Teleporting to the islands near Bird City, where the pack of sea monsters lived together with the Sea Monkeys, was no trouble for me. But when I wanted to stealthily find the Commander I needed, I realized one problem—I didn't know where he was...
Sure, I knew from canon and my past life that he'd emerge from the water when they started exterminating his pack, but I'm in the past right now. Thoughhh, what's the difference? My firepower would be more than enough to wipe them all out here in record time.
The key is not to kill too fast, or the Commander might get scared and not surface. I can't allow that, since I remembered a soul drops from him. So I need to set his killing on a loop.
Both to upgrade the Pendant and so I don't have to bother hunting for a new Commander-level monster that's relatively easy to kill and guaranteed to drop a soul.
I don't feel like hopping through parallel worlds for days, jumping into deathmatches with Commanders just to finally find one with an intact soul instead of a mere shard.
Looking once more at these Red Sea Demons—whose name I finally recalled—I pulled up all the info in my head about them before the battle started.
Red Sea Demons—They look like Earth monitor lizards with fins on their bodies and tails. Colored red. They're amphibians and, due to their versatility, lost the advantage of sea monsters in raw power. That's why they live near land—they can't compete for territory in the depths. Weak defense and mediocre speed on land. Pretty fast in water, but I'm not planning to fight them on their turf.
I'm not going to freeze the space between the islands like the national team did. That would just connect the mini-islets where the Sea Monkeys live with the rest, and I'd have even more enemies.
I'll just genocide one island after another, while Bul and Pikachu keep them from escaping into the water. But I still need to hold back myself and ask my pets to suppress their auras, or the Commander won't crawl out.
Said and done. Starting with the first island occupied by Red Sea Demons, I released my pets and joined the battle. First, I cast Triple Acceleration on myself and smashed one Servant-level monster's face, caving its skull right through. I'll mostly show myself as a physical fighter—maybe the Commander will dare to get close.
Periodically, when pack Chieftains crossed my path, I hit them with Initial level fifth step space element Telekinesis. It didn't kill them, but it froze them long enough for me to casually smash their heads. With their defense, it wasn't hard.
When they surrounded me, I cast Dimensional Teleporter and shifted dozens of meters away, breaking the encirclement. The name sounds epic and hints at its power, but it's actually a fairly simple combo spell.
It combines an alternate use of Compression at the first step Intermediate Tier of the space element with Scatter at the third step Initial level of the same element. Experienced space element mages who haven't reached High level yet use this since they can't do proper teleportation.
Combining those two spells without Heidi's Triple Cast talent takes a ton of practice. I had both, so I danced across the battlefield with the grace of a butterfly in flight.
When the Red Sea Demons realized they were losing, they roared into the air, calling reinforcements from other islands. Surprisingly, none tried to flee yet. Guess they've lost all fear as hegemons of this area. But I'll fix that quick.
Reinforcements kept pouring in, but since I was mostly using physical strength to kill monsters, occasionally space element energy and a bit of time element energy for acceleration, I barely got tired.
Not to mention my most developed element—Frost—hadn't even come into play. Saving it to surprise the Commander.
Finally, after wiping out the combined population of two islands without showing any signs of weakening, the monsters started backing off and trying to flee. But not on my watch! Bul and Pikachu were vigilant and intercepted almost all of them. I deliberately let a couple go to call their boss.
I'd genocided half his pack, and he still hadn't shown—starting to worry. What if he hadn't broken through to Commander level yet and was already rotting in the corpse pile? Though I hadn't seen any peak Chieftain-level ones either, which gave me hope.
Finally, a loud roar echoed, and the monsters stopped retreating, rallying with renewed spirit and charging me and my pets. I was thrilled—their leader, the head Red Sea Demon, had finally crawled onto the shore. The Commander's soul had come right to me; I couldn't let it slip.
"Bul, Pikachu, go all out! The rest are on you—I'll take the big guy!" I ordered my summons and teleported close to the Commander. Time to show a master class.
The temperature dropped within five meters of me as I began growing an ice shell that took the form of an octopus. As an extremely experienced mage, how could I not know Sphere's mechanics?
Even though it's studied at High level, and some can only use it via a Soul Seed with one built-in, there are geniuses like my cousin Mu Ning Xue who master it at Intermediate Tier.
Though her natural talent deserves most of the credit... probably why without it, my castrated version of her castrated Sphere only reached five meters. But since I wasn't hurling spells at the enemy but building an ice construct around myself, I didn't care.
It just couldn't reach the enemy to suppress him, but once I wrapped him in tentacles and dragged him into my territory, he was done.
Besides the Sphere, which boosted my spells proportional to my element's concentration around me, I started casting the fifth step Intermediate Tier ice spell and tweaking it for myself. Dozens of ice chains wove together into an ice octopus, with me at its center. Time for a sea predator showdown!
My opponent didn't stand still, and once my octopus fully formed, he shot a compressed jet of boiling water from his maw, blasting off one tentacle—which I quickly reattached with small chains and fused back to the main body. Wrong guy to mess with! Better fully vaporize me if you want to last longer!
Wrapping the Red Sea Demon in tentacles, I started strangling him while morphing parts into sharp blades. Under increasing pressure, they pierced his body, spilling blood and making the monster roar and struggle to escape.
After five minutes of struggle—during which this Brute managed to smash parts of my octopus that I had to regrow, burning my mana—I finally gained the upper hand. The monster roared one last time and collapsed dead on the ground, while I, breathing heavily, dispersed the ice octopus.
My Frost element was drained to near zero, but a dumb grin lit my face—my Pendant had gained a Commander-level soul, which I immediately fed it for upgrading. I'll farm stars later; I'd found plenty of targets for her genocide across parallel realities.
Could I have won easier and faster? Obviously—didn't even use fusion magic, my strongest trump card. But if I one-shot enemies every time, my skills would dull and regress.
All for keeping them sharp. Plus, I love surpassing a higher-level monster without cheating via fusion magic. Feels like top predator vibes. But crush those thoughts—got cocky enough; excess pride can kill.
Canceling the world-travel spell, I returned to the third floor of the Three-Step Tower. TuTu was still cultivating in the corner, and I had over five free days left.
Alright, then—restore my elements' mana reserves and go kill that Commander again. Stars won't upgrade themselves, and the Pendant can still improve from souls like that, though its Cultivation acceleration coefficient had already hit x4. More is better.
Damn, just realized I should've upgraded the Pendant first, then cultivated in the tower. Better effect that way. Hindsight's 20/20.