Chapter 248 - Scorching Embers VI

Claire swung her weapon three times after closing the distance. For her first attack, Boris was a spiked club. For the second, he transformed into an axe. And for the third, a battlehammer as wide as she was tall. But none of her attacks had any effect. Each subsequent strike was blocked by the chains hanging off the erdbrecher’s body, repelled before they could rend his flesh. Even though they were accompanied by vectors and magical glares.

Her fourth attack, still delivered with the hammer, was aimed straight at his exposed legs. The metal didn’t extend that far down, but the results were unchanged. She bashed her lizard straight into his kneecap, only for him to shrug it off with a casual laugh. His body neither bent nor broke. The only wound was a light abrasion, a few shallow cuts on his ashy grey skin.

It was an exchange that immediately revealed his approach to combat. He was a man of Pollux’s make, a defensive juggernaut whose abilities focused first and foremost on the mitigation and absorption of damage. And as she had determined with her failed vector applications, his magical defenses were just as robust as his physical ones. She couldn’t say for certain, but she had the sneaking suspicion that not even the realm would do him in. If his vitality was as high as she understood, she would run out of mana well before he fell short of health.

She twisted her lips into a grimace as she leapt away from him. Her retreat was accompanied by an icy spell; she formed a pyramid around his frame and trapped him in an icy prison. It was cold enough within the trap for the very air to freeze, a powerful spell that had ended many a person and monster behind him. But the erdbrecher shrugged it off. He walked straight at one of the outer walls with his golden trinkets whirring to life. They moved with such speed that they sawed straight through the gaol, releasing both the elephant and the freezing cold in turn.

Claire greeted him with a breath, but that too was repelled. The winds kicked up by his accessories dispersed it into his surroundings. There was chaos among the enemy lines, but the man in question was unharmed.

Annoyed, she took the opportunity to scour him for vitals. The defensive trinkets that had blocked her attacks rested atop his upper body and covered everything from his chest to his face. His groin seemed like the best bet, but she was suspicious. It was too exposed, too obvious for it to be a sore spot.

He attacked before she could finish her analysis, lunging forward with his nose raised like a spear. The pointed javelin was accompanied by a pair of ivory tusks, thick, bony protrusions sharp enough to give her shard a run for its money. He moved slowly for a man clearly thrice ascended; it took him almost a full second to cross the twenty-meter gap, a distance that a child could have closed in the same time. But what he lacked in speed, he made up with destructive force. He continued until he hit the restaurant, the walls of which crumbled before his headlong charge.

Claire gave chase whilst transforming Boris into a pick. She jabbed the lizard straight into his shoulder and wedged it towards the joint. The sharpened nail struck shallow, but she continued pushing it deeper, thanks to the vectors that had accompanied the blow. She watched his hands and feet as she pressed the attack, pouring her mana through her blade and into his blood in an attempt to freeze it, but she suddenly found herself in midair regardless, blown away by a heavy blow.

Pain spread throughout her chest as her ribs dug into her lungs. When she finally managed to grit her teeth and raise her head, she found his trunk extended behind him. She had no idea when he had launched the attack. It had come from right in front of her. But it was so quick that it had caught her completely off guard.

She landed a few feet away, an arm around her midsection, and called Boris into her free hand. She kept her eyes peeled for a supersonic follow up, but he pulled no such stunt. When he charged, he did so with all the speed of an inebriated snail. The confused moose summoned her imaginary snake and threw it into his face. But the divinity-charged bomb was subjected to the same punishment as her ribcage. It was swatted away, taken out of the air before she had the chance to pull the trigger.

Boris transformed into a wand, and on his mistress’ command, released a series of projectiles from his gaping maw, icy weapons modeled after their genuine counterparts, each with a different weight, shape, and speed. But regardless of how quick or heavy, they were all summarily rejected; every glacial missile was smashed to bits by the elephant’s elongated nose.

It was clear from his continued approach that he had no long ranged weapons. Despite the lack of success, all he did was march single-mindedly, advancing at her in a straight line no matter how or where she turned. The strategy was so simple that she felt the urge to break into laughter. But with his defenses as thick as they were, she found herself unable.

The erdbrecher’s approach was custom built for the frenzy of war. So long as the battlefield was set on the ground, he could easily mow straight through the common rabble and force a confrontation with whatever important figure with whose murder he was tasked. And if anyone more fragile than the lyrkress were to fall into his trap, they would surely find themselves ensnared and killed. It was a build crafted with a specific purpose in mind. Completely unlike her own.

Claire glanced across the decorative garden as she contemplated her lack of success. Lia would have a better time against the elephant man—she was capable of dishing out more powerful attacks, and she would likely fare better in close combat. Alas, Claire refused to sub out. She eyed the elephant’s trunk as she toyed with the lizard. Removing it would have been the easiest option, but she was unable to follow it in all its lightning fast speed.

Still, she charged. She dashed straight into his nose’s range and immediately dropped to the floor. Before even waiting for confirmation, she dodged to the right, whipped her imaginary snake at a spot beside her, and backed off whilst flicking a tiny, knife-sized Boris through the air. All of them were movements driven by vectors, twists and turns impossible with momentum at play.

Each spell was lined up perfectly to counteract one of his attacks. They were not reactions, but predictions made by watching his eyes. And they were correct. She perfectly parried and evaded his nose-weapon’s strikes, bolstering her confidence as she dove back in again.

She slipped past his trunk when it lashed out and delivered a stab to the back of his arm. The tiny gash was just as shallow and harmless as all her other attacks, but it was enough to light the fire in her chest. It had claimed otherwise, but she could kill him. All she needed was to find his weakness.

It was at that moment, right as she entertained the thought of victory, that she was struck again. His trunk moved like a whip and caught her in the gut. Even though his eyes had telegraphed no such strike. She raised an arm in an attempt to block the next few attacks to follow, just to find the limb pulverised in an instant, transformed into an unrecognizable mess with only a bone remaining. Waves of pain fired through the back of her mind. Her flesh was scattered all over. Some bits adorned the ground, while others were plastered to the building’s wall. Still, she had accomplished her goal.

The golden plate that covered the man’s nose was in her remaining hand. And in its place, was a muzzle made of ice. It certainly begged to question why the Freeze Toilet spell had worked so well on his trunk, but whatever the case, the prehensile appendage’s tip was perfectly covered in a thick layer of ice. He tried squeezing it, smashing it as she watched triumphantly, but it refused to be broken or dislodged. It only spread, gaining one millimeter at a time as it slowly worked its way down its trunk.

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She flapped her wings and took off while the spell did its work. Her destination was on the other side of the battlefield, where the crab-mounted crustacean was riding circles around the feline, poking her with his lance while his so-called horse moved in ways impossible for a creature with fewer legs. At first glance, it looked as if the shelled pair had the advantage, but every exchange swayed the tide in Natalya’s favour. The weapon between her lips was a horse killer, a blade specialised in the dismantling of mounted calvary. The perfectly trained crab sidestepped the slashes and on occasion even stepped forward, entering a range that made it impossible for the catgirl to swing the weapon with any notable force.

That was where the rest of her arsenal came in. She had a rapier for mid-ranged combat, and her claws if they got too close for even that. The only way to escape her domain was to retreat outside of it, but the crab saw little benefit in that; he too was a melee fighter and he had the pride to match.

Thoroughly annoyed by his mount’s bid for self-preservation, he jumped off his companion and prepared to use his own two feet. But they never touched the ground. A half-humanoid snake-moose swooped in from above and grabbed him while he was in midair. He tried slashing at her talons, but she dropped him before he could do any damage and delivered him straight into the cat’s clutches. He waved his spear like a madman, throwing wild thrusts with reckless abandon, but he couldn’t leverage the strength in his waist, nor could he put his back into his swings. His desperate, frenzied attacks were easily repelled by the whirling dervish of a feline. She knocked the weapon out of his hands after one particularly weak stab and shredded through his shell in a dozen different places. He was reduced to a memory by the time he hit the ground, his body torn to bits.

Claire dropped out of the sky again after confirming the commander’s death, but only for long enough to grab her companion and throw her onto her back.

Lia immediately moved to secure herself by wrapping her arms around the other girl’s waist, but the lyrkress grabbed her by the wrists before she could.

“Hands off.”

That was when Lia took a second look and realised the state of the flying mount’s body. There was a trunk-shaped dent in her stomach, one of her arms had been replaced by an icy prosthetic, and her lower half was bruised from litres of internal bleeding.

“Ar—”

“I’m fine. Stop fussing and look down.”

Claire directed her gaze at the erdbrecher, who was standing relatively still with his arms crossed and his nose twisted into a knot. He tried and failed to trumpet when their eyes met, to which she responded with a barrage of icy knives. Valuable bits of mana readily swatted away.

“Can you deal with him? Or is he too fast?”

“I should be fine,” said Lia.

“Okay.” Claire descended and plopped her passenger down before returning to her humanoid form. “I’m going to help the others.”

She took off again right after, her teeth gritted and her ears folded in. The cat advanced in her place, the confidence on her face no less than that of her foe’s. Their first clash, on its own, determined the battle’s course. Lia didn’t even enrage, but she parried his trunk without issue. She wasn’t reading its path from his body language, but rather combating it with her reflexes and technique. The latter played the larger role; he was still faster than her, but she backed off whenever he engaged, staying just far enough out of his range to leave him frustrated and impotent. While she delivered slashes in turn.

Her first attack was no better than Claire’s. It practically glanced off his skin, leaving only the tiniest of skin-deep cuts. But her second blow, which came after she evaded another flurry, cleaved through his flesh and exposed his bone. It was an outcome that filled Claire with equal parts frustration and relief. The halfbreed knew that it was a difference in compatibility; Lia was simply better suited for taking down the enemy frontliner. Just as how she had been better suited to fighting the flaming bird. Still, she couldn’t help but clench her fists and bite her lips.

Recalling the overheated chicken led her to arrive at an answer. She had failed before, thanks to a certain shoulder animal’s disappointing performance, but she just needed to use her divinity as Meltys used hers. For the fire had penetrated even Sylvia’s barriers, and there was hardly a chance that the elephant was any tougher than the fox.

She focused her mind on her fleshless hand and shifted her holy energy into its frame, albeit in its chaotic form. As she had learned from her experiments, orderly divinity boosted the ice’s durability first and its power second. She had to exploit the opposite property for the exponential gain she required.

It took the ice only a second to transform. It was tainted a faint purple as soon as the switch was flipped in her mind.

Claire kicked off the ground with a wild charge, ploughing into the elephant man with all the force of a howling storm. She wasn’t fast enough to dodge his trunk, but one of the cat’s blades intercepted it before slugging him right in the face. It was a satisfying strike. His tusk was snapped clean off, and she could feel his jaw giving and freezing in tandem beneath the weight of her fist. But it wasn’t without consequence. Her hand changed soon after contact. Purple spikes burst from all over, goring not just the elephant’s flesh, but hers as well. Only Lia happened to get away quickly enough to avoid harm.

She hated it. She hated how she had relied on the unreliable contingency, and how it had immediately turned around and bit her in the ass. Claire was able to turn her divinity orderly and seize control once again, but she was slow on the follow up. She surely would have taken another trunk to the gut had the cat not stepped in with a flurry of blows.

Panting heavily, she stumbled half a step back before kicking off another lunge. On her second attempt, she transformed it into a set of talons. Her clawed hand tore into his flesh, digging deep into his ribs and puncturing his lungs. She twisted one of his bones out of shape while Lia removed one of his arms. Blood poured from his wounds when the two backed away in tandem. It couldn’t have been anything but painful, but the erdbrecher looked at it with little more than a frown. He pressed his remaining hand against the missing bone and emitted a burst of magic. That was all it took. To fully restore both his rib and his arm.

He flashed a cocky smile, but Claire didn’t react. All he had done was highlight his own weakness. Cadrian warriors were able to do the same without the need for a priest class, such as the one whose function he had shown.

She was about to initiate a third charge into the fray when Natalya grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back.

“What?”

“It’s already over. We need to retreat.”

She shook her head as she pointed to the restaurant. Where another erdbrecher had grabbed the fishing rod and stolen the dog. She had no idea where the fish-net-wearing female had come from, or that she had been on the battlefield at all. Kane had not been left completely unprotected. Lia had assigned a unit of guards to protect his person while they engaged, but all of the men in question lay strewn around the property, some unconscious, others dead, all defeated.

The rest of their allies were not faring much better, as their enemies had used their superior numbers to surround them. They were cornered by archers, mages, warriors, and even the three bards she had failed to kill. Their chain of command had shattered with the crab’s fall—there was no final decision maker—but the remaining officers had managed to keep the operation on track.

Claire cared little for the common soldiers; she could plow straight through them if she wanted, but it would be a slog to kill the elephant with more help on his side; he had likely yet to show all the cards in his hand.

“Fine.” She magically moved the cat atop her back and immediately began speeding away.

Some of the soldiers loosed their projectiles, but she outran their bolts, beams and arrows. The elephant didn’t even bother aiding in the effort. He merely looked on, arms crossed, as they flew off in the direction of the sun.