The dome of blue flared with intensity as the cracks healed over, but the strange Kobold continued to rhythmically pound away.
Thesta’s entire body was tense, arms shaking as she struggled to contain the monster, rapidly expending energy. If anything was clear right now, it was that she couldn’t keep this up forever.
“Do you want me to find Argyle?” asked Cole frantically, glancing over at the dome, which was rapidly flickering between being whole and broken.
Thesta didn’t even look at him, entirely focused on keeping the shield up. “No. Time.”
Well what could they do? Did she have a plan? How strong was this thing anyway?
Suddenly she reached out with one hand, pressing it against Cole’s chest. Simultaneously, the Infernal punched the dome, cracking it almost completely. He felt his energy become topped off once more. She’d overcharged him.
Thesta focused on the dome once more, healing all of the damage. She choked out a few more words.
“I need… an opening…. Runic…Blast…. then I’ll… handle it..”
‘Okay’ thought Cole. ‘I can do that.’ All he needed to do was shock the monster for long enough so that Thesta could ‘handle it’. Hopefully that meant killing it. Sure. He could do that.
No.
He could do better than that.
Cole withdrew into himself, visualising the cords of energy once more. The Rise rune was brilliant as ever, unchanged since he’d first seen it. The Hallowed/Runic Blast was blazing its brilliant gold with a slight purple trim, fed by the cord connecting it to his soul.
If he’d changed the connections once, why couldn’t he do it again? This time would have to be quick, however.
Cole got to work, ‘grasping’ hold of the connections to the Rise rune once more. Ideally, he’d be able to add two more to his Hallowed Blast. Pain rose as he strained to rip them off the Rise rune, only intensifying as they came free.
Taking a second to steel himself, Cole slammed the connectors into the Hallowed Blast. His physical body would have dropped to the ground had he not been prepared for the pain that came next. It came in a flash, but was gone soon after.
He reacquainted himself with the real world. There was no time to spare. Cole leapt down the palisade, grunting in pain as he realised he’d forgotten his Runic Strength. As he approached, he noticed that the cracks in the dome were no longer disappearing completely. Cole breathed out, before staring the Infernal in the eyes. It didn’t seem to notice he was there, perhaps unable to see him properly, but the young man couldn’t help but flinch as its scaled fist impacted the dome once more.
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Cole raised his arm and began to carve golden light into the world. He glanced up at Thesta, letting himself grin at the shocked expression on her face for a second. You had to indulge sometimes.
The young man looked back to the spider-webbed blue dome, carefully carving out his Hallowed Blast. It was far stronger than anything he’d done in this life, and he could feel the sheer power of being bled off like an aura.
A VRMMO, while incredibly realistic, would never be able to induce this sort of feeling in anyone. It was like peeking into the halls of the divine. Cole got the sense that he was wrestling with power he would never be able to fully understand.
The rune was almost complete, and he looked up at Thesta once more. Both of them were struggling to keep something contained. For Cole, it was the divine energy that he barely had a handle on, for Thesta it was the huge Kobold.
Cole nodded at the grey-haired woman, whose teeth were clenched. She nodded back, and her face faded into an almost… solemn expression.
The monster pulled its fist back for a final time and slammed it into the heavily cracked dome. The blue energy shattered, and Cole made eye contact with the demon for the first time. Only now did he realise how large it truly was, at least a head taller than him. The Infernal beast’s jaw opened wide as it prepared to unleash a gout of flame that would cook Cole into a crisp.
But Cole was faster, slashing his hand across the air to complete the last part of the Hallowed Blast rune. Golden energy hung in the air, only for a second, before bursting forth in glorious light.
Then came the *CRACK*, as the sound barrier was split in half.
The Infernal vanished in a blaze of golden light. The darkening twilight battlefield was lit up as if the sun was shining, forcing Cole to blink white spots out of his eyes. His ears, too were ringing, although he thought he was quite lucky that they hadn’t just ruptured.
Their immediate surroundings were completely silent. The only evidence that the battle was still raging were the distant sounds of fighting. Cole’s entire body and soul felt drained, and he wanted nothing more than to lay down and sleep.
As the white spots faded, Cole could make out his handiwork. The Infernal, or rather, former Infernal, was splayed out on the ground, blasted backwards by the juiced-up Hallowed Blast.
The combination of the extra power from his soul, and the overcharge he’d been given by Thesta, had absolutely annihilated the entire front half of the scaled beast, leaving only a charred skeleton. It was like someone had dipped the monster’s body face first into a vat of acid, stopping as soon as they hit the middle of its shoulders. The flowing red robes that had been untouched when the Kobold bathed itself in its fiery breath were now half vaporised, back part unfolded on the ground beneath the corpse.
Cole walked over to the body, still in too much shock to really process what had happened. He bent down, looking at the charred dragon shaped skull.
The skull looked back.
The young man leaped back, startled, as small motes of fire appeared in the empty sockets of the skull. The blackened bones began to glow with a deep red energy, and the body started to push itself back up to a standing position. Cole tried to prepare another Hallowed Blast, but he didn’t have the energy. The skull’s jaw opened once more, fire sparking forth to devour him whole.
‘Well. This sucks,’ thought Cole, ‘But it beats dying in a truck accident.’
A pillar of blue light slammed into the skeletal Kobold, pinning it down to the ground. Cole looked up to see the most complicated rune he’d seen thus far, and behind it, Thesta. The beam of energy didn’t let up, and the Infernals’s bones and flesh were rapidly chipped away. Any attempt at kickstarting a blaze simply fizzled out, overpowered by the sheer power of whatever insane Rune this was.
While Cole’s Hallowed Blast had melted the monster’s scales and flesh in an instantaneous flash, it was more like Thesta’s spell slowly deconstructed its constituent parts, breaking them down until there was nothing left.
She kept the energy going a bit longer, and then shut it off, dismissing the complex rune. Cole was glad he wasn’t dead, but also slightly annoyed. For a second he’d thought he’d gotten the perfect opportunity to show he wasn’t weak, but Thesta had ended up saving him anyway.
Speaking of Thesta, she was suddenly right next to him. Cole, still slightly dazed, turned to say hi.
“Hi!”
The grey-haired woman grasped hold of his shoulder, squeezing her fingers painfully into his flesh. She stared him in the eyes, looking at him with an accusatory expression.
“What the hell was that?”