Chapter 4: 4: Game Ender

The mecha was absolutely immense. The robotic figure must have stood to be at least thirty feet tall, towering over the hall and every life form within it by a substantial degree. Technically the girl who had rushed off in a blur of manna enhanced speed hadn't actually said that we needed to fight this giant construct, but if there were a bunch of squadron leaders already watching us, trying to decide who they were going to pick up for their magical galactic ass-kicking squads, then it was a pretty good bet that taking that thing out would be a good start.

<As your BB it's my solemn duty to inform you that you're thinking like a crazy person,> BB snorted. <You've never used your manna before, you only have access to moderate strength boosts and energy blasts, and the first thing you want to try and do is take out something that big and dangerous?>

Sure. Maybe it was an insane move. Maybe the actual course of action should have been to use those boosts to try and speed away like the woman had, avoid the fight altogether. But I was tired of living a life in the background, and I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I started my life off in this new world in the exact same way as I had left the last one. Besides, BB had said that the amount of strength I could wield at the moment was still in the top tier of the people that were entering the tournament, which meant that although my skills were on the basic side they'd still be incredibly powerful. At least, that would have been the case if I knew how to access my powers.

<You know Jacob, for a beginner we'd usually do this nice and slow. We definitely wouldn't be throwing you into the deep end and forcing you into battle with a war droid. But here we are.> BB remarked. <Luckily I've managed to keep some of your power away from you, giving you access to power that exceeds a supernova in your current state would be a bit of a game-ender for this planet. At the moment you're going to be working with about half a per cent of your theoretical max, but even that is going to be a devastating amount of power. Basically, try not to get anyone killed.>

It was like a switch had been flipped somewhere deep inside of me. One moment I felt like a standard Human from Earth, nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing especially powerful that was for sure. For this whole time, I'd still been sort of holding onto the idea that this might have been some sort of dream, or that something had gone wrong in the transfer to this world and I hadn't actually been granted the abilities I had been promised. But no. I'd read enough light novels. I'd watched enough Anime. This was my very first power-up, and it was immense.

I could feel it surge through every fibre of my being, enhancing my strength and my speed and my durability. This was less than a per cent of the power that I had been granted? It roiled and bubbled and burst and crackled over my skin, little shards of manna infused lightning crackling over every exposed surface. I took a single step forward, and the ground beneath my foot cracked under the pressure.

Clearly, the power I was giving off was impressive because the robotic figure had flicked its gaze over to me immediately, and the life forms in my immediate vicinity had started to give me some wary looks. I bounced on the balls of my feet, trying to get a feel for the new levels of power that were coursing through my system, but I'd never know how strong I was for sure without a little bit of limit testing.

<Alright, Jacob, I've activated our Synchro Mode,> BB said. <We're operating at somewhere between a quarter and a half of a per cent at the moment, which puts you in probably the top 5 of the beings in this room. Try not to get too cocky, get hit by this thing and it's still going to hurt. Try to remember we're both new at this.>

I rolled my shoulders, tilted my neck from side to side and let it give some satisfying cracks and pops. In my past life, I'd never been much for athletics, sports or fighting. But with the amount of energy sparking across my skin and roiling inside of me, barely contained in a corona that had risen a few millimetres from my skin, standing still was almost painful.

I took off at a leap. The ground beneath me burst into a small crater as I soared across the air, a small trail of debris followed behind me in an arc directly toward the giant machine. But it moved quicker than I could have expected. The machine's hand snatched me out of the air, closing around me into a fist.

The metal was strange, soft, almost like skin. It rippled as if real muscles and ligaments were working underneath, it was nothing like I had expected from a thirty-foot tall droid. The fingers closed in and the mecha began to squeeze. But the little corona of energy that had flickered out from my skin acted as a kind of natural shield, one that the robot was too weak to squeeze through.

I couldn't stay here forever, waiting for the mecha to try and squeeze the life out of me. I could slowly see my manna starting to tick down one point every few on my HUD, and while the display claimed I had over 10,000 manna points to spend, even that would run out if I let this continue indefinitely.

It was time to put on a light display, or more accurately, an energy beam display. BB had said we were entering some sort of Synchro Mode, and the AI hadn't said anything since the fight had begun, so I could only assume that our bond had deepened for the duration of the fight. Maybe I just had to think to activate my single ability? I reached down into that well of power that seemed to rest inside me and pushed it out into my hand, and then let it pulse outward in one schism of raw energy.

The flash of light was blinding, but one thing was for sure, I'd used enough energy to cleanly knock myself free from the robot's grip. It staggered backward, almost teetering over onto its rear end, and let me drop back down into the hall to where the rest of the initiates were watching in stunned silence. While I'd managed to knock the machine away, I hadn't actually managed to damage it at all, I'd just done enough to dislodge myself and stun the machine momentarily.

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I pushed forward and jumped again. I shot through the air like a bullet, streaking forward in a crackling blur of red lightning. The robot reached out its hand again, but this time I was ready. A short pulse of my energy beam stopped the machine from closing its fist around me. I flew between two of the droid's long fingers and landed on its arm. I wasted no time and sprinted my way up its forearm before launching myself into another jump. As I soared through the air once more and came to position directly above the mechanized man's shoulder, I charged up another energy beam and tried to force as much of my power through it as I could. The beam was thick and heavy, it cut through air and metal as if they were the same thing, and the robot's arm simply fell away before hitting the ground with a heavy clunk.

Whoever was operating the machine clearly wasn't happy that they had been bested by some random initiate. Before I could react, the other hand came around and hit me down with a colossal open-handed slap. I was sent hurtling back through the hole in the ceiling that the mecha had made and into the ground with a colossal crash. I skid across the ground, barrelling through the chairs that had been set up until I crashed into the wall, leaving it with a spiderweb of cracks.

I spat a small amount of blood from between my lips and stretched a crack out of my back. It didn't feel like the hit had done any major damage to me, my shield had managed to absorb the brunt of the attack. The only reason I'd been knocked back at all was because of how small I was in relation to my opponent.

I looked up at the robot, its single eye glinted ominously. The mecha's one remaining arm reached behind its back and withdrew a heavy long sword from the armoured section and positioned itself defensively. Clearly, the operator had realised I wasn't going to go down that easily.

However, before I could launch myself through the air once again, a trio of attacks rang out through the ceiling hole. I wasn't the only one willing to try my luck against the mecha to try and score some points with the squadron leaders early on. From my right, a giant icicle, almost as long as the mecha's arm, fired out at near sonic speeds. But the mecha was waiting, and with a single slash of its sword, the ice was split in two and sailed harmlessly around it. From my left came a torrent of swirling wind, but the robot stood strong, seemingly completely unbothered by the barrage of high-pressure air. Last, but certainly not least, a thick green tendril thwipped out and latched onto the robot's sword arm, curling around its fingers and binding it tight. This attack did the most because while it hadn't done any damage to the machine it had held it completely in place. This was my chance.

For the third time, I leapt. I built up as much energy for my beam as I felt my body could handle. Until my palms were stinging and the little arcs of lightning that had been flickering across all of my skin had condensed into a flickering orb at the tips of my fingers. I wouldn't be aiming for a shoulder this time, I would be going for a kill shot.

The operator of the robot clearly knew something was up, and they weren't willing to let their mecha go down without a fight. They levelled the sword so that the tip was pointed at me directly, and in an instant, it had split apart into two halves with electricity arcing between each newly formed blade.

We released our beams of energy at the exact same moment. A pulse of raw power erupted from the gap between the sword's blade and lanced toward me, but I met it with my own red manna stream. The two energy beams collided in midair with the force of a thunderclap, the air shimmered with the heat of the two powerful energy constructs slamming into one another. But the outcome was clear. Inch by inch my own energy was winning out against the mecha's, until suddenly, my red power overwhelmed the energy of my opponent.

The beam of red manna cut through everything in its path. The torso of the robot was engulfed in a hot stream of molten lightning, and within moments, a hole had been bored straight through its core. The robot collapsed into a heap, molten metal dripping from the hole, and I let my energy beam taper off before falling back down to the floor.

[DEFEATED OUTDATED MANNACHOID!]

[LEVEL-UP!]

[YOU HAVE NOW REACHED LEVEL 4!]

[ABILITY UNLOCKED: MANNA PROPULSION - USING YOUR MANNA YOU CAN NOW CREATE LOCALISED AREAS OF FORCE AROUND YOUR HANDS AND FEET FOR UNPARALLELED AGILITY]

I let myself have a moment to breathe, then nonchalantly made my way out of the hall as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all. This time my life was going to mean something, and if the squadron leaders were watching, I was betting they'd already be pretty impressed.

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