The System

CH- 34: The real monster.

    Run or fight?

The same two options pop into Tetsu's mind.

Run as I fight. He stuck with his original plan.

A cave imp steps forward, swinging its winged blade at Testu. The rest of the hoard was moments away from gliding in and joining the slaughter fest.

At a glance, Tetsu notes the hoard's positioning, then ignores them to concentrate on the imp up front.

Tetsu takes a step to the side. 'Tag-along,' he chants and guides the edge of the blade away from him.

The blade misses its target and slashes into the ground as the sudden pull over the blade forces the imp into a different stance.

It misses and gets pinned down by the human.

Tetsu moves his hands in unison. Stinger in each hand.

He etches two runes over the winged blade and the cave imp within seconds.

Using 'razor-edge' over the stinger, Tetsu sharpens and penetrates the rough hide of the imp. To seal the deal and make sure healing doesn't impede the rune, he also uses the skill 'etched-rune.'

As a precautionary measure, Tetsu also steps on the artifact's charcoal shards, releasing a cloud of smoke, impeding the cave imp's vision.

Tetsu never was the athlete kind. But the system, nay, mana, didn't require one to always fight with their physical stats.

One can fight with their mind and fight with his mind, he did.

An overthinker's mind always moves way ahead of their body, so Tetsu used it to move his body instead.

The wind works against them as it carries the smoke around the cavern. The farther-away imps got caught up in smoke, while the closer ones still landed nearby to spot Tetsu within the smoke.

An imp lands closer to Tetsu with its blade already aimed at his head.

'Pluck' rune activates over Tetsu's head. It pulls his head away to safety, toward 'fix-point,' the second rune etched at a distance over the cave's floor.

This was a two-in-one rune Tetsu created to complement one another. The 'Carrier Fly' and his skill 'Tag-along' were the inspiration for both runes.

Two runes that were created for one purpose. To help him move faster.

Before Tetsu's head smashes into the floor, he deactivates the rune over his head and activates two other runes over his feet.

With the 'Pluck' rune over Tetsu's feet, controlling his movements, his body bends and moves at an impossible angle, cartwheeling away.

Using the momentum and force of his sudden movements, Tetsu also uses 'tag-along' over the imp he had pinned down.

The pinned imp gets dragged along as Tetsu plans and releases it into another cave imp about to strike, knocking them both out of commission.

Along the way, he makes more runes, pulling and pushing imps onto one another.

Based on how Tetsu moved, pulled, and pushed the imps around, one would consider him a telekinesis user. But little do they know, Tetsu simply switched runes on and off with his mind to mimic the effect.

'Tag-along' required direct touch to activate, but once Tetsu touched the target, they followed him around by breaking every physical law—at least the physical law from back on Earth.