One Last System

A flurry of empowered bolts appeared before roughly half of my sentinels.

The other half I put exclusively on defense, unwilling to make the mistake of underestimating my opponent.

Still, half of all my sentinels formed a roundish shape of condensed mana in front of them. And then, like tears trickling down the face of a heartbroken maiden, small pieces of mana oozed out of the ball of the condensed power.

TRAAAAAA....

Whenever a tiny piece of magic would turn autonomous, it would then shoot at the dragon, chipping away at its defenses.

The first wave of bolts didn't do much. The second one, either.

But my sentinels weren't shooting in waves at all.

Maybe it was the influence of me, the host of the system, that turned those sentinels the way they were. Yet, seeing how each of the sentinels shot its bolts so fast, they practically turned into a laser line that tracked the movements of the dragon...

I felt pity and shame.

'This kind of power is pretty much too much,' I thought, bracing myself for the impact.

My bolts continued to explode against the dragon's scales. Yet, no matter how many attacks did this monster take, it continued its dive.

And then, barely a few seconds after it dropped to the ground, the dragon finally reached its destination.

BOOM!

Three out of five guarding sentinels of mine shattered upon impact, taking the brunt of the attack.

I bent down on my knees, feeling as if my body was about to be squashed underneath the dragon's massive body.

But my shields held on, keeping the dragon far enough to stop it from attacking me directly.

But it was still well within the range of my mage's tower!

"DISTURB!" I shouted, not wanting to use my ace

This was the only ability of mine that didn't derive its power from my formations.

Sure, the better they were, the greater the range of my mage's tower was, and as such, the greater range of this spell...

But on its own, my disturb skill was too weird to classify for the terms necessary to judge the power of one's skill. After all, it didn't inflict damage; it wasn't aimed at destroying the shields either.

This was the one skill of mine that could be called fully neutral, as its aim was never the opponent but the space it was in.

'That should do it,' I thought, watching how a surge of my mana tore through the space, reaching for the dragon's body like some sort of god's hand.

And then, just like it did whenever I used it in the past, my mana destroyed the space itself.

The laws that allowed for the tiniest of the particles to make up a logical sense... failed. The rules that all the matter and magic had to abide by no longer apply.

It all happened in but a flash. Yet, as the space itself won the struggle against my mana and mended up the rift in its fabric...

No dragon awaited me. Instead, it was something that I had already faced before.

The dragon disappeared, only to get replaced with its previous form. As if my attack actually helped it to recover, it projected its antimana again, turning back into the shapeshifting invader from before.

'Fuck,' I cursed in my thoughts as I leaped to the back to gain some ground.

A slam of the dragon's tail created a sizeable hole in the ground that I stood on just a moment earlier.

I swallowed my saliva down my throat. Seeing this sight, I didn't need a perfect imagination ability to figure out what would happen if I didn't follow my instincts to dodge.

'I can't let it get physical,' I thought, taking another leap back.

And then I stopped.

Not because there was no ground for me to retreat even further. But doing so would mean stepping right on top of the city I wished to protect.

'Wait, now that it's back in its former form...' a thought suddenly breached into my mind.

And then, a notion of self-loathing followed.

'I have eyes but cannot fucking see,' I thought, reaffirming my position before redeploying all of my wardens.

The second those auxiliary tools were raised, they turned into sentinels under the influence of my mage's tower.

This time, I didn't bother with defense at all. Instead, I put all of my sentinels on attack mode and repeated the very same thing that I started this fight with.

My sentinels took a moment to heat up. And then, once again, they turned into machine guns spewing small bolts of mana right into my shapeless enemy.

This time, however, this attack instantly forced the reformed dragon back, chipping away at its exposed mana.

'Whatever the disturb did, it worked!' I thought, a sense of hope appearing in my soul.

Because for the first time since this fight began, I saw a real possibility of coming out victorious!

"Keep going," I muttered, sticking my eyes to the moving blob of violet mana.

My bolts didn't do much to the monster on their own. For every attack, only a tiny chunk of the monster's violet energy would chip away.

But those bolts continued to shoot at a rate only modern firearms could achieve.

'Quantity is a quality of its own,' I thought, a small smile appearing on my lips.

Yet, the dragon wasn't going to give up so easily.

At first, it tried to fight off my attacks, yet no matter how many tentacles it made to counter the bolts, the fire rate of my sentinels turned out to be too much for it.

'Stay!' I attempted to order the dragon with my thoughts when I saw it retreating. Its violet mana converged, consuming all the tentacles it formed itself into just a moment earlier.

And then, two massive wings suddenly grew up from the monster's back. They violently sput forward, catching the air and adding momentum to the dragon's retreat.

Yet, as soon as it got out of the range of immediate attack, the dragon shed all of its violet mana.

'Damn it,' I thought, unable to hold back my praise for the opponent's intellect.

As inefficient and slow as it was, I believed I could keep the attack for longer than the mana-form of the dragon could survive it.

But just as I was aware of it, the dragon appeared to figure it out as well, opting to return to the form in which it had greater chances against me.

'It would be a pity if it started a physical rampage,' I thought, sending a glance to the small crater it made with its tail before. 'So I better make sure that even if it changes...' I thought while a vicious smile appeared on my lips.

I then leaped forward, giving chase after the retreating monster.

For some, it could be dumb to rush ahead like that when facing a monster that I knew so little about.

Yet, every step that I made forward meant putting more distance between that dragon and the city.

'Even if it changes, I will turn its right back into the easier form!'

My game plan was simple. It was easier for me to fight the mana form of the dragon rather than its physical form. As such, my best bet was to force this powerful opponent to stay in its weaker form.

And the only requirement I had to fulfill to make that happen was sticking close enough to smack it with disturb the moment its physical form would appear!