She had underestimated these intruders.
Since they entered, she had been on the back foot, focused entirely on surviving. Had her evolution not taken nearly all of her resources, they would have been child’s play, but as it stood, she was almost completely starved of mana. Every summoned icicle carved away at what little remained.
The big purple one’s weapon flashed at every opening, forcing her to continually pull herself away. Any attempt she made to retaliate was foiled by the shield-bearer, interposing himself directly in the path of her attack, where her projectiles shattered harmlessly against his shield. It was quickly becoming apparent that she would have to hope to outlast them, or at least the ones hampering her husband.
A smile came to her lips at the thought, even with her two opponents attempting to kill her. It wouldn’t matter, anyway; Her dear husband’s plan had succeeded. They were devils now, and as such, they could never be truly killed. It would certainly take time to reform if they were, and they would likely be as weak as they currently were when it happened, but they would reform all the same.
Her musings on their new natures were interrupted when the purple woman lashed out once more. She was too slow to fully avoid the weapon’s glowing head, which carved through the ice of her arm before denting the metal underneath. The heat melted some of the surrounding ice, but it wouldn’t be too difficult to replace it when they were dead.
A frigid hand seized the haft, forcing it to the side, as the other hammered into the mass of fiery hair, throwing her opponent away. At the same time, the shield-bearer crashed into her, throwing her off balance for just a moment.
That was all they needed. As she focused on righting herself, she felt the head of the big one’s pick slam into her mud stomach. Normally, it wouldn’t be a concern, but she could feel it baking into hard earth from the heat emanating from the weapon. A swift kick to the armored midsection sent her assailant away once more, and while that freed her from the heat, the extraction caused a good chunk of hardened mud to be pulled free.
They held their places, each taking a moment to survey the situation. The shield-bearer was still unharmed, as far as she could tell, but the purple one wasn’t so lucky. One hand had dropped from her weapon to nurse her side, and a darker splotch was steadily forming on the side of her head. They tensed, and the voice of her husband echoed throughout the structure.
“You’re going to be annoying, aren’t you? Damn insects always get in my way!”
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Beck didn't bother responding. He just rushed headlong to engage the bronze monstrosity, pulling as much from the high pressure stream as he could to replace what was lost in their last exchange.
The fiend tore Cora's polearm from its stomach, flinging bits of magma from the wound as well as the half-slagged weapon. What remained was tossed aside as he closed in. Bronze crouched and held its arms out wide, seemingly welcoming the coming assault. A block of ice collided with the nasal cavity of the metal skull. Cracks formed in the structure from the impact, and it began to melt immediately after.
A sweltering heat closed around his wrist, and he registered that there was a russet gauntlet in the same place. Having rendered him unable to escape its grasp, the monster tore open the hatch on its chest, exposing molten rock surrounding metallic, spider-like legs set into a half-sphere in a box. The heat that washed over him in that moment was enough to melt all the remaining ice on his body, the water crashing onto the floor all around him.
Wherever the water touched his adversary, steam erupted. He could feel the burn seeping into his flesh from where it held him, as the heat from the furnace in its chest threatened to bake him like a potato. For a moment, he felt that horrible pressure on his head, laying in the sun on the cracked earth as a shambler leaned down to take a bite out of his skull.
Just as quickly as it came, it was gone, and his return to reality was accompanied by the sound of a church bell. He was, in fact, laying on the ground in the same sweltering heat, but he was still underground. As he sat up, he quickly found the source of the sound.
Bronze had a dent in its still-ringing skull, gauntlet-hands clutched to its temples, and behind it stood Cora, primed for another full-force swing. This gave Beck enough time to look around for his focus gun, which he found rather quickly, laying quite close to where the water gushed from the massive pipe.
He ran to retrieve it, conscious of every second they had until the thing recovered. Halfway there, and he heard the bell sound once more, though slightly muted. Scrambling for the gun, his fingers wrapped around the handle while his feet lost their grip on the floor, sending him tumbling into the massive pipe.
He quickly rose to his feet, using the pipe as support. Just in time to watch the monster belch a copious amount of smoke into Cora's face, then back off, growling. Its tone was a near match for the rumble at his back. "I'm going to enjoy flaying the muscle from your bones."
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The hatch opened once again, but Beck was already running back down the length of the pipe to the urn-shaped section. It was closer than he remembered being, but that didn't matter. His hands touched the metal, and he began trying to stretch the interpretation of [Shape Water]. It was made more difficult by the constant disruption inside, but eventually he was able to get a pretty good mental picture of what was housed in this section: a giant wheel, formed from slightly curved blades constantly being pushed by the water.
[Shape Water] has leveled up! +1 Wisdom It is now Lvl 5!
He could use that. As soon as he had a good idea of how it probably worked, he ran full-tilt back to the geyser he had created. Bronze Skull had used the time he was distracted to pull an obsidian sword from its chest, while Cora had come out the opposite side of the smoke cloud. Her head turned slightly in his direction, and she nodded right before the miasma was sent directly upwards.
Beck slid to a stop directly below the stream as the fiend charged, sword held low and to the side. His gun tracked its figure as he focused on constructing as good a replica as he could, before he realized that he had nothing to put through it. He'd tried sending pure, unchanged mana through before, and it hadn't worked. That led to another thought. He split a palm-sized globule of water from the stream above and sent it into the gun.
There was empty space behind the barrel that, for some reason, he hadn't noticed before. Working on nothing but a guess, he built the construct in that space and started it spinning. This did nothing, so he began fiddling with whatever he could on the weapon.
The fiend's obsidian blade flashed through the top of Cora's hair, which simply evaporated when it was no longer connected. On the return swing, she caught the edge between the remnants of the spike and hammer face of her weapon, where it shattered against the metal. In response, it kicked out at her to buy some space, where it plunged the remains of its weapon into the hatch once more.
Finally, as it drew the sword from itself once more, he found it. What he thought was a simple retention ring turned out to be a lever that opened a small door in the side, which he immediately flooded with as much water as he could from the stream above. The wheel set to spinning, and a small jet erupted from the end. It gained power the faster the wheel spun, but even when he reached his limit, it barely reached the fight.
So he started running. The muscles in his legs were burning in a very different way from his arm, but he pushed on. The obsidian blade narrowly missed Cora, and instead cut a line through the stone that simultaneously significantly shortened it. Finally, as it opened the hatch on its chest, he reached his destination; just close enough that it would hopefully get the effect he was hoping for while keeping him out of the fiend's reach.
The wheel turned, and water burst from the focus gun like a geyser. The molten rock turned to stone and a copious amount of steam as it was struck with the same amount of force as the stream it was pulled from. Finally, the golden bands that had barely hampered the fiend glowed bright and grew together before tightening rapidly, binding the metallic limbs as Beck continued pouring as much water onto the thing as he could. Another familiar ding! sounded in his ear.
A keening cry rang through the air, drawing their attention to Mason and Kenna's opponent. Former opponent, that is. The crystalline beast had broken engagement with them and was now flying at top speed toward them, its former adversaries pursuing as quickly as they could. As it neared, Beck could make out the expression that twisted its strangely familiar face: Pure, unadulterated rage. "He's my husband, you insignificant bastard!"
Cora quickly interposed herself between them and the approaching creature, but there was no guarantee she would be able to take it. It bore clear signs of damage, but that wasn't enough to discount it as a threat. A quick glance at his remaining mana revealed that he had slightly underestimated the makeshift spell.
Mana: 15/120
Still, it would have to be enough. Closing the lever and dismissing the construct, Beck took aim with his remaining good hand and let fly three Ice Bullets in quick succession. Only two hit, with the third going wide. They cracked against the fiend's ice skin, each impact causing craters to form and its forward momentum to halt for a moment. It was just enough for Kenna to catch up and drive her pick through the back of its head, its beak glowing from the mana she poured into it.
What ensued could only be described as one of Aldmoria's strangest wrestling matches, as the crystalline fiend attempted to dislodge the weapon before Kenna could melt through its head while Kenna and Mason worked to try and hold it as close to the ground as they could. Half a minute passed this way, until finally the silver mask that was its face fell to the ground, quickly followed by the rest of it.
Meanwhile, Beck had covered the unmoving form of the bronze fiend in water until it stopped producing steam. A pair of notifications arrived at virtually the same time.
You have aided in the slaying of a Minor Aqua Devil!
You have aided in the slaying of a Minor Molten Devil! You are now Lvl 6! +2 stat points!
The bodies dissipated into nothing.
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Fundido had lost almost all ability to sense things outside himself, save for that of mana. He and Helada had died, and quite soon after each other. Still, they weren't done quite yet. The vessels were still there, undisturbed.
Their 'souls' shot into the metal figures. Fundido flew into the stockier of the two, its steel exterior turning a dark copper as its wooden muscles burned, replaced by the magma that had become his lifeblood. He was almost done with his modifications, almost had the thing running when something clamped onto his mind.
He could feel everything that he was flee from him, as his consciousness slowly faded.