Fragments of glass exploded out of my hands to join the halos of sand of . The attacks registered each other and the roiling Skills built momentum until they struck the Corpus Chimera like a sandblasting drill. Its scorpion chitin armor endured ridiculously well, taking a full five of the attacks without failing.

Thankfully, the sixth had enough oomph to crack the plate at the base of the tail. Fur flew up for the next three parts of the attack until the ninth finally drew blood. The Corpus let out a mixture of a roar and a squeal that left my ears ringing and I was once more thankful not to be on the ground to be disrupted by vibrosense. As the tails curled in pain, I rushed forward in a dive.

I didn't bother taking the tower shield off my back, instead I two handed Fievil's axe hammer and struck full force with the heated chitin blade to the base of the scorpion tail. The screeching roar once more returned, this time setting my whole body ringing thanks to proximity. That didn't mean that my follow up attack didn't happen. The moment I made the second impact, the second charge of all my plowed a hole right into the mountain.

Bloody mud sprayed into the air as Amelia did her best to keep Fievil embedded and sawing at the wound the moment it made contact. The scorpion tail and the two bear arms tried their best to grab me, but Amelia applied every bit of experience she'd gotten to that point watching the normal Air Attuned practice. One of the beast's claws deleted another chunk of along my shoulder when they raked across the tower shield protecting my back but nothing more. The force of the final in the sequence finally severed the speedy limb.

"One more," I huffed, rolling on the giant creature's back as it swung to splat me.

It wasn't steady footing, but I didn't need it with Amelia's help maneuvering the ridiculously supersized creature. With a deft twist and loosening of my wrists, Fievil's hammer head took the lead as I swung down into the blood gushing mess at the base of the chimera's spine. At the peak of my swing, I detonated my forearms with all the force I'd absorbed when the Corpus Chimera stuck me. It cost me 5% of my Health, but for twice the force I could stack in the awkward swing it was worth it.

The tortoise shell squelched into the meat of the Q8 creature, crystal spikes bloomed along the shell's hexes, deepening the wound in preparation for the final charge of that poured into the Corpus Chimera's back. That was not to its liking as a mantle of flames nearly as hot as Daniela's dragonfire erupted down its back in response.

As I watched the approaching death by charbroiling, I cursed the expenditure of mana and thanked the girls profusely. Mana flowed into the Sturgeon Talisman along with 's spell chain.

Mud rolled down the top of my head and seeped into every gap between my base and as if it was the exact space it was meant to fill. The cloak manifested moments before the flames hit and even through my armor I felt every fiber of body hair disappear. Were it not for Striated Dermis' resilience and the reduction of the magical effect from Fievil's Arcane Sink, the heat would have dug deeper.

I completed my dodge away from the Corpus Chimera, landing on the ground in a barely dignified roll to put out the flames that remained. My almost entirely crumbled as the heat flash baked the clayey magic. I didn't even want to imagine what I would have looked like without it. Blackened tilapia comes to mind. Damn it, focus Ron!

"I'm going to need some Water help!" I shouted, using Fievil to throw up a carpet of around the Corpus Chimera as I tried to assess the battlefield. Even my eight foot stone stalagmites were nothing more than inconveniences for the large creature as they tore gashes. When it went on all fours to chase after me, spine still aflame and no longer constrained by my Totem, I knew I was in trouble.

"Where do you need it!?" Jolene called through the comm-plant. "We need water everywhere on the battlefield right now!"

"I can't get close to the Corpus thing!" I shouted, using Fievil to form long deep channels in the earth with just ahead of the stomping beast.

"I can... I know what we can do. How are you going to attack?" Jolene asked, her lithe form cutting through a Q2 spider with ease when I finally spotted her.

"It's back is opened up! If I can take out its lower body it will effectively be open to bleed out," I said, swinging Fievil to cleave three boars and a banana spider that tried to web me.

"I got it. Get it to turn around and I'll do the rest!"

I didn't waste time trying to question her, even if I was not excited to turn and run back towards the forty foot abomination. Fievil swelled the earth to intercept the flamethrower sputum the Chimera was releasing. For the sake of benefiting from vibrosense, I remained on the ground. The warnings and instinctual movements that came from my Trait allowed me to help Fievil optimize our defenses. Even then, the Totem was hemorrhaging mana.

With the influence of the Aberrant strengthening the Corpus Chimera, it was taking everything Fievil had to rebuff a fiery death. Amelia was sending out gusts of wind to keep back the flecks of liquid fire that Fievil wasn't able to get. Even if she wasn't expending mana at the same rate as Fievil, without spell chains to guide the magical effects they were incredibly inefficient.

Nevertheless, the three of us made it to, and around, the Corpus. With the Aberrant looming behind me I felt distinctly exposed, but it was definitely worth it. Jolene immediately started to weave mana at a vigorous pace when she got in range. Her own spell chain struggled against the Aberrant, steam curling off the mana that was being forcefully manifested despite her significant control.

"Amelia!" With a thump to my chest, the there cracked and the possessed Charm exploded out of it. The ghost of her wings materialized as she doubled her speed to zip to Jolene's side before letting her Arcane Sink bloom. It wasn't perfect since some of the water started to spark and turn to cloud stuff, but the Totem wasn't actively trying to oppose the merwoman's working.

As if it could sense the opposing element taking shape behind it, the Chimera started the ponderous pivot to look behind it.

"Oh no you don't!" I shouted, materializing before batting them into the Chimera's porky head with perfectly aimed strikes from Fievil's hammer head. "Your problem is here you furry piece of bacon!"

One of the missed as the Chimera turned, but when it went off the creature got an eye full of onyx. It flinched, aqueous humor oozing out in a torrent. That got its attention. Thankfully for my continued existence, that was all the opening Jolene needed.

"!"

There was a moment of warbling silence, overlapped perfectly with something I hadn't seen in vibrosense before. The ripples were sucked inward instead of being released by something for several heartbeats. When they did follow the normal order... it was one ginormous wave that was strong enough to highlight the creature despite how high leveled its body was. When it reached my ears, my armor had to work double time not to crack and shatter. Fievil didn't have a squishy brain to get rattled, so the Totem used its mana to keep my armor sealed from the effects of the magic.

When it passed and Fievil formed breathing holes in my armor, I could see that Jolene's Amplified Skill had blown a hole clear through the Corpus. It wasn't a large hole, more a strange spear thrust than anything considering the size of the creature overall, but it had been perfectly aimed to take advantage of the gaping wound I'd created.

The Corpus Chimera squealed the whole way to the ground. Its crash brought a lull to the battlefield as Dreg Tendrils and Dreg Warriors paused to gaze at the fall of the biggest threat. Thankfully my brain had already been scrambled by Jolly's Skill, so when the moment struck I knew it was time to capitalize. Instead of trying to finish off the Corpus, I rushed the giant Aberrant.

Amelia, protect them! I didn't know how the Aberrant was going to react to the next part of the plan, but it would be countering somehow.

I retrieved the stone case I'd placed the Fire Purger and the high Quotient Infusions into from my lower back where my tower shield had been protecting them. A flex of my hand was enough to crumble the abused stone, but the Purger within was intact. When I was within ten feet of the Aberrant's frozen flame, Fievil's Domain hit a harsh wall. Curls of angry red wisps flecked against the brown-tinged edge of the Arcane Sink. My Totem shrunk it, condensing his domain to just five feet at the expense of more of its stored mana than I wanted to count.

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It allowed us to take several steps further before the Aberrant's influence dropped down like a burning building. I managed another step before molten stone started raining down around me from the clash of the Aberrant's influence and Fievil's domain. I curled around the Purger, feeling several of the droplets landing on my back and hissing away single percents of health when they hit the parts of my body not covered by or the that were able to mitigate the initial burst of heat.

Fievil flinched together with me, tightening his domain to little more than a foot around me. It was leaps and bounds ahead of where our practice had taken us, but adversity was the mother of doing whatever the hell was necessary to live. I could feel the Totem growing dimmer in my mind as mana leaked through the sieve of his domain just to keep us alive. I dove, crossing the last three feet to the crystal surface and slapping the Purger against the Aberrant.

A pulse of neutral mana sprouted from within, revealing a Metier Crystal that had been hidden within the components of the device. The suction cup adhered perfectly despite the uneven surface of the Aberrant. The piping rotated then stretched and impaled solidly into the crystal surface. A tiny speaker hidden from sight shouted. "Infusion. Infusion. Infusion." over and over in a distorted tone of Alan's voice.

I didn't even open the sack, instead I just crushed every Infusion in my hand at once and aimed the tangle of Pith Threads at the Purger. The effect was immediate. The azure threads of the Infusions were sucked up by the pentagon and redirected into the tubes before being violently injected into the Aberrant. A barely perceptible whine filled the air, flakes of red-tinged crystal rained around me and the pressure from the fire mana eased by a full step. I almost dropped to my knees from the lifted burden, but I kept myself together and observed the rest of the process.

After the surface crystal flaked away, the threads took a foothold on the Aberrant. Concentric circles stamped themselves around the Purger before finger thin lines connected the Purger to the circles. Then a filament of blue grew out from the established band like a sapling taking root. Another on the opposite end bloomed, and then tree after wire-thin tree of cobalt light drew themselves over the surface of the Aberrant. Before I knew it, dozens of feet of the Aberrant were toned purple as the Water and Fire elements clashed in a mind-bending kaleidoscope of light alternating between circles and veins.

I was so enthralled watching the ongoing warfare of light I almost cost us the whole battle. Fievil manifested a clawed paw that shoved me out of the way moments before the Corpus Chimera pancaked me. The boar head snorted, smoke curling off its nostrils as its one clear beady eye stared deep into my soul. We both knew how close I'd gotten to dead.

The Purger! My eyes snapped to where the abomination's claws had dug into its parent, but other than the grooves the initial impact had caused, the effects of the Purger were intact. Even before my eyes, threads of blue were filling in the damage with entirely blue crystal like a stitched wound. The Purger itself was growing dimmer, but it had formed a divot for itself to dodge the attack.

"I'm going to need you to leave that alone," I shouted, rushing forward instead of backing away. Even crippled, the beast was entirely too powerful. At least Fievil isn't losing as much mana to keep us outside of the Aberrant's influence. That was all the bandwidth I could afford because the Corpus rolled over in absence of its lower legs. intercepted, cracked and were then replaced as I attempted to halt the collapsing building that was the Chimera's roll.

"The Purger is running out of fuel!" Jolene yelled, the mermaid dousing me in water to cool off the flames still licking at my body from the Corpus Chimera.

"I'll be fine! Get a team to bring those Infusions!" I shouted, rolling to the side just in time to dodge a glob of liquid flame. I didn't check to make sure Jolene had done what I asked, nor did I check in on the state of the battlefield. Juggling the Aberrant and the Corpus left me fighting for my life, especially as Amelia kept Jolene alive through the chaos.

Seconds passed like minutes and the minute it took for me to hear more news of any kind took hours. It was a dance for survival. boosted dodges, deflections with my shield that I countered immediately against the hardened fur of the Corpus with Tremor Frame and Diffracting Tissue not to mention pushing every Attribute I had to the limit hard enough that I could feel blood leaking within my armor. Forcing your muscles to move with Slurry Ichor had not so fun consequences.

Health: 67% (Hemorrhaging, Hairline Fractures (Multiple))

"We lost the crates!" Jolene shouted, fear thick in her voice. "The Infusions are spilled all over the ground!"

I couldn't even articulate the derailment of thoughts that followed her words. If Fievil hadn't been looking out for me, I was sure things would have collapsed right then. The mole flashed four clear images in my mind. Blobby and Billy. A vacuum and an explosion of light. Then the plan wagons were hitched once again.

"Jo-- Ugh," I grunted, tanking more of a blow than I wanted from the Corpus and getting launched away from the Aberrant. With just the casual strike I could feel some of the instances of Hairline Fractures getting upgraded to full breaks. My breath caught in my throat as my lungs failed to expand properly. With shaky hands, I reached for the Health Shot tucked at my belt and downed the first.

It was the most disgusting thing I'd ever ingested. Gritty, salty, and sour all at the same time in the worst way possible. If I could have puked without risking losing my life I would have. Even as it was, I had to endure the offense against flavor because I wasn't able to swallow. Thanking Samuel all the way, the healing made its way through me regardless.

With a choked inhale, the world brightened and I watched my Health tick up as the Corpus started dragging itself back towards the Aberrant. It would be seconds before the minion would be seeking to remove the tick trying to infect its master.

"Jolene! I need Blobby to start collecting those Infusions!" I called through the comm-plant. "Billy, I need you to bring me Clayton."

"Billy's fighting Jefferson with me," Daniela called back through the comm-plant. "What the hell do you mean 'bring you Clayton'!?"

"Help them, Jolly! I am going to feed the Aberrant a dose of its own medicine and hopefully it will keep us afloat! Don't kill him!"

"Ronan," Jolene groaned. "Fine! But take Amelia back! You aren't going to make it otherwise."

I wanted to argue, but I really didn't have a leg to stand on. Like a silver comet, Amelia cut a path through the weakened Aberrant influence to join Fievil's. Their combined effort pushed the fire mana back over a dozen feet while still compressed before the Hummingbird Charm struck me in the chest. Without any directive for me, since my attention was on vibrosense and not dying to a casual flop from the ginormous Corpus Chimera, Fievil reformed my chestplate.

With her mobility added to my dodges, the crippled Corpus became a joke. The biggest struggle was the fact that I had to purposefully keep the abomination's attention. In a bid to disrupt the battlefield in our favor, the Wildfire Hogs got a visit from the creature. While it wasn't actively attacking the other Aberrant hench-creatures, a casual miss from the Chimera was enough to snap the spine of one of the Hogs rallying the Tendrils against our fighters.

Just as I was getting ready to herd the Corpus once more, the crack of thunder rippled twice in quick succession loud enough to draw my attention. Ponzio ripped through the sky to land right in the middle of a cluster of higher Level creatures that had been fighting the Wild Fists. The pugilists did not waste the opening the Zebelos heir gave them, surging forward with Skills.

The fight had devolved into melee and archery at some point, likely when the people with less Refinement to keep up the barrage dried out their mana pools. With an opening as clear as day, it was worth it to dig into whatever reserves had been regenerated since the fight started. The Wild Fists were a rainbow wave of magic that cut down the creatures that had been holding them off for minutes. Clayton was deep in their foe's ranks, backpedaling while sending javelins of ice they were forming from his own joints.

It didn't last. Chains of cloud-stuff erupted above him, quickly forming a funnel that bound him in place. Billy rolled over the fight like an incoming thunderstorm, shining pink projectiles fell like hail from his hands with scary accuracy right onto Clayton. Each impact threw the Appendage further and further into the tightening grip of his clouds. With the released weight, his body jerked downward in the sky and then again when he lobbed a cluster of dimmer projectiles he removed from his waistguard. Stepwise, the Partial elf used his and Skills to lock down the Water Appendage one magnolia seed at a time.

I was vaguely aware of several relayed messages that Ponzio was handling, which correlated with motions of teams across the battlefield, but my focus was on Billy and Jolene rushing to converge on the Aberrant. Blobby was trailing through a muddy mess dead center of our eastward advance where the crates with Infusions had been lost. Everything I could see was drawing together and I didn't know if we'd have enough.

Daniela was fighting Jefferson alone. It was a localized wasteland of glowing purple shards and dragonfire puddles, but the woman was holding her own with the help of a trio of covering her flanks. I didn't even want to think about how much mana she was spending second to second, but I knew she had the second highest regeneration after Samuel. The Cloth Muscle fighters tried their best to keep the rush of creatures from engaging the main combatants.

The problem was the Q6 Kissing Bug. The lower level Cloth Muscles would fold without Ponzio to hold the line. Already I could see two of them down for the count, an orc in their midst dragged their members by the collar of their stone silk robes. Ponzio was staggering in place where he'd disrupted the fight against Clayton, but the Wild Fists he'd freed up wouldn't make it in time. I can't be in twenty places at once! I screamed in my mind, eyeing the Corpus Chimera trying to bulldoze Jolene and Billy, the matched battle against the Wildfire Hog and Fire Ant, and the losing front that Daniela was trying to hold despite the fact the Pendulum Cannons had pivoted to fire on the Kissing Bug.

She couldn't dodge the Pain mage and a semi-truck of infectious chitin.

You need to act, Ron! If you don't, none of this is going to work out either way! I put a desperate plan into effect. Amelia grumbled in my mind's ear the whole time, but she took me up and forward as fast as she could manage. It was going to hurt, and I preemptively placed Sam's Health Shot between my teeth. The wind roared past my ears fast enough that vibrosense picked it up through my armor when my Hummingbird Charm removed itself from my chest.

I started to fall, the world slowing as my stomach did backflips. Amelia was a streaking bullet meant for Jefferson's back, while I was a catapult boulder aimed at the back of the Corpus Chimera's head. The one still vividly on fire, of course.

As I cut through the air, something very unexpected happened moments before I pinged off the Corpus. Something that sent a chill down my spine because I was already committed.