My eyes flickered towards the catastrophe unfolding in front of my eyes. My brain finally started to reactivate.

The first problem was the giant swarm of monsters on the ground. They were the first obstacle that needed to be dealt with if we were to stave off this crisis. They were far more threatening than other swarms of monsters, mostly because there was so much variety in their ranks. Most other attacks upon the islands were a few different types of monsters, but it almost looked like every single monster in the enemy’s ranks was a different type with a different ability. They weren’t an unresolvable problem on their own, but they were guarding the area around the real problem and making it hard for our mages to concentrate fire on the tree-destroyer.

My eyes flicked towards the skies, and I resisted the urge to curse.

Even if we dealt with the enemy on the ground, they were more of a distraction. The real problem was still floating in the sky, looking down at the tree it had destroyed.

In only a few minutes, it had managed to bring down one of the trees of the super sanctuary. The island was listing a bit to the left. If another tree went down, the island might remain stable - but I seriously doubted the island would survive the destruction of two trees. In other words, we were already nearing the total destruction of the sanctuary, and the damn monster had taken less than five minutes to bring the super-sanctuary near the edge of despair. At this rate, the super-sanctuary itself would be destroyed in 20 minutes, at most. 

I sorted through all of my available spells, items, and Abilities, and tried to find a solution to this seemingly impossible problem.

How could we get past the screen of monsters surrounding the true threat? How could we inflict meaningful damage upon the leviathan, even if we got past its defenders?

“This thing looks way too sturdy,” said Sallia, as she watched the leviathan in the sky ignore another wave of acid-bombs. “It doesn’t even seem to notice the weaker attacks that hit it. Most attacks just bounce off of its skin, and the rest of its injuries regenerate in seconds.”

The leviathan seemed to finish confirming that the tree was dead, and its gaze turned towards the mages futilely launching attack after attack against it.

For a moment, I wished that I still had my tarot deck, before I wondered whether even my tarot deck could have cursed something this powerful. I checked its candle of life, and resisted the urge to curse.

By my estimation, this thing had a Fortitude of around Grade 32 or 33. It was so ridiculously resilient that my extinguish wouldn’t even bother it. Even with my massive upgrade in alteration essence, any attack I launched would do practically nothing against this ludicrous creature. The difference in size, power, and essence pool was so vast that it was like trying to jump over an ocean. I checked my items, and hoped for a solution to appear out of nowhere. Sadly, my items didn’t contain anything I hadn’t seen before, and there wasn’t a single item that could turn the situation around. All I could see was the same equipment I had been using since we dropped into this world. {Dream of Hunger} would have been great here… if I hadn’t already used it up during my trial. I regretted using it. It had gotten me three permanent grades of alteration essence, which I had thought was a much better investment in the future - but right now, I definitely thought that {Dream of Hunger} was more valuable than what I had gotten from the trial.

Of course, that might only be because I was overconfident. Realistically, {Dream of Hunger} might have just trapped me in a dream with a monster I could never hope to kill, before it sneezed me out of existence and went back to rampaging around. Still, I regretted not having a last-ditch emergency attack that might have bought some time for the other defenders of the super-sanctuary.

The rest of my stats, Abilities, and items were simpler. My dress, my umbrella, and my essence core were all basic items - they had no way to give me the kind of crazy, over-the-top boost I would need to turn this battlefield around. They were just amplifiers for my ‘basic’ abilities. My Friendship bracelet had zero direct combat power, although the ability to communicate with my friends on the battlefield was always useful as a utility ability.

What trump cards do you have left? I asked. We need to find a way to break that thing’s skin and get to its hopefully-softer interior, or we need a way to slow it down while the sanctuaries get their big items online.

All I’ve got is whatever I can make, sadly, said Felix. As I said earlier, I’ll try to whip something up - but I’m running on fumes here.

I might be able to pull something off with Mirror’s Edge, said Sallia. It depends a lot on how some interactions between this creature’s attacks and my own abilities work out, but maybe I can do something with the ability to reflect an attack with the sword?

Worth trying, if we can find a good way to pull it off, I said. What about you, Anise?

I haven’t used my {Sword of the Lost Phoenix’s Embers} yet. I also have a wide variety of spells that I can pull out of fictional works, if we can find some kind of weakness in the monster. Also, I have a pretty decent spell stored in {Witch’s Wand}. After seeing how outclassed we against this world’s heavy hitters, I went for raw firepower.

I nodded, and looked at the monster again. It had cleaned up nearly two hundred of the mages already, and it seemed to be getting bored. Any minute, it would turn towards the next tree.

Was there a way to leverage our abilities to turn this hopeless battle around? Or at least buy more time for the sanctuaries to rally together and deal with this thing?

It was risky, but I was grasping at straws already. I didn’t see any other path forward, except to try something desperate and hope for a miracle. If we died but kept the sanctuaries intact by sacrificing ourselves, we could sit around for several decades and collect rewards from the Artificial sun, until our assistance was so diluted that it no longer mattered. If we failed, there wouldn’t be anything left in this dimension to begin with - just chunks of sanctuary shattered upon the surface of the continent after a mult-kilometer freefall.

We would risk death, and hope that we could keep the super-sanctuary alive long enough for this world to survive. It was all or nothing.

I felt nervous, but we didn’t have any better ideas. I outlined my plan to my friends, and after they agreed, we stepped towards the monster.