CH459

All of his minds moved to bring the world to a standstill the moment the demons burst forth from the ground below, letting him take them all in for what they were.

They shared matching body plans, looking like giant millipedes, the portions of them stretching above the ground already bigger than he was and hinting at plenty more still down below as they gently swayed while he worked to figure out how he wanted to approach things.

He could already tell Thera was preparing a spell from the subtle movement of the earth and was willing to leave it to her, letting him focus on making sure Verbum would be safe, or at least that was his intent. The fact that he could make the world feel like it was moving in slow motion meant he didn’t think he had much he really needed to be worried about, but the monsters in front of him showed him how wrong that belief was.

All at once, it looked as though what Ben had taken for hundreds of legs had exploded out towards them, separating from their bodies with enough force behind them to make them appear fast even against the frame of reference he was acting within as they targeted the three of them with a heavy degree of precision, obviously to act as weapons and leaving him no desire to see what would come from taking those hits.

Oh, fuck me, this is going to be tight.

With almost no room to think, Ben let loose almost his entire reserved of mana, pouring it into the ground to rip up dirt to be shot out as bullets, each of them set on a collision course with the many projectiles flying through the air, carrying enough force to be sure to knock them off their path, even if he didn’t have enough in him to get all of them.

As high as his mana had grown to be, it wasn’t unlimited and he couldn’t be perfect in defending against that volley of attacks. He didn’t bother trying to affect the shots he was sure would miss, but there was one other thing he was able to do to make sure that both Thera and Verbum would be safe. He didn’t waste any mana on protecting himself.

But that’s fine because I’ve got something else for that, barrier shoes, do your stuff!

…I said barrier shoes, do your stuff!

…Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit!

His shoes weren’t working. That was the thought that first raced through his head as he tried to activate them, but it was wrong. The enchantments were still in perfect working order and he still had an external power source in the form of the mana batteries with him. No, he was simply discovering the limits of his enchantment in a way he’d never had to before.

This was his first time trying to use that barrier since he’d gained any sort of thought speed skill, and now that he was attempting to put it up with his minds moving at their full potential, he was confronted with the horrible reality of it. While there was no lag to be seen when thinking like a normal person, when a person was seeing the world at over a thousand percent faster, it was like they weren’t even activating.

He watched in horror as the demon’s attack came closer, while at the same time his barrier started to slowly rise from his feet, knowing it wouldn’t make it as dozens of spikes already rushed past the limits of where his defense would start and leaving him with little in the way of options.

He placed his faith in his jacket, wanting to believe that it would handle the blow fine for all of the enchantments he’d placed on it and directed the rest of his focus to the spikes coming straight at his face.

So close now, he could see that what he’d mistaken for legs at a distance were instead some sort of specialized scales, not that it helped things. He couldn’t move his body as fast as he could think so there was no dodging them, instead it was a matter of deciding what hits to take.

His legs were a write-off. They weren’t important enough to try and protect compared to his more relevant bits so he didn’t even consider how many times they were about to be stabbed, instead focusing on the seven that would be hitting his face and neck. Automatically, he accepted the two that would simply skim the sides of his head before ordering the remaining five on the level of danger they were to him before he began squeezing the few remaining drops of mana he contained to do everything he could.

Destruction was a part of his material manipulation that he put to quick work as he pushed his mana to dull as many spikes as he could, not destroying them entirely, meaning he’d still be taking hits, but enough that they wouldn’t dig into his flesh and skull. Four of them he was able to get to a slightly less dangerous state before he felt himself falling just short of mana exhaustion, leaving the final one that was going to dig into his neck.

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As a final act, he did his best to cancel the barrier he could see was still slowly going up, wanting Thera to have no problem getting to him to provide whatever aid she could before he cancelled the effects of his thought speed on all of his minds. He knew it was going to hurt and saw no reason he should have to experience it in slow motion.

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