I thought about using the advanced fireball, but both Alice and I were in the splash zone. It also didn’t help that I still needed time to properly power it up.

Using the spell now would be a waste, considering how many tests I put it through. It was looking like the fight might drag on. I needed to end it as quickly as possible.

I gave the spell a glance just to make sure it was still okay. It was burning dimly above us. Everything was in order. Even my arm was almost fully healed. The pink skin was a great indicator of health. I drew my sword from my inventory ready to attack.

Squirmy still in a rage dashed forward and lashed out with his clawed hands. I used the aura of my sword to block the in coming slashes. Then countered with a strike. My sword cut down on his shoulder drawing black blood.

His body was so dense that my aura coated sword did very little against him. Seeing my weak attack a tendril shot out of his body. I expanded the aura of my blade for a fraction of a second, widening the wound for a quick extraction and retreat.

The wounds I’d given him struggled to close. The tendrils were so fast that I could barely cut them down. The worst part was that my sword was struggling to get through. These were much denser than the ones from before.

The issue was that my aura was too weak. I needed more power. With no other choice, I fed even more Qi into the star pattern. This caused my aura to flare up. I wasn’t able to make more layers, but the raw power was needed.

This caused my aura to collapse and become more patchy. It broke down and reformed itself, as I tried to get it to form into proper layers. Getting it to settle was nearly impossible.

Each time the aura reformed, it managed to come back just a little more complete. My defense was garbage, but protection wasn’t what I needed at the moment. The only thing that would work was raw speed and power. With it I stood a chance.

Don’t. Get. Hit.

Apathy flooded my existence, as I tried to connect to Squirmy. There was a lot of awful things there. Memories of his victims and the truth behind what he had really planned for them. It made me sick causing me to almost get hit. I toned it down to the bare minimum I needed for my muse.

Focusing my aura, I was able to move the unstable energy to the parts that I needed. While weaving I powered my legs. When striking I powered my arms and weapon. No defense, just attack and weave.

With my perfect focus and my muse. I was able to dance around my opponent, while chipping away at the bladed tendrils and siphoning off chunks of null Qi. Slowly and persistently, I worked my way in. Once I was finally in striking range, I ran my blade through his gut.

He recoiled in pain holding his bloody wound. Enraged, he exploded in a rapid fire of jade fire bolts. With my increase in speed, I avoided them while siphoning off what I could. I found plenty of heat, momentum, wind, punishment, and what I would call harming aspects in his attacks.

Gathering everything up I condensed the aspects into a tiny ball. The system tried to pull out the aspects succeeding in ripping a few away. That was until I wrapped a red magic circle around it, allowing a fireball to form around the harmful energy.

Not only did it consume the aspects, but it gained a new attribute, turning the spell into something much more sinister.

The once red nova turned black with a blueish green core. I fired it at Squirmy. Squirmy shapeshifted his lower limbs into two several jointed ones and tried to side step my attack.

To bad for him that fireball was only a faint, as it had only contained half of the aspects I stole from him. The bug man ended up walking into the punishment infused delay fireball I’d put down to his side. It went off not only swirling around him in a dark greenish bloom, but also lifting his body into the air with the exploding force.

That was when I fired off another punishment fireball. This one lacking the harming aspects was only a dark orange. He took it in the chest causing it to expand into a fiery swirl.

The sudden impact sent him flying, landing on his back. His lower half was gone and his body was on fire. He rolled and shifted His flesh in an attempt to put out the flames.

It worked, but It was to late as his body was charred to a crisp. “Why can’t I heal!” He complained.

I smiled as I made my way over. “Punishment is a bitch.” There was a bounce in my step and my evil laugh came naturally.

It was too bad I was in this body, because it seemed like my maliciousness was lost in translation. To everyone present, I looked like a playful girl taking a stroll through a flower and bunny infested meadow.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“You bitch!” he tried to get up forming new limbs, but the damage to his body was too much. His flesh would no longer regenerate. Squirmy thought he could be reckless since his body would just fix itself, but that was going to be his downfall.

Especially when he feels all the punishment delay fireballs riddled through the boss’s body. The thought made me so happy. I couldn’t wait for the bonfire. It’ll be killer.

“Let’s see how you like it!” He lifted his burnt hand to try and blast me with his baby barf flames, but before he could get it out, I focused my disaster of an aura to my legs, and dashed forward, ramming my blade through his chest. Right through that tiny core fragment he called a soul.

Squirmy’s fake body turned into black dust. The boss screeched. Fixing my aura, I quickly rushed to my wife’s side and cut the tendrils holding her. I hugged her In my arms. We were of similar sizes, so unlike Luca, I was actually able to hold and comfort her.

I hated cutting our reunion short, but this was no place to celebrate. “We need to go.” I said, as I stacked two platform spells together spawning an air pillow once more.

Alice looked so weak. So hurt. Her mouth and arms were covered in blood. Did she bite her tongue? Why wasn’t she saying anything… oh. “That fucking asshole!” I clenched my fists as my anger rose. My soul felt like it was beating in tune with my heart.

I felt the echo grow in frequency, as it’s reverberations hummed in my chest like an angry beehive. For a second I thought I was having a heart attack, as my chest began to burn. Now wasn’t the time for distractions.

I nearly flew into a rampage, as one of the nearby pods cracked open revealing an Aku like avatar. She wore similar clothes to mine, but with a black and red color theme. She also had horns on her head.

The only thing that kept me from doing anything was the fact that I needed to get Alice to safety. Before Squirmy could get himself together, I helped Alice onto the pillow. Then stuffed a potion in her mouth. She knew what to do and began drinking it down.

I hopped on the nimbus beside her and decided to make it a little more comfortable by injecting cozy aspects into the spell. I immediately felt the pillow get softer and warmer. I hope Alice liked it.

We floated away just as Squirmy began to open his doll like eyes. He moved brokenly, as if unfamiliar with his new body. I wasn’t just going to let him get away with it.

Alice cried as her body stitched itself back together. I hugged her “I’m sorry! I know it hurts!” I cried. I wish I could wrap her in a chicken soup aura, but I wasn’t in the right mindset for that. The cozy aspects were easy because it was a pillow.

I’m so weak. If I was a real man she wouldn’t be in so much pain. Why can’t I control my emotions? Just enough to be able to heal her in a nice way.

“Izzy, you came. You’re here.” She cried.

“Of course I came. I’m sorry I’m late. I didn’t know where you were, so I was going to throw myself at the boss until it died, or I died.” I said.

“Your always so reckless. Please don’t throw yourself away.” She lightly scolded.

I nodded, “Yeah, of course. I’m sorry.”

Alice looked back to the boss with hatred in her eyes. “I wish I could have done more. That asshole deserves pain.” She spat.

“Do you wanna see something cool?” I asked.

My wife narrowed her eyes in that way that said, ‘what did you do now’ but nodded out of curiosity.

I stood to my feet readying the spell I’d been preparing for so long. It had been floating at my side the whole time. I fed momentum, wind, and heat aspects into it, as the power of the void flooded its containment runes. Seeing as they were so effective, I added punishment aspects directly to the fireball itself.

The red nova grew In size, as if it had been starving this whole time and was waiting for me to feed it. I took all the heat aspects from the heat stone, feeding them into the spell while injecting hydrogen into the fireball itself. It quickly grew into a large Solarball.

The yellow ball didn't stop there, as it expanded even more. That’s when I began condensing it. Keeping it at the size of a beach ball. The heat was so well contained that I couldn’t even feel it.

“Uh… Izzy, that looks super dangerous. Is it… supposed to shake like that?” Alice’s words made me smile.

It didn’t end there, as the spell greedily sucked up not only the heat and fuel I was providing it, but the air and ambient heat in the area. I could feel a cold chill run along my body, as the flame turned into a hot blue light. It was powerful—like a meteor spell, but much more compact and with way more kick.

The blue flame was self sustaining, as it drew in aspects on its own. The only thing keeping it in check was the magic circle I’d created. Even that was having trouble at the moment as the outer ring began to vibrate and strain.

“Izzy, it’s really pretty.” Said Alice.

Squirmy slowly made his way towards the edge of the boss’s head, gathering 100s of large bladed tendrils for an assault on us. By then it was too late. I released the advanced spell. Whispering it's name In the wind, “Greater Azureball.”

Slowly, It moved at the pace of a falling tree. Gradually, it picked up speed, as our nimbus pillow floated in the other direction. The boss’s mouth had just opened and released a cloud explosion of acid and poison, as it’s tendrils shot forward at the same time. Even it’s head lunged forward to try and attack us with its massive stinger.

It didn't matter as my Azureball burned right through the cloud, striking true and erupting in an explosion of white and blue flames. The flames expanded in a swirling mess. Sweeping and blooming across Squirmy’s head and what I would consider to be his neck.

As soon as the spell went off the rest of my spells activated creating and releasing over 100 punishment delay fireballs all throughout Squirmy’s back. The giant bug was lit ablaze, as most of his body erupted with violent flames.

I wished it was enough to finish him off, but it was nowhere near the damage needed to bring him down. Since he was a shapeshifting type of monster, head shots wouldn’t work here. It didn’t matter right now, Alice was the priority.

Even with all that, the monsters HP bar had only gone down about 8%. It wasn’t enough. This meant I needed way more attack power. This really sucked, especially since my Qi was down to 27.74%. I wish I could leave for another week of training, but that would require me to almost die in a safe and hidden area.

At the very least Squirmy had been lit on fire with burns that could not heal, and that wasn’t something he could easily fix.