162 Evolving Strategies

She had no proof that he was holding back. It was more of a feeling than anything else. Perhaps it was because he hadn't bothered to use the cannons that were coming out of his shoulders until the aerial shadows had started coming out. Or it could have been how he reacted instantly to each new threat she added. Or maybe it was because he wasn't trying to put his back to a wall and instead put his back toward the creatures coming at him instead. It could have even been the fact that it still had another trick up its sleeve with the shockwave thing.

But Altair was getting a very bad feeling about this whole situation as another shockwave burst through the room. The man didn't even look tired at all or desperate. There was no emotion on his face as he continued to cut apart her shadows like they meant nothing to him.

'This is bad,' she thought to herself as her mind began to race for ideas. She had only seen weapons be used so far. That shockwave thing could be some kind of Spiritual Energy attack, but she couldn't be sure. She still didn't know enough to figure out exactly.

However, there was one thing that she did know, this person or someone like them had deal with Number One. Number One seemed to be close to Renald and Renald had an amount of strength she couldn't overcome with numbers using her Garden, though she hadn't really tried and it was more of a feeling on that end.

Donel was also scary strong to her as well and she vaguely remembered Renald saying something about Number One being roughly as strong as Donel… Or maybe it was her imagination? She couldn't remember right now and she had other things to focus on.

She narrowed her eyes at the man that was slicing and dicing his way through her best Magic like it was an exercise routine. Whenever the arrows came close, he's make a shockwave to deal with them. The cannons were making short work of her aerial shadows as well.

There was really only one idea she had to make things harder for him at this point. It's just that one idea would make it dangerous to keep her Magic going if she wanted to save some to be able to escape later. Still, after checking and seeing that she still had about 600 buckets of Mana left, she decided she might as well give it a try. It was a level of difficulty that she hadn't been able to reach when she was training on her own.

She burned more Mana, easily consuming another hundred buckets all at once just to get going.

On all four corners of her Garden, threads thicker than a man came out from the corners. They grew and grew to be able to reach the center where the man was stilling slaying things without a care. Next, from within the enlarged threads, Altair created debris that the threads wrapped around with her Shadow Magic. They were random massive shapes as big as couches that were created.

Immediately after, half of the threads started throwing them at the android. They flew faster than the arrows and had a lot more mass as well, but it was unknown if the shockwave would be able to knock them aside should the android try and use it in defense.

The man reacted immediately once more. It dropped the weapons in its hands, the swords vanishing the moment they separated from his palms, and grabbed the first chunk that was tossed at him. He then swung it at the other chunks that were coming at him and began to spin while using the chunk as a weapon against the oncoming horde.

Altair's expression deflated as the man proceeded to use her own Magic against her Magic. She didn't consider that anyone would even try that. She hadn't thought up a way to deal with such a thing. She had, effectively, given him a better weapon to use against her horde. He had even stopped using his shockwave attack against the arrows as the couch he was swinging around was giving him enough time to bat them away just as he was batting away the horde.

She made things worse by trying to make them harder on him.

She was now drawing a blank on how to deal with this man. She claimed that she would get revenge for Din but she was finding herself completely lacking in ability to get that job done. Even if she threw herself into the fray right now she was pretty sure she would just get batted away like one of her minions. At this point she was just wasting Mana in a futile attempt at killing this man.

She felt frustrated, irritated, and pissed that she couldn't slaughter this man right now.

If she had more Mana she could afford to make a larger Garden. With a larger Garden she would have been able to add far larger threats to the man that he wouldn't be able to simple kill in a single swing. That might have been able to change everything about the situation.

But the problem was she didn't have more Mana.

She looked over at where the door to the main building would have been if she didn't have her Garden up. She knew where she could get more Mana. The very idea of it caused her to bite her lip slightly though.

The Mana Fog didn't seem to be able to get through her Garden so that was something positive about it, at least. That meant she could block herself out with it if she needed to, or at least she hoped so.

It was also her only chance if she wanted to try and deal with this man here and now though.

'I could just run,' she thought to herself. However, she shoved that idea aside immediately as she thought, 'Running here, running there, how long will I keep running?' If she could use the Mana Fog by breathing it in then she would have, potentially, infinite Mana. Even if the Mana Fog tried to attack her like it did before, she can just create a mini Garden around it when it tries to condense itself. Once she did that, it would be cut off from the rest and be unable to gather itself up to attack her. Thus, she would have disarmed it and would continue to be able to burn it as she wanted.

Or at least, that was her idea anyway.

Thus, since continuing to fight that man right now was pointless to Altair, she stopped sustaining her Garden.

All around them, the black walls, ceiling, the very room itself, along with the threads and shadow creatures, began to flake off in pieces. Each piece quickly faded into nothing like smoke in the wind.

It didn't take long for the doorway to become visible as the man continued to attack the shadows that were still fighting despite falling apart. They would last a few more moments before the residual Mana within the Magic was no more, which Altair was counting on to buy her time to dive down into the lower floors.

Altair dove through the doorway and was caught by two arms immediately. A1 and A3 were already standing there and had been analyzing the Magic. When they caught sight of their objective, they tossed their task aside and grabbed her instead of continuing.

A1 and A3 looked the exact same as A2. It caused Altair to realize she was up against androids. However, these ones seemed far more capable than the android that was made based on Liam. This was because she has seen A2 use weapons and that was her only category for ranking them above the Liambot.

They lifted her up, one arm wrapped around each of her arms, and carried her towards the stairs. The Mana Fog had wrapped around her leg gently before she was pulled away from it.

Altair ground her teeth in anger as she couldn't keep it from her face any longer. 'Three of them. THREE OF THEM?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!' She had a dozen insults for them within her head as she complained about the unfairness of her situation. She really didn't know how to deal with this situation, but she knew that letting them take her away was not an option.

Thus, similar to what she did before at… wherever she had been taken before, she formed extremely small threads on her fingers and brought them down, cross wise, towards the hands that were wrapped around her arms. She didn't know if this would work because the other one had a shield that prevented her from shredding him into cubes.

To her surprise, though, she cleanly cut through the hands that were wrapped around her arms and dropped immediately. The two androids seemed to take a moment to process what just happened as they lost their hands at their wrists.

Utilizing this momentary lapse of attention, Altair threw herself off the mezzanine and down to the ground floor. Since she didn't know where the ground was through the Mana Fog, she burned some Mana to reinforce her body.

The two androids reacted quickly, reaching their other hands out to try and grab Altair as she went. The only things they managed to grab were her shoes that came off her feet as she dropped down below. Since they failed to grab her, they decided to jump after her without hesitation.

When Altair hit the ground, she stumbled as she didn't expect it. However, she crawled in the direction she thought was the pond and where she felt that oppressive pulling sensation coming from. She then heard two things fall behind her. She couldn't see what they were but it caused her expression to darken when she heard it.

As she ran into a table with her shin and grimaced while sucking in air, she felt something wrap around her waist and yank her hard to the side. She cried out at the sudden attack from the unseen foe as she crashed through a sofa, knocking it over.

She was then pulled right through the window she was been sent through before, but it was now newly repaired… or was newly repaired until Altair went through it again. She only felt the glass shattering as she slammed through it while still getting pulled away from where she was.

The next instant, she felt herself surrounded by water.