Corvayne moved forward to stand with Lady Blood Claw, not taking his eyes off the twisted form of the monstrous Bombshell as she... or it... flailed to get back up. With a gesture the creature was surrounded in pink light, though a moment later that skin was shed, one of thousands of layers of essence protecting the monster.
"Glad to have you back." He said as he watched Bombshell get back up, preparing his next attack. He huffed, feeling numbness roiling in his arms. He was trying to figure out how to ask LBC to set him up to kill Bombshell when both them moved - Lady Blood Claw whipped her hand forward and dozens of vines wrapped around the strings that had shot out from the misshapen form. A single graze was enough to kill them. Desert plants bloomed and fired vines around Bombshell's feet. Even as they were drained they regrew, roots forming as they fired off living missiles to ward off the essence sucking strings. Even so, Bombshell surged forward and punched Lady Blood Claw.
She took the hit, right to her face, and turned and grinned, giant flaming sword punishing the attack by cleaving through layer after layer of essence to hack one of the giant woman's legs off.
Corvayne saw that Lady hadn't dodged, evaded, or used some other trick to reduce how hard she had gotten hit.
The naked woman used one hand in place of her destroyed leg, slapping the ground to stay upright as she using the other to summon a blade made of sickly green energy and flung it. Corvayne recognized it as a standard Red Line Sect ability, trailing essence.
Lady Blood Claw and his own shadows worked in tandem to drag them sideways, dirt swirling as they moved. Lady Blood Claw took the moment the towering monster needed to re-orient itself to cast spells. The language was nonsense to his ears but he understood as she cast while using vines to slide them around, her link binding the roots coming from her with Corvayne's shadow hands.
Liquidskin. Magmatic Blood. Haste. Phantom Strikes. Protect. Eagle Eye. Second Wind.
Lady Blood Claw had to slow as more threads of essence snaked out from Bombshell, countering with more plants. Desert flowers bloomed and tumbleweeds sprang into the lines, snagging the essence stealing limbs. Corvayne felt those effects as a greasy layer of something covered him, he felt himself warm, and the world slowed down. At the same time, Bombshell was now facing them.
Using a hand in place of the missing a leg she charged again. When she closed she threw her leg out as she spun on her hand, the limb growing in a way that suggested she was drawing on some monster power. It never even made it to Lady Blood Claw, bone skewers shooting through the ground and locking it in place. Lady Blood Claw tore through the limb, though Corvayne could see the woman was shrinking and moving to regrow her limbs. He felt his eyes getting heavy and focused. He was almost there.
The now ten foot woman with sickly green skin charged at Lady Blood Claw, who took a barrage of punches then kneed the high-level monster in the gut. Vines tangled with essence strings and were pulled taunt as Lady Blood Claw stepped back and used some sort of new weapon skill to flash her weapon in an upwards, her sword positioned for a decapitating blow. Of course, it was just another layer that slid off to absorb the attack, Bombshell barely slowing as she tried to move around to get at Corvayne.
Lady Blood Claw moved fast, throwing up vines as she saw strings along Bombshell's fists. It threw her off balance, thankfully not grazing her as she managed to stand back up.
Bombshell however now had Corvayne as her target and flung out strands as she rushed forward. Through [[Unity]] Corvayne felt a connection and pushed what it was pulling, [Cross-Skill: Shadow Stealer] over to Preshe. She yelled as she launched the needed, and for a moment Bombshell turned and started to dodge, only for Gylwin in cricket form to slam into her ribs from the side, knocking the monster right back in the way of the glowing blue projectile. It wrapped the threads together as it moved through her, then stuck them into the ground.
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Corvayne moved forward and grabbed Preshe's weapon, and every bit of strength he had he pulled. It felt like grabbing a mountain but he kept pulling and felt Preshe and Lady Blood Claw put their arms on him and help, and Bombshell fought like a fish to get away, to try to untangle her own lines stuck to the needle. Then... something gave.
There was a horrible sound, wet tearing mixed with shrill screams, then a low moan as the threads started ripping through her layers, flakes of sickly essence splattering the desert and dissolving in oily smoke. Corvayne watched as the pods that made up Bombshell burst, taking with it parts of her flesh as they errupted into silvery clumps of essence, swirling as they escaped and flew off. He didn't stop though, sure of what he was doing as he grabbed the now dull strings and kept pulling hand over hand as Bombshell screamed and shrank...
Finally with one tug, the last silver line and small wisp was pulled into him, and the husk of what had been Bombshell fell to the desert, not much more then skin and bones.
Corvayne took a deep breath. "Got... got her." Then, bucking his normal track record, he just slumped and let Lady Blood Claw catch him.
"Yeah yeah." She said as she transferred him to a vine backpack. "I owe you for dragging my ass around."
"You're pretty light." he said, settling in. He heard a buzz and saw Spears and Rio were riding to them on a hoverbike. He waved.
Rio stopped the bike short. Spears frowned. "I was late, wasn't I?"
"By a couple minutes." Corvayne offered, finding something to smile about despite being exhausted. "Good to have you back."
Juggernaut came to pick them up, hull showing scars where Red Line Sect members had hit with their various blade techniques. Rio split off, citing she had to try to get the sect together. Corvayne guessed that also meant seeing if Dusky was dead for good. Lepin went with her, and both girls feelings were a jumble. Corvayne didn't pry more then needed with [[Unity]].
The rest of them drove through the desert, with airships still battling on the horizon, harassed by swarms of Three-Kings fliers. Dragons, Dragonflies, and even a large purple wolf thing with horns and wings traded blows with flying cultivators and grand ships.
Corvayne sometimes took pot shots at things that got too close, including swarming monsters from the floor, but after a while of driving it was just a lot of random bodies flashing by in spotlights or getting trampled by Juggernauts legs.. When he spotted a Dao Boy survivor they'd slow enough to help them on, which amounted to five people before they reached Neo Nashville and a traffic jam of people passing through the gate down to floors 42 and lower. It looked like the city had been trashed but the Three Kings monsters were moving in the other lane without bothering people trying to flee, and that was as close to order as the floor was going to get. Their passengers left to try to find friends and family in the snarl of traffic, or perhaps to just walk through the ramp to the previous floor on their own two feet.
Corvayne eventually got bored of looking at monsters, street lights, and the same billboard rotating through four ads as they crept by it at about twenty feet an hour. He took his queue from a hoverbike drawing near and slipped from the front gunner nest into the truck, waving at both Juggernaut's reptillian eye and Mosh who had an arm out of the window to better flip off the guy behind them honking.
Inside, Preshe was asleep next to Lady Blood Claw, blanket over them on the couch while LBC flicked through TV channels, many of them muted static. He met her eyes for a moment, and saw contentment. Some of which he wished he felt.
Bayou and her pets were in the cargo area doing a makeshift clinic to help Betty and Fred and her bunny heal their wounds. The bio-weapons thankfully could compress themselves to fit in the truck, though Juggernaut had balked for a bit at letting them on. Something about bio-weapon pride, perhaps. Bayou, somehow in tune with the truck, had given it scratches in a point under one of it's legs that made the thing purr. Or it could have been a rockslide, it sounded about the same.
He went around them to the kitchen, sitting down with Bell and Spears. Someone had been decorating with items from the sect that Corvayne eventually placed as Mosh's belongings. The ornate carved wood furnishings sort of clashed with the clean and basic lines of the kitchen, but he figured that was a project they could work on once they were out of an active warzone.
Speaking of warzones, Rio came in from the back, taking goggles off. Behind her, using a cane, was a Daoboy who could have been Corvayne's clone, dusty clothes, cloak, and a black crystal mace with a wood haft.
It wasn't Corvayne's father, unless he had aged backwards then swallowed an entire bottle of Wicks anxiety pills. Even if he couldn't trust his memories he had confirmed with Spears that other people called his father 'intense' or 'scary'. Corvanye could feel, looking through his essence lense, that his double had been strong but was just slowly knitting himself back together. His shadow hands waved, usually a good sign.
Still, he felt a connection with [[Unity]] that formed like a steel wire, solid and real as the figure smiled. "Brother, we meet at long last."