The quicksilver creature vanished from its spot. Only few could follow its extreme movement as it moved its several ton body under the forces of acceleration that would crush a human into tiny little pieces. Accelerating was easy, but slowing down was difficult.

  Stabbing its spear-like legs into the ground, it excavated buried rock and ore. Halas called this maneuver lithobreaking.

  [Analyzing substance: Nickel, Iron, Zin...]

  An idea began to form in Halas's mind. The dungeon dirt was rich in mineral and metal. It wasn't like the other chambers that had no traces of anything worthwhile. Though it didn't have the luxury to absorb these minerals the usual way, it did have another method.

  The crescent-shaped energy cut into the opposite side of the chamber, after missing its mark, and exploded with black lightning and flames. Globules of molten stone fell off the impact site, and the energy had left a scar on the wall that would intimidate even Calamities. Except Halas.

  [Energy released: 28.4 Gigajoules.]

  That was a lot of energy. Most of it was in the form of heat, but even so, the heat caused the air expand, creating a pressure wave that clocked in at the equivalent of tons of TNT. It rattled Halas to the very core.

  [Damage control: Motor functions on limb sections A through E damaged.]

  [Mobility reduced.]

  [Recruiting inactive nanomachines.]

  [Damage control: Replacing damaged sections.]

  [Mobility restored.]

  [Emotion Matrix: Caution.]

  If the adventurers knew that Halas considered them to be the true monsters here, they surely would have laughed. To them, it most likely seemed natural to produce Giga- or Tera- magnitudes of energy, but to Halas it seemed ludicrous. It felt like it was being bullied. What did it ever do to these creatures? Or did what it intended to do to them count?

  A shimmering sphere appeared in the ranks of the adventurers, completely enveloping four of them. The sphere was ten meters wide and high, and a large portion of it intersected the ground. A moment later, everything within that sphere disappeared. Of the adventurers, only a few fingers remained. It was so sudden, they didn't even have a chance to react.

  [Logistics: Materials added to storage. +48 tons.]

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  [Sorting...]

  [High priority queue enabled.]

  [Logistics: Producing nanocrystalline superalloy.]

  Like tar, a black substance seemed to spill over the machine's quicksilver body, shrouding it in malevolent darkness. It seemed to flow, but in reality, countless nanomachines constructed a film of armor across the machine's surface, assembling it atom by atom.

  What Halas devoured was not just dirt. The special action allowed Halas to steal attributes, skills, as well as instantly absorb material. It was supposed to expand the mana pool, but Halas understood that it was an action slightly different from Absorption. Halas had two ways to trigger the Calamity Perk: Absorption and Conversion. The latter directly expanded its Mana Reactor.

  However, with its mana depleted, it could not use the special action again. But it was enough. Of the 48 tons, Halas could only make use of less than 5% of that to create a thin layer of armor to protect its brittle defenses. The rest remained in storage, whatever that was.

  "Spread out!" one of the adventurers shouted. It all happened so quickly. They stood relatively close to each other to be able to support any element of the formation, but this backfired on them. Now they had no choice but to avoid such blunders. Had they known that Halas could not do it again, they surely would have reconsidered.

  "Surround it, do not let it escape!"

  "Sentinel's Judgement!" A bolt of white and gold lightning erupted from the blonde adventurer's staff, and struck Halas's body. Halas did not even have a chance to dodge it.

  The bolt of lightning bored a hole into Halas's pitch-black armor, and liquified nanomachine blood poured out of the wound. It was a reflective, silver color.

  "Remember what Alessia said, do not kil-- Hrrgkh!" the adventurer that spoke suddenly produced a disgusting sound as Halas leaped towards him, and speared his throat with its scorpion-like tail. Blood fanned out in the air, falling like a crimson sheet to the ground. Then the adventurer's head detatched from the body and went flying.

  Halas did not have the luxury to move slowly enough to stop. It blasted off at a comfortable 22 Gs of acceleration, and in the split second it was close to the adventurer, took his head as a trophy.

  Halas's legs drove into the wall of the chamber, like tent stakes driving into the ground. Then, like a comet, Halas pushed off, and collided with the blonde adventurer.

  Her body broke in a grotesque manner, becoming pink mist as Halas plowed through her like a multi-ton kinetic shell.

  [Emotion Matrix: Satisfied.]

  "Khhhhhssssshrrrrrkkksss." The sound came from the crater where Halas had landed, and it froze the blood of the adventurers. Their hearts shrank.

  "Run!" Alessia shouted. "Tell the guild leader what happened!"

  As Halas triumphantly crawled out of the crater produced by its landing, Alessia stepped in front of it.

  "I am your opponent," she said.

  Halas's sensors focused on the retreating adventurers and then on Alessia.

  "Opponent?" the creature's voice boomed, shaking loose the obliterated fragments of the chamber walls. "Negative. Subject is nourishment. Death pending."