Chapter 22: 21. Brush With Death

Victor directed Wiggles to smash into the silvery barrier. The oversized earthworm glowed in an eerie green light, and its muscles bungled below its armoured plates that shifted as the worm prepared to charge.

"Attack," Victor commanded, and his mindless undead slave complied. Wiggled coiled up, and like a spring, he unleashed his full power. The cavern shuddered as he collided. Green blood and flesh dyed the silver barrier in neon green as it rippled from the impact. 

"Tsk." Victor floated past the half-destroyed Wiggles. His face was smashed to pieces, and hundreds of fractured teeth littered the floor. Repairing him for another attack would waste his precious stat points.

"Block the view," Victor said via telepathy and had Wiggles manoeuvre in front of Alice. 'I still wish to hide my true form from her, especially in her current mental state...' The young woman was hyperventilating and shivering while clutching her legs. Victor gave her appearance a brief lookover. He still couldn't discern if his sexual attraction to humans had vanished with his species change or if she was too close to a skeleton for him to find her alluring. Her skin barely covered her ribs that poked out, and her sunken facial features and mattered black hair made her look closer to a ghoul than a human. 'I am getting distracted...' Victor felt stressed but also anticipation. Everything was so exciting for once. His once dull mind had woken up. He had a lot to think about - Terry's message included. Where had it come from, and how? Victor pushed those questions to the back of his busy mind; his stats were down to an all-time low. 

Victor approached the barrier. As a test, he placed the tip of his claw against the surface and cautiously poked it. Despite its almost liquid metal appearance that rippled from the touch, it felt like poking a concrete wall. Hard and firm. His next test involved [Spirit Movement]; cautious of his stat expenditure, he only turned the tip of his claw into an ethereal blue. 'Does this make me a ghost?' the effect was a little different to those spooky cartoonish monsters back on earth but had the same idea.

[Spirit Movement] had a very high expenditure, but it effectively removed him from the mortal plane, allowing him to move through anything.

As expected, his claw passed through. 'Twenty stats lost...' Victor watched the numbers rapidly fall and then continued ticking down every second. 'I really need to fix this issue. Assuming there is a solution...' Victor refused to believe there wasn't a way to solve his falling stats, but with his limited information on this world, he had little choice but to soldier on and hope to find a way during his travels. Doing some quick calculations in his head, if he used [Spirit Movement] and forced his way through this barrier, he would have around two hours of life force left. 

He took one last glance at his skills:

[Consume X]

[Raise Undead X]

[Shadow Magic X]

[Annihilating Aura X]

[Freezing Cone VII]

[Stealth X]

[Doom Ray X]

[Spirit Movement V]

'Apart from [Doom Ray], I don't see another solution.' Victor took a deep breath yet was eerily silent, just floating there ominously like a ghost. Then, he saw Alice running alongside Wiggles. Just as she was about to catch a glimpse of him, Victor dual cast [Stealth] and [Spirit Movement] and pushed his way into the barrier.

The silvery barrier rippled around his silhouette as he forced his way through, the barrier's magic surged to push Victor back, but he was relentless. He watched his stats fall from around seven thousand to only four thousand. The barrier groaned before shattering like broken glass. 

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Two enormous dragons lying beyond stirred in their sleep. One was tar-black with that distinct tint that noble chrome dragons like Genus possessed. The other was a feminine-looking dragon with fish-like silver scales. The tar-black one was the first to stir from its deep slumber as a blood-red eye stared through Victor at the destroyed barrier. The senior dragon with wrinkles covering its leathery skin let out a tired snort and pushed its titanic body up on its hind legs. 

Victor didn't use mana, but even he could feel the immense power flowing through the corridor, gravitating towards this blue whale-sized lizard. Victor didn't waste a second and floated right past the old dragon. His target was the still sleeping silver one that had rolled onto her back instead of waking. 'Dragons sure do love to sleep... perhaps forever.' Victor hovered over the dragon, reactivated [Spirit Movement] and plunged his claw straight into the dragon's heart and another into its brain. Despite his long reach, he felt like reaching down into an abyss as it took over three meters before he made contact with the heart. 

Despite his ethereal form, Victor could feel the slow heartbeat of the female silver dragon. He was burning stats like crazy to plough through the dragon's natural mana defence and dense mana-filled muscles. Finally, with only a few minutes of life force remaining, Victor deactivated [Spirit Movement] - the dragon instantly woke up. Her ocean blue eyes immediately went to her heart, where she felt something weird. Something was caressing it. She blinked in confusion at the shadowy creature floating over her like a grim reaper. "What..." She snarled in her ancient language before her eyes narrowed and her mana flared. Victor almost screamed. It felt like dunking his hand in boiling water. With his last remaining strength, he squeezed the dragon's heart. The muscle was the size of an elephant, and it felt like trying to squeeze a bowling ball, but Victor triumphed. 

Victor scrambled the silver dragon's brain matter and tore her heart into shreds with his meter-long claws. Then, using his near 360-degree vision, Victor moved to the left to avoid a claw from the black tar dragon and reactivated stealth. 'Holy shit- if he hits me with anything right now, I will die...' Victor was barely a glorified cloud of steam. His stats had fallen to that of an average human.

Victor avoided another stray claw and cast [Consume]. A whisp the size of a house emerged, and his body greedily absorbed it. Victor watched with relief as his stats soared to a decent level:

[Name: Victor]

[Race: Netherborne]

[Level: 304] (Level up!)

[STR: 43200, DEX: 43200, CON: 43200, INT: 43200, WIS: 43200]

(Life Force Unstable)

'I wish my stats would just show me my remaining time-'

The screen rippled, and his debuff updated.

(Life Force Unstable - 11:59:59)

'Twelve hours of life...' Victor had never felt so alive in both his lives. 'Hahaha, THIS is what living is all about!' Victor turned to the old dragon. It was mourning the silver dragon's death while scanning its surroundings with blood-red eyes that gleamed with power.

'Well, I already killed one...' Victor looked at the stairs at the end of the corridor with light shining down on its upper steps. '...should I kill another? Would that be wise?'

And then the dragon saw Alice.