Lohan, operating through his Parallel Processing Core, processed the scene in milliseconds.
He saw the tide of lizards advancing and the greedy gleam in Varkas’s eyes.
For an ordinary Player, that army would be a nightmare, but with his mind working at high speed, analyzing both all the approaching enemies and the resources he had available to try to deal with it, an idea came to his mind.
"Lisa, focus on the three Players for now; I’ll take care of the infrastructure of this battlefield," Lohan said, shifting his gaze to the other Astralis members present. "Pip, Elle, you want to save the villagers and become Astralis warriors, right? Well, now’s your chance."
Before Pip could ask how, Lohan performed a Partial Division maneuver and fired two generous blobs of his neon-blue gelatin that flew like projectiles toward the two fairies.
Upon contact, Lohan’s gelatin didn’t digest them; instead, it expanded and flowed over Pip and Elle’s small bodies, activating the Living Armor form. Then, Lohan coated this layer with the Obsidian Exoskeleton, molding black hexagonal plates that fit their features perfectly, just as he had done with Lisa.
Suddenly, two small, black, armored figures appeared in the air.
Pip, who already possessed rigid, blade-sharp wings, now looked like a small flying knight clad in black armor, much like a miniature knight.
Elle, on the other hand, took on a more agile and less armored appearance, since she wouldn’t be fighting in a head-on battle; Lohan prioritized keeping her movements fluid so she could act as long-range support for Pip on the battlefield, yet she remained fully covered by the Slime’s body and the black scales that protected her life.
[Visual Representations Here and on Discord.gg/NunuXD]
"Pip, Elle, accept my [Collective Synaptic Synchronization]. With this, you’ll also see what my clones see," Lohan commanded.
The transformation came as a shock to Varkas’s group.
The two little fairies, who had previously seemed like easy targets, shot into the sky like fighter jets.
Pip dove into the swarm of level 4 and 5 lizards with his metallic glass wings and the small black sword in his hand, slicing through scales and flesh with absurd ease, while Lohan’s armor absorbed any attempt at a bite or strike from the reptiles, spreading the damage around or simply absorbing the attack entirely since the creatures were far weaker than him.
Meanwhile, Elle took up the role of aerial support, hovering above the chaos. Thanks to her affinity with plants and her connection to Lohan, she identified the blind spots of the metal and fire lizards, but she didn’t attack directly; she merely signaled to the dozens of Slime clones Lohan had already scattered across the field or approached just close enough for her living armor to apply his Mark on the monsters, so that Pip could activate the mark later and deal even more damage to those lizards.
Lisa was also helping as best she could, adding the two young Guild members to the mental link, allowing them to communicate remotely via telepathy.
"There! To Pip’s left! Three Metal Lizards are trying to surround him!" Elle’s mental voice echoed, and instantly three blue puddles on the ground became adhesive, trapping the lizards’ legs in place and applying Marks of Rupture so that Pip could finish them off with a lethal swoop.
While the armored fairies and clones decimated Varkas’s "horde," turning the Lizardman’s army into raw fuel for Lohan’s clones, who digested it at high speed and converted it into stamina to keep the battle going, Lohan himself partially detached from Lisa’s back and formed two dense, black human arms, exuding an aura of authority that made the air around Varkas vibrate.
The fox’s appearance, with two pairs of eyes glowing with white flames in its mouth and two thick arms on its sides, was terrifying.
Varkas, who was just a few meters away, stopped abruptly. He saw even the Level 10 lizards being immobilized by Slimes that seemed to have the density of lead, and watched the now-armored little fairy pierce the skull of a Fire Lizard as if it were paper.
The racial confidence of his Rare Lizardman body began to crack in the face of that display of dominance.
"That’s impossible! Slimes and fairies can’t fight like that!" Varkas shouted, his claws trembling.
Lohan "looked" at him with his red artificial eyes, while Lisa positioned herself with her flaming paws ready to incinerate Brant and Stig.
"To be honest, the qualitative potential you boasted so much about seems like a bad joke told to me..." Lohan’s mental voice resounded like thunder, as he prepared the Vacuum Detonation in his new obsidian hands. "You bragged so much about how incredible and powerful you were, but you never even asked who you were fighting..."
Varkas looked at the creature communicating with him, clearly also a Player, and with such conflicting emotions inside him, not knowing if he felt fear, despair, anger, or sadness, he asked on autopilot. "And who the hell are you?! Why should I care who I’m fighting?!"
Then, on the round black head that had detached from the fox’s body, beneath the malevolent-looking red eyes, a sinister smile with sharp "teeth" appeared, uttering a name that made Varkas and the trio freeze.
"You must have heard of me... just like the dozens of Players I killed before you. After all, the name of the first PK in the Open World must carry some prestige..." Lohan said.
Hearing that, the trio’s eyes widened. "No, it’s impossible, you’re the psychopath who killed the first Player?!"
Ever since his last confrontation with Brutus, Lohan knew that his image in the minds of other Players was that of a maniac, so he decided to take advantage of that, especially with the terrifying appearance his current form had.
That’s why he smiled even wider. "Yes, remember this: today you will die by the hands of Halon."
As soon as he finished speaking, Lisa didn’t hesitate and sprinted at full speed toward the trio, not caring one bit about the numerical disadvantage.
They were still in shock from the name they’d heard, taking a fraction of a second too long to react, but that fraction of a second, when facing a creature as fast as Lisa, was fatal.
xXx
On the battlefield, the giant, wary lizard that had come with the group of lizards summoned by Varkas stopped moving, watching Pip and Elle with fear and awe.
He realized that what had slightly drawn him in had been a lizardman’s magic, but this was merely a slaughterhouse, a desperate fight that would bring him no reward, so he simply turned and walked away.