Imagine a game of cat and mouse. Except the mice are pestering and hunting the cat, and the cat is too prideful to run away completely.

Then imagine that the cat is a Leviathan, and the mice are Dawnbreaker, myself, and Abelino in an Aviaton.

This battle was different from most of my previous battles. We were content to whittle down the Leviathan’s bony exterior, one blast at a time. With Dawnbreaker beside me, I didn’t need to boost my stats past my floating points, so the battle wasn’t on a timer yet.

Instead, Dawnbreaker and I would fly in from slightly different angles—Dawnbreaker as the distraction, and me as the follow-up, under my Invisibility Cloak, when the Leviathan committed in its attack against her. Fortunately, the Leviathan couldn’t sense me under the Invisibility Cloak.

The Leviathan was staying just about ten yards under the surface of the water, so I would try to fly as close as I could to its core, and then use my Mana Cannon to blast a portion of its bony exterior away, before fleeing immediately from the retaliatory geysers that would fly my direction.

With the monster’s stats, each blast would only cut through a foot or so of bone at a time. And the core was the most heavily protected part of the monster—I estimated about four feet of bone, and then another ten feet of miscellaneous tissue to cut through before we could even touch the core.

I had made three passes already, and so my next attack would likely shred through the bone. But the Leviathan, even though it wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, wasn’t going to sit quietly while I ambushed it. It was time for a double feint.

There were books on monster psychology in Acclimated Worlds. I had memories of them, and I had memories of fighting a Leviathan, as well.

What would it do when it felt like its core was threatened?

It was about to roll over, hiding the opening that I had painstakingly created, and in the process, causing a large enough wave to push us back.

So, instead of attacking from above, I would be attacking from below.

There was one challenge, though. Most likely, the Leviathan would be able to spot me if I did go underwater, because it would notice the absence of water.

So, I needed a convenient absence of water to hide in.

Dawnbreaker flew towards the Leviathan, raising her sword dramatically.

Dawnbreaker’s projected sword aura flew from her sword, traveling more like a stab than a slash, vaporizing the water that it passed.

I flew in the wake of her sword aura, as steam rose and water vaporized around me.

The Leviathan flipped its fins and rolled, sending a massive wall of water towards where I had attacked from the previous three times.

But I was already underneath it, buffeted by the intense currents around me.

It likely wouldn’t take the Leviathan very long for it to notice me, but it was too late. Its massive torso was already rotating, caught in the motion of revealing the bloody hole I had already created.

I formed harpoons using my unisuit arms, and swam up next to the Leviathan, ramming my harpoons into its gaping wound.

Already, I could tell a fin was switching directions, about to slam into me. It was finally time to go all-out.

I put a third of my Mana Pool into Physical Defense, and a third in Agility.

I fired a Void Crystal point blank with the Mana Cannon, vaporizing the last of the Leviathan’s bony armor.

Then, using the harpoon-like arms, I wedged myself between the monsters’ relatively soft tissue and the bone, just in time for the Leviathan’s fin to slap the hole that I had crawled into.

I felt the weight of water and tissue around me slam against me, but I knew that however bad it was, it would have been far worse if I had not hidden under the Leviathan’s bones.

The slap itself wasn’t dangerous. But then the pointed tip of the fin jammed into the hole where I hid, and I knew I had to work quickly.

Mana Sensing gave me a clear line of “sight” to the core, but I knew that if I fired a mana cannon at it then I would miss out on a high-quality monster core.

So instead of firing, I sliced my way deeper, submerging myself in blood and tissue, fleeing the scratching fin.

If I were just Jarek, then at this point I would be complaining about Samantha’s death wish, or wondering why I repeatedly end up in similar positions, burrowing inside a monsters’ flesh.

I was acutely aware that if I were just a split second too slow, the Leviathan’s fin would shred me to pieces—regardless of my Physical Defense.

Could we have defeated the Leviathan without this relatively risky tactic? Of course. Especially if we had let Dawnbreaker go for the kill.

But I wanted the kill, and they were willing to pass it off to me.

And there was something thrilling about making the exact movements, precise maneuvers.

Success lies on the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and you will fail.

I wedged my body deeper, tearing through the tissues around me, and then I felt the Leviathan’s whole body lift up.

I could picture with Mana Sensing what was happening. The Leviathan had completely surfaced and flung itself up into the air like a dolphin that was about to belly flop onto the surface of the water.

If I were still surrounded by bone, then I would be a goner. The concussive force of the bone around me would have killed me in a heartbeat. But I was surrounded by relatively soft tissues, so I just braced myself with my unisuit’s extra arms.

The Leviathan’s reaction to my presence was two-pronged. The fin that had been digging towards me, as if it were scratching at an itch, gave up.

Instead, as it rose above the surface of the water, a fin slammed against the water, propelling the Leviathan further upwards while sending a jet of water towards the wound that I was hiding inside.

I placed a few extra points in Physical Defense, and grabbed onto the tendons and soft tissue around me, bracing for impact.

After the impact, it wouldn’t quite be fair to say the rest of the battle was a walk in the park. But at least my life wasn’t in danger anymore as I cut through the Leviathan’s innards, sliced around the creatures’ core, and killed the beast.

Congratulations! You have slain North Pacific Zone Lord. +20 free Stat Points.

You have completed the mission, Zone Offense.

Reward: 1 Schema Treasury Token (C-rank)

Zone Offense mission updated: Slay the World Lord on Earth. Reward: 1 pick from the Schema Treasury (B-rank).

Level up! (to level 41)

The fact that the mission updated and mentioned the World Lord meant that all the other Zone Lords had finally been defeated.

Almost there, I sighed, mentally, as I extricated myself from the slowly sinking corpse of the Leviathan.

Nobody else on Earth really processed how close we were to complete disaster, even though I had mentioned it several times. Maybe at one point, this was a game that was designed to give everyone a fighting chance. But now, it was so rigged that resistance was a joke.

The Sleepers. Cryogenically frozen soldiers whose builds were optimized for conquest. The Schema would charge invaders steep prices depending on each invaders’ level, and there were hard caps on the number of invaders above level 50.

So the various factions would train and level people to level 49, get them ready to advance, and then put them under deep sleep. This was especially common among the Fey, who had a significantly smaller population than humans.

There was a limit to the invader level, as well as the items that invaders could bring. But there was no limit to skills invaders could have. So virtually every invader would have a skill at A rank, or even S rank.

Then there were the force multipliers. The Necromancers, the Summoners, and so on. It was common for factions to bring them in at level 49, help them reach 50, and then the native forces wouldn’t stand a chance—especially since these Necromancers and Summoners would have A or S rank skills.

The real battle would be the follow-up, between the various invading factions to see who would claim control of the planet.

If we couldn’t kill the World Lord and gain teleportation access to the Acclimated Worlds, then it wouldn’t be a question of if we could defeat the invaders. It would be a question of who to surrender to, and how to negotiate our surrender.

Once we had our own teleporter, we could invite in reliable factions. Most likely it would be Dawnbreaker’s goddess’ faction—Mira, the goddess of hope, wouldn’t screw us over too hard. With our own teleporter, there would be no limit to the number of people we could bring in, no limit to the levels, and no limit to the items. A few dozen Aviatons, a couple of level 100+ soldiers, and the other forces would beg to retreat through the World Portal.

I’d seen it all before—Samantha had several different sets of memories of people who had been through Acclimations before.

Except, there was one thing I’d never seen—

I’d never seen the World Lord die before the sentient invaders came.