It took her a moment to adjust to the fact such a huge monster had so little strength behind its blow. Her stats weren’t that impressive. She even stole a sideways glance at her father to see how he was handling it and her brow creased in perplexion when she noticed he also remained unmoved.
The world exploded in white and red, and a million searing daggers tore apart every facet of her mind, reaching into even the deepest, most hidden recesses.
Unbearable pain ricocheted through her consciousness, digging into even what she was coming to understand as her soul. Not all the way, but just knocking on the door of that ethereal part of herself.
Even during the torture chamber of the 13th Floor she hadn’t felt so pressured. Her fortitude and vitality had done some heavy lifting to relieve the damage and destruction wrought by that horrible little room, but here there was little her attributes could do to assuage the hyper boss’ assault.
She could still feel the pulsing warmth of Spinebreaker in her hand, but it was a struggle to maintain her grip on the war hammer’s shaft. Even staying on her feet was a constant battle.
Defeating this monster is going to be impossible like this. Maybe I don’t have the skills to counter mental assaults, but somebody here must do - I’m sure the tower wouldn’t just throw us into the abyss without a rope.
Despite that, Evelyn had never actually received definitive proof of such behaviour from the tower - it was just a personal belief. So, she was growing more worried by the second.
The pain grew. She wasn’t sure how such a thing was possible, given that it had started off at an already inconceivable level of agony, but now it was as though a million hammers were pounding on knives that dug deeper and burned fiercer with each passing moment.
All of a sudden calmness washed over her, like she was sinking into a warm bath after a hard day’s work. Tension slipped from her body. It took a second to adjust; her mind had been working overtime to resist Zork’Karu’s intrusion and the lack of it took her by complete surprise. Then she heard a whisper.
You’ve been holding back for far too long, child. Unleash your inner fury. Be wild and free.
It was strange. The voice in her head spoke to her desires. She longed for a challenge, a battle where she could unleash everything and be pushed to the brink - in the way she had by Dazurmagon. That wasn’t quite what it meant though. Something was off, but she wanted to enjoy herself. And so she started to swing her hammer with unchecked abandon.
Thunk. Spinebreaker slammed into something soft, stopping only for a moment before the force of her blow carried it through whatever was putting up the feeble resistance.
Liquid splashed on her face, warm and coppery. Blood. Evelyn didn’t stop swinging. Zork’Karu’s hide was tough and just a single blow would not be enough to break the tough chitin.
The whole experience felt like she was underwater, though her movements were not dulled in the slightest. She could hear loud shouts in the distance, but they were faint; irrelevant. A crack echoed in her ears as her war hammer hit home.
Again. And again. Evelyn continued to swing Spinebreaker without rest, the only pause in her furious frenzy when the hammer smashed into something that had a little more resistance than usual.
Even then, all it took was one or two more blows to send whatever it was flying away or falling to the ground, broken. She was unstoppable, and unkillable.
It was this bliss she had been searching for since that first moment in the tower, scrambling in the dirt in a dimly lit cavern. She had been weak then, desperate. Never again. Nothing would stand in her path - she had made that declaration before and it was echoed in her skills.
The Unstoppable Conqueror.
Recently Evelyn hadn’t felt that way, but as she cleaved her way through the riff raff around the hyper boss, her pounding heart was filled with vigour once more. It froze mid beat. She felt something cold in her chest and the feeling rapidly spread to the rest of her body. Her thoughts slowed right down as the glacial tendrils grasped her mind.
No, stop! I don’t want to lose this flow. I don’t know how to return.
She was unable to resist the icy grip. Her consciousness went blank after a final struggle against the cold and she could taste the tang of copper in the back of her throat.
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~ Mei Han POV ~
Her body surged with endless warmth and power as the glacial blizzard raged around her. Every foolish challenger or monster that stepped close found themselves pierced through the heart by a deadly lance of frost that moved too fast to dodge, or fashioned into a comical ice sculpture caught in the throes of despair.
The corners of her mouth crept up ever so slightly. Not quite a smile, but the closest the frosty woman usually came to one. She loved this. So too did her husband and surprisingly, her daughter.
Each of them was blazingly competitive at heart. On Earth that had translated into devastatingly effective business acumen that allowed her and Anthony to build a multi-million dollar empire. Her creative agency was one of the most sought after in the western hemisphere and his various holdings were massively profitable.
Evelyn on the other hand was a fiercely intelligent scholar who excelled in all of her academics and was an exceptional sportswoman too, when she could be bothered. Until the incident with that girl in college. It didn’t matter now. In fact, Mei had grown rather bored of the whole charade during the last few years.
Success came easily and people were open books, to be read as simply as turning a page. The tower offered a new challenge. One that was a little tough to adapt to at first. She wasn’t used to getting her hands dirty.
Acquiring Kiss of Jotunheimr had been a blessing. Magic came naturally to her, in the same way interior design and the art of socialising had done. The mana just… flowed.
Frost followed and her enemies fell or froze where they stood. She struggled against the bosses - alone that is - but even they could not resist the touch of ice forever. Currently she faced an even tougher challenge. Not to defeat her enemies, but to halt her allies in their mindless rampage before they did more harm than they already had.
Just now she finally managed to grasp hold of her berserking daughter. Evelyn had succumbed to Zork’Karu’s influence after the beetle’s magic had turned from an assault into pure mind control. About ten seconds after blocking the hyper boss’ strike, both Evelyn and Anthony had unsheathed their weapons and started to rampage through the ranks of the nearby guilds.
Mei was hard pressed to feel guilty towards the members of Ventura who fell to the crushing blows of Evelyn’s war hammer or the powerful slashes of her husband’s sword. They had attacked them first after all.
When it came to the other guilds however, she knew she needed to step in before things went sour. Across the battlefield she saw plenty of similar situations playing out. Friends killing friends, guildmates going wild and slaughtering their own.
It was a powerful magic and clamping down on the disastrous results was difficult. With help from Kayla she had floored Anthony and frozen him in place. He was still a statue of frost, but she could see his eyes clearing under his visor. He might be himself soon enough.
Her daughter however, had taken far longer to deal with. She was truly a force to be reckoned with. None could stand against her for long. Those who could handle the first of her strikes would fall by the second or third.
She knew she had to put an end to Evelyn’s blind rampage soon, but for a moment she watched and admired her daughter’s power.
Then she let the blizzard consume her. Even amidst the raging ice her daughter continued to swing and charge forward. It was impressive. No one had resisted her magic for this long, except for the odd boss and monster with a countering elemental affinity.
There was a terrifying moment towards the end of the struggle where Evelyn actually turned to face her, with dull eyes glazed in white that couldn’t really see what was happening. Yet she had sensed the source of the attack. Mana exploded from her body and the thin layer of frost that had been creeping across her skin shattered.
Mei hadn’t wanted to go too far, but she held her own safety above all else. And she knew her daughter was tough. So she speared her through the heart with a lance of ice.
Even then it took a couple of seconds for the frost to claim her body and turn her into a fearsome statue caught in the middle of swinging her terrifying war hammer. Mei wanted a weapon of her own. A staff perhaps, of a similar calibre.
She had managed to stop their rampage, but the beetle was still demolishing Haven and practically unchecked. They needed a solution soon. It was then that Kayla interrupted.
“Great job Mei. She’s real tough when she puts her mind to it. I’m surprised you were able to stop her in her tracks,” she said. Kayla approached the frozen Evelyn and rubbed a palm across her cheek, pulling back quickly and wincing at the sheer cold of Mei’s magic. “I think it’s time we do something about that big bastard, don’t you?”