Chapter 216: Chapter 216

(“ You can surrender at any time ”)

Espoiramissa’s voice lost all its life. No longer its strange shifting tone and sound, it was blank, almost as neutral as it could possibly be.

I wanted to ask myself, how did this situation come about... what was the metaphorical nail in the coffin?

Perhaps that is going a bit too far.

Strangely, I wasn't angry. Because I really thought I was going to be the moment I arrived on Espr’s true body. Quite a peculiar reaction, not of anger, but of thinking I was going to be angry. Perhaps all my revenge moments earlier had soothed my emotional state or something, but I wasn’t mad... maybe a little pissed off, but who could blame me on that front? Kidnapped, sent across the universe again, stuck on Espr again– wow, my luck was spectacular.

Sigh… Espr, if you have a face, I am going to punch it so hard.

I scanned everyone around me, the terrain and every monster that was coming in my direction.

Dragons, unknown abominations, trees, dinosaurs, golems, and so many other beasts and creatures that now I am really curious about what Espr’s process is when it comes to creating monsters.

I was almost joking about the situation, but in truth, my heart had sunk a little. It felt… something must’ve gone wrong while everything was finally going correctly.

“Hey, were you watching towards the end?”

(“ In your conflict with Domas Maxwell? ”)

“That was the bastard's name. You should’ve stopped spying and told me that information at the time. It would’ve made for a great surprise moment.”

(“ Your enjoyment is not my concern ”)

Flames burned across the ground, pushing against the waves of monsters, but they used their bodies to resist the flames. The ones at the front died, but the ones behind pushed forward, using the corpses in front as a replaceable shield as heat eventually ate away layer after layer of charred corpse shields.

The monsters that moved through Espr’s will were more like a natural disaster than living creatures.

The frustrating part was that the threat of the monster varied, but I never knew where the deadly threat lay. Large creatures could be weak, and small ones could be deadly; those two outcomes reversed, swapped, and every valve turned a different direction. From my past experience here, I knew a good amount of the monsters. Plenty that I knew I originally could defeat or had to avoid at all costs. Now times had changed, which also just meant that new foes emerged.

The beasts that I tried to avoid at all costs were usually the ones that only moved a few times a year or never moved at all and the ones that could destroy environments with ease. Such creatures had awoken at Espr’s command to bring me down.

The air itself shook as I felt the heartbeat echo through the air as the large white-scaled lizard flew through the air towards me.

The first big one to show up, lovely.

The large white dragon with crystal wings roared as I felt its power shatter the land.” Aren’t I glad I never got on that thing’s bad side before?”

The space around me started to instantly cool without the dragon seemingly doing anything.

“Now, you may be the first, and because of that, likely either the closest or fastest, but by the stars, you were the worst fucking one to arrive first.” The flaming demon that was I flew into the sky within crimson flames.

While on the ground, my flames still burned, eating at anything and everything they could.

Energy was my biggest disadvantage in this fight, but I had a plan. I couldn’t take in energy from Existence, but from a quick test, I could steal a small portion of Espr’s energy. That was likely due to our past connection playing a part and the fact it was a dungeon planet with a whole atmosphere full of energy, but the purpose for my ground flames was to slowly consume that atmospheric energy and whatever it could grab from Espr’s monsters.

It was still extremely slow, but recovery was recovery, and I couldn’t let the ice dragon put out those flames. They were a little too important for my current scheme, and remaking at this point would leave me with an energy deficit.

I began battling in the air with the ice dragon, summoning a wild collection of weapons that I fired at every angle. The outcome of this clash would be vastly different if we had fought when I first left Espr.

Ice rapidly formed layers on its body as the weapons flew towards its scales, and while some of my weaker constructs were deflected, the majority of my weapons pierced its skin. It was one of the apexes of this world, but I was closer in power to its creator than the dragon was to me.

Still, that didn’t mean it would die easily.

I could feel the wounds I made heal rapidly. High vitality appeared to be a coming factor among Espr’s creation. This made killing them very annoying.

“I guess this will be a good showing of what you have available, Espr.” The planet didn’t respond. I guess they were a little scared. “What are you worried your little pet is going to get skewered?" Espr still didn’t respond.

Deflecting a beam of ice, I charged forward and knocked the massive mountain-sized dragon back. The thing was truly absurdly massive. I continued to attack the beast and tear into its body. The space around me constantly rapidly froze and tried to swallow me in shells of ice. The first one I was trapped in, and I burned my way out, but that was too much of an energy waste, and it was better to just dodge.

A large blade of Fire and Starlight formed in my hand, and I readied myself to cut this dragon into soup. As we clashed again, more pests came.

Crowds of beasts fired from the ground beams of magic towards me. Hundreds of thousands of different magic attacks flew from the ground to reach me. My fires continued to spread in a mass frenzy, attacking the monsters. It got close, but oh, the stars there were still so many monsters, and with my extended vision, I could still see gigantic armies of monsters marching towards this area.

Other flying beasts flew towards the sky to try and attack me, but these were on the lower end of intelligence, and some instantly froze due to being in the natural passive instant freeze field of the ice dragon.

I still attacked the dragon while the ground forces attacked and carved away a large portion of flesh, but the dragon instantly froze those wounds. My body size made dodging the ground attack not too hard, but there were still so many that I was relying on my shields since they were almost covering the whole sky.

However, these attacks were more frustrating for my foe. “Wow, that looks annoying. I guess having a body that large has its disadvantages."

The ice dragon roared in frustration as some of those blasts hit it. I could hear it swearing from its soul about the stupidity of these creatures. Despite having the ability to think and speak, it was rudely refused to speak with me.

“Honestly, I would recommend retreating. I think you have done a good enough job trying to wear me down.” I smirked, as from our encounter, I was still mostly unharmed physically.

It growled at me. I had a strong feeling it was simply refusing to speak with me. But I could tell it was seriously debating my words; however, doing so would likely mean going against Espr's orders, which it probably held in higher priority. The ice dragon was the first of Espr’s apex creatures to come, mostly due to its speed and close proximity. The ice dragon against the walking sun wasn’t exactly a great matchup, even if it held some advantages in dealing with my crowd-controlling abilities.

Numerous diamonds of ice formed in the air, and I had seen similar abilities. “Exploding ice?”

I flew back as these bombs filled the sky, which exploded when the attacks from the ground came into contact. Soon, the whole skill was filled with constant ice explosions. Flying at high speed, I dodged the attacks as I planned to finish off the dragon that refused to retreat.

Then I noticed a large attack through my [Star Mapping].

A large beam of light flew across the planet towards me. Perfectly curving through the atmosphere to my destination.

I dipped out of the way, but soon, a rapid-fire blast of life curved across the planet, aiming at my position. Expanding my [Star Mapping], I found the source. A massive black tree with crimson bark and bright green leaves, its trunk stretched into large open cannons of bark which charged up and fired halfway across the planet.

“Seriously, Espr? You never once bragged about the bloody tree anti-everything gun?! That would’ve been such an interesting topic to speak about. ”

I tried getting Espr to speak again, but they still were silent even after I spoke more directly.

I could feel my fires still bringing and providing me energy, but damn, there were still so many and they made me realise I needed to speed up my plan.

The beams of light from the tree cannon kept firing, and with that and the ground attacks, the sky was a completely unsafe place. The ice dragon also knew this, and with the ice bombs still going off, it retreated to safety.

“Come on, retreating without even saying anything?” I complained as I continued to accelerate through the sky, moving higher and higher. I could feel Espr’s worldly barrier in the distance, and breaking through it would be a little challenging and not worth it. The moment I did, I would immediately weaken and being that close to Espr in a weakened state would be basically an act of surrender on my part.

Making the situation worse, I noticed more of these apex creatures moving across the land towards me. Powerful creatures that would make everything harder for me were coming, and killing them would be a challenge. Killing them wouldn’t be hard individually; even together wouldn’t be impossible if I were in peak condition but to win the war, wasting my energy on them was not something I could afford.

High in the air, I judged the ground where my flames were able to sneak their teeth into.

I think I’ve found the stop.

With a burst of energy, flames erupted around me, and my Starlight hardened to a point as I came hurtling towards the earth.

Burning through the crack in the ground like a plummeting meteorite, I felt my body ache as the earth pushed against my body. The pain was nothing, and I exploded with energy to accelerate my impact. The earth shattered as I penetrated through the weak points within the crust.  The shattered stone tried to reform and shot towards me as weapons. Thousands of stones flew to penetrate my skin, damaging my shielding to the point that segments shattered, and the rocks pierced my skin.

Certainly not ordinary stone...

It was a fact that planets with mana within them were stronger, but I was learning that a true, complete Dungeon Planet was on another level of toughness.