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1199 Words
But Matt had still done his job.
A thigh-thick shard of ice took the bird in the head. Unlike his hail, this attack was hardly diminished by the incredible heat, and cut a furrow into the face of the monster.
Then, as the boss was turning its attention to Aster, Liz came in with an oversized axe that thunked into the skinny leg as if it were a tree.
The scream was ear-shattering as the boss stumbled. Another wash of flame cascaded out in an expanding circle and hit Matt and Liz. They were close enough to take damage, but this wasn’t the first time they had been badly burned, so they continued to fight.
Luna’s training had prepared them for this.
Keeping his breath held, Matt swapped places with Liz the second she removed her axe. He intercepted the [Fireball] that the monster had aimed at her with a swing of his own blade.
The explosion of a partially charged [Mana Charge] and [Fireball] colliding caused a shockwave that sent Matt tumbling, but a second scream echoed out as Liz took a swing at the other leg.
The flaming ostrich fell to the ground and started to glow as it let out a piercing wail of pain.
As the heat in the room increased, Matt felt the boss’s Concept infusing the fire, making it all the more deadly.
The wing that Matt had damaged with his first attack knocked Liz back, but a shadow-covered Aster stood in the open and screamed.
If she had been a wolf, the cry would have been majestic, but since she was a fox, it was too high pitched and warbly to be anything other than amusing.
What wasn’t funny was the weight of Aster’s cold Concept.
Aster rejected the bird’s reality of heat and fire and replaced it with her own.
His bond’s Concept of absolute zero clashed with the Tier 9 sub-boss’s own fire Concept.
Fire and ice. The eternal cycle of everything without essence.
There was a moment where the two powers were in balance, but with a flick of Aster’s tail, the tide changed, and the fire went out.
The room, which had been charred and blackened, was instantly transformed into a winter wonderland. Stone shattered and wood cracked at the rapid temperature change, destroying the objects around them.
Liz was closest and brought her axe down onto the neck of the stunned bird.
A torrent of essence rushed into Matt, but as he was still a peak Tier 6, it spilled out of his spirit like an overfull glass.
Aster wobbled two steps before using [Heart of Power] on the corpse of the monster. A ripping sound was clearly audible as the chest of the monster ripped out, and a head-sized heart hovered in front of Aster as she tore into it.
As his bond feasted, Matt hobbled over to Liz, who was working her left arm in a way that told him something was wrong.
His AI said it was nothing major, but he still asked, “How’s the arm?”
Liz grumbled, “It’s the armor. A piece got bent, and it’s sticking halfway extended.”
“Are you okay to continue?”
Liz was about to answer when Matt spun. There was a ripple of power from Aster, and Matt felt her mana pool grow slightly.
“Really?”
Matt was honestly jealous. That was the second time the upgraded effect of [Heart of Power] activated and gave his bond a permanent boost to her cultivation.
Liz noticed and laughed, asking, “Was the boss good?”
Aster pranced over, and around the last mouthful of heart, said, “It was like spicy chicken. Let’s kill it again.”
They took an hour to rest and recover, with all of them using [Endurance] to its fullest. Aster had used most of her willpower to break the boss’s Concept and she would need the rest of the day to actually replenish that well of power. Matt was still unable to cast [Ranged Heal] and speed their breakup, as his maximum mana pool was still 20 mana short of the spell’s initial cost. He made a note that they needed to buy copies of [Ranged Heal] for Liz and Aster. It was dumb of them to rely on Matt’s endless mana when he didn’t have the mana to cast lifesaving spells.
None of them wasted any time. As Liz hammered her armor back into shape, Matt used their perch to observe the entire city, and record its layout for the rest of their delve.
When they were ready to move on, they decided to spend some time clearing more of the city before moving onto the massive bridge that crossed the bay.
They didn’t want to have to retreat through enemy attacks, especially with Matt no longer having a flying device of his own. As they killed more of the orcs there was a sharp increase in the number of assassins but as long as they moved slowly Aster was able to smell the precursor to the transformation and ambush.
While they were all a little worse for wear, they killed enough of the patrols that they were unable to find any other squads, even when using the drones to scout for them.
They carefully laid out a retreat path, then moved forward to cross the bridge.
Before they even set foot on it, the water started to rumble and crash. A massive, whiskered water serpent wrapped around the bridge and screamed at them. Its black, iridescent scales shined with hues of green and purple, and its deep, golden eyes glowed with anger.
The monster’s power felt just like the flaming ostriches had. This was another sub-boss at the peak of Tier 9.
A jet of water tore a furrow at them. While the bridge was unharmed, the cobblestone path they were walking upon was ripped to shreds.
Matt pulled back with Liz and asked, “Can you handle this monster?”
Liz had a major weakness to water, after all.
If the monster mingled its water with her blood, she’d lose control of the element long before the reverse happened for the monster. After all, it had an entire ocean to pull from, while Liz was far more limited in the amount of blood that she could carry around.
Liz nodded. “I’ll be limited, but I think we can take it.”
Aster yipped, “Let’s see if snake tastes as good as chicken!”
Matt was more reticent. “We pull back if we don’t think we can win. We already learned a lot, but we aren’t in perfect shape. Better to pull back if we need to. Formation three and priority two.”
That meant Matt would be acting as a hybrid tank, but they would pull back if they didn’t make significant progress on the monster in the first two or three minutes of the fight, or as soon as one of them felt that they were in danger.
It was one of the more conservative formations that Luna had drilled into them, but it was exactly what they needed right now.
- Writer
