worse, lost his footing. He fell perhaps fifty feet before he regained control and started climbing, but by then it was too late to stop the divine beast.

“Holding back to keep from killing you has made this fight far more of an ordeal than I expected. I suppose some congratulations are in order there, but I think it’s time to stop worrying about breaking you. Zelamir will just have to satisfy himself with your corpse if I can’t take you alive.”

Zelamir? Is he the one who made the dungeon seeds?

Velik deliberately put that thought aside. He’d find his answers later. Halifex had shifted back to his human shape, which did nothing to stop him from gliding through the air. The sphere of magic faded away behind him as he dove, but new ripples pulsed outward. Those struck Velik, tossing him about as each one threw him in a different direction, but [Magic Eater] was already cutting through them.

By the time Halifex closed in, his hand alight with energy and reached for Velik’s skull, Velik had already sorted himself back out. His spear had fallen away during the tumble, but he simply crafted a new one and raised it to drive it through the monster descending on him.

Halifex saw it coming and twisted out of the way, but the strike had been bait. Velik’s free hand came up and channeled [Dread Lance] through it. At the same time, he let the spear dissolve. Grinning fiercely, Halifex shifted into the shadow world.

There he found Velik’s right arm also shifted, channeling a [Dread Lance] of its own. Both went off at the same time, the one in the real world hitting nothing, but the one in front of Halifex’s face throwing him into a free fall.

The divine beast crashed into the ground and faded back into the real world, his concentration broken. Velik descended on him in a flash, gravity doing most of the work to propel him at his target. A new spear formed, then a second, and a third. By the time he impacted Halifex, half a dozen of them were descending in sync.

They tore through the man, pinning him to the ground. One pierced right between his shoulder blades. Another took the back of his skull. Two more hit Halifex’s calves. The last two sliced through the monster’s biceps.

Even that wasn’t enough to kill a monster this strong. Halifex groaned, still very much alive, and tried to rise. Before he could heave himself up, Velik called up [Dread Lance] again. Six spears lit up with sparking energy. The magic ran down the length of the weapons, and it exploded against the monster.

By the time the light faded, Halifex was gone. Pieces of him were scattered across the ground, but the majority of his body was nothing more than ash. The spears were gone, consumed in the detonation.

And a billowing cloud of essence hung in the air, monstrous in size but already starting to fade away. Velik’s LPS reached out, hungry, and snapped it up. It streamed into him, unbroken for several seconds. That was a first—previous enemies had always been consumed in an instant, but a divine beast was on a whole different level.

Some of the essence escaped, fading into the world. Velik couldn’t say how much, but probably not more than half. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure what he could possibly have done to capture it all. Perhaps merging [Magic Eater] and [The Wanderer’s Path] would help?

[You have gained 22476 essence.]

Velik froze and blinked at that notification. He’d had a bit over three thousand unspent essence at the start of the fight, and he’d used almost all of that recreating [Shadow Step]. Prior to killing Halifex, he’d had so little essence remaining that the LPS was in danger of starving. That was no longer a concern, obviously.

The fact that he’d gained so much essence when more than half had escaped was worrying, though. If monsters that were over level 100 weren’t even giving a thousand essence, and a divine beast was worth close to fifty thousand, what level were they the equivalent to?

No, the ramp up must be accounting for most of that. Every upgrade costs more and more. They can’t actually be level 5000. But does it even matter? Is there a functional difference between 5000 and 500?

He looked around at the crater he’d created using six simultaneous casts of [Dread Lance] and reminded himself that, level 500 or not, he’d been strong enough to kill one divine beast. It hadn’t even been that hard. Certainly, Tesir had been more difficult to fight back when Velik had met him.

I can do this. Killing this divine beast has just made it that much easier to take the next one.

He turned his case to the mountain of black volcanic stone and burning red lava and wondered just how far away the next divine beast really was.