Chapter 106 Perdition.
Edward launched forwards with near blinding speed and moved to land the opening strike. The monstrosity reacted just as fast and attempted to cut through him with its right handed armblade. Edward turned his swing to meet the attack blade on blade. The monster’s attack was arrested by the meeting of forces. Edward’s arm almost buckled under the strain but his seventeen levels and nearly thirty years of experience and training prevailed.
The monster pulled its right blade back to strike with its left causing Edward to half spin to catch it with his own. Lenna moved in and attempted to sever the armblade that was retreating from its exchange with Edward while the second was being busied. Her strike came down as hard as she could. The armblade was forced low and the monster shifted from the impact but its armor was too tough for even her magical sword to cut through.
“Reinforced defenses!” Lenna called after the exchange. She could tell from the lack of substantial damage that the creature was using some kind of internal magic to make itself more durable. If the defenses spread to more than just the insectile parts she had no idea.
Edward had to jump back after the monster tried to take a bite out of him. It was then that he realized what the black fog was doing. “Slow field!” He called. Even though his voice was heard by the other three it sounded muffled as the shadow fog muted all sound. He had managed to escape the potential instant death of getting caught in a basilisk’s jaws but only by a hair’s breadth. The fog had slowed his movements. The longer he was near the monster the more it slowed him. At his current level of suppression he could still fight relatively fine but if the suppression continued to ramp it would become a problem very quickly.
As he jumped back he realized that the shadow fog continued to cling to him meaning he wouldn’t get to simply dive out and back in repeatedly to bypass the negative effect. “Slow persists!” He informed. His voice was less muted because he was no longer in the field directly.
As soon as Edward had jumped back Kahtesh had opened his mouth and lanced a lightning bolt into the monster’s head. The bolt would have simply punched through the falling shadow hide and fried the creature’s brain but the small blue scales redirected the lightning bolt in every direction except towards the eyes. The scent of burning flesh quickly drowned out any other smell in the small cavern of which they fought.
The monster hadn’t even reacted to the blow which was a bad sign. Somehow the mad wizard, who had created the monstrosity, had found a way to allow it to maintain a connection to the entire body, while simultaneously preventing the feeling of pain from being transmitted through its nervous system. Isaac had vanished and was running along the side of the monster trying to find a good place to strike. He eventually decided on the side, right next to some blue scales that were likely there to protect some kind of important internal organs, and lunged.
Isaac drove his shadow enhanced blade into the creature’s thick hide and pressed with his entire weight. His angle was off and he got his blade wedged almost half a foot into the monster’s side. Its ribs had bound up his blade. The monster seemed to realize that it had taken an attack even if didn’t feel pain and kicked at Isaac. Isaac jumped backwards, leaving his blade in the monster’s side, narrowly avoiding getting another long gash.
Lenna danced with the armblade on her side and continually tried to cut through the joint on the insectile limb. She was making progress but as soon as the monstrosity had realized that fact it turned its full attention on her. She was immediately put on the defensive. The slow field had slowed her enough that she could only block with her flame and aura enhanced strength, meeting each attack with one of her own.
After every exchange the window of error shrunk. By the fifth blocked attack she realized that she was about to start taking hits. Edward appeared a few feet to her right and landed three quick hits on the creature’s front left knee. The cuts weren’t as deep as he would have liked but the move had succeeded in making the monster split its attention.
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One blade whipped out at Edward, the other at Lenna, the monstrosity’s mouth taking turns forcing them back with a snap of bone breaking jaws. Isaac jumped back in and yanked his sword free immediately before Kahtesh attempted to fry the creature again. This time the lightning bolt hit an unscaled part of the monster and its muscles started to twitch in odd ways.
Isaac dove back in and tried again. Once again his angle was off. He knew from experience that getting through Kahtesh’s scales wasn’t easy so he had been trying to circumvent them but after the second failed attempt he needed a new plan. ‘Should I go through its stolen eyes and scales?’ He asked Kahtesh but there was no answer. The little bone dragon hadn’t moved to answer at all. ‘I guess it doesn’t really matter now that they’ve been defiled.’ He thought.
Isaac, still basically impossible to perceive, moved around to the front of the monster where Edward and Lenna were barely keeping up as the fog continued to cling to them. Isaac touched Lenna’s back and took a step forward when she had and then a step back as she retreated. His hand never left her back as if they were doing some strange dance. He had been watching her move, watching her fight, for around a month now. After an untold number of hours of sparring together and the countless hours of staring at her, he knew instinctively what she would do and how.
Lenna felt the shadows that were clinging to her start to get burned away as Isaac poured death mana over her skin. His magic was more powerful than their foes as it was focused instead of being blasted out in all directions. As her speed increased she could tell that Isaac had pulled back from her but his magic’s intensity hadn’t diminished. She started counter attacking in between blocks and the monster started to get more and more cuts and gashes on its face.
Edward noticed out the corner of his eye Lenna speeding back up. “How?” He asked with some struggle as his body was being pushed to the limit to force its way through the thick layer of fog covering it. Lenna didn’t answer but simply started to press the attack even harder.
Isaac moved around Edward and towards the creature’s already damaged knee. He jumped to the side and mentally directed Kahtesh to target it with a lightning bolt. The little dragon complied. The lightning bolt punched through the monster’s knee, skipped off the scales on its chest and slammed into the wall. The knee buckled, granting the rest of the team an opportunity that none of them were willing to pass up on.
Lenna landed another powerful blow on the monster’s armblade joint, where its elbow would be, and followed it up with a slash across its right eye parting it in two. Edward only had enough time to make his own strike towards the armblade’s elbow on his side due to how slow he was at that point. Isaac moved quickly, his own shadows were too powerful for the monster’s fog so it merely rolled off him as if it were rain on off a duck’s back. He pulled a throwing spike out of his Inventory and drove it as hard as he could into the stolen dragon eye.
In less than two seconds the monster had been taken to a knee, taken a solid amount of damage to its main weapons, and lost both eyes. The trio’s, Isaac, Lenna, and Kahtesh, teamwork had meshed with Edward’s perfectly, most likely due to the high leveled warrior’s years of working with many different teams.
The monster didn’t howl in pain, nor did it flinch or whimper. Instead it struck out with all its strength in a paired attack. Its armblades moved outwards to their maximum reach and then snapped closed. Edward barely got his sword up in time to catch the attack. Lenna would have dodged and parried the attack but instead she moved into it and took it with her own sword. She knew that if she would have dodged then the armblade on her side would have struck Edward on the back.
Even though both warriors had blocked the attacks with all their strength they were still tossed into each other. Their backs slamming together with a loud clang of metal on metal as Edward’s illusion on his armor was forcefully dispelled from the impact. The monster struggled to regain its footing while continually pushing Edward and Lenna into each other with all of its strength. The only thing preventing Edward from getting dusted by Isaac’s death mana was the distance between them caused by their armors.
Isaac moved to the side and tried chopping into the armblade’s elbow like how Edward and Lenna had, on Edward’s side as that was the side he was on. He had gotten another two chops in before the monster made its next move. It shoved itself forward and pulled its armblades towards its mouth in an attempt to force the two warriors stuck in its grasp into its gaping maw.
Lenna turned and raised her feet. One foot was planted on the monster’s lower jaw and the other barely found purchase on its upper teeth. The shift in weight caused Edward to be forced downwards and the armblades scraped off his armor before firmly wedging themselves onto Lenna’s pauldrons. Edward rolled to the side as quickly as he was able. He wanted to get to his feet as soon as he could and cut off the armblade that Lenna had been hacking into but with the fog slowing him down he knew it wouldn’t be quick.
Lenna could feel her knees buckling under the massive strain and she knew that it was only a matter of time before the monster’s top row of teeth gave out under the force of its own armblades. “I seek atonement for my sins, I embrace perdition.” She grunted out and then tucked her arms and slammed her heels together.