He and Branth continued on their journey, and he felt the strain on his elemental mastery grow and grow the more he had to split his focus. His elemental plates of energy continued to draw his power as they fought against the regenerative power of the Hydra. Then Jonathan realized that he could use the elemental energy constructs to track where the monster’s heads were. He tried to explain this to Branth, but the noise was muffled by the thunderous symphony of internal life that came from the monster’s organs. Instead, he simply led by example, and started to alter his path towards the front of the creature’s body.
On the outside, Edgar and Hushar were fighting a retreating battle, as the lava spread ever further. The Hydra continued to move, sending more cracks racing across the ground. The heat in the area had become sweltering, even for the highly leveled fighters. Only the efforts of Edgar in creating a shield of wind prevented them from being burnt, or perhaps even immolated in the case of the fragile wind mage. The heat was far beyond any natural lava, and it meant that even the air was over a few thousand degrees in heat. For somebody who was yet to cross the second threshold in Resilience, it was an almost deadly level.
Bolts of condensed wind shot out at mach speed, and Hushar sent blades of rock at similar speeds towards the remaining heads. However, neither man had a means of sealing the wounds, which meant that they were simply suppressing the monster, and adding to its arsenal. Despite this, until Jonathan emerged from the creature, there was nothing much they could do. The creature had begun to drag its underbelly in the lava, trying to prevent Branth and Jonathan from emerging. It showed a concerning amount of intelligence for such a brutish beast.
Within the beast, Jonathan could feel the plates of elemental energy nearing, and he soon found himself traveling up one of the monster’s stumps. He could feel the neck snapping through the air, but he grimly proceeded, his stats seeing him through. Behind him, Branth crawled, a bit disorientated by the motions of the neck. A few moments later, Jonathan reached a point where he could go no further, and he sent out a wave of consuming Void energy that blasted a hole in the monster’s neck. He leaped out a moment later, and landed in safety.
Branth emerged a moment after, and he leaped clear, avoiding the lava. Jonathan turned to see the state of the battle, and noticed that the monster had already multiplied its number of heads greatly, likely from the efforts of the others to fight it.
The creature now boasted over twenty heads, each of which was able to spit out aggregations of molten rock. All around the creature, a pool of lava extended, threatening death to any who approached.
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Jonathan grimaced at the sight, knowing just how much harder it would be to prevent the monster from regrowing its heads. If four stumps were hard to suppress, then the number that there were now would be almost impossible. In addition, there was no way to simply sever the head further down the neck, as the necks had split into halves, rather than simply branching off near the end.
With a sigh, Jonathan summoned his Void energy once more, drawing upon his deep stores.
“Well, this one hardly went to plan,” he said. “How annoying.”
“Sorry about that,” Hushar replied. “The monster seems to have far less durable necks than skin, in order to allow it to divide more easily.”
“Interesting evolutionary choice,” Jonathan observed as he finished gathering elemental energy. “Makes it a bastard to fight though.”
“Well, now that you’re here, it should be a lot easier.”
“Yeah, about that,” Jonathan began. “The more heads there are, the harder it is for me to use my Void abilities to individually suppress them.”
As if on cue, the monster sped up, its heads swinging wildly. Bolts of lava erupted from its many mouths, blanketing the area in searing hot rock. Jonathan leaped backwards, his stamina enhanced jump taking him over a hundred feet. As the rock landed, it splattered everywhere, and a few droplets hit him, burning him even through his armor. Jonathan growled, and finally stopped holding back. Golden Divinity pulsed through his blood and flesh, and he felt power surging to his control.
With a roar, he sent his stamina to his legs, and pushed off the ground, flying over the morass of lava. His fist burned with the cold purple fire of the Void, and he cracked through the sound barrier multiple times over. His fist flashed forwards, and impacted the Hydra directly in the center of its chest, where all of the heads intersected. There was a detonation of energy, and a shockwave of Void enhanced power that tore off the necks at their roots. They immediately began to regrow, but Jonathan was having none of that.
He screamed as he expelled the majority of his remaining Void energy, blanketing the monster in it. Then he slammed his will down, and kept the energy there, preventing the heads from regrowing. The monster writhed in pain and fear, but Jonathan did not let go, not even when molten rock dripped onto him from the stumps, searing his flesh. Had his armor been metal, the heat conduction would have seared him to the bone.
A few moments later, the creature breathed its last, and the massive corpse fell to the ground, resting in the pool of its own lava. Jonathan leaped backwards, off the monster, withdrawing from the dangerous molten rock. The others seemed beleaguered to say the least, and he was quite tired as well. That battle had been a slog more than anything else, and although nobody had suffered severe injury, they were still impacted by the battle.