I was able to see clearly now, as Daiki's Night Vision—or whatever he called it—helped.
Daiki, a few meters in front of me, said, "You take the right, I take the left," and then teleported to the left side of the large opening where the Manaless Manipulator stood. He was about fifteen meters away. The Manaless Manipulator floated six meters above the center of the room.
The dungeon was filled with corpses... and then, suddenly, the corpses disappeared into red particles, leaving ants and flies on the ground out of nowhere.
"What?" I muttered, confused, as I rushed to the right side of the Manaless Manipulator.
All the corpses were gone, instead there were ants and flies.
The room was circular, the walls were made of diorite, giving the room a thicker atmosphere. The floor wasn't flat like tiles, but it was straight and easy to walk on unlike the steep rocks in the cave.
Just as I got to the right, the Manaless Manipulator looked at us. Though it was just a cloak floating mid-air, it released enough bloodlust to scare both of us—our expressions changed immediately.
"What monstrosity," he said angrily, just as scared as me.
The Manaless Manipulator looked left and right at us, cautious in its own accord.
The kid jumped straight toward the Manaless Manipulator as I followed the same action.
He had said earlier that he wasn't very fast, but now I realized—he was faster than me. He probably only said that so I wouldn't feel so inferior to a kid.
We closed in. Just a few meters away, the Cloaked Manipulator extended his arms to both sides and threw a couple of dead cockroaches at each of us.
We were close. As the cockroaches' white glow flashed in our eyes, we were instantly sent flying backward.
"What the hell was that? I didn't even see anything," we both said in confusion, holding our heads in pain. We sat, back against the wall and dazed.
We slowly looked up, our eyes, backs, and heads all aching.
"What in the world is that?" I muttered, staring at the two monstrosities in front of me.
Two... there were two. Two humongous centipedes right before my eyes.
They were at least 8 times larger than the mutated zombie-orc monsters from before.
Their mana was intense—almost as strong as my own. Each was nearly fifteen meters tall and three meters wide. Their skin was black, and dozens of yellow legs twitched exactly like a normal centipede.
Daiki saw them too. We were both frozen in fear as the air grew heavier with every second going by.
The centipedes rushed, they dived straight at us.
Daiki teleported to the far left corner. I jumped hard to the right, barely dodging the two massive creatures.
When they hit the wall behind me, they released a splash of purple venom—literally the most venomous poison I've ever seen.
My heart skipped a beat. I was inches away from death.
"What the hell just happened?" Daiki murmured.
We were both injured, not enough to hold us back but it definitely hurt.
Daiki teleported to my right.
"What the hell just happened?" he asked, breathing heavily and wiping blood from beneath his nose.
"How should I know? We dashed at the cloak guy, and then he throws cockroaches at us—and the next thing we know, we're on the ground, and there are two giant centipedes in front of us," I replied, just as clueless as him.
"I always heard that Cloaked Manipulators had to do something specific to summon their pawns… but these? These are on a whole other level. And it didn't even take him that long to summon them," he said, clearly worried.
The two centipedes on Daiki's side crawled towards us and stood beside the other two. Their bloodlust matched the Cloaked Manipulator's. All four of them stood still, as if they were letting us talk on purpose.
We stayed focused, our eyes locked on the centipedes, ready to dodge if they made a move.
"Are they mocking us?" Daiki asked, realizing they were holding back on purpose.
"I think so. Are we not even a threat to that Cloaked Manipulator? Just how strong are these things, usually?" I asked.
"I've just heard that Cloaked Manipulators are strong enough that only Crimson Order guys can defeat one. But I don't think this thing even thinks we're a threat," he said, his expression changed into frustration.
"Damn it... what even is this thing? Is it even an ordinary Cloaked Manipulator?" I said, getting frustrated.
The centipedes attacked again. It was like their target never changed, as the same two that attacked me before attacked me again.
The kid and I had calmed down a little after the sudden surprise from before. Although it did hurt, it still didn't affect our movement or powers.
The centipedes jumped at us again. But this time it was different, since we wouldn't be caught off guard.
We both jumped to the right this time instead of him teleporting—maybe to save mana.
We were side by side to each other. He extended his right arm and started to create something. A second later, the centipedes jumped us again and we both dodged to the right once more.
I noticed the Cloaked Manipulator staring into our souls.
The kid finished what he was making. We didn't talk—we didn't have time to. The kid had a paper and something was written on it. The Cloaked Manipulator noticed it, but didn't care.
The kid handed me the paper instantly and teleported to the complete other side of the room.
The centipedes attacked again, and the other two went towards the kid.
I dodged again and saw what the paper said.
"Buy me some time. I'm going to make something useful to deal with this poison, as using close-range weapons is a straight-up suicide. Buy me at least a full minute," the paper said.
"Does he think I'm some god? There's no way I can buy a full minute, especially when I can't make the two that are on him come for me," I murmured to myself.
Well, I have to do it.
The two centipedes attacked me. I dodged, but started running toward the two centipedes that were going after the kid.
I easily closed in, since I was much faster than the centipedes if we talk about top speed.
By the time I caught up to them, they were about fifteen meters away from the kid. It had already been thirty seconds.
I took a glance back. The other two centipedes were following me. Seeing them from far away made them look more disgusting than terrifying.
I lunged straight at the centipede to the right. I pulled out my dagger and strengthened it with mana. I sliced through the centipede's soft skin, and when I did, there wasn't any blood. Instead, venom was released from a small part of the centipede's back.
I dodged it by jumping on its uncut skin and lunged back onto the ground.
Or so I thought. My left hand, from the dorsal side in the middle, was dark purple from just a mere drop.
The hand burned, and I had absolutely no choice. The other two centipedes were closing in on me, the centipede I attacked didn't slow down, and obviously neither did the one on the left.
I took my dagger, stopped the mana flow through both the dagger and my left hand, and then…
Stabbed my left hand to neutralize the poison before it got any deeper. My hand was bleeding, and it hurt a lot since I went in a little deep to make sure the poison was neutralized.
Blood dripped down from my hand as the poison was being cleansed.
It took me too long. The two centipedes closed in on me—and also on the kid. Just as the kid was about to be attacked by the centipedes, he had already finished what he was making.
He teleported back to the very corner we were at before, dodging the two centipedes. He didn't need me to buy him time, but he probably wasn't sure if he needed it or not.
The two centipedes lunged at me. I dodged it and started heading toward the kid at full speed.
The centipedes started coming for us again, but I was faster. Within a dozen seconds, I was in front of the kid.
I saw him holding two silver guns and I immediately thought, Is this kid stupid or something? before I reached right beside him.
I stopped and asked while breathing heavily, "Dude, are you stupid? These guns wouldn't do a thing, since something that is not strengthened by mana would do nothing against objects covered with mana," I said, thinking I was correcting him.
"I know that already. I just have another plan—we'll strengthen the bullets with mana," he said confidently.
"Once we lose physical contact with anything we've strengthened with our mana, the mana is instantly gone in that object. There's not even an instant where the object stays strengthened by mana without physical contact," I said.
"I also know that," he said, and raised his hand. "We'll use these," he said as purple bullets appeared in his hand from his creation.
"What is this?" I questioned, confused.
"These bullets are made of amethyst. If you don't know, amethyst is capable of holding or storing mana inside and outside of it, which makes it possible to have it strengthened with mana even after losing physical contact," he said in a happy tone.
I was confused. I didn't know about amethyst at all.
Two of the centipedes closed in. Just as I looked back and was about to dodge, the kid aimed his two guns at the centipedes and shot their faces. They were knocked back a little—the gun was powerful and the bullets actually worked.
The two centipedes' faces were injured, poison splashed to the ground, and the kid used it two more times to finish the two centipedes.
I was amazed by it. It was so insane that amethyst worked like that, and with his ability, it actually helped.
The two centipedes were knocked down, and the kid tossed me one of the guns and two magazines with 6 amethyst bullets in each..
I pocketed the two magazines. The other two centipedes closed in, I aimed my gun at the one on the left and he aimed at the one on the right.
We both shot three times, and the centipedes were knocked down as the venom splashed down on the ground.
We both nodded. The kid teleported to the far left of the Cloaked Manipulator, and I ran to the close right of him.
While running, the bodies of the four dead centipedes slowly vanished into red particles. In their place were four dead cockroaches.
That meant he had turned the cockroaches into the centipedes we fought earlier, although I still wasn't sure.
I got into position.
Shockingly... we heard the Cloaked Manipulator's laugh, his arms raised.
The devilish laugh he had made the room grow heavier. Cold sweat dripped from our faces as we were scared out of our minds. His laugh was something else—it was heavy and almost overwhelming. Even without mana, it was his sheer bloodlust that made the room feel that heavy.
He spoke, his voice heavier than any I'd ever heard.
"Splendid, too splendid... I've finally found real pawns. The ones that'll make me unstoppable!" he exclaimed, happy in a devilish way.
"What are you? Because you're not any normal Manaless Manipulator I've ever heard about," shouted the kid, while trembling a little.|
"Ah yes, I think I should let my soon-to-be pawns at least know who they're going to serve after death," he said, making us tremble even more. What did he mean by 'soon-to-be pawns'? Whatever it was, it didn't sound pleasant, and we listened without interrupting him.
"Indeed, I'm not any ordinary Manaless Manipulator you humans call us by. The Manaless Manipulators you speak of are intelligent monsters without being a specific different species ourselves," he explained. His voice grew heavier with every second, and I wondered what he meant by 'a specific different species'?
"I'll tell you about the Manaless Manipulators before I tell you about myself specifically," he said. We heard with our ears wide open and were on our guard.
"The Manaless Manipulators control specific types of monsters. The Manaless Manipulators don't have mana, so in order to gauge their strength, you have to do something else. The Manaless Manipulators have two phases of strength—Phase One is the inner phase, and Phase Two is the outer phase," he declared. Now I get it—to know a Manaless Manipulator's strength, there's different ways. I listened even more carefully.
"Phase One: the inner phase is how much darker the color of the cloak on the inside is. In Phase One, the darker the color, the stronger the Manaless Manipulator. Phase One goes from white to different colors and shades. First is white, then is green—getting darker and darker until it reaches blue—and then the color changes to red and continues to darken until it becomes pitch black. That is the strength scale of Phase One for Manaless Manipulators." We heard him, and then the realization struck both of us on what it meant, but I was slowly hoping that it wasn't what I thought it was.
"Phase Two: the outer phase, is the second phase of our strength. The color pattern remains the same—the darker the color, the stronger the Manaless Manipulator. Only 1% of Manaless Manipulators get to Phase Two. That is when they become strong enough to be a death threat.
From there on out, even a slightly darker color becomes so much more dangerous. At the end, there is an all-black Manaless Manipulator—the strongest of them all by far." What I was hoping to be wrong, was indeed what it meant. This one is the final phase—the strongest of all Manaless Manipulators.
"And that Manaless Manipulator is none other than me. I'm the king of all Manaless Manipulators. The strongest of them all, and the biggest threat by far," he declared, confirming all our suspicions. That is, if he wasn't lying.
"My ability is to take any living thing's corpse. Once I touch the corpse, it becomes mine. My power allows me to revive that corpse into something else. For example, I took the ants and converted them into the small fries you first fought. I amplified their tiny amount of mana—that was so little, you might not even know ants had mana—and converted them into any monster, limited only by the size and the amount of mana the corpse had." My worst fear came true. He had this terrifying ability. And I did not know ants had mana either, but he converted the mana into what the monsters I first fought in dark were.
I was too scared—so scared that I froze as my heartbeat got faster.
It wasn't only what he told us. As he spoke, his voice got thicker and more overwhelming, and it made it too believable.
"The mana, when I convert the corpse into my pawn, is amplified by about a thousand times compared to what it originally had before.
That is my power.
The power of the Black Cloaked Manipulator—the King of all Manaless Manipulators."
At this point, the both of us were too scared to move. We were trembling and couldn't take the truth.
It was at this moment that the both of us realized something.
Dying was now inevitable.