Raids are the best enough said. Where else can a user meet new people, trade numbers, and form bonds that last an eternity? Guilds are formed in raids, and life can become blissful afterward. The loot, the battles, and the friendship make raids worth it. While I have had shitty raids before, they are few and far between, and after experiencing good raids, I don’t tolerate bad ones.

…

I moved down the building floors, silent as a ghost killing everything that moved with gentle taps of my fingers. Necrotic blood covered the walls after I cleared a room. Each death was a lesson. I learned how to direct Mortal Telekinesis to fire just a little tighter to blast through the bodies of my enemies. With each move, I used as many skills as possible. All the while, I kept my speed at almost humanly visible levels.

“Your feet never touch the ground. Do you have the levitation skill?” Light narrowed his eyes. “Be careful, or you’ll suffer the same fate as those under zero gravity. All those big muscles of yours will turn to fat.” The preteen said with a leer.

I allowed my total weight to rest on the floor. Cheap apartment tile cracked under my feet before the floor rumbled, and I sunk through. The undead under me cried out in shock before I splattered it. Flight took over before I fell through the next floor.

Undead rushed at me, glowing with deathly QI. Flow Of Hawks took over, and I moved around the clawing attacks, but I didn’t learn much. Even restraining myself, there wasn’t a sense of danger.

I stopped attacking and felt their claws stop against a thin barrier of QI. It wasn’t that I had an actual barrier or anything of the sort. Not that I wouldn’t develop such a skill eventually, but for now, it was merely my aura tightly condensed around my body. So even their deathly QI-coated claws failed to damage me.

When I don’t pretend that they're a threat, they really aren’t. So I pointed my finger at one and concentrated more on the mechanics of Mortal Telekinesis. While it was a Magic/Strength technique, there were other parts to it. After using it a few times, I learned that it was completely reliant on my mana and physical strength to work. By stripping the skill down, I began to work understand its principles. The body worked as the template, and magic Magic formed the rest. I had all the strength I could ever need for now. MyUnfortunately, my Magic Parameter wasn’t the same.

MAG 215 (2150)

The nature of the Dragon Lord Perk multiplied my base Parameters by 10. But that was all it did for my MAG Parameter. Still, 2150MAG was a high number even with the Parameter inflation.

With the template of 36,707STR, a beam of force shot forth from my finger and blasted through the head of an undead milf. Bits of black brain matter covered the walls, and I felt a fit of exhilaration. Using my skills made me feel better. They were a high that seldom stopped. I knew of only one better fix, and that was the dice. A tap from my finger flattened the skull of an undead teen, and the brains exploded out its ears. That time I distributed the force evenly when I struck. When I waved my hand and pushed forward, whole sections of the building exploded, gales of wind-blasted their bodies out of the apartment, and the building screamed as windows shattered throughout the floor.

A mosquito buzzed around my ear, and I smacked my face. Then, without meaning to, I blasted myself with far more Mortal Telekinesis. Everything around my head looked like a bomb had gone off, but I hadn’t felt a thing; the force hadn’t even moved me. It was my flight skill; I hovered in the air and maintained my position with my QI.

Just as I had begun truly contemplating the implications of my power, a thought occurred to me. Why were there mosquitoes here? There wasn’t blood to be had?

I turned my nose up and sniffed the air. The scent of life stood out among all the death. There were my fellow users and some lives, one of which was in a nearby room.

Before I could investigate, I heard a rush. From behind me, an undead crashed through the building as James Black strode into the room. He looked no worse for wear, and even his coat appeared immaculate in this dreary apartment.

“It seems I am not the only one too powerful for this raid. Did you come here hoping for a rare drop, or are you interested in the fairer flesh of the elves?” James said as he surveyed the damage I had wrought.

“If there is elf pussy to claim, then I will take it. But I’ll admit this was more a self-imposed lesson that had to be learned.” James nodded as if what I said was completely understandable. The silence gave me more than enough time to formulate a question. “How do you deal with your power? When you realize you’re a thing that can’t be considered human, how do you cope?” I asked.

James snickered. “Aren’t you a little old for angst? We are gone from our world scattered across time and space and free to self-determine mostly. You should fuck everything wet and slippery whether it's willing or not. That’s what others would do with your power, or are you trapped by the morality of a dead world?” James asked.

I raised an eyebrow and pulled open the door to where the living elf was stored. “Is that what’s expected of me when given true freedom? That is boring; life is about more than pleasure. Besides, she’s at most 15.” I said.

The man laughed. “I won’t tell if you won’t, and my young master would undoubtedly do worse. That boy has a bad habit of breaking his toys.” James said.

“Why serve if he’s such a little shit?” I asked.

“James, get back here this instant. I won’t have my only defense be the idiot who thinks guns are inferior to swords.” Light yelled.

“Why indeed,” James turned towards the direction of Light. “I’m coming, young master,” James said.

An undead elf with raven black hair held the living elf like a life preserver. Not like that would protect her, I wasn’t in the mood to leave casualties. From their fear, I felt my MAG increase, and something clicked. A hypothesis formed in my mind, one that changed my grasp on MAG and QI.

Might was easy to understand; it came from my physical body, the levers of its power were my desires, and any idiot could use it when in possession. On the other hand, Magic was something much more complex. It wasn’t spiritual in nature, but it held many similarities to it. Their rules were nearly indivisible, with slight differences in application and origin.

How were the spiritual and magic different? Well, MAG comes from the depth of belief and intelligence. The higher a being’s intelligence, the stronger their belief. Or, to put it simply, once they became sure of a belief, they fought tooth and nail preserving them. It's why Intelligence and Magic work well together. A dragon is an entity tied to Magic, and belief itself was far more profound than any wizard could hope to be. So what was the spiritual?

That was much more complicated. To put it bluntly, it was a product of faith, much like Magic with a defined purpose. When life gathers and is put in danger, its desire to preserve itself creates spiritual energy or QI. It's how King gathered so much QI. At some point, magic acted as a lever to allow the soul to come to be.

I stared down at the two elves. The longer they looked back at me, the more of their fear I passively drank in. It took a little concentration, but I gathered this fear energy and turned it into MAG. While the fear crept up from their auras, I wove that energy tightly before my Dragon’s Core turned it into MAG. This, of course, disproved my theory, or did it? It was so interesting; the interactions between MAG and QI seemed to swap places from how I understood them. The more I grasped at them, the less I understood.

What was a dragon’s core? The skill’s knowledge told me it was a spiritual organ designed to create MAG. My next question had to be what MAG as a substance was. I possessed it, I used it, and I knew next to nothing about it. The powers distinguished themselves at times, and in others, they seemed indivisible.

A fireball appeared on the tip of my finger. Both girls flinched, and their fear increased. “How do I control this power? Is it by Magic or soul? If you guess, correctly you get to live.” I said.

Yes, it was an evil thing to do, but I wanted an outside perspective and fear.

“Magic,” The living elf said.

“Soul,” The undead said.

“Both and neither, not answering is correct too.” I shrugged and let the fireball dissipate. “When I control something, Magic weakens the laws of reality to make it possible, and my soul empowers it to do so. The soul is the foundation the Magic uses to enact the user’s will. Without the stabilizing force of the soul, magic would be chaos.” I said and stared between the two girls. “You know she will eat you eventually. To them, you’re nothing but food.” I said.

“What do you care? These ears of mine are great for hearing secrets. I’m nothing more than a potential hole to you.” The elf said.

“I won’t eat her I’ll resist until the very end. Then, you’ll rape Keya over my dead body.” The undead elf said.

I shook my head. They didn’t matter, and I wasn’t in the mood anyway. I wanted to understand my power more than anything; I wanted to make peace with it.

Then flinched when I raised my arm and pointed it South. “My team and I are about to battle a monster. If either of you wants to live, head the other direction.” As an experiment, I marked both of them. So I would know if they died while I was here.

By the time I made it down below, the city had begun to rumble, and the death aura grew more substantial. Tanks moved down the street towards the growing power. It was so interesting.

“Useless, they’re wasting their time with tanks when it takes a sword to the enemy down,” Johnson said.

“Did you even watch a video of the second raid or prepare anything but a sword?” I asked.

“Who cares? I’ll just respawn back on the rooftop if I die.” Johnson said.

I opened my mouth and closed it. “Why don’t you check the #harshtruths section of Reddit? I’ll wait?” I said.

“Can’t it wait? I will race you to first strike against the boss.” One of the tanks exploded in a tiny mushroom cloud. Only a few buildings were vaporized.

“Everyone who isn’t immune to rads suit up or teleport out,” Jessica said.

Jonson posed for effect. “A samurai has no need to fear rats,” Johnson said. “So that’s what the first boss is, a giant rat.”

The explosion finally hit us, tossing Johnson back ass over tea kettle. His wish-bought polyester silk kimono held up relatively well as the southern boy’s ass shattered a car’s windshield. Johnson’s sword flew off his belt loop and onto the pavement.

A giant bone-white claw rose out of the dush and debris to gasp the pavement. Power radiated from the creature in high-frequency waves. As it lumbered up from the nuclear crater, the ground around it began to flatten under its natural gravity magic. Graviton Aura was a drop with a 2.95% chance without drop rate increase items.

Ding!

Manhattan

Perks: Nuclear Brute and Magneton

Droppable Enemy Skills

Graviton Aura lvl100

Type: MAG

Rank: A

High Frequency lvl100

Type: QI or SPT

Rank: A

Atomic Eyes lvl100

Type: FTH

Rank: A

The creature stood to its full height and roared its hate at the world. I felt my mind fill with static noise, pain, and the corruption of all my plans. All around, electronics exploded, and the undead in the area clawed at their heads until they died. I fell to my hands and knees and spat out a mouthful of blood.