Once Annabelle had blasted the door open, we all charged into the room to engage the cultists on either side. Tiff and three of her teammates, along with Annabelle, went left. I went right with Achmed, his two guys, the other women from Team Spice.

We caught them by surprise but they were armed and ready for us, and recovered quickly. A fierce hand-to-hand fight began. I tossed some area buffs on the others then let them fight while I took stock of the room.

System: You know Thaumaturgy

That was quick. Maybe seeing so many people using it at the same time accelerated my already fast learning speed.

As soon as I got the new skill a flood of information raced through my head. I knew what was going on. I knew what we had to do.

I used the custom power I’d created by synthesizing Arthur’s telepathy power with some other abilities and established a mental link with Tiff and Achmed. Fortunately, telepathic communication was much faster than verbal, so we could pack a whole minute’s worth of conversation into just a few seconds.

Me: Hey, it’s Daniel. Yes, I’m in your head.

Tiff: What the hell? Telepathy too? For fuck’s sake.

Achmed: I won’t ask.

Me: Listen to me, we don’t have much time. I know how to stop this.

Tiff: How do you—

Me: It doesn’t matter how I know. I just need you to trust me. Those tesla coil things are feeding off the life force of those cultists.

Tiff: I’d already guessed that much.

Me: Destroying those coils is the key, but both of them need to be done at the same time, and it has to happen before they complete the summoning ritual.

Achmed: Or else?

Me: You don’t wanna know.

Tiff: Two teams, two quests, two coils. I get it now.

Achmed: So we were meant to work together.

Me: You two need to take down those coils but it has to be done at the exact same time.

Achmed: Piece of cake.

Me: I wish.

Tiff: What’s the catch?

Me: That guy on the far wall is the cult leader. He’s cast a forcefield between us and them. And...he’s a named NPC.

They were both team builders, they both had All Can Be Revealed. I was sure they knew what I meant by that.

Tiff: I see.

Achmed: Let’s just focus on taking down that forcefield or a lot of named NPCs are definitely going to die.

Me: Leave that to me.

Achmed: How will you...you know what? Never mind. I trust you.

Tiff: I suppose I have no choice but to trust you too.

Me: Get in position and wait for my signal. Annabelle and the others can handle these goons.

Achmed: Copy that.

Tiff: Let’s do this.

It was up to me. All I had to do was take down the bearded guy to lower the shields. I felt like Obi-Wan on the Death Star. Unfortunately, the ten cultists flanking him had created a wall of people between us. Fine. All I had to do was take them down first. Wait, didn’t Obi-Wan die on the Death Star?

Then I heard something, or I thought I did. A faint rustle behind us. I looked back but didn’t see anything. Could’ve sworn I'd heard it.

Screw it. Time to go full out.

I turned on my Holtzmann shield and copied a few powers. Then I used my custom versions of Jane’s and Kay’s powers to blink over to the other side of the forcefield and unleash omni-do upon their sorry butts at superspeed. With my elvish knives I became a spinning, swirling, slashing emissary of death.

Constantly moving, I took a page from Jane’s book and kept blinking around, popping in and out of the fight like a blur. I was focussed completely on offence, trusting my shield and speed to keep me safe. The one time they managed to land a hit on me with one of their serpentine knife but it bounced harmlessly off my shield. I hate to sound braggy, but those poor buggers didn’t stand a chance.

I dropped the superspeed once all ten were on the floor to conserve mana, then turned my attention toward the named NPC Duke Driskol, Head Cultist. I could only assume Duke was his actual name and not a title. I tried to picture what he would look like without the lanky hair and crazy eyes, the man he was before being twisted into a cult leader, but came up blank. All I could see was a cultist that I wanted to kill.

I leapt onto the dais and lunged at him with my knives, but they bounced off an invisible force field before I could reach him. So he was keeping multiple force fields going, huh? Tricky bugger.

I tried a few more slashes, but his force shield seemed impenetrable. A gap opened in the scraggly hair on his face as he smiled, revealing crooked, yellowed teeth.

So that’s how he wanted to play, huh?

Fine.

If I couldn't get through the force field physically, I'd just have to do it another way.

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A bubble of swirling color appeared around his head. His hands went up, reaching into the dark, airless Void I’d enveloped him in. I slashed at his body, but the shield was still up and my knife bounced off harmlessly.

He lurched back, staggering, but I kept the Void around his head, suffocating him. I slashed again, still no luck.

He dropped to his knees. One more slash, and this time my blade didn’t bounce off but left a deep slit across his chest. His shield had dropped.

He instinctively lowered his hands to cover the wound that now blossomed with crimson. My knife sliced again, this time disappearing into the Void bubble. I felt it hit something soft but solid and there was a moment of resistance before my blade cut right through and passed out the other side.

He slumped to the floor. I dispelled the Void and saw him lying there, gasping for breath with his hands now clutching his own throat in a futile effort to keep the blood from pouring out of the wide gash I’d opened in it. He wasn’t dead, but it was only a matter of time.

I looked down at him, slumped against the back wall in an ever-expanding pool of red. This must’ve been what I looked like from Flint’s perspective, only he’d killed me instantly when he severed my head from my body completely. I had just severed his jugular so he wasn't dead. Yet.

Oh man.

“This isn’t because I don’t think you deserve to die,” I said, then healed him. Just a little. Just enough so he wouldn’t die but not enough that he could be a bother anymore.

As I crouched over him applying the heal, I noticed something glinting amid the blood that soaked his upper body. He was wearing something around his neck. I poked at the glint and found a thin chain, so I grabbed it and pulled. The chain broke, and I discovered on the end of it a small, metal hand and a fancy-looking key. Into the inventory they went.

I flicked the blood off my knives and sheathed them, then turned around to see what was happening with everyone else.

They were still holding their own against the cultists near the door. Half the bad guys were down, but so was one of Tiff’s team. Achmed and Tiff had both moved closer to to their respective coils on either side of the room, and both of them were watching me with strange expressions. I suppose what I’d just done must’ve looked a little odd from their perspective.

The cultists surrounding the coils looked in rough shape. Their faces were wrinkled and shrunken, like overripe peaches that had been left sitting on the counter too long. They didn’t appear to have much life left to suck out, which probably meant the ritual was nearly over.

The cultists around the magic circle were still swaying and chanting, and the embryonic demon taking shape in the dark energy sphere was still growing. I could see limbs now, just starting to wriggle. But that was fine, my job was to take down the shield so Achmed and Tiff could shut down the ritual. Now it was their turn.

I reopened the telepathic link and told the other team leaders to get ready to take down the coils.

Me: Okay, destroy the coils but do not touch the cultists.

Achmed: Why not?

Me: Because the apparatus will automatically replace them with the nearest life forces, and that would be us.

Achmed: Right, just the coil. Got it.

Me: It has to be done at the same time. Attack on three, okay?

Tiff lashed out with her whip, wrapping it around the top of the coil like Indiana Jones preparing to topple the statue of Anubis in the Well of Souls. She set her feet, both hands on the whip’s handle. She nodded at me. Achmed merely held out one hand in front of him while the other gripped his mace. He nodded too.

Me: One. Two. Three!

Tiff yanked hard on the whip and Achmed shouted “Water Well Wasteland!” at the top of his lungs. Her pole began to topple while the floor under his turned into water. One more yank and Tiff’s came crashing down to the floor at the exact same moment when the ellipsoid on Achmed’s pole had sunken to his level and he swung his weapon at it crying “Monstrous Mace Mash!” Both devices shattered, exploding in showers of sparks at the same time.

Then things got hectic.

The moment the coils were destroyed the dark energy stopped flowing from the cultists and they all slumped lifeless to the floor. The spinning magic circles disappeared as the dark energy arcing across the room cut out, and the energy sphere containing the demon abruptly vanished. The twitching creature inside it fell on the top of the platform with a squishy thump.

The twenty cultists who encircled the platform all wailed and bowed their heads to the floor, prostrating themselves in front of the demon they’d summoned. Well, almost summoned.

We’d stopped the ritual before it had a chance to finish so the summoned creature had not fully formed yet. I had a hard time believing it was a demon at first. The only other demon I’d seen was Ruka, and this thing was as far from my succubus friend as it was possible to be.

It was roughly humanoid in shape, a bloated monster twice the size of an obese adult human. Its scarlet-colored skin was stretched taut over bulging muscles in some places and hung loose over dropping flab in others. Its oversized head was capped with a single long horn above the one eye that had taken shape. The rest of its head had not finished forming, leaving half its misshapen face nothing more than an obscene gob of gray flesh mottled with oozing patches of black. Two of its six long, muscular arms had yet to form on one side, along with one of its two legs. The four arms that had formed ended in fingers that had a few too many joints and terminated in long, sharp, claw-like nails.

Demon of Calamity (Partial)

Powers:

Big Enough For Ya? - Expert: Change size

Cower Before My Might - Expert: Cause fear

That’ll Hurt For A While - Expert: Poisonous claws

Your Life For Mine - Expert: Draw power by consuming living beings

Skills:

Brawling - Expert

Claw - Expert

It didn’t seem that tough for a final Boss, but maybe that was because the ritual hadn’t been fully completed. I imagine its Status would’ve looked a lot scarier if it wasn’t just a partial Demon of Calamity.

The fighting near the door had stopped when Achmed and Tiff had destroyed the apparatus, both sides turning their attention to the beast on the platform. The remaining cultists there also fell to their knees and bowed in obeisance.

All of a sudden, a wave of despair flooded through me and I found myself stricken with fear and disgust. It was hard to move. All I could do was stare in horror at the monster writhing on the platform. It seemed to be trying to pull itself upright but lacked the requisite number of limbs to do it. Its one eye rolled in its socket and its wide, toothy mouth snapped at the air as it flopped and struggled. Then the eye focused on the cultists kneeling before it.

The demon began to grow, rapidly inflating to twice its original size and nearly filling the entire platform with its egregious bulk. Two of its thick arms swept out in front of it, each one grabbing a cultist and lifting them into the air. Its mouth opened wide and it chomped down, biting a cultist in half. It chewed a bit, then stuffed the rest of the body into its maw.

As the cultist crunched between its countless teeth I managed to overcome my fear. I could see Tiff, Annabelle, and a couple of the other Players also coming out of their daze at the same time. Guess we made our saving throws. Achmed and the rest remained frozen as they gaped slack-jawed at the beast, still controlled by its power and petrified with fright.

By the time it had fed itself the second cultist, the ones who were no longer stricken started taking action. The Players back with Annabelle took advantage of the cultists’ prostration to unceremoniously finish off the ones they'd been fighting by the door. Tiff used her ability to create affinity minions to form four elemental creatures of pure Darkness. They flew toward the demon, each one grabbing one of the monster's arms and gnawing on it.

As for me, I quickly scanned Status to see if anyone needed a heal. Everyone was hurt at least a little, so I only healed the two who were in the red. I’d used up a fair bit of mana so far and I was getting tired of passing out in the middle of fights, so I decided to conserve mana and forego using more powers to fight. Time to do this the old fashioned way.

I pulled out my knives again as I ran a few steps then leapt high onto the thing’s enormous back. I drove both blades deep into its meaty flesh and held on, dangling from them.

Okay, now what?