Aura Farming (Apocalypse LitRPG) [BOOK ONE COMPLETE]

The relief that flooded John's system momentarily loosened the knot of tension that had been tightening. Chester was alive. Battered, terrified, and screaming his lungs out on an upside-down walkway in a pocket dimension that defied sanity, but undeniably alive. The sight of their lost comrade, glowing like a miniature sun, was the first piece of truly good news they'd had in what felt like an eternity: he wasn't going to have to add another goddamn corpse to his Inventory.

That relief lasted for precisely one and a half seconds.

Because behind Chester, just arrived on the same walkway, was the stickbug boss. The red-souled manager was a blur of brown chitin that devoured the distance between them, soaring like a missile.

It was going to reach him. The outcome was inevitable. In a matter of moments, their newly rediscovered comrade would be reduced to a fine red paste.

There was no time to think. No time to formulate a complex plan or shout instructions to the others. There was only time for action. Letting the scythe and katana dissolve back into his Inventory, he activated Acclerate, the world slowing to a crawl.

The deafening roar of the monster stampede, the echo of Chester's distant scream, and the frantic chittering of thousands of monstrous insects all deepened into a distorted thrum, like a recording played at a fraction of its normal speed. The individual flakes of paper from the strange fountain now drifted through the air with the lazy grace of snowflakes. Through Eagle Eye he could see the strain on Chester's face, each muscle contorted in a visage of terror. He could also see the stickbug, closing the gap with horrifying certainty.

He had a window. A small one. He had no choice but to take it.

His destination was locked in his mind's eye: the patch of inverted ceiling directly beside Chester. With Accelerate active, he saw the world around him twisting for a fraction of a second, the very fabric of space bending to his will under Teleport's power.

One moment he was on the ground floor with Lily on his back, the next he was upside down, his boots planting themselves firmly on the walkway high above, leaving her sprawling on the floor somewhere down below. Gravity, in this absurd place, was a matter of perspective. The sudden reorientation was jarring, but his enhanced equilibrium handled it without a stumble. He was right next to Chester, who was still in mid-stride, his mouth open in a slow-motion scream, completely oblivious to John's sudden appearance.

John didn't waste the precious milliseconds he had bought. He reached out and grabbed the front of Chester's shirt, his grip like a vice. The glowing aura emanating from Chester's skin was intensely hot, a physical manifestation of the sheer life force pouring off him.

The stickbug was almost upon them, its bulbous black eyes fixed on Chester with a single-minded hunger. John could feel the pressure of its approach, a wave of force in the air. He activated the next link in the chain, pulling Chester with him, practically throwing the massive younger man onto his back.

He pushed off the walkway with Flash Step, launching them straight out into the vast, open emptiness of the Escher-like chamber. For a heart-stopping moment, they were simply falling, three figures tumbling through the impossible void, the distant platforms and walkways spinning around them.

He felt Chester's grip tighten, a sharp intake of breath against his ear. The wind roared as they plummeted. Below them, he could see Doug and Jade in the process of helping Lily up in slow motion, tiny figures looking up from the relative safety of the chamber's entrance.

Their fall lasted less than a second before John's next command took effect.

A searing heat erupted from his shoulder blades on either side of Chester. Two immense, leathery wings, black as pitch and scaled like a reptile's hide, burst from his shoulder blades. They unfurled with a sound like a cracking whip, each one easily ten feet long, catching the air with a powerful, concussive thump. Their fall arrested instantly, turning into a controlled, gliding descent towards the rest of their team.

But their problems were far from over.

He glanced up and saw the stickbug launch itself from the walkway they had just vacated, firing itself like a javelin, its body held rigid, a brown spear aimed directly at them. Its obsession with Chester overrode everything else, including self-preservation. It smashed headfirst into an intersecting staircase, the impact shattering a chunk of the strange, stone-like material, before it ricocheted off, corrected its trajectory in midair with an impossible twitch, and came screaming towards them again.

John gritted his teeth, banking hard to the left, his new wings straining against the air. He combined their powerful beats with another, shorter Flash Step, kicking his legs like he was doing breast stroke, blinking them twenty feet to the side just as the stickbug shot past the space they had occupied, the wind from its passage a violent slap. With nothing for his legs to truly kick off of, Flash Step was considerably less effective, but it was at least useable.

The chaos was only just beginning. From every walkway, every platform, every impossible angle, monsters began to hurl themselves into the void. It was a waterfall of bodies, a suicidal rain of chitin and claws, all driven by the same insane compulsion to get to Chester. Most would splatter against the distant floor, but the sheer volume was terrifying.

Worse were the ones that didn't need to fall. From the deeper recesses of the chamber, new swarms emerged. The giant bees, now with stingers protruded, each the size of daggers. Fat, buzzing flies with compound eyes that glowed a malevolent crimson. Crickets with legs powerful enough to launch them through the air in hundred-foot bounds. A cloud of flying death was converging on their position, ignoring the laws of gravity as they flew sideways and upside down, their only focal point the glowing, screaming man in John's grip.

He looked past the immediate swarm, his gaze locking onto the massive portal core at the heart of the chamber. The great green iris was no longer just watching passively. It was focused, its hourglass pupil constricted to a pinpoint, aimed directly at Chester.

And then he understood.

Chester's ability is working on the portal itself. The System is counting it as a monster, so he's gained its attention.

And, by extension, that apparently meant drawing the aggro of every goddamn monster in the entire portal world, too.

They couldn't outrun this. Evasive manoeuvres were only delaying the inevitable. The swarms were closing in, the stickbug was lining up another javelin-like charge, and his wings, powerful as they were, couldn't dodge thousands of enemies at once. They would be overwhelmed. Buried under a mountain of bodies in midair.

A grim smile touched John's lips. Luckily for them, he'd been planning for a situation just like this. The points he'd earned during their frantic run through the office hadn't been sitting idle. He'd gone shopping.

And he had bought something designed to handle a crowd.

John took a deep, shuddering breath, filling his lungs to their absolute capacity. For a spell that had cost him a staggering 32,000 Aura, he sincerely hoped it was as good as its name implied.

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The activation method was absurdly simple. He just had to blow. To slaughter enemies by the dozen and farm points at an unprecedented rate.

What erupted from his mouth was far beyond the burst of air he'd been anticipating. It was a cataclysm. A scouring torrent of wind screamed out into the chamber with the force of a jet engine writ across a span of space wide enough it would have surely covered an entire motorway outside this place. The air in front of him visibly distorted, a cone of sheer power spinning out from his lips and slamming into the approaching swarm of flying insects.

The effect was instantaneous and devastating. Hundreds of the bee and fly-like creatures were simply obliterated, their bodies torn apart by the gale. Hundreds more were sent spinning away like leaves in a storm, crashing into the warped walls and walkways with meaty smacks. The air was quickly choked with a blizzard of shattered chitin and pulped insectoid flesh.

Hurricane lived up to its name.

+1000 Aura

+1000 Aura

+1000 Aura

+1000 Aura

+1000 Aura

The notifications scrolled past his vision in a satisfying stream. The spell was a meat grinder, and it was glorious. But his satisfaction was short-lived.

Through the heart of his man-made apocalypse, a brown streak shot forward. The stickbug boss tore through the scouring wind, its black eyes still locked on Chester. It was far from unimpeded; he could see it twisting and bobbing through the air like you'd expect to see from a plane going through turbulence. But it was still coming, somehow maintaining its forward momentum despite the cataclysmic force against it, almost like it was being pulled along by invisible hands wrestling against the winds. At this point, accounting for nonsense concepts like the laws of physics was a fool's game.

"Shit," John hissed as he cut off the flow of air.

He Teleported again, this time aiming for the wide, stable platform near the chamber's entrance where the others were watching the aerial chaos unfold. He appeared beside them in a flicker of displaced air, immediately setting Lily down on her feet. Accelerate ended just in time.

"Chester's got them all aggroed," he spat out the words as fast as he could and hoped they weren't too jumbled up. "We'll lead them off. You go for the core."

Lily nodded, already raising her crossbow and taking aim at the airborne swarms. As long as Chester was the centre of the universe's hatred, the rest of them were practically invisible to the monsters. They could use that.

The stickbug, having already corrected its course, was screaming down towards their platform. John didn't hesitate. He grabbed Chester again, who was now just staring blankly, his mind seemingly overloaded by the sheer terror of the last few minutes. One more Flash Step took them off the platform and high into the air, the boss monster smashing into the spot they'd just occupied, sending cracks spiderwebbing through the stone.

Now he was truly airborne, his Draconic Wings beating a steady rhythm to keep them aloft. The limitation of Hurricane was painfully obvious: it was tied directly to his own lung capacity. He couldn't sustain it indefinitely. The battle became a frantic, draining dance. He would fly in a wide arc, keeping his distance from the relentlessly pursuing stickbug, then take a deep breath and unleash another devastating blast of wind into the thickest part of the monster swarm, clearing a patch of sky and racking up thousands more in Aura. Then he would have to break off, gasping for air, his lungs burning, before the boss could close the distance.

His primary objective should have been the portal core. He knew from experience that destroying the heart of these dimensions was the quickest way to end the nightmare. But it was impossible.

The stickbug was being smart. It wasn't just a mindless engine of destruction with a singular goal. It was actively positioning itself between him and the portal core, cutting off his approach angles, herding him away. It was taking its role as the boss with unnerving seriousness that he just hadn't felt from the other two he'd faced, and John had absolutely no idea what, if any, 'rules' or patterns it might be forced to follow. So far, its only pattern was its strange tendency to appear as if it was a tool being wielded by an invisible giant, and he couldn't think of a way to exploit that.

His wings beat hard, propelling them upwards in a steep climb, the pursuing swarm a chaotic tapestry of chittering death below. The roar of thousands of insects combined with the rush of wind was a wall of sound he had to bellow to pierce.

"CHESTER!" John shouted, the volume scraping his throat. He had to turn his head and shout directly into his teammate's ear. "CAN YOU TURN THAT THING OFF? YOUR SPELL!"

Chester flinched at the volume. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated with terror, but a flicker of comprehension broke through the haze of panic. He shook his head, the motion jerky and desperate.

"I CAN," Chester screamed back, his voice cracking, "BUT I'LL LOSE A LOAD OF THE BUILD-UP!"

John frowned, banking sharply to avoid a trio of javelin-like stingers shot from a group of oversized wasps. "BUILD-UP? WHAT BUILD-UP?"

"MY SPELL! THE LONGER THEY LOOK AT ME, THE MORE IT HURTS THEM! IT COMPOUNDS, WORKS FASTER THE LONGER IT'S ON, BUT IT DETERIORATES WAY FASTER TOO!"

As he swerved, his gaze swept over the pursuing horde, and for the first time, he noticed the subtle details. Some of the monsters at the very front of the swarm, the ones that had been chasing Chester the longest, looked off. Their movements were slightly sluggish, their carapaces taking on a sickly, purplish sheen, like bruised fruit. One of the giant bees suddenly convulsed in mid-air, its wings ceasing their frantic buzz as it tumbled from the sky, a puff of corrupted-looking dust erupting from its body as it fell.

His eyes snapped towards the centre of the chamber, to the colossal portal core. From this distance, it was difficult to tell for certain even with Eagle Eye, but he could swear he saw a faint discolouration spreading near the edge of the great green iris, a creeping patch of something that looked like mould, subtly tainting its otherwise vibrant glow.

Chester's ability wasn't just a taunt. It was a disease. A slow-acting plague that corrupted anything and everything that kept its attention on him.

Everything, it seemed, except one.

The stickbug boss showed no signs of weakness. It continued its relentless pursuit, its movements as sharp and impossibly fast as ever. The corrupting aura that was slowly killing the rest of the portal's denizens seemed to have no effect on it. Or if it did, it was negligible. Like the monster's HP was so high that Chester's effect, even scaled, would take too long to have any effect.

A new calculation formed in John's mind, shifting the entire strategic landscape. Chester could kill the portal core. Given enough time, he could bring the entire dimension down just by standing around and being a target. It was a slow, agonizing process, but it was a guaranteed win condition. And it meant that Chester would be the one to land the killing blow, granting him the massive influx of Souls that came with it. The idea of another member of the team getting such a significant power boost was more than just appealing; it was crucial for their long-term survival. Another member with Souls to spend, if the worst were to happen, could be essential.

The stickbug chose that moment to launch another attack, rocketing towards them with murderous intent. John took another deep breath, his lungs screaming in protest, and unleashed a fresh Hurricane. The blast of wind cleared a path, sending dozens of the smaller, corrupted monsters spiralling away to their doom. But, as before, the boss monster punched through the gale.

John was forced to Teleport, the world twisting for a split second as he blinked them a hundred metres higher into the air. He appeared just in time to see the stickbug smash into a floating platform below, the impact reducing a huge chunk of it to dust.

This wasn't sustainable. His lungs felt like they were on fire from the repeated use of Hurricane, and he didn't have the room to fuck around with Biomancy. It was only a matter of time before he made a mistake. A moment of hesitation, a slightly-too-slow dodge, and the stickbug would be on them. Chester's slow-burn victory plan was perfect on paper, but it meant nothing if they couldn't survive long enough to see it through. He couldn't protect Chester and fight a defensive battle forever. The only way to win was to remove the biggest piece from the board.

He needed a plan to deal with the boss monster itself.

Luckily, he had one. He'd been thinking about it almost non-stop for the past few hours, after all.

It was just a little risky. Maybe bordering on completely insane. On multiple levels. Especially with Chester's presence added to the equation. One could perhaps argue it wasn't even the most efficient or effective way to go about this. Logically, it would be better to come up with a scheme to get past the bugs and destroy the portal core.

But he was going to do it anyway.

He wanted that boss monster dead.