Aura Farming (Apocalypse LitRPG) [BOOK ONE COMPLETE]

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 and speared towards them.

John was forced to Teleport away, landing on a set of stairs that appeared to be connected to nothing at all. He appeared just in time to see the stickbug smash straight through a walkway and disappear. And yet, it came rocketing right out, coming straight for them even though it had, for a moment, broken line of sight to Chester. A confirmation, if there ever could be one, that the portal core was dictating its actions.

The weight of Chester on his back was a constant reminder of what he was protecting, what he was fighting for. The man's glowing aura was like carrying a miniature sun, and the heat radiating from his skin was starting to become uncomfortable through John's jacket. But none of that mattered. What mattered was keeping Chester alive long enough for his corrupting ability to do its work on the portal core, that faint discolouration steadily spreading across the great green iris.

John's wings beat hard, propelling them in another wide arc around the edge of the chamber. The pursuing swarm was a tapestry of chittering death, and through it all, the stickbug was a brown streak of pure malice, always repositioning, always herding him away from the portal core. It knew their endgame, and it wasn't going to let them have it easily. John felt like he could play keepaway like this indefinitely, but he didn't have the ability to rush past the boss as he was.

It was all a matter of speed. With Flash Step and Teleport, he could avoid the enemy, but its tactical positioning was preventing him from truly taking control of the pace of the battle. With Accelerate, he was able to close that gap to a degree, but the frantic racing of his heart was nerfing that ability.

That was the crux. The Skill was keyed to his heartbeat. Thirty heartbeats under time dilation at Level 5, five seconds off. A simple rhythm, predictable. And not good enough.

But it was also exploitable. His heart rate determined the duration, which meant if he could slow his heart, he could extend the effect. Until now, that had been a matter of trying to calm himself, to unsurprisingly little effect.

That was about to change. He'd had an idea. One he realistically should have thought of the moment he unlocked Biomancy. John reached for the Level 6 Spell that was rapidly becoming his ace in the hole. Knowledge flooded his mind, a supernatural awareness of every cell, every vessel, every electrical impulse in his body. He focused on his heart, that thundering engine in his chest that had been hammering away at panic-speed for the past several minutes.

The response wasn't quite immediate, but it was damn near close. Without the First Aid and Medic aspects he'd attached to it with his quasi-jailbroken Skill-Spell Combine ability, he wasn't sure he would've been able to figure out how to do this safely at all. His heartbeat began to lengthen, the frantic rhythm easing into something more measured, more controlled. It wasn't enough to be dangerous; he wasn't dropping into some kind of meditative trance that would leave him vulnerable. It was just enough to stretch each beat, to give himself a few precious extra subjective seconds under Accelerate's effect.

But the benefits weren't merely in the extended time dilation. As his heart rate dropped, something else happened. The white-hot panic that had been clawing at the edges of his consciousness, the terror of being hunted by a monster that could bisect his comrades in the blink of an eye, began to recede. His thoughts, which had been a chaotic jumble of threat assessment and desperate evasion, started to crystallise into something clearer.

He could think. He could plan. And he could execute.

John activated Accelerate, and the world slowed to a crawl. But this time, with his artificially calmed heart rate, the effect would last just a fraction longer. It wouldn't be much. Maybe half a second from the perspective of someone viewing him in real-time. But half a second under time dilation in the midst of a battle of this nature was an eternity.

His wings carved through the air in broad, powerful strokes, each beat a thunderclap that echoed through the vast chamber. Below them, the swarm of flying monsters was a syrup-slow constellation of chitin and malice. The stickbug had just launched itself from a walkway, its body held rigid like a javelin, aimed directly at their projected path. Its eyes were wide and terrible.

John banked hard to the left, his enhanced equilibrium handling the sudden shift without issue. The stickbug shot past the space they would have occupied, close enough that he felt the displaced air like a slap. Through Eagle Eye, he could see the minute adjustments it was making mid-flight, those impossible twitches that let it correct its trajectory in ways that defied physics. It was already lining up another pass before it had even landed. It stopped in the air like it had been caught and snapped around, facing them once more.

Good. Let it come.

He'd been playing defence long enough. Time to switch to offence.

Accelerate ended. Shouting over the roar of wind and thousands of screeching insects, his voice came out level, grim, carrying the weight of a decision made. "Get ready. I'm taking it down."

Chester's voice rose in a shriek of protest, the words distorted by turbulence and terror. John ignored him. The man was terrified, exhausted, and had been at the centre of the most horrifying attention a man of his disposition could possibly receive for what must have felt like hours. His judgement was compromised. John's wasn't.

Or at least, that's what he told himself.

The truth was simpler, and darker. He'd had enough. Enough of running, enough of dodging, enough of being hunted. The vindictive fire that had been burning in him since the stickbug had nearly killed Chester demanded satisfaction. And John had learned, in the days since the apocalypse had started, that sometimes the only way forward was through violence.

Besides, he had a plan. It was risky, bordering on suicidal, but it was a plan. And if it worked, he'd gain enough Aura to make this entire nightmare worth it.

Time to give the System what it wanted. Time to put on a show.

The first phase of his plan was deceptively simple: establish a pattern.

John needed the stickbug to think it understood him, to believe it could predict his movements. He needed it frustrated, indignant, focused entirely on him and Chester to the exclusion of all else, even beyond whatever influence the portal core had on it. He'd picked up a vibe from the creature during their earlier encounter, when it had faced them at the management office of what it called Super-Duper Mart, spouting LinkedIn management jargon at them. There was a sadism to it, an arrogance. Unlike the Headmaster, who'd been bound by the strictures of its role, or the Crab, who'd been more curious than malicious, bordering on playful, he got the impression this thing enjoyed hurting people.

That satisfied tone it had spoke with when it slapped Chester aside, and the way it watched them as if savouring their reactions. John was sure of it. It thought it was superior. It thought they were ants to be crushed. John was going to use that against it.

He adjusted his flight path, sweeping in a wide arc across the centre of the chamber, weaving between corridors and staircases that jutted out at odd angles. The stickbug tracked him, those bulbous black eyes fixed on Chester with an unerring intensity, its voice suddenly booming from distant speakers scattered throughout the mind-bending chamber.

"PERFORMANCE REVIEWS WILL BE CONDUCTED!" the voice declared, dripping with false cheerfulness that couldn't quite hide the venom beneath. "SUBSTANDARD WORKERS WILL BE SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE TERMINATION!"

"Yeah, yeah," John muttered, banking around a floating platform. "Stop being such a stick in the mud."

+1000 Aura

The notification flickered in the corner of his vision, and he couldn't help the small smirk that tugged at his lips.

+400 Aura

He unleashed another Hurricane, the torrent of wind erupting from his lungs and slamming into a dense cluster of giant bees. They were pulverised instantly, their bodies reduced to fragments that rained down into the abyss below. But the real purpose wasn't the kills; it was the turbulence. The blast of wind created pockets of chaotic air, buffeting the stickbug as it attempted to close the distance.

It barely worked. The creature adjusted mid-flight with that same impossible fluidity, its body twisting like a weapon being wielded by some unseen giant. But it added to the chaos, to the unpredictability. And more importantly, it forced the stickbug to react, to expend effort, to grow more frustrated with each failed attempt to close the gap.

The pattern emerged naturally: John attacked from a distance, the stickbug shrugged it off or dodged and closed in, John was forced to Teleport or Flash Step or Accelerate away, depending on the circumstances. Rinse and repeat. It was a dance, and John was leading.

He was taking a spiralling path, gradually tightening the radius of his flight pattern. The stickbug, focused entirely on Chester and hopefully convinced that John was simply fleeing in panic, kept positioning itself between them and the core, cutting off what it perceived as their primary objective.

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"SYNERGY!" the voice boomed. "WE MUST LEVERAGE OUR CORE COMPETENCIES!"

"How about you leverage deez nuts?" John called back, immediately regretting the juvenile comeback even as the Aura rolled in.

+1000 Aura

Whatever. He'd said worse.

He banked hard around a cluster of upside-down walkways, the stickbug hot on his heels. It was getting faster, or maybe just more reckless. Either way, the margin for error was shrinking. Time to escalate to phase two.

John reached into his menus, dancing through options that had become as familiar to him as breathing. He activated Accelerate again, his artificially slowed heartbeat via Biomancy giving him those precious extra moments of clarity. The world crystallised into that familiar slow-motion ballet, and John began his assault in earnest.

Triple Casting got the chance to prove its worth.

Ultimate Shot was his opening salvo. He thrust his arm out, fingers splayed, and clenched them into a fist. The projectile that erupted from his wrist was a work of art, a maelstrom of elemental fury contained in a single bolt. It announced itself with a roar of thunder, a storm cloud and a hail of shrapnel-like embers. Frost spread from its point of impact, followed by the sudden growth of restricting plant life. The necrotic aspect deepened the damage, ageing the target's matter in an instant. All of this was wrapped in a razor-thin bolt of lightning, a roiling tempest in miniature, and a cloud of boiling steam.

The stickbug dodged, of course. It slid to the side with that unnatural smoothness, as if its body had been moved by an external force rather than any physical work. The Ultimate Shot sailed past it and detonated against a distant walkway, reducing a twenty-foot section to a chaotic heap of elemental and esoteric effects.

"AGILITY!" the voice declared, comprehensible despite Accelerate. "A KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR IN TODAY'S FAST-PACED MARKET!"

"Let's see you dodge this, then," John growled.

He fired again. And again. And again. Leading the target, anticipating that impossible speed, forcing the stickbug to work for every evasion. Each shot was a new combination, a new arrangement of the dozen different aspects crammed into Ultimate Shot. One emphasised the lightning, another the necrosis, a third the storm aspects. He was showing off, deliberately displaying the versatility of his arsenal, and the System was eating it up.

This was the power of Archmage. The ability to customise, to a degree, the configuration of Combined Spells on the fly. It didn't grant him unlimited leeway; it was like each Combined Spell now had a slider, and he could emphasise different aspects of the mad amalgamations at will. Buying Archmage had been a gamble aimed at a later step of his plan, and this wasn't exactly what he'd thought it would do—he'd assumed it would simply make his Spells more powerful in general—but it was already paying off.

+1000 Aura

+1000 Aura

+1000 Aura

The notifications rolled in in a satisfying stream, punctuated by the thunderous detonations of his attacks. The chamber was being torn apart around them, platforms crumbling, walkways collapsing, the air thick with dust and the acrid smell of scorched stone and burnt chitin as the collateral damage from their clash carved countless insectoid monsters apart.

But the stickbug was still coming, still relentless, still focused on Chester with that single-minded hunger. It was exactly what John wanted. Let it think he was getting desperate, throwing everything he had in a futile attempt to slow it down.

Let it think he was losing.

"Alright," John muttered as Accelerate came to an end once more, his artificially calm heart beating a steady rhythm in his chest. He was vaguely aware of Chester screaming, clinging to his back like a howling monkey. "Time for the main event."

He reached into his repertoire again, this time for the big guns. Meteor Strike was first. He raised his hand to the sky, forming a mental link with something heavy among the primordial matter above the portal world. When he brought his arm down, he felt the connection solidify, and a meteor the size of a minivan came screaming down from the heavens, forming of flame and stone from the roof of the cavern.

The stickbug saw it coming. Of course it did. John had no doubt the monster could have dodged easily, but it was midway through a charge at John and Chester, committed to its trajectory, and there, again, a hint of its personality shone through. He could see it in those bulbous eyes. The arrogance. The malice. The sadistic desire to see John's confidence break when faced with the futility of resisting a greater being.

The impact was cataclysmic. The explosion sent a shockwave rippling through the entire chamber, platform fragments and monster corpses sent flying in every direction. The heat was intense even from a hundred metres away, and John had to shield his face with one arm as he banked away from the blast zone.

When the dust cleared, there was not a scratch on the stickbug's brown, segmented body. It hadn't even slowed down.

"RESILIENCE!" the voice boomed, but there was an edge to it now, a hint of razor-sharp intensity that hadn't been there before. It sounded hungry, ravenous, the desire to feast growing. "THE CORNERSTONE OF A HIGH-PERFORMING TEAM!"

"You sound stressed," John called back. "Maybe you should take a personal day."

Chester wailed.

+1000 Aura

Tornado was next, his finger stirring the air in a quick spiral. A few seconds later, a twister materialised on a distant walkway, quickly growing to an impressive size. It began to move, seemingly of its own accord, tracking towards the stickbug with the inexorable force of nature itself.

The stickbug once again ignored the attack. Dodging such a paltry thing was beneath it. But the tornado adjusted, sucking in smaller monsters and debris, growing larger and more violent with each passing second. When it finally caught up to the stickbug, it engulfed the creature in a howling maelstrom of wind and shrapnel.

And the stickbug burst from the twister, moving even faster than before.

That's right, John thought, pasting a grimace on his lips. My attacks are nothing to you. I'm nothing to you. A bug to be squashed beneath your boot.

"ADAPTATION!" the voice screamed, the corporate calm finally cracking. "WORKERS MUST ADAPT OR BE REPLACED!"

"Adapt to this, you corporate fuck," John snarled.

+1000 Aura

He switched to Geomancy. With a thought, he reached out to the stone platforms around them, commanding them to reshape and move with flowing gestures, a conductor with his geological orchestra. Spikes erupted from surfaces, walkways twisted and buckled, creating obstacles that forced the stickbug to slow down or smash through, to take less efficient paths.

All the while, he kept up the barrage when he could. Ultimate Shot after Ultimate Shot, punctuated by the occasional Lava Sphere or Tornado or Meteor Strike. He was gaining Aura at a terrifying rate, the System rewarding him for every flashy attack, every taunt, every moment of aerial acrobatics. It wouldn't be long now. Thirty-thousand, tops.

The stickbug was adapting, learning his patterns, but John was adapting faster. He could see it in the way the creature moved, the way it anticipated his attacks. It was constantly adjusting its approach, trying to cut off his escape routes, trying to herd him into a mistake.

Far below, on a platform near the chamber's entrance, he could see Lily with her crossbow, picking off the flying monsters that got too close. Doug and Jade were making their way across the platforms, holding the line against any creatures that crash-landed near them, steadily advancing towards the portal core. They were doing their part, clearing a path, giving the portal core something to think about.

And he could see Chester's corrupting aura spreading, that sickly purple discolouration creeping across the portal core's surface like a malignant growth. It was working. Slowly, agonisingly slowly, but it was working.

The stickbug must have sensed it too, because its movements were growing more erratic, more frantic. The portal core's directive was warring with its own instincts, forcing it to split its attention between protecting the core and pursuing Chester. It wanted nothing more than to crush John, the one who kept defying it, taunting it, humiliating it. But it couldn't ignore the threat to its primary objective.

And that internal conflict was making it sloppy.

"FOCUS!" the voice roared. "WORKERS MUST MAINTAIN FOCUS ON DELIVERABLES!"

"Sounds like someone's having trouble with time management," John called back, grinning despite the fatigue that was starting to creep into his limbs. "Maybe you should try the Pomodoro Technique."

+1000 Aura

He had to bite back a laugh at the absurdity of it all. He'd always had a terribly embarrassing laugh.

John activated Sanguine Clone, and a cloud of red mist erupted from his skin. His consciousness split, granting him two perspectives of the world as the mist congealed into a bloody doppelganger, complete with jacket and sunglasses. The clone immediately launched itself at the stickbug, using its Force Pull aspect to accelerate to impossible speeds.

The stickbug, caught between John's real body and his clone, was forced to choose. Its body blurred into that spinning sawblade form, the same attack that had nearly bisected John during their first encounter.

The clone didn't even try to dodge. Instead, it used its Hydro Stream aspect, its entire form flowing out of shape and becoming a column of blood that wrapped around the stickbug's spinning form like a crimson snake. For a moment, the two were locked together, a writhing mass of chitin and liquid, and then the stickbug tore free, shredding the clone into a spray of red mist.

But it had taken time. Precious seconds where the creature's attention had been divided, where it had been forced to deal with the clone instead of pursuing John. Giving him breathing room.

Time for the finale.

John reached into his menus one last time, trembling with anticipation. He'd been saving up for this, watching his Aura balance climb higher and higher with every kill, every taunt, every moment of this insane aerial ballet. And now, finally, he had enough.

He made his purchases in rapid succession, the knowledge flooding into his mind even as his Aura balance plummeted. New abilities, new powers, new ways to turn the tide of this battle.

He felt the loadout click into place, felt the synergy between his different abilities, felt the raw potential thrumming through every cell of his body.

"STRATEGIC REPOSITIONING!" the voice shrieked. "WORKERS MUST—"

"How about you try repositioning deez nuts?" John interrupted, because apparently his brain had decided that was going to be his signature move now.

+2000 Aura

The stickbug charged.

And John smiled.

"Alright," he said, his voice barely a breath, meant only for himself. Chester was still screaming. "Let's fucking go."

+400 Aura