Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 361: Gareth

My Avatar does exactly what I thought he would when faced with a large group of opponents that he couldn’t face head-on.

That beautiful bastard just flies straight up.

Yup, it's that simple, yet it still gives him a huge advantage.

It's like introducing a helicopter with machine guns and rockets into a conflict between people fighting with muskets. And it isn't pretty.

Once he’s out of range, the people below struggle to detect him and a few of them do manage to reach that far, warning the others of the upcoming attack. But it's all to no avail.

Five seconds pass.

Ten seconds pass.

Nothing.

People from Easy difficulty, nervous and more sensitive to the fluctuations, are already starting to feel his mana concentrating high in the air.

Thirty seconds pass and Samuel shouts, causing people to scatter and spread out over a wider area.

Then my Avatar attacks. Like a crashing meteor, he slams into the ground where the greatest concentration of people from Hard difficulty are, and like an EMP, a disrupting wave explodes from him. It spreads over a huge part of the forest, weakening barriers, canceling skills, and straight up disrupting them.

He then lifts off as quickly, a single orb left in his wake. A thermal orb as big as an orange. It shines an intense golden color, the immense heat being released causing the air around it to waver.

Golden flames explode into the area and with this, dozens of people from Hard difficulty start appearing outside.

And more follow.

One after another, their hastily recreated barriers, their armors, and skills fail to resist the brilliant golden flames. Bodies melt, charred to the point the system pulls them out.

Being charged by so much thermal energy, the orb envelops a huge area, killing hundreds of people.

When it looks like it's the end, from high up in the air, an orb lands in the middle of another group. A tricolored orb that turns bright white, exploding into heat, shockwave, and following with an implosion.

Then another tricolored orb lands somewhere else, and a third one too.

The explosions are changing the landscape, tearing the trees from their roots, sending huge chunks of the ground flying through the air, and flinging human bodies around, burned and crushed before disintegrating into a cloud of shiny particles.

There is no sight of my Avatar, as he hangs safely in the clouds. It's an efficient and smart choice.

Down below is pandemonium. People are burning, the ones not dead have been left with terrible wounds and missing limbs. Some of them scream, most of the leadership is already dead and safe outside in the common area.

As I thought, my Avatar seems to have run low on mana and there are no more big explosions. Instead, a rain of orbs as big as grapes falls to the ground, each of them letting out a whistling noise as it passes through the air.

Some of the survivors try to hide under trees or block the attacks. A few even attempt to shoot something towards where the orbs are coming from. But it's to no avail. The Avatar focuses his attacks on people who have been weakened or occupied with fighting against the forest fire.

Just ten seconds is enough to finish the rest of Easy and Normal difficulty. Tens, hundreds of people decimated by an Avatar with most of its mana depleted.

The surviving members of Hard difficulty shout and hurl insults at my Avatar. Every single one of them finding themselves frustrated with their inability to reach him with their attacks.

Obviously, the Avatar doesn't care at all. Not even a little bit. I love the guy.

On the screen, his face shows for a moment. Calm and expressionless while he forms some larger mana projectiles around himself, compressing them. Using natural gravity and his kinetic energy to launch them at the remaining challengers. Unable to use the flames the challengers just put out, he simply smites them from up on high with mana projectiles.

It's quite shameless.

“Why do you not fight like that? It looks so easy!” Min-Jae comments, watching the screen with big eyes.

“Because it would be boring,” I respond.

I figured this fighting style out a while ago. Most of the people around my level or higher can't fly. That's something kinetic energy allows me to do. Having air superiority and being able to launch ranged attacks without worrying about retaliation is truly powerful.

Maybe it is even the most optimal way to fight for me, seeing the Avatar fighting that way.

But it's so boring.

If I fought like that I wouldn't be in danger. I wouldn't gain more experience. I wouldn't see the skills of the people I’m fighting. I wouldn't learn what is possible and how people tend to fight.

I could, but I don't want to fight that way because I don’t think I’ll get any stronger doing so. It’s as simple as that.

Still, knowing that I could fight that way, I wasn't worried about them defeating my Avatar, and Avatharniel didn't disappoint.

Such a cowardly little prick. Good job! You are making Papa Nat very rich!

The last remaining group gives up and leaves the event rather than wait for the Avatar to kill them.

Just like that, in under two minutes, my last challenge is won, my restricted Avatar, the bane of almost two thousand people.

Congratulations, your avatar emerged victorious in the 3rd challenge! You have received 17,113 shards. The final event reward will be given after the end of the 3rd event!

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

It physically hurts me how much the system took with its 10% cut, but there's nothing I can do about it. But damn, an arcane passive might not be all that far off. Most likely not during the tournament, but maybe sometime during the 6th or 7th Floor.

“Fricking monster,” Brainiac lands on the roof near us.

“I won't give you any shards,” I say before he can continue. They’re mine. My precious!

My Avat… no, I worked hard to get them.

Brainiac snorts, “Not even I’m that shameless.”

“So what are you doing here?” I ask as he sits down next to me and the other members of group 4.

“I had to get away from Gary, the old man can be annoying sometimes.”

“You should beat him and take over as leader of WhiteWing,” Aaron jokes.

“Only if you take over Group 4,” Brainiac sighs, “Even if all of WhiteWing attacks him together we have no chance against Gary.”

“He doesn't seem that strong,” Maya mentions with interest.

“Gary is crazy strong.”

“Sure he is.”

“I'm not joking!”

“He just looks like he would fit better as a pastor or the director of an orphanage.” Maya snorts.

“I know what you mean,” Brainiac nods. “But that's only because we’re real people from Earth.”

The conversation is getting interesting so I listen. At the same time, Gareth's Avatar appears on the screen and a 15-minute countdown starts.

“What do you mean by that?” Min-Jae asks, moving closer while sipping on his drink.

“I mean exactly what I said. Gary is nice only to people from Earth and no matter how trashy they are, he always gives them a chance. Only once he really believes they are beyond helping will he become ruthless.”

I knew it. The paladin of justice is secretly evil. Right now Brainiac might think the Earthlings are being protected by Gareth, but I'm sure his dark secrets will spill. There is no way someone acting so nice to people isn't evil.

Brainiac lowers his voice, “On the third floor he killed a hundred or so natives. Women, and children too, no hesitation at all. We needed water and food and they had it. So he just took it on himself and murdered them all. After that he smiled, saying to us to not worry and that he would protect us and take these sins upon himself.”

I watch Gareth's Avatar. Restricted to the 5th floor, it stands there below the trees. The chiseled face of a 40 or 50-year-old man waiting for his challengers.

“Gareth hasn’t gotten angry with us, not even once. He never shouts, he never despairs, he never hits us or anything, and often takes hits instead of us. Not once in the past year did I have a worry that he might hurt me,” Brainiac says, his usually cheeky expression serious.

“You shouldn't underestimate him just because he acts silly sometimes or seems nice. He’s in Hell and in Beyond for a reason,” Tess warns the other members of our group.

“He is,” Brainiac nods. “You know what's funny? He’s at his strongest when he is alone. Fighting with us, he holds back a lot to protect us, but the moment he’s alone his fighting changes. Just wait and see.” He points at the screen where the Avatar waits for the challengers.

A few minutes later Gareth’s Avatar’s 3rd challenge starts with over a thousand people inside.

Right away the man starts moving towards the group of challengers and a silver crown floats over his head.

Once again, I have to wonder what his crown is called. Other than me and Tess, he is the only one so far that has one. That offers another question, are crowns rare? Are they considered powerful or important?

Getting closer and seeing the first people from behind the trees, Gareth starts radiating silver light from his skin. Maybe light is the wrong word, it's more like silver smoke seeping through his pores.

In his hands, two maces form, each of them with a few nasty spikes, and both weapons probably as long as my arm. Over his shoulders, two silver orbs float.

Combat opens with Gareth slamming a mace into a melee attacker from Hard difficulty.

Not even for a second is the man capable of facing Gareth's strength, his arms cracking and the mace piercing the skin-tight barrier and turning the man into shiny particles.

A group launches ranged attacks at him and whether they bombard the ground around him or his skin he doesn't bother to create armor around himself. He faces them all easily with just the sheer strength of his stats and enhanced body.

One of the orbs shoots ahead with surprising speed and reaches a group of twenty ranged attackers. Before they can move, the orb expands, in the blink of an eye, almost like a bubble, and each of them finds themselves inside of that bubble. The bubble stops expanding and then changes color to a darker shade of silver.

The group finds themselves unable to get out. Their bodies slam against the inner walls of the bubble and their weapons fail to pierce it. Before they can try more, the silver bubble starts shrinking as quickly as it expanded before.

All twenty people are caught in that. From the size of a small house, the bubble shrinks to the size of a small room and then to the size of a basketball, and finally to the size it started at. Everyone inside it, unable to escape, is squeezed and killed.

Attacks start anew. Gareth is bombarded while moving almost lazily from group to group, no one manages to endure more than one attack from his mace. The two silver bubbles move around, enveloping groups of people and turning them into shiny particles.

Outside of the tournament, the result would be more gruesome. A bunch of people reduced to a compressed bloody paste.

The forest exploding around him from the challengers' attacks doesn't cause him much trouble. He seems capable of going on for days.

Shadowy attacks fail to slow him, fire causes him no trouble. They can't disrupt his mana and they even fail to pierce the orbs. Anyone who winds up inside one of those silver bubbles dies without exception.

When they start moving out of his reach or the range of his bubbles, he changes strategy. The crown over his head disappears and the silver smoke stops leaking from his skin. Instead, armor forms around his body.

His armor isn't bulky or impressive. It seems almost skin-tight and dense. At the same time, the maces in his hands dissolve, and Gareth dashes, the ground exploding under his feet.

In a blink, he reaches another group, gloves forming around his hands as he delivers a shattering blow to someone’s head, reducing the man from Hard difficulty into particles. Gareth twists his body and grabs the poor man's sword in his hand as he kicks another assailant, caving in their chest, and dispersing them into a haze of silver particles.

Like Lily, Gareth uses the strength of his body and armor to go wild and tear the remaining people apart.

“Gareth is really bad at doing multiple things at once,” Brainiac sighs. “But when he doesn't have to focus on healing, teleporting, and keeping our marks active he can be really scary.”

Nice. First, Gareth doxxes the real names of everyone from his group, and now here’s Brainiac giving us exposition on his abilities.

What a group.

“So what are the names of his skills?” I ask.

“Not telling!” Brainiac answers.

Well, maybe they aren’t that stupid.

“It's fine, I might ask Tacita, I'm sure she already knows the names if you guys talked about them sometime during the tournament.” While I say it I glance back to the top of the chimney where a thin girl with messy brown hair sits.

Her eyes meet mine and her expression seems to be surprised and in quick succession a weird field she generates changes a few times. But each time I change my detection as well, allowing my senses to pierce through.

Only her last attempt succeeds at confusing me for even a moment longer and then she stops when I see even through that.

Tacita seems dissatisfied, annoyed even, her eyes turning dangerous as she examines me, studying the way I’ve been detecting her.

I hope you didn't think you could keep hiding from me forever.