One Last System

Soaring through the sky was a surprisingly nice feeling. The air gently brushed through my face, caressing it like the most intimate lover would do.

There were no sounds in this sky world that I entered, all of them trapped far below me.

Suppose only I wasn't crushing down towards the ground at a speed that would surely cause my demise upon landing. In that case, I could actually enjoy this moment pretty much!

'Fuck!' I screamed out internally, my teeth tightened and locked in their position by the immense pain that threatened to shatter my soul.

Even high up in the sky, the pure mana continued to burn right through my entire self. The system alerts continued to bring my attention to the rising corruption of the system, indicating that it wasn't something that I could ignore.

Thankfully, high up in the sky, I could at least take a moment to glance over at what my system was warning me about.

I scrolled through all the windows, quickly locating the information I needed. It was right in the bonus window that I received all the way back in my early days at the Skyladder sect...

But while only one point was added, something that I already had suddenly increased.

***

Chaos[3.27]: The tiny part of the host's system is missing. The host is to expect certain bugs and errors. The system is slowly corroding away due to corruption.

Corruption(0.27): Degradation of the system due to exposure to unfiltered energy.

Capacity Corruption(11.7): Sub status of the corruption. Limits the output of the host's powers by its percentage.

***

A split of a second passed, and the numbers changed. My overall corruption raised to point seven, bringing my chaos to three point seven. Yet, while the overall increase wasn't that bad, my Capacity Corruption shot through the roof, reaching seventeen point three points in just this moment!

'This isn't good,' I thought.

Judging from the descriptions of the corruption... Wasn't I basically killing my potential with every second that I forcefully used this new form of energy?

And then it dawned upon me. One thing that I have already decided on. Something that was the very foundation of my power already.

'Why the hell am I trying to purify this mana on my own?' I asked myself right as my body reached the highest point it could after the jump, only to finally start dropping down.

Yet, before this short moment of tranquility, the short window where my momentum was relatively small...

I acted.

I only had a few formation stones left. Yet, without even a hint of hesitation, I threw them all out in the air while setting up my Mage's Tower at the same time.

Despite losing contact with my hand, the stones were still within my sphere of influence. And before I even started to fall, I had already arranged them all in a neat formation.

'I need to stop it for but a moment,' I thought, looking down at the energy source that burned my insides.

Ever since I combined the two energies, I have kept the reaction going. Despite the immense drawbacks of using it, this was the one ace card that would give me the freedom and safety once I would face the monster from the meteor.

"I already graduated from using the mana all on my own!" I shouted out to rebuild my own morale before squeezing down the output of my own mana and the violet energy I scavenged.

Instead of trying to forcefully shut this reaction down, I simply ceased to supply it with mana. And once the balance of the two energies was lost, the reaction ceased all on its own, finally stopping the onslaught of the potent energy flooding my system.

'Now, to restart it,' I thought, hurrying the heck up as my body was starting to gain a downward momentum.

Before, I had to use my entire power in order to start this reaction. But now that I had this new, potent source of energy, squeezing my mana and that violet energy together turned out to be a breeze.

This also allowed me to limit the output of this strange process, keeping the influx of energy to a manageable amount.

But it was still unfiltered. And if I wanted to use it to my advantage in the fight to come, I had to change that! Because even though I greatly limited the amount of energy, I soaked in...

My corruption counter continued to grow. Slower, but it grew with each passing second, steadily increasing just how much my future potential would be fucked over.

"NOW!" I shouted to myself, redirecting all the incoming energy from my insides towards the stones I threw out in the air before.

As if controlled by a will of its own, rather than rushing towards the nearest stone, the stream of this wild mana separated into several threads, each of them rushing forth and connecting to one of the stones.

But this wasn't even near the end of it.

Once all of the stones were flooded with mana and reached their capacity to hold it, the energy started to form complex matrixes between stones. And once those links finally formed and locked in, a stream of pure, powerful but already filtered energy rushed into my system, quickly mending the inner wounds I sustained before.

"Ahhhh...." I released a sigh of relief when my torture finally lifted, replaced with the usual amount of pain.

Sure, it still hurt like hell, but at least my body was no longer corroding!

I raised my eyes to glance over at the matrix of connections that appeared between the stones. And despite not putting any will into its formation, I couldn't help but be in awe of just how complex of a structure it became.

The stones could hold only a tiny amount of mana in them on their own. Even when adding the capacity of all the stones I used, a promise of the energy I directed towards it in a single second would be enough to shatter all of them thousand times over and then some more.

Yet, as if set on disobeying what I believed to know about the world, the energy continued to pour into the stones from the mana and violet energy reaction while the array spewed out perfectly clean energy right towards my insides.

'I will think about it later on,' I decided.

As fascinating as this topic might be, I didn't have the time to analyze it.

Not when I saw the meteor falling on the city below me, right where I could sense a massive gathering of people.

'Isn't this the intersect tournament?' I thought as I continued to speed up towards the ground, nearing the top speed that I could achieve due to the friction of the air slowing me down.

My thoughts turned grim.

If Mia was anywhere in the sect, then she was sure to be right in the middle of the disaster!

As if responding to my thoughts, the energy that I gathered ignited, coating me with a protective barrier that allowed me to break through the limits imposed by the friction.

'Huh?' I shrugged in surprise when the Outerpost started to grow in my eyes at a visible race.

It was only a matter of seconds before I would become a thin pancake of blood, shattered bones, and torn flesh plastered on the ground!

'I don't want to die...' I whispered in my thoughts, Mia's face flashing before my eyes.

And once again, the pure energy in my body responded, changing the properties of the force that surrounded me, gently grinding my descent to a halt.

Or rather, that's what this strange form of mana attempted to do. But it was too little too late. At this point, I could only ponder whether limiting the output of my magical reaction was the smart idea.

I crashed into the open ground.

My legs screamed out in pain the instant I landed. The impact nearly broke them apart under the massive stress it put my bones and muscles through.

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For a moment, I couldn't even feel my legs, not to speak about standing up. But as the fresh flow of pure mana filled my body again, the pain lifted, allowing me to finally take stock of the situation.

The monster before me was different than the last time. Instead of forming a pufferfish-like structure around its host, it became a massive, bear-like disaster.

And quite noticeably, it was several times as massive as the monster I duked it out with before!

"Good thing that I prepared," I muttered to myself, looking all over the place.

Before I would even start the fight, I had to ensure Mia's safety. Yet, finding a specific person in a crowd of several thousand turned out to be quite a challenge.

I walked towards the monster in an attempt to buy myself the time. The time that I desperately needed to refill my stock of energy and to find where Mia was.

And then I saw her.

Mia was just there, roughly forty meters away, standing on the fourth level of the tribunes to my right. Her entire left side was covered in blood, something that she didn't seem to either notice or mind herself.

The blood boiled in my veins. And the pains I went through when using excessive amounts of this new power suddenly turned meaningless.

My mood darkened as I turned my eyes back on the monster before me.

Instead of attacking right away, it clearly bid its time as well, observing every last of my movements.

'I planned to deal with you in a cultured way,' I thought, feeling how any form of rationality started to slip through my fingers.

Right now, my trauma didn't matter. Right now, my pain didn't matter.

All that I could care about was ensuring Mia's safety.

And so I pulled all the stops, once again slamming all my mana and all the violet energy I had left into the reaction.

The formation stones responsible for filtering the incoming energy shattered in an instant, infusing the space around me with a lot more magic than I could fathom. Yet, despite not being directly connected to my insides, this mana was still locked inside the area of influence of my mage's tower.

Determination filled my eyes as I raised my sight on the violet monster again.

It just stood in place, waiting for me to make the first move.

'Well then,' I thought, taking a deep breath and raising my chin high before willingly absorbing all the energy produced by my magical reaction.

Right now, I couldn't care less about pain or corruption. Those things I could deal with later. But there were some things that I would lose if I didn't react right away!

'Let's see if I can fulfill that guy's wish and actually save someone!' I thought before fully embracing this new, burning power and infusing it into my mage's tower.