For a terrible moment, all of them froze, staring back at the monster.
Then it was broken by the demon snarling and swinging his greatsword at them, unleashing a torrent of blue fire. The fire threatened to swallow them but, in an instant, a hexagonal shield manifested between them and the attack, supported by Sam’s Shadow Shield while Katie began to cast her own skills and Dan seemed to be trying to take control of the blue flames with little results.
The flames battered the shields, but they ultimately held under the onslaught.
As soon as the flames died down, leaving only a few patches on the ground still burning, Sam’s Shadow Shield was broken by the charging demon, greatsword held aloft and murder in his eyes.
Before the monster could also crash through, the hexagonal shield cast by Clarissa vanished, and the demon was intercepted by Katie, blocking his greatsword strike with a blade of her own. Before the monster could react, he received a face full of a white-hot spear of fire, courtesy of Dan.
Sam simply stepped back for a moment and observed the fight, staying out of the sight of the demon. He watched for almost half a minute as Dan, Katie, and Lucky played keep-away with the monster, occasionally burned by the blue flames that sometimes acted like fire and sometimes like liquid.
Clarissa was sweating from exertion, but she was keeping up with the damage.
“What the hell are you doing?” she yelled over to him between two breaths as the monster pushed Katie away with a mighty effort and let out a roar.
“Looking for a weak point,” he replied calmly and raised his sword.
With a brief effort, wind mana began to swirl around the blade, being compressed to the edge, increasing its size and cutting power. Around him, the rest of the wind mana took the shape of countless spears, hovering over his shoulder, ready to strike.
He waited two breaths, raised his right foot, and slammed it down with full force, directing the Ground Shake at where the demon was currently crossing blades with Katie while Dan tried to break through the blue flames.
“Disengage!” he yelled while activating all his speed-granting skills like Shadow Burst and Shadow Grace with the wind granting him an extra boost of speed. “Purge after strike!”
The monster, momentarily unbalanced glanced at him, and Sam exploded forward. But to the demon’s surprise, instead of one Sam, there were five more copies of him, all of them moving forward with the same speed while the Wind Spears he had prepared, began raining down.
The boss was instantly overwhelmed, however, the demon proved that he wasn’t chosen by chance to protect someone so important and recovered quickly. It raised his greatsword, ignoring the Wind Spears striking his body, and swung it in a great circular arc, bisecting all the Sam’s that were heading in his direction.
Upon seeing the sword go through all of them, he was surprised, but the surprise only lasted until Sam’s enhanced blade struck.
Moonlight, enhanced by the wind, bit into the armor of the demon, creating a sizeable gash. Before the demon could even register the hit, he grabbed hold of the wind mana in the cutting blade and simply detonated it, thereby increasing the size of the gash and creating an area where the liquid-like blue flame wasn’t covering the demon’s body. With a simple exertion, he launched himself backward, avoiding Clarissa’s next spell.
“PURGE!”
The white light of the spell flew forward, expertly striking the patch of bleeding skin that Sam created.
The white spell splashed against the skin of the demon and he let out an unearthly scream, parts of the armor began to spew flames, but they didn’t return, leaving the armor without its burning protection. The patches were maybe the size of a small hand, but that proved Sam’s theory.
He didn’t have to explain anything. They were all seasoned gamers. They all understood the assignment when they saw what happened after the Purge spell hit the monster.
Wanting to make sure that nothing could play them, while bombarding the monster strategically with his magic, allowing Katie, Dan, and Lucky to create openings for Clarissa to cast her spell, he ran around and carved runes into the ground around the fight.
It was nothing special, just a simple containment circle. He hoped it wouldn’t be needed but there were so many suspicious things happening that he wanted to make sure.
He watched from the sidelines as Purge spell after purge spell hit the monster, destroying more and more of the flame armor, allowing them to damage the demon properly.
The moment he carved his Heart Rune into the ground and channeled his mana into it, thereby activating it the last of the flame armor was banished, leaving the demon bleeding from several gashes wrought by Katie and Lucky, and burns covering his extremities courtesy of Dan.
Puffball was sitting on a pretty nice rock and cleaning herself.
The only place where the blue flame was visible, aside from the randomly burning patches on the ground, was the demon’s eyes. They shined with even more intensity and Sam could feel through his Mana Sense some kind of ‘otherness’ through it.
‘It seems my hunch was somewhat correct…’
With a roar of her own, Katie wreathed in her customary yellow lightning which pooled around her sword, sprung forward, and with a mighty strike cut the monster’s arm off. Sadly, it was not the one holding the weapon. While the demon was wounded and ravaged, he still had enough presence of mind to dodge the strike aimed at his weapon-holding arm.
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Sam shot forward and while the demon tried to get his equilibrium back, struck from the back and severed the other arm at the shoulder, leaving the monster wide open for Clarissa to hit him with a Purge right between the eyes.
Again, for a moment, everything was frozen then the demon, bleeding from his stumps and multiple lacerations, burns sizzling sinisterly, threw his head back and let out a scream that shook both the cavern and the people in them.
As the blue light began seeping from the eyes, creating cracks on the haggard skin of the demon, Sam’s eyes widened. He knew what was going to happen.
“Second phase! Out of the circle!” he yelled while jumping outside of the runic circle he created. Lucky simply vanished into a small shadow. Katie looked like she wanted to continue hacking away, but, in the end, she followed the order while Dan simply turned around and ran. Clarissa was already outside of it, so she simply watched as the cracks spread, turning the monster into something looking like a porcelain doll repaired with gold. But instead of the porcelain’s white color, the body was dark, and the blue fire replaced the gold.
Then the monster exploded.
Thankfully, without throwing chunks of flesh everywhere. The blue fire was hot enough to vaporize the flesh.
In its place was left an amorphous blue light, vaguely looking like a humanoid with tentacles everywhere.
“A malicious spirit…” Clarissa whispered in realization.
“Yup. Prepare your Purge,” Sam agreed and began channeling mana into the runic circle’s heart rune while weaving another circle in the air, made from illusionary runes as a backup.
It was a common mechanic. Kill the monster possessed by the spirit, and the spirit would in turn possess somebody from the players, forcing the team to fight against themselves.
But he was a smart cookie and had the tools to prevent that. Hopefully…
The spirit didn’t even need a second to start moving and instantly honed on the nearest being, Katie who was standing at the boundary watching the spirit with interest.
It flew forward silently but was thankfully repulsed by the circle.
Sam felt the strain and knew that the circle had at most two or three chances to rebuff the spirit before it burned out.
“I’m going to restrict it, use all the mana on that Purge,” he murmured under his breath at Clarissa and then began focusing on the spirit to the exclusion of everything else.
He was vaguely aware of Lucky resurfacing behind him. The loyal wolf watching his back, but most of his attention was solely on the illusionary runic circle he was constructing.
Using runes he had learned, he put together a binding circle and restriction circle on each other. Then while the spirit finished with its observation and readied itself for a second strike, he began to decrease the circumference of the illusionary runic circle around the monster.
CLANG
The monster slammed against the circle and Sam saw some of the hastily carved runes begin to sizzle.
‘Okay, one more and it goes puff…’ he mused as he began to tighten the other circle even faster.
The spirit floated backward a little, ready to charge, and that was when Sam struck, knowing that his piddly little illusionary circle wouldn’t hold long.
Bands of runic script encircled the tentacled spirit, freezing it in place with Sam channeling an immense amount of mana into his creation to make sure it worked for even a few seconds.
He didn’t have the ability to give a signal to Clarissa, but she was a pro, and the moment the spirit was bound, she sprinted forward, swung her staff, shining with the light of the Purge spell, straight through the spirit.
Wherever the staff went, the spirit’s body was simply erased. Surprisingly, the spirit didn’t let out any sound, but Sam had to channel even more mana into his binding as the spirit began to struggle even more.
Clarissa, seeing the effect her attack had, did it again. And again. And again, until there were only pieces of spirit-like blue light floating around. Then she stepped back and called out. “Let it go!”
Sam let go and let out a breath of relief. A quick glance at his mana told him that even his incredible mana regeneration was almost overtaken by the spirit’s struggle.
Clarissa simply raised her staff with both hands and let out a simple cry.
“Begone foul spirit! Banishment!”
The remaining parts of the spirit that seemed to be drifting close to each other instantly began to sparkle with rainbow light, then simply vanished in an anti-climatic puff, leaving the team flabbergasted and staring in disbelief.
“That’s… supposed to happen r-right?” Dan asked worriedly as he stepped forward, gripping his club that was still covered with white-hot fire.
To their relief, Clarissa nodded. “Yeah. Surprised me too the first time I used it. Holy Banishment has a light show, but the simple Banishment just sends them over to the other side,” she explained.
Sam let out a sigh of relief.
“Now we just need to deal with the priestess…”
Hearing that, all of them grimaced. The last time they purged the crystal, it was almost full. They knew that something was going to happen, but not what exactly.
“But first a little break… I need to get some mana.”
----------------------------------------
A few minutes of break, a mana potion or two, and they were ready to head into the city, leaving the scorched and practically destroyed area before the destroyed gates.
The ruined buildings still looked the same, but when they reached the abode that hid the priestess’ body, they noticed a small light seeping through the holes in the building.
Carefully, they entered the dwelling and sought out the loot bag, which this time contained no notes, but a ring shining with almost holy light, a skill book on the language of the demons, and another that contained the spell, Sacred Flame.
The book about the demon language went to Sam while Clarissa and Dan had a little rock-paper-scissors tournament about the skill. In the end, Clarissa won the game and quickly learned the spell, though Dan didn’t really look too disappointed. The spell was clearly intended for a healer or priest…
They would have the ring identified back in the city, but Sam suspected that it would be something useful for healers.
“Wow, this dungeon was basically created for you…” Katie remarked. “We barely got any cool loot, and you got like half a dozen spells. No doubt the ring will be yours as well…” she finished with a pout.
“Don’t worry,” Sam called out as he learned the skill book. “The game is fair. Clarissa got some awesome loot, but I doubt we’ll be left out…”
Giving the devastated room a last look, Sam nodded and motioned toward the room where the priestess slept her dreamless sleep. The rest of the team followed him and soon they were silently standing around the body of the priestess, all their eyes glued to the crystal shining with blue light.
Sam met Clarissa’s eyes and nodded. She returned the nod and, after a brief murmur of the incantation, she reached forward, her hand shining white.
The moment her hand touched the crystal, she called out.
“PURGE!”
The crystal shined even brighter until the light grew strong enough that none of them could see.
Then a sound…
CRACK
The light vanished, the crystal was gone and instead, there was another spirit hovering over the decaying body of the priestess.
Thankfully, this one didn’t have any tentacles. Instead, it, or rather she, looked exactly like Sam imagined the priestess would have looked if she were alive.
Luscious hair, falling in waves from her head, reaching the small of her back, decked out in fine clothing and many religious-looking jewelry.
For a brief moment, there was disdain on her face, but sadness and bittersweet happiness instantly replaced it.
“Humans…” she spoke up, her voice ethereal yet commanding. She spoke like someone who expected to be listened to and brooked no foolishness. “You freed us…”