An already chaotic fight further devolved with the boss joining the battle. Now, not only did the monsters need to watch out for the enemy rankers, but they also had to be on the lookout for two High-D Rankers fighting in their midst.
Speaking of the two High D-rankers, Drax, who had been slammed into the dirt, quickly lost his smile as he stared up at the green menace. The small scuff that he had done to the thing's chest had disappeared, indicating its regenerative capabilities. Needing to move on with the fight, Drax quickly switched from enhancing his body with strength to a general enhancement, allowing him to keep up with the monster by increasing all his physical aspects.
In response to seeing that its punch hadn't done much to the scaled figure, the monstrosity tried to keep pummeling the dragonkin. Drax, obviously not wanting to keep taking a beating, activated one of his techniques.
“Light like Ash.”
The dragonkin was briefly surrounded by ash and then, in a speedy dash, moved out of the hole he had been in and, with another quick motion, unsheathed his long sword and shield, stabbing forward and piercing one of the monster's biceps. The green aberration, who had already punched the ground, noticed upon lifting its fist that the dragonkin was no longer there. Then, upon feeling the stab on its bicep, it looked only to find the dragonkin standing before it. Then, Dan and everyone involved learned another of the monstrosity's abilities.
In a bright flash of blue light, its large hands grasped for crystalline long swords that appeared out of nowhere. It didn't even take a second for the swords to appear before the monster was already rushing at Drax, who had to parry and block with his sword and shield against the flurry of attacks.
As the two high-rankers moved around, slashing and parrying, the rest of the fight wasn’t going well for the green skins. They were still outnumbered and being slowly worn down by Dan’s monsters. The cardinals were the main game changers as their renewed harassment of the green-skin casters was letting Dan’s own casters take down the enemy melee combatants.
Additionally, it turned out that the rogues weren't great at fighting against multi-limbed creatures, and the centiblades gave them a good what for. One by one, the enemy green skins were falling though they were still able to take out one or two of his own monsters. Many of these casualties were to the cardinals. The squadron was now down to 80 of the 101 original birds. It didn’t seem that bad, but considering the boss was still rather healthy, Dan wasn't so sure.
The fight between the D-rankers was getting intense, and Dan was getting a bit worried about Drax. It was obvious that that warrior didn’t have much practice against combat with a four-limbed menace, and he was struggling to keep up.
Drax, feeling the pressure, decided to do something that might hamper the regenerative effects of the boss.
First, he activated another of his techniques, yelling “Lacerating Slash!” his sword glowing white with power before he swung it at the monstrosity. It was the first time he had used the ability against the aberration, so it had no idea what to expect and attempted to block it. It succeeded because of its strength, but the power of the technique was unexpected enough that it was pushed back, giving Drax a quick rest, which he used to charge up his innate ability.
Quickly recovering from its short delay, the four-armed goblinoid charged at Drax once again. In response, Drax waited until it was close enough before opening his mouth unleashing a torrent of flames upon the boss. The response from the creature was instant, as everyone heard its roar of pain.
When the flames cleared, Drax and Dan saw that the fire had been very effective, and it was having some trouble regenerating, which was precisely what Drax had hoped for. Since it was confused by finding this new weakness, Drax took his chance, moving forward again, activating two of his techniques one after another.
“Burning Flames!” This technique caused flames to flutter into existence around his sword and was followed up by “Piercing Thrust!” as the dragonkin pointed his flaming sword forward and was pulled by it, quickly covering the last few feet to the monster.
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His sword pierced the thing's chest, causing it to roar in pain and wildly slash at Drax to make him back off. Pulling back, Drax was happy to see that the hole wasn't healing at all, and he had finally done some truly permanent damage to his foe.
The battle around the two High D-Rankers continued as they fought. Smoke, dirt, dust, and everything else still permeated the air. The green skins were on the verge of getting wiped out, though they had managed to deal some decent damage to his monsters. At some point during the battle, the casters had switched from elemental attacks to solely kinetic blasts, which completely outdid the centimentalist's own attacks.
In the enemy ranks, the first group that had been wiped out completely was the rogue goblins. They couldn't handle all the different blades coming at them from the centiblades and had been quickly torn apart. Then, with the rogues out of the way, the centiblades engaged the hobgoblins, though not before tearing into the orcs and slicing them apart. They eventually also moved along with the remaining centibulkers to deal with the mages with the support of the centimentalists. Their charge had caused them to take some casualties as the hobgoblins and orcs had gone out in blazes of fury, uncaring of their wounds.
Sadly, the mages weren’t as easy to take down, and Dan’s forces ran into their shields. The green-skin casters had combined to work as one machine, and with death at their doorstep, they were burning all they had to in order to stay in the fight and take out as many of his monsters as possible. And when Dan said they were burning, he meant it literally. He wasn’t sure what they had done, but the casters were literally being consumed by pinkish flames that burn away at them. So, surrounded by a pinkish shield that had lost all its blue coloration, the casters sent out waves of force that slammed into his monsters, tearing many of his unarmored centiblades apart since they were the first to arrive.
It would take a bit of time for his monsters to break through the combined shield, but they should eventually get to it, and hopefully, enough of them would remain that they would be able to put up a decent resistance against the boss.
The shield situation was also not being helped by his retreat of the cardinals, who were rather good at tearing into the shields of his enemies due to their great numbers. The order had been possible because the spiders and squirrels had retreated before the weird aura thing came about, and the bats did so after the explosions. He was keeping them in reserve since much of their energy had been spent. However, he had sent some bats to relay an order to the flaming cardinals. Dan wanted to keep as many of them as he could alive in order to use their fiery attacks against the green aberration. Something they had quickly gone to do as they joined the fight against the aberration along with Drax, who had been keeping the thing busy as his flaming sword managed to score some hits here and there. With the addition of the cardinals, the aberration was quickly being burned, halting its regeneration further. However, it also meant that the thing had more targets, and it swung its sword, slamming them into his birds, each swing strong enough to kill with a single hit.
The aberration didn’t look anywhere as dead as Dan had hoped. It still had plenty of energy left and apparently just as many tricks. Since, in another flash of blue, one of the swords was replaced by a plain-looking crystal staff. The thing looked like a normal wooden staff except it was made out of blue crystal, not wood. The color was then emphasized as the staff glowed a light but rich blue like the color of the sky, and in a flash, the swords of the aberration were covered in frost. The change in temperature was immediate, and Dan could even spot the small puffs of cold smoke dispersing from the swords. Even more annoying, the aberration itself was also covered in frost, and the cold spread over the ground as the monster admitted this cold aura that brought down the temperature in the area.
There was a whole second where Drax and the aberration just stared at each other after its trick, and then it was broken in unison, both dashing forward and clashing once again. Except now, every time that Drax managed to strike a blow using the cardinals as a distraction, the fiery sword didn't do as much damage as before. In fact, Dan could see from up above that now the flames were being someone smothered by the frost, letting aberration regenerate once again. The process was low, but it was still happening, which was not good.
Dan needed the fight with the rest of the green skins to end so his monsters could help Drax in his battle. As such, he ordered his bats to fly in once again and blast the casters in one go in order to overwhelm their defenses. The bat's mana wasn't fully recovered, but he needed more monsters in the fight against the boss. There was no way that Drax had as much mana as the monstrosity, and it would only be a matter of time before the dragonkin stalled.
Dan imagined that the knight was no longer using the rest of his techniques in order to focus all of his mana on enhancing his power so he could keep up and slightly surpass the monster since it was the only way for the fighter to deal a bit of damage.
Thankfully, when his bats arrived, half of the green-skin casters were already down, their bodies consumed by the pinkish flames. It wasn't long after their arrival and unleashing of their Sonic Resonances, which combined to an even greater level that the enemy shields broke apart under the magical sound waves. With the shields down, the centiblades finally got their blades on the green skins who attempted to bring up their personal shields only for them to be sliced along with their bodies by the sharpened blades of the centiblades.