John actually raises his crossbow and wants to shoot me again. Go on then.
"Don't shoot it, John. I hit it more than a dozen times and it did nothing. That thing has a damage resolving skill of some kind. Must be threshold rather than accumulation since my attacks did nothing but it avoided being hit by Petra. Unless you can release an attack above your level your wasting your time."
Tsk. Should have sent another spell her way. Despite being hit by her own sorcery and having both of her arms crippled, Belladonna has stood up and shared her findings. I suppose I shouldn't fault her too much. Petra must have already come to the same conclusion and would have told John the same thing if Belladonna hadn't.
"If you have a strong attack, get to charging it up. I'll keep this thing busy! Though I really wish I wouldn't have to choose this path."
That sounds bad. Paths are sometimes used to refer to the last step paragon candidates take to earn that name. It's the evolution of their core skill and the result of that evolution is not set. Some struggle to find a direction to evolve while others find one rather quickly but hold off since they think they can find something better.
Petra's words make me believe that she has already found a possible path of evolution but held off to find a stronger or better suited one. Since I proved to be incredibly strong, she's decided to choose the weaker path to gain strength and finish me off.
This will make things so much more tedious. But I do wonder what I will get for devouring a paragon whole.
Petra begins to exude a dangerous aura as she initiates her skill's evolution mid battle. I doubt I can successfully interrupt her so I shift more focus to my side project while sending a tide of darkness barreling towards Petra.
I doubt it will work but I will definitely try my luck.
Petra's eyes glow and her miniature ship starts to distort as space warps around it. She's not been wearing much of a pirate get up before but now a signature pirate captain's hat with a golden crown emblazoned on it appears on her head. A cyan frock coat drapes itself around her body and suddenly a ship emerges from the distortion beneath her feet.
"To me!"
Petra calls out and jumps onto the deck of the full sized ship that emerges from beneath her with a full crew present on it. All of them hold the class of sky pirate and are ready for battle. Is it a long distance summoning skill?
I use soul-piercing gaze to target Perta's evolving skill and see what's up.
[the sky pirate queen and her flying ship]
What is a pirate queen without her ship and crew? Skill wielder can summon her ship and crew to any place and boost the prowess of her ship and crew by a large margin.
So long as the sky pirate queen loves the ship can never truly be destroyed and her crew cannot enter death's embrace.
Who writes these descriptions? I always wondered that but now is not the time. Paragon skills usually allow both the creation of subordinates and a massive increase in personal power.
Petra has neither. She can't convert people into sky pirates and she certainly can't derive an increase in personal power from that skill. But both her ship and her subordinates have been added to her combat strength.
Most of her sky pirates are around level 200. but the sense of danger they are giving me is closer to level 400 sky pirates. And the ship… 600? 700? if it weren't a lifeless object I'd not be confident to ensure that Petra stays here. But it's just an object and thus it's more like a weapon that has reached an insane level.
I only read reports of its performance before it was enhanced. Petra is trying to make some headway in old man Hawaii's dungeon, tropical entropy. And apparently her ship's barrages can wreck havoc on most monsters that get in range.
And I am in range. The cannons roar as cyan flames gush from their barrels and a barrage of gunfire bursts from their muzzles. They just fired indiscriminately at everything in my direction. Not that it matters. I'm the only thing on that side of the ship so no danger of friendly fire. I'm also so large in size that there is no chance of missing me.
Despite omni immunity being an awesome damage negation skill that sounds like it can negate anything, it has its limits. It makes me completely immune to mosquito bite tactics and no environment can really bother me. However, strong attacks can still pierce through. Petra's attacks can do so by themselves and so can these cannonballs that have been shot by the buffed ship.
The cannonballs break through my omni immunity and impact upon my body causing violent jiggling. I feel searing pain as my mass is destroyed by the arriving force of the projectiles and the destructive enchantments engraved upon the cannonballs.
But that's already it. Before the cannonballs can start doing serious damage by fully triggering their engraved enchantments, I devour them.
My gluttony tears into them as I break their feeble resistance by manually disenchanting them. Without the enchantments to strengthen them, the cannonballs are dissolved in mere moments.
And now it's my turn. I have been preparing a spell since before I launched those weapons at Petra and the others. I have the quadruple casting skill and while it's not very strong yet, dual casting is easy. So while I was creating space blades, launching that tide of darkness and everything else, I was busy preparing a second spell.
It took me a while but that is mostly due to me wanting to finish the spell without Petra noticing and priming it to take effect instantly.