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Matt gave Liz’s hand a quick squeeze, dropped his [Bulwark], and blasted them back into the sky, some fragments of tentacle monsters caught in the updraft and joining their madcap pursuit of the elites.
Aster joined them en route, perched on a flying cloud and locking down the air around them for any of their enemies. Their first enemy glowed with a reddish-gold light and shot a [Mana Bolt]-like projectile that tracked them even as Matt sought to dodge. The blast broke through his initial [Bulwark] and was only stopped by a combination of [Diffusion Shield] and [Bulwark].
Once they reached it, the first elite barely even slowed them down, between Liz’s still-empowered spear and Matt’s accompanying [Cracked Mana Spear]. It exploded into rubble and essence, instantly filling up Matt’s spirit twice over as he directed most of the incoming essence directly into his core, and the rest into [Lesser Sacrifice]. It had taken lots of practice to properly allocate essence on the fly, but he’d had practice material to spare.
He spun in the air, launching Liz at the next elite like a discus while diving toward a second one in tandem with Aster. [Flamethrower] billowed out, engulfing the both of them in light-blue flames as he allowed Aster to convert the fire to ice-aspect and use it for fueling her own skills. Wind and snow cracked the golden hide of the monster and ice accumulated on its skin courtesy of [Glacial Strike]. By the time he was within melee range of the monster, teleporting past a bright red shield it tried to raise, the ice was thick enough that he could cast [Cracked Mana Trap] on it.
The detonation blasted a hole in the side of the elite, and Matt finished it off with his sword burying his blade into the beast up to the hilt and channeling a [Bolt] through it, then ripping it to pieces as he centered his Concept’s repulsion on his sword. The fragments of stone fell to the ground far below, and Matt used [Air Body] to quickly reposition himself near a pair of Liz-shaped beings of blood. One vanished and the other manifested itself as his girlfriend bathed in the blood of her former enemy, ending both her [Lesser Blood Clone] and [Blood Body].
[Lesser Mana Clone] was a difficult skill to control, normally requiring full concentration to manage, and [Lesser Blood Clone] was no different. However, Liz had learned that while in [Blood Body] form, she could have her clone either duplicate or mirror her actions with comparative ease. Anything else was still impractical, though they hoped once she got the hang of Concept duplication, she could manage more autonomy for less focus.
Hand in hand, they dove once more into the fray.
It took them nearly a week to clear off the landslide of monsters, as the moon had sent out a new wave of enemies in the skyscraper-sized ships once a day. Even approaching immortality, they weren’t quite able to go indefinitely without sleep, particularly with such exhausting combat, but they were able to get some rest between monster waves. It mostly reset Liz’s momentum, her buffs fueled by the deaths of enemies all needing to be constantly fed or wither away, but she also appreciated the amount of practice they provided her. If anything, each day was easier as the rift sent half as many spires with each barrage.
They weren’t quite untouched, of course. Matt had a few minor flesh wounds, nothing worse than a gash across his abdomen that would have needed a professional healer had Liz not been able to quickly stitch his organs back together with her [Lifeblood Manipulation]. Aster had a few broken bones that would take a couple weeks to heal without further medical attention, and Liz’s intestines were lightly perforated after she’d taken a barrage of quills to the gut at one point. But her own healing was more than enough to keep her upright and fighting.
Once no more pillars fell from the sky and they had killed all the monsters hidden in the ground, the three of them were forced to look up at the moon.
Flying up thankfully didn’t trigger the monster to throw more pillars of stone at them, but it did start to wave some of the smaller tentacles around the largest crack at them, throwing train car-sized stone pillars at them like the drone monsters did.
Thankfully, they had enough control over their flight to dodge everything, but it still left them with a serious issue.
“How do we kill that thing?” Matt asked through their AI.
He was currently sharing his vision of the boss with his AI, having enhanced his sight with [Telescope] and [Ranger’s Sight]. The two of them combined to let the trio see the boss even from their distant perspective.
The boss was thankfully not the entire moon monster but rather seemed to be the exposed heart of the moon, visible and reachable through the crack in the outermost layer of the satellite. It pulsed and wriggled even as the canyon leading down toward it wriggled with the stone tentacles.
Aster ventured her opinion. “Frankly, I don’t want to kill it. It can have space, and we can have the ground. It’s a victory in my books.”
Her tone said she was only half-joking, but Matt considered it even as they floated to the side to dodge an incoming pillar of stone.
Liz shook her head. “I hate to admit it, but you might be right. I don’t see how we can fight tentacles that big. Even if the biggest ones that sent the ships out don’t swing at us, the smaller ones guarding the canyon are hundreds of feet long and thick as a building. I just don’t know if we can blast through that much stone.”
Matt was still thinking things over when both women looked at him.
Offering up his idea, he asked. “Which do we want to try first? [Skewer], or [Arcane Powershot]?”
“[Arcane Powershot],” Liz answered. “I’m not risking my spear against that thing.”
Aster flicked her tail and huffed out a breath of air that vanished into the void. “He’ll need to stand still for so long, and we definitely can’t block any more of those spires if you’re tied up aiming.”
“Well, we’ll have warning,” Matt pointed out. “The minimum charge time isn’t longer than the travel time for the pillars, if we see an attack incoming I can just shoot off a weaker arrow and reposition.”
Liz shrugged, “It’s better than getting closer. Let’s see if we can make this work.”
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