Luke’s heart beat faster as the titan roared in pain and anger. The sound hit him with such force that it felt like an attack. The dual explosions from his drone-delivered bombs had pierced the monster’s bulbous eye. Ocular fluid splattered across twenty feet and dripped down its enormous body.

  It was a strange body. Luke had gotten used to monsters on this world being quirky, but of a recognizable shape. The Blast Crabs had claws and a shell, the Hive Wolves had fur and a tail, the Stone Beetles had mandibles and wing casings. Kalibutan monsters were only a step away from the mundane ones on Earth.

  Not the titan. It was unrecognizable. It had more in common with a Lovecraftian horror than it did with anything from Earth. The branching tentacles along its bottom were strange enough, stranger still when they connected to the iridescent scales below the monster’s frog-like eyes and sharp beak. Something strange was dripping off the edges of its body, light green drops that turned to mist before it hit the ground. A pale green fog was building up below it.

  Luke assumed it was poison. It shouldn’t be a concern because all of his newer mech designs were airtight with military grade air filters. All the same, he planned on staying out of the probably deadly fog.

  It angrily roared again and its remaining eye searched the skies for the source of its pain. It quickly locked onto the magic drone. Previously unseen tentacles lifted up from the top of its flat body. Each one was over a hundred feet long, with the same branching design that made it look like a tentacle tree. If the bottom tentacle forest was the legs, these two were its arms.

  They sliced upwards in tandem, the tips of the tentacles acting like a whip. A dozen cracks filled the air as the tentacles impacted the magic drone and obliterated it. Tiny bits of metal scattered outwards in a spray.

  Note to self, don’t get hit.

  At the same time, he did need to catch its attention. Overcharge was already augmenting his mech, the runes burning bright. His over the shoulder spell rifles barked, sending spells spinning through the air. Instead of a three foot wide spell as normal, the ice ball was six feet wide, and the tendrils of the lightning bolt stretched out to eight feet.

  The titan was still standing in the surf, not yet on the beach. Luke’s spells flew far, but still landed hundreds of feet away from the monster. It didn’t even notice, still scanning the sky for other threats.

  Luke sighed. He had been hoping to save this for later. He lifted up his right arm and fired out an overpowered fireball from the mortar sized barrel in that forearm. The blazing spell flew out, expanding bigger and bigger until it was a full twenty feet wide. When it impacted the sand in front of the titan, it exploded out into an even larger conflagration. Sand was glassed at the impact point.

  The titan’s iris swiveled over, locking onto Luke and his squad. It roared again, this time creating a shockwave of sound that sprayed sand everywhere. Its poison fog was pushed ahead of the shockwave, spreading far in all directions. The monster was moving towards them a second later.

  The great beast was still hundreds of yards away, but it suddenly felt much too close. The others fired their mortars without having been told to. The oversized spells arced up into the air, purple streaks of acid magic trailing like a comet tail.

  “Ok, go, go, go!” Luke yelled before the spells even landed.

  The six of them raced northward, following the edge of the beach, well outside the area they had planted the bombs. As they ran, the three new hires took pot shots at the following titan, none of which reached the monster. The earlier mortar shots had hit, and were slowly working their way through the titan’s thick scales.

  Luke kept pace with the group, the blazing runes of his mech making their grueling pace effortless. He waited until the Lovecraftian giant just barely entered his range. Then he unloaded everything. Gargantuan fireballs, colossal sawblades, lightning superbolts, and glacial ice balls all flew through the air, impacting the monster with enough force to make it keen in pain once more.

  At the same time, buried explosives went off, shredding two of the beast’s legs. Unfortunately, that still left more than a dozen branching tentacles for locomotion. If anything, the bombs made it speed up, trying to get at the tiny creatures hurting it. Everyone’s shots were hitting it now, pinpricks of annoyance even if most of the spells didn’t get through its scales.

  Luke kept firing, trying to get as much damage in as he could. It didn’t take long for his over the shoulder spell rifles to catch on fire, and his arm cannons gave out shortly afterwards. The extra mana flow was just too much for them. Reluctantly, Luke deactivated Overcharge and used the second half of Repair Craft.

  He immediately used the first half of Repair Craft again, checking his mana pool as he did. He was down to half already, and the titan hadn’t even slowed down yet.

  A trio of bombs in the sand exploded, shredding more tentacle tree legs. It signaled the next phase of the plan.

  “Sandwich, you are up!” Luke yelled.

  The blond summoner intoned, “Echoes of the Dead!” over and over again until he had four pink Spore Raptors surrounding him. He pointed them at the titan following them and said, “Attack.”

  The summons turned and raced towards the approaching giant, moving as one. The plan was to have them use their spores to distract or slow down the titan. They didn’t actually know if his pink summons had the same magic as the monsters they came from, but it was worth a try. Each monster core could only be used once for Sandwich’s class, so testing out that possibility would only limit its effectiveness. It would either work great or not at all.

  The feathered velociraptors swarmed around the titan’s tentacle legs, weaving through the flesh forest. Grasping tentacles tried to pin them down, but they were slippery. Little motes of pink sparkles drifted off the slightly intangible summons. They soon disappeared in the poison fog that built up underneath the Titan.

  They reached the Inertia Club where Luke had left it, halfway to their escape plan. He grabbed on and activated the enchantment as they ran. He slid to a stop and yelled, “Keep going! Don’t stop until you are in the caves.”

  He didn’t have time to check and see if they obeyed, the titan was almost upon them. If his plan was going to work, he needed to get atop the monster, he couldn’t do much down here, twenty feet below its main body.

  Legs pumping, Luke ran towards the titan, aiming for one of its many front legs. He watched the two arm tentacles atop its head, thinking about how they had just disintegrated his magic drone. When one of them twitched, Luke immediately activated Frictionless Slide, zipping across the sand. A shadow swept down, aiming for where he had just been.

  When he stopped seventy feet away, he was still hit by the sand thrown up by the impact site. He ignored the spray and kept his eyes on the titan’s tentacle legs. Every time it took a shambling step forward, it connected with the ground in a straight line before its tentacles reached out to stabilize itself. Luke had to wait for just the right moment.

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  A second passed and the arm tentacles retracted.

  The titan slowly realized it missed.

  Two more seconds passed and it located Luke's new position.

  Both arm tentacles reared up to strike.

  Now!

  Luke mentally slammed Frictionless Slide, zipping across the sand and up the monster’s tentacles. At level 11 he could move seventy feet with every usage. He was a quarter of the way up the monster’s tentacle when it ran out. Luke hurriedly activated the skill again, and again. The only way he was able to stay atop the tentacle was the extra brainpower that came with his high Acuity. It didn’t quite slow down time, but it helped him focus absolutely on staying atop the tentacle and bending his path in the right direction.

  The final usage of Frictionless slide had him face to eye with a bulbous protrusion taller than he was. He had made it atop the monster’s head, but its iris was intently focused on him. He wouldn’t have long to kill it. He quickly ran over to a spot that had been weakened by the acid and fire spells.

  Luke raised the Inertia Club over his head and switched the activation rune. Instead of removing inertia from the incredibly heavy club, it amplified it. He swung the weapon down with every ounce of strength he had, aiming for its brainpan just behind its eyes.

  The impact shattered the scales for ten feet around and spattered blood for even farther. Luke heard a crack and felt it in his feet. One hit had cracked a titan’s brainpan. Just three or four more of them and it would be dead.

  The titan knew that too and used its tentacle arm to swat the intruder off its head. Luke saw the tentacle coming just in time to activate the inertia rune on his club and power armor. Instead of being pasted and strewn across the beach, Luke moved with the tentacle’s impact, flying high into the air. The impact shattered his chestplate and cracked his ribs, but he wasn’t dead.

  He had designed the inertia runes in his mech to only briefly remove inertia so he regained his weight while he was still a hundred feet in the air. He plummeted straight down, an unexpected yelp escaping his lips. He had just enough presence of mind to reactivate the inertia rune on his mech just before he hit. The magic took hold just before impact on the beach, saving his innards from severe blunt force trauma.

  The Inertia Club hadn’t been active though, and that buried itself deep into the sand. Luke hurriedly stood up, swaying as he did so. Rapid changes of inertia were really messing with his head.

  Luke checked the club and saw it was still in one piece, but the mana core in its hilt only had a third left. He wasn’t sure if it would last long enough for another hit.

  The titan had lost track of him when he dropped out of sight and reorientated on the remaining five mechs. Luke could let them continue to lead the giant monster away, accomplishing the task they had come here to do.

  But their escape plan involved titans being too big to get into the caves. The tentacles would easily be able to reach deep into the tidal caves.

  Luke couldn’t allow that. He was going to make his last hit count. He reached down and grabbed the club, knowing he had to do something different this time. He had a terrible idea. A stupid one, really. But it was the only plan he had and there was a narrow window for action. He pulled out his mana torch and quickly welded his gauntlet to the club.

  Now that he was completely connected to the Inertia Club, his Machine Bond could affect it as well. He activated the inertia removing runes and then spammed Frictionless Slide to catch up with the titan. Getting atop the monster was harder this time, the monster seemed to be running, its leg tentacles churning. Each path upwards lasted half as long.

  With a reckless grin, Luke slammed Frictionless Slide again and again until he was atop the monster.

  Perhaps sensing his free use of magic, the titan’s eye swiveled around and locked onto Luke. Another tentacle came whipping down, aiming to squash him instead of flicking him off again.

  Luke activated Overcharge and raced forward. The extra strength and dexterity that came with the overpowered runes was enough for him to avoid the first strike. The monster’s second arm swept across its head, aiming to brush him off. He jumped just in time to clear the thick tentacle.

  The titan stopped hitting itself and tried something new. It snaked its arm tentacles around itself in a circle and spread out the branches wide. It had created a cage of tentacles around itself, slowly tightening it down so Luke couldn’t escape again.

  He ignored them.

  This was already going to be a make or break attack, the tentacle cage didn’t change that. Luke lifted his Inertia Club and aimed for the same spot as before. He swapped inertia removal for inertia enhancement and brought down the club with every ounce of his strength. This time Machine Bond was allowing Overcharge to work on the club’s runes as well. The runes blazed with power as the club hit three times stronger than before.

  The impact hit with thud and a crack that broke the world. Or at least the ground beneath him. Thick bones cracked and shattered. His club smashed deep into the fish-like brain, pulping everything inside. The titan dropped, its leg tentacles losing all power. Luke drifted up during the short fall only to slam back into its head as the main body hit the ground.

  He groaned and picked himself back up. He looked around to see that the Titan’s eye was still trained on him. An arm tentacle shakily rose from the body. All that and it still wasn’t dead? He hurriedly pointed his arms down into the gaping wound and unloaded everything into its gaping headwound. Overpowered fire balls, lightning bolts, ice balls and sawblades slammed into the monster’s brain.

  It exploded and heaved up, spraying blood and viscera everywhere. Luke paused for a moment and wiped blood off his visor. The menacing tentacle arms had dropped down. Was it dead?

  The System of the World decided to answer that question with a series of notices. Since they only came after battle, that meant the titan was actually dead.

  Luke plopped down in relief. Specialist White had been right. Getting skill ups was easier in high mana areas. Particularly where a titan had just been killed.

  The System of the World wasn’t done with him yet. It sent one more notice that made him grin ear to ear.

  The notice about ascension being available meant that Luke had passed his threshold at level twelve. Excellent. That meant new skill choices and a greater class buff. He was knee deep in monster brains, but suddenly this was the best day ever.