Dungeon Hunter - Chapter 55

Chapter 55: Episode 15. Gigante (1)

The strength was 94, and the health was 92.

The two physical abilities both exceeded 90.

‘I should probably increase my intelligence as soon as possible,’ I mused.

I felt ashamed about the fact that Gigante’s intelligence was higher than mine. However, I did not think a higher intelligence was worth my remaining points.

Feeling bittersweet, I took out Anger.

“Krithli, leave me alone.”

Krithli opened her eyes wide and asked with concern, “Will you be all right?”

“I do not fight to lose.”

I would not even start if I were going to lose.

Gigante was superior to me in physical abilities, but that was about it. The total statistics of Gigante and me were about the same. I was superior in using skills. Good decisions and tricks would decide the winner.

Krithli glanced at Gigante and bowed to me.

“Please be careful, my Dungeon Master.”

Soon Krithli left the altar, leading Pyrok and Griffin.

I ordered the two Fire Golems who were guarding the altar to move out. The two Golems pushed through the thin walls and exited the altar. It was only Gigante and me.

“I kept you waiting for a long time.”

“You win! Then, I will follow.”

He thought that the arena was ready.

Gigante conveyed his will through his awkward pronunciations.

I held Anger tight and got ready.

“I was going to do that in the first place. Paranormal.”

I thought about Paranormal, a ring of unique grade.

I invoked the item that could give me one of the five blessings at random.

[You have received the blessings of Paranormal. You now have strong charm.]

I clicked my tongue.

All I got was a strong charm.

It was the most useless blessing that I could get from the ring at that moment.

Boom!

I had no choice but to stamp my feet hard. At the same time, electricity flowed through my entire body. I used Lightning God Power and sent distributed electricity throughout my body.

Through the Eyes of Mind, I double-checked that I needed to finish everything quickly. I was superior in mana. I preferred intense fights with blood and sweat, but I had to be careful.

I could only do more harm by using skills with maximum mana.

Bang!

Gigante swung his blunt, big, and hexagonal club. The stroke boomed throughout the dungeon and left a large pit on the floor.

Gigante’s strength was 94, and he could wipe off a mountain!

If I got hit, I would not resist for long.

My health point was at 82. My defense was far inferior compared to that of Gigante.

‘Now!’

However, it was easy to avoid large movements. Gigante was not very agile, and I could easily read his next moves.

As soon as Gigante tried to lift the club from the floor, I stamped my Anger on the ground.

Pow, pow, pow!

The electricity flew from Anger to the ground. Soon the electricity hit the club that Gigante had in his hands.

“Huh!”

Intelligence is related to anti-mana power, and Gigante did not have much anti-mana power. The Lightning God Power would not be a decisive blow, but it would pause Gigante for a moment.

Gigante released the club from his hands. I immediately drew out Anger and jumped from the floor hard. I wanted to soar high and strike Anger into Gigante’s heart.

The plan was to soar high in the air and smash Anger into the heart of Gigante. Even if Gigante was stronger than I was, without the heart or the brain, he was nothing more than a dead body!

However, my plan did not work out.

Dun, dun, dun! The floor in front of Gigante rose and blocked him. If it were just a piece of rock, I could have easily penetrated it.

Clash!

However, it was not a normal piece of rock but rather one reinforced by a skill.

The skill that made the rock stronger was Chest of Earth (Ex U).

Chest of Earth was a skill specialized in defense and it successfully blocked my critical blow.

Anger failed to penetrate the wall. The wall soon collapsed and Gigante, who appeared from behind, swung his club hard.

‘Things are not working out.’

Gigante condensed strong mana in his club.

Gigante had two skills. He’d just used one of them and the other skill would be Gigantic Slash (Epic).

I did not have the skills strong enough to counterattack Gigantic Slash.

I retreated hurriedly to get prepared for Gigante’s attack.

Gigante swung his club, which was fully condensed with mana.

Bang!

Gigante’s strike created strong waves.

The pressure from the club drew everything around.

The strike carved a scar on the floor. The width of the scar was about 10 meters. The scar, which seemed like a bite of teeth, extended far from the floor to the wall.

I managed to pull myself out, but I was shocked by the impact of the blow.

The skill was surely of an epic grade. It was on a par with Griffin’s Fire and Lightning.

Rather, Gigantic Slash seemed superior to Griffin’s skill in offense. Griffin’s Fire and Light was an attacking skill specialized for damaging many opponents. On the other hand, Gigante’s Gigantic Slash was for a single target.

I wiped my forehead.

After Gigante used his skill, half of the altar was destroyed without a trace.

‘It is not impossible to repair, but…’

The combat was a total fiasco. I regretted choosing the altar as a battleground. However, even if I had tried to fight Gigante at a different place, he would not have followed. It seemed that repairing the broken altar would take quite a lot of time and effort.

Anyway, I could draw one conclusion from this attack.

‘It is doable.’

Perhaps I could defeat him without using the skill of Anger.

I calmly looked at Gigante.

His skill, Chest of Earth, showed superior defense. However, the pitfall of the skill was that the user, who was Gigante, could not make any offensive moves while using the skill. Furthermore, activating Chest of Earth took some delays and covered a large area.

As for Gigantic Slash, it sure was a powerful attack, but I would be able to dodge the skill had I been well prepared for it.

I needed to make use of the different characteristics of Gigante’s skills to win the battle.

As soon as I decided my next move, I kicked off the floor and soared into the air.

Gigante knew that it was easier to hit an opponent in the air than someone standing on the floor. He swung his club hard and tried to hit me. I twisted my body and stroke Gigante with Anger.

Clash! Anger scraped Gigante’s club. I may have been behind in physical abilities compared to Gigante, but I was better than him in the mastery of weapons.

I closed the distance between Gigante and me at once, aiming at his neck.

He would not be able to activate Chest of Earth when I was very close to him.

Slash!

I mustered all the strength that I could and stabbed Gigante’s throat. However, my sword did not go in as deep as I expected.

It barely cut his skin.

I did not panic and ducked to dodge Gigante’s club.

‘I do not think that I failed because I was not strong enough. It felt as though I was hitting a wall. Can he strengthen his body using the skill of Chest of Earth?’

When I looked closely, pieces of dirt fell off from the skin of the throat that I cut.

Phew!

I could not imagine that Gigante would surround its body with a wall.

“K, Krr!”

However, my sword did go into his body a little bit.

Gigante had hard skin but also had low anti-mana power. Anger contained my energy, and it could damage Gigante through the scar it had made.

“Fool around, this is it!”

Gigante looked very angry.

Smoke rose from his body because of the electricity that had shocked him.

From that position, Gigante prepared for his critical blow, Gigantic Slash.

I quickly switched to defense and prepared for the upcoming impact.

However…it felt subtly different from the Gigantic Slash that I saw earlier.

‘He was just shaking my tree.’

I frowned.

I realized that it was impossible to completely dodge the blow, so I activated Lightning God Power using the full energy that I had. I had no choice but to try to cancel Gigantic Slash using this skill.

The two skills were of different grades, but I was far superior in mana power, which determined the attacking power of a skill. If I put all my energy into my skill, it might be able to cancel out Gigante’s despite the lower skill grade.

However, it did not take long to realize that my plan would not work.

Baanng!

The skill felt like a storm with lightning.

I could call it a disaster. The skill radiated a vibration of a tremendous amount of mana.

When Gigante activated Gigantic Slash this time, incredibly powerful vibrations, which were incomparable to what I had seen, flowed from Gigante’s club to me, crashing down everything on the way.

The width of the vibrations reached several tens of meters…I mustered the last bit of my power.

I superposed mana waves after mana waves, creating a very dense stack of waves. The shield of electrical power with many layers appeared before me and soon clashed with Gigantic Slash.

Buzz! Buzzzz!

I created seven layers of electric shocks.

With Lightning God Power, which was a seven-star skill, seven layers were the most that I could make. However, Gigantic Slash quickly stripped off the layers.

It destroyed the second layer, the fourth layer, and soon the sixth layer.

Finally, the skill crushed the seventh layer of my electric shock shield.

I was able to cancel most of the Gigantic Slash in the meantime. However, I ended up receiving the remaining bits of Gigantic Slash on my body.

“Cough!”

Gigantic Slash stroked my chest.

The blood flew out from my chest, and I vomited it out of my mouth.

‘I am not lucky today.’

I could not even think about wiping the blood on my lips and hardened my face.

There was a huge scratch from my shoulder to the bottom of my belly, which seemed to be made by nails.

Unluckily, Gigante’s blow scratched the heart and the stage where Lightning God was resting.

The blood was continuously oozing out from the wound.

I realized that the longer the battle went, the more likely it was that I would lose.

Should I use Anger?

Strangely enough, I had a strange conviction that if I used the skill Anger, I would not lose. Of course, I did not predict what the side effects would be.

“Huh!”

However…my body quickly got hot for some reason. It felt the same as when I just got the heart of Hell Lord. The blood circulated through my body and everything felt very remote.

Mana flowed from my heart, which was somehow stimulated. The flowing mana began to devour my entire body. My face hardened even more.

I clenched my teeth hard.

It was a mana backflow.

Only a dying monster would feel his or her mana flowing in reverse!

I had felt it before, so I knew exactly how it felt.

Everything was now clear. Gigantic Slash had struck my heart, and mana was flowing out from my heart.

The amount of mana that the heart of Hell Lord contained was beyond my imagination. It increased my intelligence and mana by 35, even though I could not fully activate it.

Now the battle with Gigante was no longer the most important problem.

I sat down hurriedly, fixed my posture, and concentrated my mind.

I needed to prevent the mana from flowing in reverse.

I tried to collect the flowing mana as much as possible and put it in the heart. I also focused on recovering the wound on the heart where the mana was flowing out from.

Potions or Elixirs were not helpful in this case. If I was forced to stitch together the wound, I could not predict what the mana that flowed out would result in.

I could not rely on any other means but myself to recover from the mana backflow.

However, something unexpected happened again.

Gigantic Slash had damaged my heart and the stage below my bellybutton.

Lightning God, wriggling under my belly, soon woke up from irritation. It then started to grab at and consume the chunks of mana that flowed out from my heart, trying to fill its hungry stomach.

Until now, Lightning God had never been around my heart. He was busy running away from it as if it were running away from something scary.

It acted differently now. Rather, it consumed mana near my heart aggressively, slowly getting larger.

I stopped collecting mana.

Whatever overflew would flow again. If I could somehow reduce the overflowing mana in a more constructive way, which was having Lightning God consume it, mana overflow would not be a big loss for me.

I let Lightning God consume the flowing mana for a while.

In the meantime, I remained focused on the Lightning God.

[The heart of the Hell Lord has been partially awakened.]

[‘Lightning God Power (U)’ went through a transformation and is completed as ‘Spirit of Electric Power (Epic).’]

[‘Spirit of Electric Power’ is not a spirit of the normal type. It has consumed the mana of Hell Lord, Jinma Dragon, and Dark Elf Hayer, and it has transformed into a special spirit in the next level.]

I opened my eyes.