Shin drove his Pulse into the dense horde and blasted them around the boss room Chariot was pushed back into. Separated now and less impossible to deal with but the situation remained dire as the chimerans charged with disorganized zeal. A horned chimera threw a surging fist at Yen that passed through a portal to crush its own head. The Comet maximized before Yen shot out and exploded on another, but the modified player regenerated in an instant.
The horned chimeran’s head recovered in tangent, but Donny’s Shield Charge sent it flying before it could attack again. An eagle headed player burst down next to Donny and let out a terrible screech. The knight’s body trembled and blood spurt from all over. In the haze of his brain regenerating from mush, the eagle head gathered wind in his arms and Karla’s leg slammed into it, Crush obliterating half its head as it crashed into the wall.
Donny’s mind snapped back into focus as a third tackled Karla away. The amazon broke out of its hold and three more attacked, their assault leaving her teetering on the edge of death against several, the brutal damage piling and healing on her body as she fought with gory zeal against poor odds.
Donny tensed forward to burst to her aid, but suddenly shifted the other way, just in time to block the club of a deformed ogrish foe. The club shattered his greater bastion but Anchor held his feet in place so the strike wouldn’t reach the mage behind him. Blood spurt from his ruptured internals once more but it gathered in tendrils, gilding his axe as he cleaved a light wound into the ogre head. Yen realized without words and took Fire Mimicry form, creating some distance.
With nothing incumbering him, Donny landed a concussive knockback of his shield interrupting the chimeran’s simple roar as he rent through the wound before it healed, drawing a pool of blood to coat himself further. Donny raised his axe and the ogre chimeran roared harder, its body whipping into speed as it unleashed a barrage of strikes, sending a bloody chunk of the knick cratering into the wall.
A second Comet slammed the orge away but that drew the attention of others. A barrage of smaller fire blasts slowed them down enough for her eyes to track and she grasped them in Hold. Explosion detonated in the center but something dispelled it away with ease as the holds shattered.
Three chimerans charged her with anti magical claws, and curving arrows pierced their skulls. Basem blinked away from the retaliation of another and sank into hiding once more, as Yen soared through the air erratically as the danger towards herself increased by the moment.
Mujin struggled mightily against one, his recently gained spear replaced the frozen one that broke against the vampire seer. The claws of the gnoll shredded through his dragonplate, only his sixth sense and lightning reflexes allowing him to evade death, and little else. Dragonfang thrust at the gnoll chimeran and a shockwave beneath its feet knocked the spear away and the gnoll lunged with open maw, just for a black scythe to reap its head.
Mujin paused only a split second before impaling the gnoll with the sharp fangs of a dragon to destroy its soul. Ashley danced with the chaos and madness, taking limb and flesh where she could but the creature’s abilities were too stacked and they recovered immediately.
She darted down to take the leg of a chimeran just upon Jean but left him as quickly as she came to help. Wooden puppets shattered in his wake as Jean was forced to Substitute from their incessant attack, nothing within his arsenal able to damage the indestructible.
Plants bloomed all around within the bloody hall, twisting and grasping vines endeavoring to stall and hinder the augmented creatures as much as possible. A barrier at her side from Mara blocked a cataclysmic bolt of lightning and a portal returned a spear from the other. The guardian trio forced to defend each other just as much as they were the others.
Shin crashed through the air before them, his ragged form pursued by half a dozen. Flesh regenerated in an instant as he resumed his attack. Light Blitz brought him to the side of the furthest right and prismatic shadow spike formed around his hand. Duality flared and he punctured it clean through the creature’s flesh.
The hag shrieked which strained his mind but his shadows impaled it from within and prismatic fractures ended its cries. A closed fist slammed him down into the hard floor but the headless invoker blitzed again and bloomed a tree in the nearest chimeran, spreading iridescent cracks through its soul.
“...mama…” Tears drained down its eyes as the chimeran groaned with the last of its life, and Shin froze.
Acid breathe from a dragon headed chimeran melted the top half of his body and a giant belted him away to splatter against the wall. Shin’s body reformed as the chimerans charged upon him once more, but his expression had changed. Colder. Deeper.
The will of a displeased tyrant fell on the battlefield and prismatic shadows skewered every last chimeran still remaining and a dire tree bloomed in all. As the chimerans fell dying, Shin’s eyes were solely upon the still uncaring Stein. Vicious wrenched from his soul in a mad frenzy of pure malice, no longer restrained by his bondholder.
Wretched shadows lunged like a sea of knives, the dark wave crashing into a wall of nothing as though the air itself ate away of it. The Dusk Garm rose from the shadows beneath, malevolent fangs opening towards the madman’s neck. And Stein took the darkness himself in one hand and light in the other, and they merged to wipe away all trace of the wolf.
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
Shin felt something return to the root in his soul and slowly start to heal, and Stein appeared before him with the speed of light with a bleak look in his eyes. Swirling gray magic severed through his barrier and Shin’s body in an instant. “Why must you always interfere?”
A hold around the Soulweaver shattered as soon as it came and the curving knives and arrows struck only blunt force, but it gave Jean enough time, to pull Shin away through Puppetry strings. Karla’s kick slammed into Stein’s unmoving arm as his other hand morphed into a blade and struck up towards her head, passing through a portal into his own.
Stein pulled his own bladed hand from his skull as Karla’s knee snapped his head back, but his thoughts were elsewhere and unconcerned. Stein shifted in an instant towards Dante. A portal appeared before his morphed hand, and the blade curved below into a spike that pierced straight through the charlatan.
But Dante moved out of it as though he were a ghost, his glowing tattooed body showing no damage at all. His own morphed hand infused with Corrosive energy slashed on Stein, and cut not even a scratch of his body. Dante blinked away as a scorching Comet dispelled before it struck the madman.
Greater Mindfray and Greater Bewilder assaulted the soulweaver’s mind but neither skill did anything at all. Mujin flickered all the same and impaled the man through the heart with a dragon fanged spear, but Dante blinked him away at once. Stein stood still, pulling the spear from his body that healed in moments, flesh and soul. Not even his expression had changed, as if he was merely reviewing the results of a routine experiment.
“This is insane…. He has everything.” Yen stressed, still within her fire form.
“Blind and ignorant…” Stein turned to her. “I have nothing yet.”
Dante’s expression tense as a large portal opened before Yen. But that portal shattered and her body of flames smothered away in the dark, leaving only a single ember dropping to ash on the ground.
A prismatic fist flaring with black and white struck Stein’s back, shock came before it struck but his Foresight was too compromised with a rival to react. The damage to his soul spread a little deeper and unlike all his other wounds, it remained. Twilight struck him again, but his duality enhanced barrier held this time.
Vines, arrows, and knives bombarded the soulweaver all at once. Stein slipped through and destroyed them at his ease, and appeared next Mujin with lethal intentions. A succession of portals and traps thwarted his attempts, but he moved on to Kamala as his new target without issue. But the same happened again.
A black figure flickering past him, as the smiling reaper’s scythe sliced through his shoulder. He spared a moment’s focus to the anomaly but the wound healed and he resumed his focus to the others, but Shin appeared behind again.
Stein was ready this time and light shifted away from the invoker’s transcendent attack, and Dante was waited right there. Blue markings lined his body as he thrust his corrosive palm into the prismatic cracks, the enigmatic runic power deepening the cracks in one hard pulse.
A clawed strike passed through Dante’s intangible form as the medley of distractions harassed him once more. The invoker and the charlatan, Stein marked those as the true threats, the charlatan in particular who interfered with his Foresight so. The pine green haired reaper was of note, but once he dealt with the charlatan, the others would fall.
Stein blitzed around the hall, threatening Chariot with death one after the other, forcing Dante to expend mana to deal with it. A dire end looming closer as the soulweaver they faced seemed to have limitless mana, and Dante’s was rapidly draining. Shin and Ashley struck wherever they could but none of their attacks were landing any more.
Stein drew closer and closer to the inevitable end, but the persistence of the flaws before him brought out some of his annoyance as well. That such defective beings had stalled his goals for even a moment of his infinite time irked him. His untrained attacks fell incessantly as the mortals before him strained more and more and finally, a portal fizzled out and his arm pierced through the charlatan’s chest.
Twilight coated his arm with the others approaching too slow to react, and Stein’s eyes widened slightly. His movements stalled and his focus turned to the blazing inferno of the firestarters resurrection. A soaring Comet dispelled before him just as he had always done, but the success this time was met with a trace of confusion. Confusion that lasted only an instant, as something paralyzed his body for a moment and Shin struck in the opening.
Prismatic mana crashed more violently than before, spreading the damage across the whole of his back. Dante morphed away as Stein’s light speed failed. He lunged away on the power of his vampirized body but a black scythe and silver spear tore away at him further. And Shin appeared behind him once more.
In his frustration, a wave of glowing gray twilight burst around him, only to be contained by the prison of duality enhanced sanctuary. Stein foresaw the invoker’s approach but the cracks spread further, preventing his skills and Shin struck a fourth time. The fractures spread deep through his body such that it seemed like the soulweaver would fall apart. And the vampire family lunged.
Shin flickered to meet the woman, her own twilight palms failing to pass through his pulsing armor of black and white. And with his other hand, golden flame flared the same and burned the vampire queen to ash. The child perished at the same time to Yen’s flames, but Stein was gone. Fled through the dungeon.
Without a word Shin burst after him, and the others followed. Through the winding old library, out of the study, down the hallways, Shin ran with prismatic eyes and came to a stop in the chapel. Before a giant statue of a man with the sun for a head, Stein ambled, his body starting to chip and turn to dust. He took a step and his foot crumbled away, bringing him to his knees before the sculpture.
“You have everything…” Stein spoke to no one as his body turned to dust with his shattered soul. “Why can’t I take such a small part…?”
Yen glanced at Shin, staring at the pile of dust without a sign he would do anything further. “...you fine with him getting that peaceful death?”
“Nothing’s worse than dying.” Words of certainty given in such casual tone Yen couldn’t find the right words to reply so she said nothing further.
Donny stored his weapons as his posture relaxed. “That should do it, yeah?”
“Well… Can’t really have much more impact than this…” Yen agreed.
“There’s still a day left. We should not lower our guard.” Kamala reminded.
“I mean, are they really gonna fight us with nothing to gain?” Yen noticed Shin’s lack of anything. “You good?”
Shin didn’t look back over, his expression still neutral. “Yeah.”