Chapter 42 - Mana Gauntlet-Drill

Waking up from his dream, Rynold tried to piece together what the god meant. He was struggling to stand up, let alone make use of his brain to acknowledge what was going on around him.

Looking around, he noticed that the others have left him, as per his instructions. Deep down, he was glad that they left the battlefield unscathed but there were other things that he had to focus on right now.

The battlefield was chaotic.

X, the usually strong and reliable Mech Knight, was riddled with scratches and dents along its metal body. It was struggling to defend his liege from further injury but it was desperate to do so.

Sure enough, the collapse of Rynold triggered some sort of mechanism inside the Mech Knight, like it was its duty to stop the chaos that would happen when his master died. But at what cost?

Rynold struggled to stand back up, his hand clutching his head as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. He looked at the crater that was engraved into the pavement from the impact of when he was thrown and he was sure that if it were a normal person, they'd probably be dead by now.

For now, though, he didn't have time to lose.

Rynold pulled up his status window and decided to put a few more points into his Endurance and Intelligence. It was the first time that he invested points into his Endurance, but, judging from the current state of things and his overall remaining HP, he doubted he could last another hit.

Decisively, he put 15 more points into his Endurance, boosting his max HP by 150 points while the rest he put into his Intelligence.

Intelligence. It was the Attribute that boosted his abilities and powers so far in the New World and he knew that it was the right Attribute to put points into almost all the time. But he didn't have time to contemplate his options but chose the most direct one.

A few words that the god said echoed through his head. Even though there were some things that stood out, he knew that he had to take the god's advice and actually use his head for once. Instead of blowing past everything like the past, he had to think of a new plan to deal with the Behemoth Ghoul.

Rynold quickly judged the characteristics of the Behemoth Ghoul and there was a certain quality that was the hardest to deal with. The tough skin.

The skin that the Behemoth Ghoul had was one of the toughest ones Rynold's encountered so far and blunt attacks didn't seem to do any damage to it. Remembering, Oliver's attacks seemed to merely scrape the skin of the Behemoth but not deep enough to wound it.

Having no choice, Rynold knew what he had to do.

He pulled the drill from his inventory that he had originally decided to not attach to his gauntlets. Apart from the obvious cons of it being excessively larger than common sense indicates, Rynold attached it to his right gauntlet.

It was a simple process to be fair. Just pull the attachment itself from the inventory and press yes on the window that popped up. Direct where the attachment should go and that's it. The only problem was that he couldn't customize what it looked like.

That didn't stop Rynold, though, as he knew what he should do this time. But he didn't have time to customize what it would look like and use it as is. After all, X was getting pummeled.

The drill attached to Rynold's right gauntlet and fit like a glove. The attachment went over the hand itself, making the gauntlet look like a handheld drill but the hand isn't shown. It looked clunky, but it worked.

The Behemoth Ghoul suddenly struck down with all its might, pushing the Mech Knight into the ground. Although the Behemoth Ghoul looked like a combination of a gigantic lizard and a humanoid, the limbs it possessed were still long enough for it to slam its palm down.

The force of the hit was strong. So strong in fact that the Mech Knight could've been flattened if it weren't for Rynold canceling the summoning all so suddenly.

X's hitpoints were nearly bottoming out if Rynold hadn't intervened. He didn't even have to pull up the Mech Knight's status window to know that it can't fight any further.

Rynold jumped to the surface of the Behemoth's hand and used it as a foothold to climb even further up. Even though there were certain precautions a normal person should have before doing something crazy like this, that didn't apply to Rynold.

Using the grapple on his left gauntlet, he continued to scale the Behemoth Ghoul and it wasn't long before he reached the top of its head. Despite the violent shakes of the Behemoth Ghoul to throw off Rynold, he still desperately clung to the tether that was virtually unbreakable.

'Thank the heavens for Mana!' Rynold thought as the Behemoth Ghoul grew tired from shaking its scaly head.

The movements of the Behemoth Ghoul were noticeably slower now. Perhaps it was due to the insect that it couldn't kill for some reason or maybe this insignificant creature that was on top of its head.

Regardless, Rynold didn't take the Behemoth Ghoul's feelings into consideration and decidedly raised his drill hand. 'Hope this works!' he thought as he punctured the tip of the skull while violently willing Mana to rotate the drill as fast as he could.

Mana. Even though it was newly introduced into the world that was once predominated by technology, people who are considered "evolvers" are known to be able to manipulate their own Mana according to their will.

That is what is happening now to Rynold.

As Mana coursed through the mana channels in his body to rotate the drill, he further broke his limits and decidedly used Mana Infusion, making the drill much more effective.

Doubling the drain from his Mana reserves, Rynold pushed his hand further into the top of the Behemoth Ghoul's skull. The ghoul roared in pain as it struggled to shake even more violently than before.

'Die!' Rynold thought as he hung on for dear life, 'Die! Die! DIE! DIE! DIEEE!!'

The shakes grew more violent as Rynold got more desperate. Despite pushing further into the skull, however, Rynold was soon thrown off.

Falling down, he knew that his attack was effective.

Blood was splurging out from the head of the Behemoth Ghoul like a miner puncturing a hole into an oil line. Rynold hoped that it was enough to stop the Behemoth, but it certainly wasn't as it tried to swipe its tail at the falling Rynold.

Thinking on his feet, Rynold dodged the attack by grappling to a nearby structure. 'That was close,' he thought as he decided to reformulate a plan of attack. He was alone but that didn't mean that it was a problem. The attack was effective, that was enough for Rynold to have hope of beating this creature.

'If I know my anatomy, that should stop the ghoul's,' Rynold thought as the Behemoth suddenly lost all feeling in its arms and legs, 'motor functions!'

Truth be told, Rynold didn't really know much about brain anatomy. It was just pure luck that he managed to disable the ghoul's movements by drilling a part of the ghoul's small brain. In reality, he had actually managed to drill most of the ghoul's cerebral functions. Despite the ghoul's skull, the brain didn't grow much in comparison.

Regardless, the attack did, in fact, work. It worked better than anything Rynold could have expected but he wasn't done with killing the damned creature that caused so much chaos.

The Behemoth Ghoul could still act as it was more creature than an intelligent being. It could still attack and defend but, unlike before, the creature was now doing it so sloppily that it looked like a child having its first meal.

Thankful that he was alone, Rynold hid from the creature's line of sight and tried to think of a new plan. He couldn't target its limbs one by one as it would take too long. He certainly couldn't do the same move again because he knew that he had done what he could up there.

The options that he had right now were to target its vital points or maybe deal consistent damage to bottom out the creature's HP. Rynold thought about his options only to come out that the plans were rather iffy. Besides, he had done what he set out to do.

Slow the creature down.

And yet, he lamented on the fact that he could kill the creature now. It was an opportunity right for harvest, he just genuinely didn't know how to kill such a thing. The same rules should apply for killing a ghoul but the crossbred hybrid of the Behemoth was the main problem.

Suddenly, a voice popped up from his head as he remembered what the god has said before. Rynold remembered something about Mana and how it could be strengthened.

'That's it!'