After learning that I could level up [Basic Strong Body] and [Physical Endurance] at the same time, I'd entered a time-dilated illusion barrier and conjured up a boulder. A bunch of chains, a few logs, and a lot of finagling later I had the basic setup to teach myself the Ranma ½ Breaking Point technique. I was just strapping myself into the harness that would keep me stationary while the boulder slammed into me when Washu showed up.
"You know you're slowly driving yourself insane, right?" She asked as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"I'm what?"
"You. Are. Going. Insane. You spend months at a time doing nothing but training, not even eating or sleeping. I know it's a great way to get more powerful and I won't force you to stop, but I want you to consider a few things."
I nodded, indicating I I would listen to what she had to say. Washu hadn't given me any bad advice yet that I was aware of, and she was the catalyst for my powers. I wasn't really sure how becoming strong enough to fight the enemies she'd insisted on adding was insane, though.
"Listen, take a step back. Examine your own thoughts. Gamer's Mind doesn't protect you from changes that come from within, only external influences. You were an introvert when you started the Jump-Chain, but you're getting to the point where you consciously avoid people to keep from forming connections. You cut off your mother a while back, which was reasonable but cold. You know you won't be seeing her again after the Jump, which is the same reasoning you're using for keeping everyone else away. Do you follow me so far?"
I nodded guiltily. I still wasn't sure why I wasn't getting the emotional context from the memories of backgrounds that weren't drop-in, but Washu's assessment of my mental health might be a clue. She was watching my face carefully, and probably reading my thoughts again as well. Even with [Mind Magic] I really doubted I'd ever be able to detect when she was doing it, let alone stop it.
"You're starting to see the problem, but you haven't gotten the whole picture yet. Let me paint a mental picture for you, shall I? You entered the Pokémon jump so conflicted that you partially repressed your memories of your previous life and fully repressed the emotional context of the memories you gained from your background by using the perk that was supposed to help you remember things! Perfect memory showed you the way for the first jump, and you somehow did it again here when you absorbed your background knowledge. Back to Pokémon, you messed with a few people but never made any friends even in the Saffron Gym. I didn't help when I pulled the whole montage prank, so that's partially my fault. Maybe with additional time you would have gotten better. The only living thing you consciously made an effort to bond with was Ember, and then you accidentally ended the world as you knew it by spilling too much information."
My heart sank the more she spoke, but I continued to listen. I knew now that I needed to hear this, not just because it was Washu but because it was becoming apparent I'd done some things seriously wrong even if I hadn't realized it at the time. Maybe this was part of why it took me so long to realize that the people around me were real? The guilt I felt for killing the people who came after me was pitifully weak, too. I didn't think the me from before the Jump-Chain would like the new me very much.
"Exactly!" Washu exclaimed. "Although the killing thing is partly because of Gamer's mind, and you're expected to change over time, your personality has gone through a radical shift. You've gone from introverted to avoiding contact with other people like it's a disease! You haven't seen or spoken to Ember since you got here! The only person you consider yourself to be remotely friends with is Jee-Han, and that's because he's going through something similar! That stretch in the Instant Dungeon where you figured out [Mystical Energy (Body)] shifted your perspective too, but I'm not sure yet whether that's good or bad. I've been trying very hard not to look too far into your future because if you're ever going to be a god of any sort you need to keep your free will. That said, though? In addition to your increasingly worrying social failures, you're also not living! The meditation was a good start to recovery since it'll help you a little, but you need to actually do things besides grind! You're losing your creativity, your sense of humor, and your attachment to the world in a ridiculous quest to end every threat before it can hurt anybody else!"
She was shouting by the end, and I was getting confused. Wasn't one of my goals to help people? To protect them? Becoming stronger was the only way to achieve that goal. Mental degradation would pose a problem, but I'd never been good at socialization anyway. Only my wife, coworkers, and family members ever got more than a few words from me a year unless someone prompted me. Usually my wife. Was that part of the problem? I'd been relying on her to keep me from being a shut in, hadn't I? I'd actually told her a few times that without her influence I'd probably have had a lot more problems. Washu was smiling encouragingly at me now, and I sagged in the harness.
"Ok, you've convinced me I need to be more social at least. What about Anime Attack, though? I don't want people to suffer, and I need to exploit the time-dilation effect as much as possible if I'm going to have a chance at beating them by the numbers. I've got all the major weaknesses at least partially covered now, but I need to grind those skills to near perfection in order to really stand a chance," I explained sadly. Washu's look reminded me of someone explaining something to a very dim child.
"Wren, you aren't meant to win by the numbers. Jee-Han faced enemies more than ten times his level pretty regularly in the main timeline, and you can too. I told you to be creative, and you need to do that. You also need to be social. Finally, you need to think through your plans before you grind. This," she gestured at the breaking point setup, "is something you can get in a later Jump if you really want to. It's one of your favorite series, so I know you're going to visit. Step back and think: what are anime characters in general weak to, and what can you do to exploit that? Also: what are you forgetting? You've already lost track of a few plans."
I actually felt my mind shift directions, and my head tilted to one side as I thought. Washu conjured a floating chair and sat patiently, waiting for me to come to my own conclusions. I hadn't freed any slaves yet, despite now having a way to do so. I could set up a generator or enchantment that did the same thing in my empty warehouse for power, and a system to conjure water and destroy waste was now well within my capabilities. It was too bad it was an empty copy of the original or I could have...copy? Something to look into. There was also the lightsaber idea I had earlier when talking to Jee-Han. That probably wasn't everything I'd forgotten, but they were things I needed to actually start on.
Next was weaknesses. What were anime characters weak to? I knew a lot of them were vulnerable to magic, which was one of the reasons I'd been building as a wizard. Wizards who had time to prepare were almost universally deadly, but I didn't have enough information to tailor attacks to specific enemies or prepare ambush points...did I? I knew the target of the attack would be the Korean Abyss in general, and would start with the Abyss Auction since Washu had given that bit of information away during our last discussion. If I was going to start buying slaves and I picked them up myself, I'd get a few locations to set potential ambushes. I didn't think they'd automatically deliver slaves in the same way they did my books (stupid little flying saucer drones!), but it was possible they'd send them out alone with orders or send them with an escort before they let me pick them up.
Even if they somehow tried to prevent the slaves themselves from divulging their point of origin, with the right preparation I could track where they came from even if they were teleported. I had a way to get locations for the first attacks that would take place, and I had knew that the Hwan, Cheon Bu, and Yunhonmoon would all be attacked at some point as well. I hadn't heard anything of the Black Rock clan this time around, but I hadn't exactly been paying attention. Jee-Han and the Witch of Slaughter might have wiped them out when they tried to kill her, but hadn't that been after she was hired by Sung-Gon to protect Sung-Ah in the original timeline? I'd have to ask him if that had happened here. If the Black Rock was still around they would be a target too, and one I didn't mind looting then trapping so thoroughly as to reduce it to ash if anything I didn't like happened there.
If I looted the place they would probably move out though, or at least inspect their security measures. With [Mystical Energy Void], [Illusion], and [Stealth] I shouldn't have any trouble getting in, so I could trigger the trap wards themselves to transport material goods to a preselected location just before everything inside was destroyed. I could probably make it a tiny fraction of a second delay too, so it wouldn't be enough to alert the attackers they needed to get out. I'd need to figure out a way to hide the wards themselves, but leaving them deactivated except for the trigger mechanism would help. Now...how was I going to deal with anyone that didn't get caught in the ambush? They'd have to fight the rest of the Abyss, so I really didn't have to stop the whole thing by myself. In fact, the Auction's backers basically deserved what was coming.
Washu's smile had gone from encouraging to delighted, I noted out of the corner of my eye. I wasn't the only one upset at them, then. What would anime characters be weak too, though? Magic wasn't going to take care of all of them. Uchiha Madara in particular would probably be too fast and have such varied powers that attempting to take him with magic just wouldn't work unless he was unaware...wait. There were ways to catch people unaware that kept the attacker well outside of conventional detection range, let alone immediate retaliation range. The Abyss used one of them regularly: guns. I was a wizard, and I didn't have a ranged weapon other than magic. Not only that, I was a budding enchanter with enough power to make things well above my level work without having to actually learn the process. Even if the enchantments eventually broke down or I had to redo them, I could make a sniper rifle and a set of handguns many times more dangerous than they were off the shelf.
I'd always disliked guns in my first life, but mostly because I felt people were too irresponsible with them. I was American, and the idea of them being a part of life was embedded in the culture enough that even the most idealistic citizens admitted they probably wouldn't ever go away completely. While many anime characters were ridiculously physically tough, I knew a lot of them would have trouble with a sniper round to the face. And enchanted sniper round flying a hundred or more times faster than would be possible without magic would make the range of enemies I could tackle with such a weapon much broader. Washu's grin was feral now, and I was only mildly surprised to find that my expression mirrored hers.
I was no longer running on auto in a straight line, and I had new goals with new ideas to help me achieve them. I had forgotten several of the core tenants of my first life: family first, you are important to your family so take care of yourself as well, and big problems can be made solvable by reducing them into smaller steps. There were others I was sure, but those were what came to mind. I needed to see Hwan about the guns his people used and getting some of my own, then I needed instruction and practice. Enchanting could be done in time-dilation as long as I had company. The slaves could be handled concurrently with other projects with the exceptions of tracking down the holding areas and trapping them, and then I was getting myself a damn laser sword. Or a plasma sword, which sounded even better. If I added a little bit of [Force Wall] to it I could even block things and spar with them like real lightsabers!
Hwan was glad to see me again, as apparently he'd been expecting me back a few days ago. The Cheon Bu had been a little perturbed that I'd apparently spent nearly a week in their training area without stopping for a break, and told me not to come back for a few days at least. When I explained my idea of enchanting weaponry to Hwan he got a sadistic look on his face that indicated he very much approved of the idea, and took me directly to the armory. I was introduced to the quartermaster that managed the Hwan armory, who was instructed to give me access to the weapons I needed for training, then when he felt I was skilled enough not to shoot someone on accident to start giving me weapons to enchant.
The basic gun safety course only took a few hours, but the supervised practice ran considerably longer. I got messages indicating [Weapon Mastery] now included pistols and rifles days before I was deemed competent enough to use them in the field, and had actually gained a few levels in [Weapon Mastery] since then. I discovered this after I realized I'd left alerts for skill level ups off and went to check what was taking so long, only to find the skill had gotten better but I hadn't been notified. I turned the notices back on, slightly annoyed with myself.
When I got my first pistol to enchant I did as much as I could to it before I started getting messages indicating the weapon itself would break down if I added more magic. I started with a little [Conjuration] on several magazines to give the weapons they were loaded with infinite ammunition, then started altering the conjured bullets until I got something coated in a weak [Mystical Energy (Void)] field to help penetrate supernatural defenses. It wouldn't completely negate most defenses, but it would be a nasty shock to anyone that wasn't expecting it. The magazines started to pop messages that I couldn't enchant them anymore at that point, so I conjured a few force walls on the shooting range and had the guards start testing them while I moved on.
The chamber of the weapon itself was next, and I knew it would be complicated to do what I wanted: ideally the weapons should be completely silent, have no muzzle flash, and all the energy of the exploding powder should go into propelling the bullet faster rather than leaking into the frame of the weapon or producing aforementioned sound and flash. I also needed to see if I could add a [Mystical Energy Generator] to the housing, since I hadn't had room to do it to the magazines. The enchantments would eventually become useless if they lost power, and would dissipate shortly thereafter.
I tried [Force Wall]s to focus the force of the weapon discharge and [Mystical Energy (Gather)] to absorb the sound, light, and heat generated. The results weren't spectacular, so I tinkered a bit and ended up merging a little bit of [Reflect] and [Illusion] into the mix and ended up with a weapon that had three times the muzzle velocity of its unenchanted brother. I'd hoped for a little more, but couldn't think of a way to reliably improve the enchantment I already had further without overloading the damn thing with mana.
The barrel of the weapon was laced with a mixture of telekinesis and lightning to create a magnetic acceleration of both the muzzle velocity and the spin before the bullet left the weapon. I actually had to enchant a new pistol after the first one exploded from the force generated, but a little tweaking left me with something that didn't explode after firing 200 rounds and had a muzzle velocity almost twenty times that of the unenchanted weapon I was still using as a control. After seeing the first one explode on me the guards insisted I enchant some extra protective gear for them, so I made some full gloves and safety glasses as tough as I could, then did the same for the protective vests they all wore under their clothing. I could heal pretty much anything non-fatal by now, anyway.
With the latest upgrades being tested I went back to tinkering, and found a few extra bits I could attach smaller enchantments to. The outer case of the handle and trigger could hold a bit, as could the sites and the hammer of the weapon. The hammer I tied a very complex identification scheme to, which actually utilized a bit of soul magic to identify the one using the weapon. If someone who wasn't approved when I enchanted it picked the thing up, the hammer struck a tiny [Force Wall] instead of actually discharging the weapon. I was only barely able to get that working, but got a lot of encouragement from the security personnel since it had the potential to prevent a lot of accidents in addition to making sure the modified weapons weren't used against them.
The weapon sights I left alone, since I couldn't figure out a way to fit anything useful on them without overloading the material with mana. I was getting better at fine manipulation the more practice I got, but steel to resist my efforts a lot more than the leather I'd used for my gloves and boots. Most of the internals of my watch were actually one big crystal, which held enchantments rather well. Maybe I'd eventually add crystals to a gun, but for now I was fairly certain I was going to be fine with the base models. Customizing them would add time to the enchanting process, and I wanted a lot of these on the field when they were needed.
The handle casing and trigger mechanism proved to have a slightly higher capacity for enchantment than the rest of the weapon. I wasn't sure exactly why that was, but I wasn't going to complain. I'd intended to add [Holy] to the weapons to make them more effective against undead and such, but realized just before I started it would also make it significantly less effective against other targets. Instead I added the same kind of pseudo-indestructibility enchantment I'd added to my gloves and the guards' safety gear. I could make the enchantment affect the whole weapon if I anchored it there and tuned the other effects to work with it, which just left room for a summoning marker in case I needed it and it wasn't in my inventory. I'd leave that off the models I made for others, but I wanted mine to be special. With that in mind, I made a pair this way and had them engraved with my family crest.
The guards had tested the hell out of the weapons themselves and relayed to me that the recoil was unusually low. Also, the back wall of the firing range needed to be replaced. What would normally stand up to automatic weapons fire and sniper rounds was by now starting to look like dog-chewed cardboard. Hwon-Gon got someone in to repair it while I started working with the sniper rifles he'd provided me, and I set up a mixed [Force Wall] and [Telekinesis] enchantment over the newly repaired wall when the contractor left. [Telekinesis] would slow down anything near the wall, and [Force Wall] would stop anything that did get through from penetrating the new metal and concrete barrier.
I used the same enchantments I had on the pistols on my new sniper rifle, but was able to scale up all of the effects with more material to work with. I really needed to get better at putting more complex enchantments together in smaller amounts of material. I was sure I could overcome the limit entirely if I could figure out a way to tailor the damn things to direct the extra mana productively, but I had other priorities at the moment so I stuck with the piece-by-piece and brute force approach I'd been using. The sniper rifle was also tested, then engraved while I made a few more for the few people trained to use them. I'd really wanted to figure out a way to carry the silencing effect over to the projectiles themselves, but since the initial acceleration occurred before they left the silencing effect of the weapon it was still pretty damn quiet even in the enclosed range. I couldn't hear it even with my enhanced senses and without the earmuffs normally used there. The guards had a talk with me for testing without them on, but I was grinning the whole time.
When I wasn't making or testing guns I was working with Sung-Gon, Jee-Han, or the newly arrived Witch of Slaughter and her stoic companion. The witch, Lolikiano Mistream, had agreed to tutor me and Jee-Han and take care of the acquiring as many slaves as could be saved from the Abyss Auction for a ridiculous sum of money and any information I could provide on when the whole thing was going to happen. She also demanded to be the one to trap the places those slaves had been held, which she and Jee-Han had apparently discussed while I was busy and wouldn't budge on. Since that left more time for me to get other things ready I was perfectly alright with that, just confused for a bit. Her companion Horutipia Aholting, who insisted we call him Dylan instead of mispronouncing his full name, seemed to see some sort of potential in me. When we'd started they insisted Jee-Han and I show them what we could do so they'd know where to start teaching us, and it just got weirder from there.
When I demonstrated my [Holy] ability and [Elemental Bending] he decided he was going to teach me whether I liked it or not. There weren't many druids left, he said, and the teachings could not be allowed to fade. His initial lessons weren't really lessons so much as they were him shoving a pile of ancient books and scrolls at me and threatening that if I failed to read and memorize them or if they were damaged in any way he'd kill me. When I returned them to him along with hard-bound copies in modern typeset he didn't react other than to start quizzing me on what I'd learned. I kept a set for myself of course, and they'd go in my warehouse if I ever decided to clean out my inventory.
Under Dylan's tutelage I was able to significantly strengthen the cleansing aspect of my [Holy] magic and started to get the hang of growing plants more quickly using magic and ki. Unfortunately with all that was going on and his self-appointed job protecting the Witch of Slaughter, we didn't get much more time together after that and none of it was dedicated to teaching. I set about purchasing what I couldn't easily conjure for the Warehouse and enchanting what was needed for running water, electricity, and waste disposal.
It was enchanting the stuff for the warehouse that finally got me over the block I had on how much I could enchant any given block of material. At least, it started me on the right path. Porcelain was just as delicate to the way I was applying my magic as it was to a hammer, so I had to figure things out in order to get the toilets working. If I thought I had the time I'd have gone back and re-enchanted all the guns, but I had a few more things to do before that would be viable.
When I had the warehouse sorted I moved on to creating my most complex wards to date, which would generate their own Instant Dungeons to weaken the enemies of those that lived and worked in the warded locations. To those I added lightning and energy-draining triggers that would act on anyone entering the activated Instant Dungeon who didn't meet the specified parameters. I added myself to all the ward schemes of course, because I didn't want to be fried by my own magic. The Cheon Bu and Yunhonmoon properties were both over lay-lines, which I'd finally remembered to check for, allowing the wards to be significantly more powerful than if I'd used only my normal mana generation method.
Once everything was warded I started playing with Instant Dungeons again and developing my lightsaber technique. I had a few ideas for a special Instant Dungeon, and the lightsaber technique was finicky in that it kept trying to burn my hand off. I eventually managed to get a bright beam of plasma about a meter long floating above my fist as if I was holding a sword, with a line of [Force Wall] running through it for solidity and an optional bead of plasma below my hand as well (because Ryouko's laser sword, that's why).
I sighed. Washu was right, I wasn't going to win this by the numbers. Even with all my preparations I had my doubts that I could kill one or more opponents over 150 levels higher than me. But...what if they weren't that strong? Anime Attack gave me a year until I faced opponents at godlike levels, so what happened if I triggered it early? Could it be triggered early? I had calls to make. If I was wrong more of the Abyss got time to prepare, but if I was right our opponents would be coming at us with incomplete plans and much lower power than they expected to gather.
I was playing with my new plasma sword technique outside the Hwan home when it happened. The entirety of my sensory range rippled with an energy I'd never noticed before, then most of it rapidly converged to a point several kilometers away. Some went in another direction, which meant there was probably going to be multiple areas threatened at once.
[Quest complete! Help Prepare the Abyss for Anime Attack!]
[You gained a level!]
[You gained a level!]
[You gained a level!]
[A new quest has been created: Survive the Anime Attack!]
I immediately sent a party invite Jee-Han, which was answered only a few seconds later. I turned on voice chat.
"It's starting," I told him. "I'm going to close the portal to my warehouse and alert the Hwans. If I disband the party can you invite me, Sung-Gon, Lolikiano, Dylan, and the rest of the big players then engage voice chat for coordination? I don't know everyone, and most of them don't know I've got the Gamer ability so it'll be less surprising coming from you. Also: can we give those two code names or something? I keep thinking of them as the Witch and her warrior druid guy."
"Can do. I felt something happen, but only got a direction from it. I think it might be down 63rd street."
"Right. Call me back when you've got the rest of the party set up. I'm headed to notify Sung-Gon."
"Will do."
I raced out of the room, then asked the first guard I could find to relay a message to Sung-Gon for me: "It's begun." The message would prompt him to put the guards on alert and prepare himself to flip the new property-wide wards on at the first sign of attack. A slight tremble in the ground beneath my feet indicated the fighting had already started somewhere, but depending on the power of the attack it could have been anywhere in Seoul. We were pretty centrally located, I thought as I left the Hwan home. A massive serpentine form I'd only ever seen in a PokéDex and a few pictures on the internet rose above the city-scape, and I cloaked myself in invisibility using [Illusion] before taking to the skies in that direction. It looked like it was close to where the primary convergence of what could only have been thought energy had happened, and the being itself radiated it.
Despite having lived in the universe for a decade and only ever catching two, my first thought when I saw a rampaging pokémon without an obvious trainer was to chuck a PokéBall at it. Lucky for me I had four empty Master Balls. I wasn't at all sure it would work, but it seemed worth a shot. I could hit it from long range by guiding the ball in with telekinesis, then retreat at ludicrous speed and start shooting it with my rifle if that didn't work. I absently accepted a party invitation and was subjected to a ton of radio chatter, which prompted me to mentally mute everyone except Jee-Han.
"Jee-Han, I'm in pursuit of the giant flying thing. Do we have any information yet?"
"Wren? Yeah. Black Rock has apparently already been attacked, and Witch and Druid are fighting a bunch of anime characters. The ward designs you and Witch discussed worked, so the compound is essentially empty and I'd imagine your warehouse just got a huge pile of junk delivered to it. Oh! One of the Yunhonmoon sentries just spotted a group of identical blonde kids entering the wards and getting fried. Apparently they're wearing bright orange, and should be shot just for that."
I grinned at the sentiment, sure that the memetic Naruto clones were just as poorly dressed as they were in the anime. "Do they have scrolls on their backs?" I queried. Several seconds passed before I Jee-Han replied.
"No, no scrolls. They don't seem very competent either, but they just keep coming and they're really fast. When they die they just go up in smoke."
"That's good. I was afraid they'd managed to gather enough energy to make all of the attackers at the height of their powers despite it being several months early, but it looks like they found out we knew about the attack and tried to set it off before we could prepare defenses. Let people know the orange-wearing idiot is creative and sneaky, but has probably never heard of a gun."
"Can do. I've got some idiot with a rose whip and another one trying to fire ki at me with a finger gun, so I'm going to have to cut this short."
I nodded even though he couldn't see me. Those two sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place them. Giratina, if that really was the legendary pokémon, was in range. I grabbed a Master Ball from my inventory and flicked it at the giant pain-in-the-ass with telekinesis. It disappeared into the ball, which I caught with a wide grin and guided back to my hand. Washu must have been watching, because there was a howl of feminine laughter in my head. I'd deal with it later.
"You can't keep that, but it'll make a good bargaining chip!" She warned me, and I couldn't help but smile a little.
Flicking the now-potentially-occupied pokéball back into my inventory, I scanned around below me. There was the familiar figure of early-series Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z glaring up at me, so I faded back into invisibility and moved higher and a bit to the left. His gaze didn't follow me, which made me exceptionally thankful for [Mystical Energy (Concealment)]. The ridiculous haired and armored figure turned back to say something to his colleagues, a pair of men in armored robes of some sort and a man in a long white trench coat. All three had swords, which made me grateful I'd brought guns. One of the armored men turned to look in my direction as I raised the sniper rifle, and I saw his eyes start to bleed red as I pulled the trigger.
The man's head exploded before his stupid cheater eyes of cheating even finished activating, and the crater the round formed when it hit the ground underneath him knocked the other armored figure and Vegeta off their feet. The man in the trench coat maintained his footing and bolted for cover, while Vegeta rose into the air screaming for me to come and face him like a man. I flew around a bit to get a better shot, waiting for him to still for just a moment. When he did, a bullet slammed into his torso hard enough to knock him out of the air and shatter most of his armor. I hadn't anticipated the stuff would be that strong, but at least the boastful asshole was bleeding. A massive tree burst from the ground near the group's initial meeting place, and a salvo of sharpened metal swept through my location from the building next to me.
Madara, his left eye ruined, glared at me from his position atop the highrise and flashed through hand-seals faster than I thought possible. That wasn't good. Something slammed into the barrier of Gamer's Mind when I met his gaze, probably an illusion or mind control technique. The next moment there was a dragon of black fire approaching fast, and I dodged right into a strike from a tree branch the size of a small vehicle. It knocked the wind out of me and took a few of my hit points, but not much more. Deciding I needed a little distance, I flew straight up fast enough to make my vision blur, just barely dodging a spectral sword wielded by an equally spectral blue giant with a Madara-shaped center.
Vegeta came next, ki blasts destroying the branch I'd been hit by and everything in the general vicinity, including a building. I did my best to drown out the screaming from below, resolved to end this as quickly as possible in order to minimize the loss of life, and exchanged my sniper rifle for a single pistol. Raising my right hand into the air more for dramatic effect than anything else (nobody could see me except Madara, and I didn't care what he thought), I shaped fire and lightning into the smallest point I could.
The ephemeral giant, now revealed to have four arms each complete with giant katana, leapt toward me with Vegeta flying close behind now that he could see the light of my building attack. Shots from my pistol took Vegeta in the torso and Madara's giant across the face but failed to do any significant damage to either, so I unequipped the pistol and brought out my shovel as I waited for just the right moment. When the two of them were about one-hundred meters below me I activated the special Instant Dungeon I'd been working on, making sure to include all of my opponents in the area.
The world around us flashed and the cityscape below became a featureless plane of asphalt, while the sky went completely dark. My enhanced senses from Body Mod allowed me to see the body heat of the figures below, including the jerk with the trees and the trench coat guy, who'd apparently managed to make it to quite a ways up a building before he was sucked into this dark and featureless place. He fell, but I doubted it would kill him. The only light supplied in the visual spectrum came from the maelstrom of plasma condensing above my hand, and I was pretty sure it was getting hot enough to emit gamma radiation at this point so it probably wasn't a great idea to stare at it. Or hold it much longer.
I'd allowed only myself and those made with the thought energy I'd sensed earlier to enter, so there were no civilians. There was no escape. The beings beneath me most likely didn't have the requisite knowledge to break an illusion barrier, and I'd done all I could to make this one hard to leave anyway. Simply crossing over the borders wouldn't work, both because they were far away and because they were as unyielding as a dozen [Force Wall]s. Supernatural attacks would bounce off them like with my [Reflect] ability, and attempting to exit the proper way would pit their willpower against my own but amplified by my MP even if they did figure out the method. Finally: natural regeneration of mystic energy was cut off here for everyone but me, at least in theory. This was a prison Instant Dungeon, and nobody was leaving alive unless I let them out myself.
Madara's construct swung a sword, and I glided out of the way before pointing the ball of superheated plasma through its face straight at the figure in the middle. A line of actinic light left a blazing path burned into my vision for a fraction of a second, and the giant fell to the ground melting away from the partially vaporized body of the Uchiha within. A freight train hit me in the side, and I smashed into the side of the Instant Dungeon an instant later. Vegeta had managed to work out where I was from the plasma ball, and he was probably already used to blinding flashes of light. Or just immune to them because he was a stupid alien from a stupid show with a stupid plot.
My hit points dropped significantly, despite the mid-level [Mystical Energy (Basic Mastery)] I'd been using to boost my stats and defense. Madara's corpse had disappeared again, so the crazy bastard was around here somewhere doing Gaia-knew-what. I ramped up my [Mystical Energy (Basic Mastery)] as high as it would go with my current skill level, then reserved a third of my total MP for [Mystical Energy Generator]. If I kept that up and did nothing I risked being forced into [Mystical Energy (Body)] and losing physical form, but even after my reserves refilled I'd be using enough energy to keep them from becoming a problem. [Holy] raced through my body, regenerating hit points as it went but remaining within my ability to conceal. Also, losing physical form was an option with some of these guys. I just had to make sure Madara and the Senju tree-fucker were out of the way before I could risk it, since they might have sealing techniques.
The blue giant formed again, this time staying on the ground and swinging its energy swords to launch spectral projectiles into the air in every direction. This distracted Vegeta enough that I was able to catch him in the eyes with a lightning bolt and follow it up with a conjured tungsten rod hurled as hard as I could manage with telekinesis. The bolt ruined his eyes, and the tungsten rod went straight through his ribcage and the undamaged back side of his armor. The armor itself exploded, sending shrapnel and bits of things I really didn't want to think about shooting back from the soon-to-be or already dead man. I faded into invisibility again and tried one of the strategies I'd come up with for another anime character on Madara: using a quick combination of [Elemental Bending] and [Force Wall] I thinned the air below me, then erected a barrier to prevent the air rushing back in when I released control.
With the stage set, I filled the area with fire. It wasn't especially hot, and invoking it through a [Force Wall] felt all kinds of weird, but it served the purpose of removing the last of the breathable oxygen from the area. I watched dispassionately as the heat died down and the forms of Madara Uchiha and Hashirama Senju started to suffocate. An oddly-deformed obese man with several missing teeth was bleeding out near Madara, having apparently been partially crushed by the spectral giant earlier. Wait...I was missing one. Wood and blasts of various elemental energies were slamming into the barrier below me, but I ignored them. The [Force Wall] was invulnerable so long as I concentrated on it and I had enough [Multi-Focus] to keep it up for now. Ah! That was my missing foe.
The man in the trench coat strode smoothly toward me across the [Force Wall] holding the air from the suffocating forms below. He'd drawn his sword, and radiated even more soul energy than before. I could not face this man on his terms. From the moment I'd spotted him something had started beating against Gamer's Mind, and when he muttered a word a flash of light erupted from his sword causing the pressure against Gamer's Mind became so powerful I was caught off guard for a moment. If he'd attacked in that moment I probably would have died. Instead he started monologuing, and I knew I was dealing with an idiot. Or at least someone with a terrible writer. When he started talking about master plans and zanpakuto I just got angry. This moron was from one of the anime I hated the most in all the world. Bleach. The idiot was monologuing, was from Bleach, and had an obvious power source sitting on his chest that shown like a beacon to my [Mystical Energy (Sense)].
My mana was full, so I studied him. He and the thing in his chest were bursting with soul power, but it was twisted and corrupted in a way I'd never seen before. All of this was overshadowed by the strange energy source: thought power. I'd managed to create something of a dispelling technique for all the forms of energy I knew before, but even if I adapted [Mystical Energy Voice] to work on this new energy it would be me trying to beat him down by force when he was clearly backed by a more significant reserve. [Multi-Focus] allowed me to think of or concentrate on seven different things at the same time with no loss of speed or quality, so I dedicated one thread to watching the idiot pontificate and four to figuring out a way to more effectively overcome more powerful sources of energy. The last threads kept my [Force Wall], [Mystical Energy (Body)], and [Mystical Energy (Generator)] powers activated and in balance with some difficulty.
The man finished his speech, which I'd completely ignored, and charged at me with his sword. As if on auto-pilot my body dodged out of the way, the thread that had been watching him defending me. He struck again and again, and each time I dodged for fear of what he was doing pumping so much energy into that blade of his. He was getting faster too, probably testing me for some idiot plot. Finally, I came to a testable hypothesis. I was able to control any form of energy I was familiar with due to the Gamer's ability to use any ability with MP regardless of the source it would normally use. That was what I'd been using to "smooth out" and absorb power for the [Mystical Energy (Void)] technique so far. The man before me was leaking energy like an idiot, possibly in an attempt to intimidate me. There was still something made from the same energy hammering at my mind. All of it was energy, and from a certain standpoint should behave like energy.
Lectures and podcasts from my first life few through my memory. Everything in the universe, including matter, was in theory made from oscillations in the very fabric of the universe. Oscillations were energy, and I could control energy. I'd proven that I could control more than just supernatural energy by developing [Elemental Bending] and tweaking it to produce all kinds of different effects. I hadn't been doing it consciously for the most part: the Gamer's Skills ability had been making up for lack of knowledge with its own kind of power, but every time I came to actually understand what I was doing the skill associated with that knowledge had increased and I'd been able to wield it more efficiently, with finer precision, and with more power. There was one thing all energy shared: oscillation. Even if it was in a place so fundamentally alien to my way of thinking that I would never fully comprehend it, every type of energy I'd yet encountered had that in common. I converted MP into soul energy in my hand, and let it slowly build as I dedicated more of my thought processes to avoiding the strange man's attacks.
When the energy had built to a sufficient level, I made a mental u-turn and shifted it ever so slightly. He looked puzzled at the blade of unformed soul energy that I tossed between us when he charged. He was no longer puzzled when it impacted the center of his chest and he discovered the wonderful properties of destructive interference. He staggered, and I took advantage of the opportunity to fill the area with plasma. When he came after me again, screaming in rage and pain with a gaping hole where the power source had been, I incorporated this latest technique into my [Mystical Energy (Void)] technique. So long as I directed enough attention to it and gave it a bit of MP to keep going, it would now absorb energy and emit destructive interference at whatever was left instead of attempting to smooth it. Sosuke Aizen, though I would never know his name, came within range of the void aura and collapsed as what remaining soul energy he had was neutralized.
I hesitated to end him for a moment, then remembered that this was not a person. This was a soulless being created from thought power. Then I adjusted my aura to destroy that too, and the man lost cohesion with a ghostly wail. Only my power was allowed here. I could be overcome with brute force, but it would now require a level of energy several orders of magnitude greater than my own since my defense fed on what attacked it.
I glanced over at where Vegeta's body had fallen on the [Force Wall] to note that he too had faded and been replaced by a pile of shinies. The Madara and whoever the guy with the beard had been seemed to have died too, but the damn Senju had turned himself into a tree and was just fine without oxygen. There was probably enough carbon dioxide in there for him to regenerate, too. Did he even need that? He wasn't dependent on lungs now, so he was a problem. I gathered the loot on the [Force Wall] with telekinesis and shoved it in my inventory, then shifted my focus such that all I was doing was maintaining the said wall and gathering plasma just below it. If he could have bypassed the wall he would have done it by now, so I'd stay up here and play "fry the tree man." When he finally stopped moving I beat him with my shovel until he turned into loot.
[You've obtained the title: Light-Bringer!]
[By earning a title that spawned a legend, you've earned an extra title slot!]
I dismissed the [Force Wall] holding me up, then used [Flight] and [Telekinesis] to gather up the remaining useful items. The won notes from below the barrier were singed, but passing them through my inventory fixed that for all but the worst of them, which I destroyed. The pile of books all went in my inventory with the strange sword, flintlock pistol, ridiculous black and gold cape, and seed packet. I'd study them later.
[You gained a level!]
[You gained a level!]
[You gained a level!]
[You gained a level!]
[You gained a level!]
[Quest complete! Survive the Anime Attack!]
[You gained a level!]
[You gained a level!]
[You gained a level!]
[You gained a level!]
[You gained a level!]
[You gained a level!]
[You gained a level!]
When I left my Instant Dungeon I found a scene of devastation. It looked the city had been hit with an earthquake, a dozen tornadoes, a fire tornado, and then just for fun the sewers had backed up.