“Firing Hellcannon!” Karl warned as he unleashed, well, hell.

The blob of shapeshifting metal that was his soulbound “tool” had increased in size as his [Class] evolved and was now the size of a small car. Before, he’d used it as the ultimate multitool but not much beyond that.

Now though, he’d turned it into an incredibly complicated machine, built around a vial of Demon Lord blood that was burned up in seconds, sent flying down the barrel of the “gun”, which was in turn lined with countless runic plates which he’d drawn from his [Class’] storage space, interestingly titled [Every Tool, Everywhere, Anytime]. That space was filled with countless different versions of every rune any of them knew, with the end result being that Karl could put together any basic enchantment in mere seconds.

Throw in the fact that he could freely manipulate the liquid metal he used as the ground he built upon, and creating such hellish machines of war was easy as pie.

A deep crimson beam of power erupted from the aptly named “Hellcanon”, leaping straight at the latest demon’s face. They’d found their rhythm with the third one, but they’d also figured out a trick that made killing one beyond easy. Well, Karl had thought he’d found one, and now, they were testing it out.

This attack alone would have caused terrible damage, but not been lethal. On its own, that was.

[Empowered Barrage], [Arcane Gift], [All-Piercing Shot], [Enduring Damage] …

All in all, over a dozen third Evolution military commander [Skills] turned the metaphorical death ray into an actual death ray, twice as thick as the previous shot and infinitely deadlier.

The demon staggered backward, a several-meter-wide hole through its chest. The beam then traveled upwards, vaporizing the entirety of the monster’s head. Lacking both a head and most of its torso was lethal to even one of these things.

Meanwhile, the few random fireballs it had tossed around had been easily intercepted.

“That was pretty easy, wasn’t it?” Wechsler asked as he stepped up next to Isaac. The lawyer had been there in the very beginning when the team had started, but as time had passed, he’d become progressively busier and hardly ever showed his face anymore. But he’d shown up to this, as this was still technically an animal experiment and someone had complained about the military “gunning down a helpless animal”.

“It’s all a matter of figuring out how something works,” Isaac said.

“I’m guessing this is the end of all our energy woes, isn’t it?” Wechsler said, “I mean, tapping what probably amounts to hell for energy seems risky, but it also seems damn viable.”

Isaac shook his head “That would get way too expensive. Killing one of those things in one shot burned close to a hundred thousand euros worth of machine components. If that were the only cost involved, that would be doable, but this was only possible due to the [Skills] of several people near to Level 100 and we’re damn expensive. If we were getting paid for this … we’d probably show up as a major line item in the national budget, and that’s without considering how many people would be needed as backup.”

“Good point.” Wechsler shrugged “And you’re fighting an entirely new [Raid Boss] after this, that didn’t get canceled because you took longer fighting the demons?”

“Yep.” Isaac nodded “The Lindwyrm. There’s a legend about how eating it might give powers and I want to check that. Also, I have a personal hypothesis about how there’s a premium resource for every [Raid Boss], like the blood of the Demon Lord. There’s one where I one hundred percent know what the resource is because those who eat the Salmon of Wisdom are said to gain magic and all the knowledge in the world, but we need a place to summon it before we can do anything with that knowledge.”

“What’s with you and wanting to eat everything?” Wechsler asked, side-eying Isaac.

“Not everything, just the stuff that’s almost certainly going to help,” Isaac said.

“You’re that certain?” Wechsler frowned.

“If all [Raid Bosses] give special loot as I suspect, then the flesh will definitely be it. Dragon scales, dragon blood, dragon fangs, all of those are the mythological dragon bits that are useful. Now, a Lindwyrm is a kind of dragon, but listed separately from the others and the “eat it to gain superpowers” is always linked to stories where the dragon is referred to as a Lindwyrm at least part of the time.”

“I guess that makes sense. We’ll see, I suppose.” Wechsler said, getting up and walking away before turning after a few steps “Also, I know it’s stupid but I have to ask this: are you at all planning to inflict any unnecessary pain, injury, or other cruelty upon the monster you’re about to summon?”

“No,” Isaac said, rolling his eyes and Wechsler nodded. Bureaucracy had its uses and its place in the world, but there were oh so many truly ridiculous rules and regulations that sometimes, it was almost enough to drive a man insane.

***

“Summoning Monster!” the final warning echoed, declaring for all to hear that this was it. Sink or swim, live or die, walk out of here, or end up in a body bag. The last chance to walk away had long since passed.

Nothing happened for a long moment. It couldn’t have been more than a single second, but that delay was still enough to set people’s nerves on end.

And then, the Lindwyrm erupted from the summoning circle, shooting from the ground like a bottle rocket, all hundred meters of titanic serpent launched skywards until it seemed to stand on the tip of its tail for a moment, hanging up there like the most terrifying “danger noodle” a meme had ever been made of.

Eyes glowing a venomous green raked over the crowd of tiny figures that stood at a safe distance, analyzing their defenses, picking out the weakest among them to be its first target. Two clawed forelimbs that were comically small compared to the rest of the body were ready to tear apart anyone who tried to attack the head from the side. Armored scales, the smallest of which were at least the size of a human hand, covered it completely, with a dangerous energy radiating out from underneath them.

Leaning almost imperceptibly to the side caused the serpent to fall over towards the lowest Level group, coming down almost fifty meters short of the frontline. Keeping a distance had its benefits.

Isaac had simply written down a few dozen possible powersets for the Lindwyrm, making plenty of speculations but including its actual moveset in several different possibilities. Based on that, a set of plans had been created that accounted for the various powers they might be facing, and those conveniently just so happened to cover all of the most dangerous powers the damn thing possessed.

Throw in the fact that they had at least some idea of what it was capable of thanks to having fought its [Field Boss] variant and they had a good enough grasp of what it was capable of that when a titanic cloud of acid burst from the beast’s gullet, they had a direct counter available.

Frost and wind magic combined to freeze the liquid, then throw it straight past the monster, not inflicting even a single scorch mark onto the tank’s shield.

Normally, this would have been a prime situation to pepper a [Raid Boss] with attacks, but that was where the problems started. Being a snake, the Lindwyrm was very low to the ground and damn difficult to hit without accidentally hitting the ground or having the projectiles fly over the monster and strike the people there. Sure, blasting the concrete was just a waste of an attack, but any miss posed a real risk.

So when the warship’s guns chattered to life, every hit taking small divots out of the monster’s scales while the bow turret managed to destroy scales in their entirety, but only when they were utterly soaked in enhancing [Skills].

The [Mages] had it a little easier, being more able to direct their magic even after getting slung around, but they only had a few truly heavy hitters in their arsenal, offensive or spell-strengthening cooldown [Skills].

A few orders snapped off via the party chat caused the formation on the other side of the snake to scatter, then, Karl’s Hellcannon blazed to life. The world’s most expensive fuel (other than antimatter) vaporized in a split second, the energy boiling through the barrel and vaporizing countless intricate and incredibly expensive foci as they lent their energy to the beam or refined it.

The blood-red beam of “fuck you” tore through the air and gouged a huge chunk out of the target but the giant snake heaved upwards, pulling itself out of the line of fire, leaving with serious scorch marks but surviving just fine.

Of course, having been raised off the ground also made it an easy target for the long-range attackers, free from the worry of friendly fire. Scales were flayed off and blood sprayed in an orgy of violence, but only for a moment.

That’s when the beam petered out and the snake dropped to the ground, looking somewhat worse for wear but still perfectly able to keep fighting.

This was the second issue. A Lindwyrm was, for the most part, a snake. It did have two forelimbs, but those were not its most powerful weapon and utterly useless for locomotion. Having huge chunks taken out of one's body was pretty damaging for most creatures, but as a [Raid Boss], the snake wasn’t that bothered by damage to its internal organs and the impact the attacks had on its mobility was non-existent.

It was at this point that the snake clearly decided that enough was enough and deployed its “I need my personal space” move. The thing glinting underneath the scales, glimmering in the gaps between them, revealed itself as being acid when it sprayed out, erupting from every intact part of the monster’s body.

As the closest group made a rapid retreat, the Lindwyrm spun, head shooting straight at Karl while the tail whipped around and sent the squad it had targeted initially toppling like dominoes.

Twin streams of acidic venom burst from the beast's fangs with enough force and concentration to serve as a waterjet cutter, smashing into a magical shield and being deflected. At first. Shield layer after shield layer shattered and people dove to the side while Karl just dropped straight into the ground and escaped that way as the monster hammered into the place where he’d been standing a second earlier.

The report of a heavy rifle echoed loudly in Isaac’s ears and for the first time, one of the shots aimed at the beast's eyes hit home with enough force to pop it like a water balloon. Isaac recognized that weapon, it was the single most expensive sniper rifle ever built. Every single part had been handcrafted by Helmut Stagmer, heir to Wayland the Smith from Germanic myth. If it hadn’t been created as a favor to Isaac, it would have probably drained GSG-9’s budget, but it had been. And now, the man who’d shot out the eye of someone who’d basically been a god of war held the incredible weapon and he was putting it to good use.

A half-dozen [Skills] layered onto the bullet ensured the wound was infinitely worse than it would normally have been, impossible to heal, and even partially bypassed the [Raid Boss’] almost-immortality. It took a while to properly line up a shot guaranteed to not miss as the sniper wouldn’t have gotten a second shot, but now that it had succeeded, that was it.

The monster roared in agony, twisting and writing amidst the group it had leaped into. The acid cloud might have been spent for now, but the individually targeted acid sprays were still in use, single-second bursts hammering into individual targets. Tanks were sent staggering as their shields began melting, warriors barely managed to remove limbs before the venom reached their heart and/or brain, and mages were forced to flee as their shields shattered like glass.

No one had died … yet. But things were starting to get dangerous.

Their formations were being adjusted on the fly, pushing the Lindwyrm up against the side of the island while a fresh line of tanks established itself to keep the monster there.

With every passing second, their plans were being refined further and further, updated via the party menu with everyone moving in accordance with the new plan. They’d beat that monster in time, but there’d be casualties. Having some plans prepared that matched the monster’s powerset helped, sure, but it just wasn’t enough. Someone had better do something fast, else Isaac would intervene.

“We’re going to Plan B.” The [General] in charge of the affair ordered a moment before Isaac would have acted on his own “Two minutes.”

Fucking finally.

He exploded forwards, charging straight at the monster, transforming into his [Form of Horror] a split-second before using [I Am The Sword] to split the snake straight down the middle. Sure, the Lindwyrm didn’t do him the favor of lining up neatly for him, allowing him to remove half its body completely, but the attack did shave off a decent chunk of its body, the front third of the snake now looking like an anatomical drawing showing all of the beast’s insides.

And then, the whole affair was dragged into the [Grave of Swords]. The plan was for Isaac to keep the [Raid Boss] busy for the specified length of time and then release it. But that wasn’t what he was going to do. He had twice as many Levels as the last time he’d faced one of these things, but with the additional Stat gains from each Level in the third Evolution, he had three times the raw power. This thing wouldn’t survive two minutes unless he held back massively.

Besides, killing a [Raid Boss] mostly on his own was a decent accomplishment and it would add one of those things to the training portion of [Grave of Swords].

Isaac grinned as he ducked under a sweeping tail, slicing straight into the largest blood vessels he could reach as he did so. A blast of hellfire removed most of the acid cloud, then, he leaped over the striking head and drove one of the swords integrated into his [Form of Horror] into the brain up to the hilt.

This was what made his blood sing, what made him feel alive. It was a sad statement of fact, no man should feel most at home on a bloody battlefield, but it was true.

This was where he could truly fight without needing to watch out to avoid taking or causing friendly fire. It was a bit mean to say, but all the others out on the island, well, they were cramping his style.

Isaac fought in a manner he jokingly referred to as “the way of the demented pinball”, though it was more officially called “speed demon”. Fast movements, quick strikes enhanced by cheap [Skills], with the primary Stat being Agility, backed up by enough Perception to avoid running into walls and overall be effective at max speed and Magic Regeneration to keep up one’s assault. That wasn’t a good powerset for fighting in formation, and the problem got considerably worse as the group grew.

The team worked out rather nicely, especially with how well they knew each other.

GSG-13 worked out fine-ish, though for the most part, that usually meant everyone fighting against their own enemy without getting in anyone else’s way.

An army? That left him stuck in place, playing dodge tank while slinging the occasional [Far Strike], flying blade, or [Grand Hellflame] at the enemy.

Here, though? Here there was no one to accidentally shoot him in the back, no one he might trip up, just him and his foe. Showtime!