The enemies in air became scarce, apart from the stronger individuals, the small fries were pretty much cleaned up. I looked at the ground and saw that the mass of bodies was now high enough to reach the heads of the gardener mantises. I almost gasped at the sight, since my feel of time got a bit skeeved, I didn’t notice I killed that many.

[Obtained enough experience. Level risen to 21]

Wasn’t the amount of experience from monsters ridiculously lowered? Why did I level up again? Just for how long was I killing to actually gain a level on that setting? Well, that didn’t really matter, since there was still about sixty percent of enemies left.

Come to think of it, what happened to my stamina? I don’t get tired from the fighting, the only thing I feel is the mental strain and not any fatigue. Is this related to me regenerating with mana? Maybe my species are supposed to be like that, to feed on mana instead of normal food, and I just wasn’t using that feature.

Doesn’t matter, I still have a lot to do.

[ [High speed mental processing lvl. 1] was derived from the [Mental processing lvl. MAX] ]

When did it level up that much? Just how much thinking I did while being lost in a battle.

Just for how long I was ignoring everything that was happening to me. The pain I felt still resonates with my body, even though I’m currently unhurt, the mental strain from the regeneration and simultaneous fight hit me like a train, and the life of the countless beings I extinguished was surrounding my body.

My mind just didn’t want to accept the reality, and tried shutting it off by doing excess tasks, but now that it gained more power it couldn’t just ignore the ongoing fight. I suddenly wanted to return to my previous state of blissful mindlessness, but it just wouldn’t happen. I became intensely aware of just how many things at one I was doing.

Crap, I got distracted, something just cleanly shaved off my back. I quickly regenerated it and looked down to search for the source of the attack. It was another mantis, just a bit bigger, sending a wind blades my way. I dodged some of them, ignoring the damage, and quickly decapitated the monster. While being at it, I sneaked a bite of its meat.

[Proficiency reached. Gained skill […] ]
[Warning, skill incompatibility detected. Converting skill.]
[Gained skill [Air creation] ]

Hmm, so it actually exists, the skill incompatibility. I though that if you wanted, you could farm any skill in existence if you had enough lifespan, but it turns out to be impossible. I didn’t have a particular collector spirit, but it still was somewhat disheartening. Well, even without being able to get every single one, there’s still enough of them to force appraisal to show “page 2”.

Now how do I use it, I didn’t try anything precise with darkness creation before, since I didn’t think it could be useful in any way apart from a mana draining cloud. But air was different, if I just released it, nothing would really happen, so I needed it either in for of a wind or something like a compressed bullet.

Let’s see, if I wanted to go for a wind blade, what I would need to do? I most certainly need to create some air first, and then give it a shape, but how would it cut? I have no idea how to create something like a “sharp air”, it would just dissipate on hit, unless it was a compressed mass of it. If I used the compressed air, then it wouldn’t really cut, it would just explode with pressure.

Let’s go for the bullet then, since the blade would just end up as the same thing with extra steps. Creating air was easy, compressing it was a bit harder, but still manageable, it would hold together thanks to the thin layer of mana protecting it. I didn’t add it, it just appeared automatically after I compressed new air. The hard part was launching it, but it was only until I figured out I could actually add a second chamber of compressed air, and “punctuate” it creating propulsion.

I had to be careful, or it would explode near me, but I still managed to do it almost in a second. Using skills to substitute for my mana control was pretty easy, but I still had a feeling that if I could properly sense mana while doing it, it would be much more effective, and I could add some more gimmicks. Right now it just felt like a program with semi-proper A.I. was trying to read my intentions.

[Proficiency reached. Gained skill [Parallel thought lvl. 8] ]

Nice, now I can think more about the slaughter… Let’s shoot this bullet first and then worry about the blood. The propulsion created by the compressed air seemed to be a failure at first, because it started very slowly, but then, when the hole in mana became bigger, it shoot off with a booming sound, gaining immense speed.

It hit a beetle on the ground, one of the most armored targets, actually sinking it into the soft dirt before it exploded. And man, exploded it did! The pressure was so strong that the beetle’s carapace got torn to shreds and its blood sprayed everywhere, showering the army in gore.

Nice, I’m making more. I think I’ll dedicate some of my thought capacity only to creating and firing these. If I could create a good template, then recreating it would take about a second, so I could have a nice weapon for clearing distant targets. This fight is just getting easier and  easier, but not really lighter on my mind though.