Five crystal monsters had appeared from the ground around me, they had several different forms, two of them looked roughly like people, while two of them looked like a mass of crystals orbiting something. And the final one was another of those crabs, except it was purely made of crystal.
Five against one is really bad for me, I need to also know how strong they are if I want to know how much of a chance I stand.
[Crystal person] lv. 11
Species: Lesser Crystalline Apoikia.
Status: Waning.
Stats:
Hp: 78/143
Ep: 0/213
Strength: 82
Defense: 132
Energy strength: 71
Energy defense: 91
Speed: 43
[Crystal mass] lv. 9
Species: Lesser Crystalline Apoikia.
Status: waning.
Stats:
Hp: 89/128
Ep: 0/281
Strength: 75
Defense: 63
Energy strength: 89
Energy defense: 68
Speed: 82
[Crystal crab] lv. 13.
Species: Lesser Crystalline Apoikia.
Status: waning.
Stats:
Hp: 122/183
Ep: 0/189
Strength: 133
Defense: 142
Energy strength: 55
Energy defense: 120
Speed: 30
The stats of these monsters were baffling, they didn't have any SP, and their EP were at 0. But why? What does that mean? Why did any of that happen? Well, there isn't any time to question it now, I'll have to just beat them.
Their speed stat was bad compared to me, even their best speed stat was in the 80s compared to me, and all of them had that waning effect, I can dodge them with my eyes closed, but I will have to ask Appraisal about the- Ow!
One of the crystal people had grown more crystals from their arm to attack me, those crystals shortly broke and the size of the crystal person had decreased. The attack that hit me had pierced through my scales barely, scratching me in my side and making me bleed. Damn it, I underestimated my enemies again? Why do I keep on messing up!
No more talking Mr. Brain, I'm pulling the zipper on you now alright? Focus now Lisa.
The two flying masses of crystals were the most troublesome to fight right now, they boasted the highest speed out of all of the crystal people, and these were my highest priority targets now. The crystal enemies weren't very fast and they lacked thinking skills, they were completely brainless and followed me like how enemies would follow you in games.
The crab was by far the slowest one out of all of them, and if I minded him, then there was no way it could get me, so I just started around the place trying to keep all of them in sight.
The flying masses of crystals had gotten to me the fastest out of all of the others, the large space that had appeared due to them getting to me so quickly had given me time to deal with them.
Both of them had attacked with surprising coordination, they had shot their crystals towards me, with one of them holding back their shot until the other had completed firing their crystals. I started dodging as hard as I could, but a few of them had hit their mark and shot me in my sides, some of them bounced off due to my defense, but quite a bit of them had pierced me, the moment they land in me, they leave instantly.
Their shooting time gives me a few seconds to deal with them before more of them come, and I have to be constantly moving to not get caught by the others. The crab that I hadn't finished off was still there, trying to struggle towards me with its three legs, it may be paralyzed. But it's still a threat, and if I manage to level up from killing it, then it'll all be worth it.
Alright, I'll need to find an opening to be able to finish off the crab. Unfortunately, I don't think I can paralyze them to create that opening, I mean, they were literally rocks y'know? I guess that means I also can't poison them, and fire will probably also not work on them. I mean diamond had an insanely high melting point right?
I was forced to wait for an opening, I kept trying to get closer to the crab while keeping them away from me, I kept on getting hit by the crystal attacks of the flying masses, but I managed to start blocking them, for the flying shards, I started using my eye of force on them. It was pretty hard and required me to focus on their attacks, but I could stop them. Unfortunately they would just return to them instantly, but that is when I realized another weird thing about these monsters.
Their HP kept on dropping the more I battled, I kept appraising them and seeing their HP drop the more they fought.
But finally, I had managed to get the opportunity that I was looking for, the crystal masses stopped firing at me and the others were far away. The crab tries to slam me with its pincers but I go around it and then attack it while it was upturned. I stab through the shell and then try my hardest to do as much damage as possible. I was then fired at by countless crystals, and they had lodged themselves in my back. It hurt a bit, but there were so many of them there. Was I going to die by a thousand paper cuts? Don't think of something scary like that Lisa, I'm not going to die. Absolutely not.
I fire earth needles into the inside of the crab and then I breathe fire in there. The crab starts struggling more, and much like the other crab it had died.
But I did not level up.
My gamble had turned out badly, really badly. I still had not leveled up and I was now injured more, I made a lot of mistakes here now. I thought that there was nothing that could threaten me here except Megalos, the giant crab, or the giant crystal person. And now here I am, with 67 Hp, and the 5 of them are still alive.
I'm here because of my own bad choices, and I'll have to now think completely clearly to beat them.
Continuing to run around like this will drain my stamina, so I have to change the battlefield to somewhere favorable for me.
I start running towards the nearest wall, while dodging all of the attacks of the crystal masses. I was now basically completely focused on dodging them.
When I reach the wall, I start running up it. The other crystal enemies can't reach me now.
The flying ones had flew far away from the wall, I wait for one of them to fire their crystals, when it fires them, I dodge it to the left and then use my eye of force on the bare core that was revealed.
The core dashes towards me as the other one fires its crystals, hitting the other one through its core and cracking it. When the core reaches me, I hold it up and start smashing it against the wall. The crystals that were flying towards this core were shaking with every attack. And before they could regroup with their core, they had gone limp and fell down. Losing their color and cracking as they fell.
[Required exp amount reached. Lisa leveled up to lv. 16]
[Stats increased.]
[4 skill points added.]
[Proficiency of skill "Paralyzing breath" reached the required amount. Increasing paralyzing breath to lv. 5]
I exhaled the moment I saw that announcement. Being on the edge of death like that was scary! I'll always have to remind myself not to get arrogant against anything ever again. But it's hard to break these bad habits, anyway, I only have to deal with the other flying mass and then I'll be golden.
The other flying mass hadn't let up even after seeing me beat its friend, but could it even see or think though? I don't know and I also don't care, after it regained its crystals, it starts firing them at me, but it doesn't fire all of them like last time.
I run across the wall and dodge the attacks, the crystals hit the wall and get stuck in them for a second, once they leave, a deep hole was left in the wall. I could count like 15 holes on the wall from the crystal mass.
But now that it fired a lot of its orbiting crystals at me, that leaves it open for a grab now!
I use my eye of force on the core so I can finish it off like the last one, but the crystal had instead sacrificed a crystal by putting it in front of my eyesight, causing me to pull one of the crystals by accident.
I try to reverse the pulling and push it instead to skewer the core, but it was really difficult to change from pulling to pushing, plus, I'm fairly sure the crystal was also pushing its crystal towards me.
[Proficiency of skill "Eye of force" reached the required amount. Leveling up "eye of force to lv. 4]
I don't know if the level up helped or not, but I managed to stop the approaching crystal for long enough to be able to dodge it. That speed was no joke right there, it must have went like 300 Kilometers an hour! That nearly reached me in a second. But luckily, that crystal had broken once it touched the wall, but it also took a large chunk of the wall with it, and some parts above it had collapsed.
What kind of freaking rail gun was that?! I mean it was definitely super cool... I'll definitely put it on my list of things to try out.
But what is important here now, is that the crystal will continue to protect itself with its crystals, I'll have to get it to attack me. And while it's trying to get its crystals back. Bam! I'll attack the crystals and destroy them.
When the crystals come once more, I start dodging them, and then i started breaking them as I dodged. I used earth techniques to make earth needles to hit some of the crystals, and then I used my eye of force to push some of them against the wall with all my might. My EP had shot down due to all the use of these techniques, so I'll maybe have to do it physically the next few times.
The crystal had finally gotten its crystals out of there, but I got a pretty good amount of them. I broke like 6 of them, and there are only 12 remaining. But this battlefield is a mess right now, there are so many holes on the wall, I could trip from any one of them, especially if I'll be dodging attacks from the crystal mass. So I really hope I can end this quickly.
I wait and look at the crystal mass, but it doesn't fire more crystals at me this time, instead, it starts flying towards me. The shock of seeing it approaching me almost makes me trip on one of the holes, a lot of my plans were dependent on it staying up and firing crystals on me. But maybe this is actually a blessing in disguise? I'll have to know now.
The crystal mass gets in front of me, and it starts swinging its many crystals at me like swords. I keep on moving back to avoid them, nearly tripping on another one of the holes, which made me lose enough footing for the crystal mass to slice my arm.
My arm started bleeding, but it was fine for the most part, I luckily got away quickly before it started swinging all of its crystals at me. But I now had made another plan
Since the core was now close to the wall, I could stab it with a really long earth needle, a needle that long and fast will take a bit of energy and time to make. So for now I'll be dodging it more.
I continue moving back and dodging its crystals, it wasn't very hard since I just needed to stay out of its range, so i just kept on going back while minding any holes nearby.
And then finally, I had it prepared. I finally found an opening from the side, and then, I stabbed through the core of the crystal mass with a large and quick spike. It was nearly instantaneous, the crystal core had gotten pierced. And stayed on for a while until it finally broke, and the crystals orbiting it had also fallen similarly to the previous one.
Ah, thank god it's over, that was terrifying! I don't want to ever be that close to death ever again. I should really investigate if there are any healing techniques or whatever. But that will have to come later, since there were those three still remaining.
I got pretty far away from the rest of those crystal people, and when I ran across the wall to get back to them, I could find them in the half point while I was going back there. Isn't that nice? They saved me all the hassle of getting to them. Such nice people. What? They are trying to kill me? Well then I take that back, you aren't very nice anymore.
To be honest, they are going to be pretty easy to deal with, they can't fly or get up on the wall here, so I just need to hit them with ranged attacks till they die. But I don't think I'll be able to kill all of them with ranged attacks, so I'll have to kill two of them with techniques and kill the final one normally.
Which ones should I kill? Well, the crab has way too high of a defense, I'll likely use all my energy just to beat it. But for the crystal people, then I'll maybe be able to beat both of them with my current energy stock.
I had around 40 EP now, I'll have to not use all of it, because using all of it sounds like it'll have some terrible side effects.
After preparing the earth spike, I stabbed it through its chest, making it unable to move due to the damage, but still not killing it. Damn, at least it's paralyzed for later. I'm not gonna bother wasting energy on finishing it off. As long as it can't move, then it can't interfere in my battle.
I create another earth spike and then aim it at the other crystal person, I stab through its head and neck this time, and this time, the crystal person did die.
[Required exp amount reached. Lisa leveled up to lv. 17]
[Stats increased]
[4 skill points added]
[Proficiency of skill "Earth techniques" reached the required amount. Increasing "earth techniques" to lv. 4]
Another level up, and this one had brought me back to perfect shape, and now I did have enough energy to finish off the crystal that was paralyzed from the attack. I pierced through its head with a weaker attack, and finished it off.
Now only the crab remained, first off, I stab the crab with one of the spike from underneath it, but that barely does any damage. The earth spikes had broken when it hit the crystal, but it did make a dent on it.
Alright, I'll have to know use an attack I was thinking about ever since I saw that mass of crystals. I prepare an earth spike from in front of the crab, preparing to make it as fast as possible. And then when I fired it, I used my eye of force to increase its speed as much as I could.
The spike barrels through the crabs frontal part and then goes through it until is stopped mid way through, the earth spike had turn to rubble from the parts that hit and only the base of it remained. But the crab now had a giant hole through the front of its head. And with its crystallic body cracking.
Then, I jump off from the wall and fly as high as I could, and then I drop down on it and attack it with my legs at its injured place, further shattering its head and breaking it in two. The crystals had then started cracking more like the others, and now it was finally over.
Haaaaaah, this was exhausting! What a battle that was, I was nearly in a bad spot right there, but they just couldn't match up to me, hahaha! Er, no Lisa, even as a joke, I can't be acting arrogant like that. One bad move there and I would have been back at the bonfire.
Anyway, I'm now going to eat the two crabs that were remaining, no, I am not going to eat the crystal crab, what kind of game logic do you need to eat a freaking crystal? Well, this world is kinda like a game, but I'm not eating a rock alright?
Wait why am I rambling about eating rocks? Am I overthinking it? Am I rambling too much?
... let's just go eat now.