Chapter 157.6: Monster Waves {(Part-6) out of 6}
Even with Dante providing beforehand information on the live locations of the monsters, the health bars of Earth's Alpha Chosen gradually deteriorated at a pace that far exceeded what they had experienced in the previous waves.
A minute had passed, and almost everyone in the team was at their wit's end, with just scraps left in their health bars.
Noticing that, Jay instructed everyone to form upon Min-soo. Since it was part of the plan, they all knew it was time for the last survival measure.
Min-soo right away dived into his role and opened up a Space Pocket.
Everyone, including Jay, followed Min-soo into the small room-sized pocket in space.
Although it was a little crowded with all eleven of them in there, no one complained.
Instead, they all looked at Min-soo, who stood with his eyes closed as he focussed on maintaining the Space Pocket.
From within, it was like a one-way mirror, making it possible for them to see everything on the barren battlefield.
However, they couldn't launch attacks from within the Space Pocket since it was an entirely isolated space.
Other than maintaining the Thunder Miasma Field, Jay wasn't able to manipulate the grey thunderbolts into attacking the selected monsters.
Without Jay's control, the torrent of grey thunderbolts randomly bombarded the monsters.
That continued for six more minutes before Min-soo's Spirit Energy reserves were emptied, shoving everyone out of the Space Pocket.
Once again, everyone spread out and tried their best to survive under the monsters' blind large-scale attacks.
From then on, it didn't take more than a minute before the emulated health bars of Earth's Alpha Chosen fell to 0% one after another.
Kasim, Andrea and Min-soo were the first ones to be eliminated from the barren battlefield.
Gabriel, Henry and Kensei followed shortly after them. Next were Sergei and Brandon. As for Olivia, she held out a little longer, but she followed suit as well.
With two minutes left, the only ones that remained were Jay and Dante.
The <Mind Link> was broken without Olivia, but Jay established a new one himself since he could use all of Olivia's skills.
If not for Jay carrying Dante on his shoulder while escaping around, it would have been next to impossible for him to survive for so long with Dante's agility being at the bottom among the Earth's Alpha Chosen.
At the same time, it was the other way around as well.
Without Dante foreseeing the monsters' movements and the core impact range of their attacks, it wouldn't have been possible for Jay to survive till then, even after using <Strength Boost-III>, <Agility Boost-III>, <Frenzy> and covering himself with <Ice Martial Aura> simultaneously.
<Lv.10 Frenzy> (Uncommon Grade): To activate this skill, the user needs to choose a lifeform as a target to unleash their inner frenziness. Within that frenzied state, the user's 5 main Attributes will receive a 20% increment in Stats.
Duration upper limit: 3 minutes.
Cost: 20% Stamina
Lv.21 <Ice Martial Aura> (Stage-3): Boosts user's Strength, Agility and Endurance Attributes by 15%.
Cost: 21 Spirit Energy per second.
<Strength Boost-III> (Rare Grade): Increases Strength Attribute by 25% for a duration of 3 minutes.
Cost: 30 Spirit Energy peruse.
Cooldown: 30 minutes.
<Agility Boost-III> (Rare Grade): Increases Agility Attribute by 25% for a duration of 3 minutes.
Cost: 30 Spirit Energy peruse.
Cooldown: 30 minutes.
By stacking all four of them together, Jay's overall stats jumped from 990 to 1440. An improvement of 450 stats placed Jay at the initial part of Tier-4 Mid-Phase.
After the four-stack boost, his Strength and Agility attributes exceeded the other three and were on par with a monster that had just reached Tier-4 High-Phase.
But the downside to having so many boosts stacked on each other was the Stamina consumption that was several times higher than that of the Stamina regenerated per second.
With 343 stats in Strength and Agility attributes, his top speed hit a stunning 230 meters per second, even exceeding the speed achieved through <Isolated Suction>.
Combined with the Thunder Miasma Field and his top movement speed, he evaded most of the fatal attacks.
That continued for some time before there was just a minute left before the 12th Monster Wave could end.
However, that didn't bring forth any joy to Jay since, at the current rate of the damage they received, Dante's emulated health bar would empty out in the next couple of seconds, even with Jay morphing a part of Centauri Kavach's full body armour to shield most of the damage Dante received.
Dante's role was vital because, without his navigation, Jay's chances of lasting till the end of the 12th Monster Wave would plummet.
So, Jay improvised and brought out the <Steam Wind Sword> and had Dante latch onto it before sending it to a corner on the very top of the battlefield, whereas Jay stayed on the ground and used <Size Alteration> and shrunk his body size as much as possible.
From being 6 feet tall, he minimized to a height of 5 inches (12 cms). <Centauri Kavach> compressed itself to fit Jay's diminished body size.
Although the reduced size negatively impacted his agility by a bit, the damage inflicted on his body was reduced by several folds due to his minute body surface.
Besides moving from one spot to another, Jay manipulated grey thunderbolts to attack certain monsters, whose attacks would inflict critical damage to Dante in the next few seconds.
That way, he distracted monsters into directing their attacks onto himself and sneaked around within the Thunder Miasma Field while bearing most of the burnt of their attacks' impact.
Seconds continued to dwindle away, and so did Jay's emulated health bar. Whenever he had the chance, he ate Grade-3 Vitality Fruits to refill his health bar disregarding the temporary debuffs he could be shortly be inflicted with.
That continued till Jay's health bar dropped as low as 6%, and then a series of notifications rendered in front of Dante and him.
[Congratulations! Your team has successfully survived the 12th Monster Wave.]
[Due to surviving the 12th Monster Wave, and setting a top record, a 150% bonus Score was added to your Round-2 Team Evaluation.]
Individual Contribution Score:
Olivia (Lv.40) - 44890 (10890+34000+0+0)
Min soo (Lv.38) - 15630 (3630+12000+0+0)
Andrea (Lv.37) - 13030 (3030+10000+0+0)
Sergei (Lv.35) - 31260 (7260+24000+0+0)
Brandon (Lv.35) - 29860 (7860+22000+0+0)
Kensei (Lv.31) - 26050 (6050+20000+0+0)
Henry (Lv.30) - 25675 (225+5450+20000+0+0)
Kasim (Lv.29) - 20470 (240+4230+16000+0+0)
Gabriel (Lv.27) - 18125 (495+3630+14000+0+0)
Jay (Lv.25) - 3328270 (1000+2500+5000+10000+25000+50000+100000+249040+439500+719230+638000+1089000)
Dante (Lv.25) - 37240 (8470+28000+0+0)
Team Score: 9298826 (3669540+5629286{Bonus})