While Nikola's cloak was still fluttering behind her, her feet finding the floor after her journey across the tower, the loan inhaled a massive puff of air.

Oh no. Now that the other person bearing the lion's mark was but a corpse reddening the floor, Katalyn was once again the only valid target for the one remaining lion, and Nikola had just finished using her final [Crunching Cleave].

Giga had abandoned his shield, so he couldn't raise it in preparation, nor would it be very helpful considering he and Phoenix were now against the wall, far from the bearer of the Mark of the Lion.

The beast exhaled violently, thousands of metal shards shooting out toward the Warrior and the Mage. Luke grabbed Katalyn by her uninjured wrist and initiated his [Sword Dash] straight toward the lion, tiny daggers sticking into the marble behind them.

Katalyn screeched, but quickly realized what was happening when the two of them shot forward and Luke punctuated his dash with a slash to the lion's chest.

A spray of arrows stuck into the feline's side, followed by two strong, focused arrows that were so deathly accurate that the second one split the first, pushing its arrowhead further into the creature's ribs.

"Over here, foul creature!" Phoenix yelled, trying to draw the boss's attention away from the two who were encroaching on its space.

It didn't work. The lion raised its paw and drew it back in preparation.

The wolf who had been dropped off in their midst was frozen there, watching his two party members expire. The archer's feet were fading away in a mist of tiny rectangles.

"HEAL THEM," Nikola half-growled-half-roared in the Healer's direction, a rumbling sound that threatened them into motion, eyes wide.

They began drawing a symbol in the air, complex and winding, just as the massive paw collided with Luke and Katalyn, punting them like dodge balls toward Phoenix and Giga.

Gold caught Katalyn coolly in a hug, protecting her from the impact just as the heal procced and both the Warrior and the Mage were engulfed in white light. Luke had no big strong man to protect him and slammed face-first into the wall.

"Oh thank fuck," Kata breathed as her health bar ticked back up and out of the red.

The angelic glow was so bright it bounced off Gold's armour and into his eyes, blinding him temporarily.

Luke peeled himself away from the vertical plane and whirled back toward their mutual foe, and when he turned, he saw that the boss's three eyes were set hungrily on the Mage. It backed up one step, and then two.

And then charged.

Unbeknownst to the Mage, who was facing away, and Giga, who was blinking the stinging whiteness out of his eyes.

Kata placed a tiny peck on the golden Warrior's cheek. "Thanks, big guy."

Nikola pushed off her heel and sped after it. She swiped her hand out and narrowly missed grabbing the closest of its three whip-like tails, in the hopes of slowing it down.

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Everything happened too quickly.

The Butcher tried to [Crunch] the creature's back leg, but the skill was still on cooldown and offered her a disappointing boop of rejection.

The realization that the beefy feline was surging toward both the Mage he said he would protect and his friend fell across Phoenix's face. He flashed from devastated to defiant in an instant.

"Giga, do not hesitate! Run toward my voice! You will make it!"

He took action with immediacy, but he didn't beat the predator that crashed into the wall so hard the shock wave knocked Luke off his feet.

A spray of blood climbed the wall, a web of cracks splitting up through the surface as well as the impact broke and then shattered the sturdy marble bricks. The sickening sound of two bodies' worth of bones being pancaked filled the room.

He didn't make it. Phoenix had tried to invoke the will of The World of Wills, but perhaps even he hadn't believed enough that the lion already on its trajectory toward his friend wouldn't succeed.

"NO!" The archer wailed brokenly, and nocked an arrow in his bow. He began furiously firing everything he had into the creature, arrow after arrow, skill after skill. The silvery lion's fur was summarily drenched in crimson and peppered with bolts, and Luke joined in on the onslaught, slashing and stabbing and cutting with all his might.

The two bodies thumped lifelessly to the floor when the boss pulled away from the crater it had crushed into the wall.

It was wounded. Their efforts were draining it of its life, but not fast enough.

They wouldn't be enough on their own. Something was tugging at the edge of Nikola's mind, urging her to remember, egged on by her rising feeling of uselessness. She was not useless.

She had seen so. Many. Players die. She had killed them herself.

Remembering make her ears ring. Looking back at anything from when she was a true NPC made her feel like a dagger was being driven into her skull, but also like she was being split apart into millions of pieces.

Everything she had done as an NPC, she had done mindlessly hundreds of thousands of times, even millions. Looking into any of it meant seeing the same scenario splintered across a million screens, all at the same time in a dizzying display of sight and cacophonous sound.

Her fingertips began to fray, pixels rising from where her hand and cleaver met. She had a different cleaver in some of the fights, and a different outfit as well; a dark set of armour, sporting shocks of red. She saw herself from outside herself, dancing around players and slicing them in the back, dodging attacks, weaving through parties of two, three, four, five.

She had an ability that exploded a red light outward, making anybody who got caught in its rays [Bleed]. She initiated most battles with it, placing herself in between as many opponents as possible.

She had a skill she used often, but-- visually, she couldn't discern its usefulness. Focusing on too many instances at once for additional information made a spike of pain bloom behind her eye.

The pain was getting to be too great, even for her. She could only choose one to look into enough to see what symbol she used to perform it.

The final ability she could see was extremely plain in what it did; a gory, cruel skill that would be perfect for rendering a foe useless.

If she could pull it off.