A sucker covered hand, about the size of Kat’s torso, whipsawed past her. Wind pulled at her armor as she ducked underneath the limb.
Her instincts screamed, and Kat acted without looking, throwing herself to the side just in front of a leg slapping into the ground where she had just been standing.
Water glittered in the blinding light of the floor guardian, tracing Kat’s Pseudopod as it snaked around her, jamming a knife into the monster’s leg and hanging on for dear life. For a heartbeat, she considered releasing Overpressure to activate Levitation, but the river of purple blood raining down from above convinced her otherwise.
If the monster was bleeding, it was taking damage. Even if the three of them hadn’t managed to crack through its armor yet, weakening the guardian could only be a good thing.
Instead, she tightened her muscles, bracing her body. A second later, she was yanked upward by her pseudopod as the monster spun to face Kaleek and Dorrik now that she was out of sight.
She curved her Pseudopod, pulling herself toward the base of the creature’s leg as she flew through the air.
Her knife hit first, Penetrate making the blade glow red as Kat used Crippling Blow to find a major artery. Purple blood gushed out of the wound, hot and smelling vaguely fishy as it washed over Kat’s hands.
Below, her Pseudopod yanked its knife free, jamming the blade in and out of the floor guardian’s rubbery flesh in a line leading upward toward where Kat hung on the creature’s underside.
Kat dismissed her first iteration of Overpressure, replacing it a second later with another one centered on her current location. The previous stream of blood turned into a river, dousing her entire body in the hot, disgusting, purple liquid.
It listed slightly to the side, its balance thrown off by its leg suddenly going limp beneath Kat. Another bolt of light, really more a laser than anything else, flashed from the front of the monster as it concentrated its bioluminescence with its reflective skin.
The line of destruction traced a jagged line across the landscape as the monster stumbled, deflecting off the metal plains and back up into the air.
Dorrik easily dodged it, his body awash with a purple glow as he pushed his physical abilities far beyond their natural state. His swords wove a deadly dance, darting in and out of the monster’s thrashing limbs as they cut and hacked at its thick, rubbery skin.
“Miss Kat! Vacate!” His voice echoed inside her head.
Kat cut the flow of mana to Overpressure, pulling her knife from the monster’s hide and kicking off of its leg simultaneously. While falling, she activated Flight, feeling the faintest twinge of a headache from her constant switching between spells.
Air rushed past her as the floor guardian slammed its torso into the ground, leaving a dent where its saucerlike rim hit the steel. Another sonic attack, transformed into little more than a blast of air pressure by enchanted wax plugging her ears, hit Kat, knocking the breath from her lungs and half stopping her heart.
She cut to the side, unphased. One of the guardian’s arms swished through the air, from below, and Kat dodged to the side.
It almost worked. The sucker covered hand hit her from underneath, sending Kat sailing up into the air and tumbling end over end.
Luckily, she was already flying and the attack didn’t do much more than shave off a couple HP and leave some bruises.
Righting herself, Kat turned back to the battle. A blanket of purple energy held the guardian’s torso down, barely visible through the monster’s growing glow. Its legs were thrashing wildly, trying to ward off Kaleek and Dorrik, but Kat’s attacks had given her companions the opening they needed to do some serious damage.
Dorrik was using all of his psi energy keeping the glittering oval from righting itself, but even without his powers enhancing his physique, his swords were more than enough to shred a leg on his own. On the other hand, Kaleek was in his element. His sword burned with red flame as he triggered multiple skills at once, hacking and hewing its way through any leg that came close to him.
Kat pulled her crossbow from its holster and began to reload it, all while keeping an eye on her opponent’s illumination level. By now she’d gotten a better feel for the monster’s attacks. It took a couple seconds for it to gather enough light and to alter the surface of its body enough for it to launch an attack. That was more than enough time for Kat to dodge.
Another leg went flying, sending a splash of purple blood to dye the battlefield as Kat’s bolt clicked into place. Mana flowed into the weapon as she took aim.
One of the monster’s legs snuck under Kaleek’s guard, hitting the desoph in the chest and sending him flying through the air. Kat shifted her crossbow and the shadowy blur of a bolt buried itself in the base of the limb.
Overpressure activated and blood erupted from the arrow hole, dislodging her bolt and spitting it back up into the air.
Quickly, Kat reloaded another bolt, this time not bothering to cast another spell. Infusion let her cast spells through her crossbow. Its major advantage over her other spells was that once the mana was spent on the spell, it no longer counted toward her maximum number of active abilities. The disadvantage was that once the effect ran out of mana, it would fade and there was no way she could continue feeding it power.
Her second bolt hit the top of the same leg. Overpressure was beginning to fade, but there was still enough to push the arrow free. The guardian thrashed, finally managing to get its feet under it and push.
Dorrik’s psi field resisted for a second, giving Kaleek enough time to get back to his feet after landing in a flash of metal on metal sparks. Another wave of sound hit Kat as the guardian surged to its feet.
It turned, trying to aim the smaller end of its torso at Kaleek and Dorrik, but its movement was hampered by the number of limp limbs hanging off of it. The monster wasn’t quite crippled yet, but it was clearly starting to slow down.
Kat swooped toward the ground, grabbing a potion from her belt and taking a swig. Flight was a mana hog. Like many second tier abilities, it was very useful, but it needed to be used sparingly and had the potential to be more harmful than good in a truly protracted battle.
Light flashed as the oval fired its ability again. This time, the indentation on the side of the floor guardian shifted slightly, dragging the beam of eye searing light across the landscape in a heartbeat.
It moved too fast for Dorrik to dodge, but it also couldn’t focus on him for long enough to burn through his protection. Instead, it distracted him for a fraction of a second, leaving him stunned and smoking gently in its wake as a monstrous limp smacked into him and sent him soaring into the air.
Kaleek retaliated by chopping that leg off at the wrist as he rushed back into the fray. The floor guardian wobbled slightly, struggling to maintain its balance. It wasn’t quite down yet, but it was clearly taking serious damage.
She landed, dropping to one knee to put another quarrel into her crossbow. Some forty paces away, Dorrik had clambered back to his feet and was drinking a health potion. It wouldn’t immediately fix the damage caused by the attack, but it would speed his healing up enough that he would be back to one hundred percent in no time.
Kat grabbed her backup knife from her Pseudopod, slipping it back into its sheath. The watery appendage lost cohesion, splashing to the ground as nothing more than inert liquid. She took a deep breath, focusing her mana.
Kaleek disabled another one of the monster’s legs with a well timed swipe. It wasn’t sufficient to completely sever the rubbery flesh of the guardian, but he managed to leave a deep enough cut to cripple it.
Gravity’s Grasp settled over the battlefield. The spell barely slowed Kaleek down, by now he had plenty of experience fighting under its influence, but the teetering monster stumbled, the metallic lip that ran around the outside of its oval torso digging a furrow into the ground.
She pushed her mana a second time, layering a second Gravity’s Grasp on top of the first. The guardian fell to the ground, its remaining legs no longer able to keep it aloft under the massive surge in gravity.
Kat could feel her mana draining rapidly, but she was fully stocked with potions. They’d spent weeks saving up the marks to purchase them, it only made sense for her to use them.
Kaleek walked toward the struggling monster, each one of his steps slow and purposeful. The three of them had trained under a double cast of Gravity’s Grasp in the past, and although they could move under its weight, that didn’t mean that it was safe or simple. A single misstep could send you tumbling to the ground, and a simple fall could cause serious damage. Worse, Kaleek’s heavy armor would leave him as stuck as the floor guardian, rolling back and forth on his back like an upended turtle.
He lifted his sword, the blade burning red as he used a skill to make it weightless. Then, once the blade was hanging in the air above one of its struggling limbs, Kaleek cut the skill, letting the strength of the enhanced gravity slam the blade downward, easily severing the leg.
Kat pulled out a second potion, sweat starting to bead her face as she kept a careful eye on her mana levels, trying to time drinking it perfectly. If she wanted to maximize its efficiency, her mana would need to be as low as possible without letting her spells lapse.
Dorrik walked past her, his body glowing purple as he used his psi enhancement to keep himself upright under the increased gravity. By the time he reached the monster, Kaleek severed another leg.
The guardian was beginning to glow again as Kat downed her second potion. There wasn’t any sign of its skin changing shape to create a lens, but it wouldn’t be long before it took aim at one of them.
“It looks like the guardian is about to fire its laser again,” Kat thought to her companions. “Be ready, on my mark I’ll be dropping Gravity’s Grasp. You’ll only have a fraction of a second to get clear.”
“The next phase should begin once you remove your magic,” Dorrik replied telepathically, his swords dicing through monster flesh as he painted himself and the landscape around him purple. “It will have taken some damage from us removing so many of its arms and legs, but that shouldn’t be enough to kill it on its own. We will need to puncture its armor for that.”
“SMASH, THRUST, RECOVER,” Kat winced as Kaleek’s cheerful voice echoed inside her skull. “PUNCH HIM IN THE TEETH. KICK HIM WHEN HE’S DOWN. IF HE GETS BACK UP? SLASH, CUT, ANOTHER!”
Purple blood splashed into the air as he turned another leg into nothing more than a bleeding stump.
“Are you-” Kat began, hesitating as she tried to sort through the situation. “Are you singing right now?”
“SORRY ABOUT THAT!” Kaleek mind-shouted back. “I FORGOT THAT THE TWO OF YOU ARE IN MY HEAD RIGHT NOW. THIS IS JUST MY NORMAL BATTLE ROUTINE, DON’T PAY IT ANY MIND.”
Before she could parse the mental flashbang that was trying to talk with Kaleek mid-battle, Kat spotted the floor guardian’s hide undulate as it began forming a lens. Already the purple stained metal was glowing brighter, evaporating a lot of the blood that covered the creature.
“Gravity is OFF!” She shouted mentally, dropping both of her spells at the same time.
Both Dorrik and Kaleek jumped to either side a fraction of a second before a beam of light erupted from the downed guardian. Even with the warning, it still managed to clip Kaleek, but he escaped before it could do any real damage.
Kat stood up and started jogging toward the floor guardian. It was trying to right itself, but well over half of its limbs had been cut off in the fray. A blast of air pressure, likely a sonic attack that would have floored the entire party without their preparations, reminded her that even immobile, it was far from helpless.
Kaleek took off another arm. The monster barely seemed to notice as they all thrashed back and forth madly. Meanwhile, Kat’s eyes wandered over the creature’s torso, finally brightening when she found her quarry.
There was still a webwork of cracks from her first crossbow attack on the side of the monster. Out of all her spells, the only one that could do real damage to the monster’s thick, steel skin was Gravity Spike. Ordinarily, that would be a tough prospect. The spell took time to focus, and for most monsters that gave them an opportunity to evade the attack.
Her mana gathered as Kaleek fought off another pair of arms, his armor still smoking from the glancing light blast. Kat released her spell, not stopping to watch the twisting gravitational forces as they pushed and pulled the guardian’s hide in a dozen directions at once before she began accumulating mana for another attack on the same spot.
Kat stopped some fifty paces from the downed creature. Just out of range of its remaining limbs. When her third spell hit the same spot, a couple of fist sized chunks of metal fell off of her target, bent and misshapen by their own weight.
“One more,” she sent through their telepathic bonds. “The armor’s almost done.”
A purple spear of psi energy zipped into the monster’s side, causing its remaining arms to stiffen. Kat glanced to the side as she began preparing her fourth casting of Gravity’s Grasp. Dorrik had a bolt of crackling energy in each pair of arms, tossing a second attack while Kat watched.
The attack didn’t seem to do a huge amount of damage, but like most psi based assaults, it stunned the creature for a moment with each blow, giving Kaleek and Kat the time they needed to land their strikes.
Her fourth casting of Gravity’s Grasp was the one that did the trick. Kat could almost hear the floor guardian’s thick, rigid steel armor cracking through the enchanted wax in her ears. Finally, the metal gave way, pieces as big as her forearm slipping off while the remaining chunks of armor hung loosely in the wound, torn and useless.
Kaleek took advantage of the still stunned monster to jump up onto its side, ramming his greatsword through the hole that Kat had drilled in its torso. Once again, the guardian stiffened, its few remaining arms frantically grasping toward the heavily armored desoph, but then another spear of purple energy transfixed it.
The big otter pulled his sword back out of the wound. The blade was purple with blood as he brought it up above his head. Then red light wrapped itself around the blade, a skill burning a significant portion of his stamina.
He slashed downard with the sword, its tip hitting the damaged but still intact armor on the outside of the injury, bending it inward and driving the thick metal into the guardian. The rest of his attack cut deep into the wound created by his first strike.
It didn’t slash deeply enough to hit the oval’s internal organs. The monster was too big to do that in one strike after all, but Kaleek’s sword sunk at least a pace into his opponent’s side before he jerked it back out.
That was all the invitation Kat needed. Mana swelled as she cast Overpressure, and it was like she had bombed a dam. A river of blood gushed from the wound, practically unseating Kaleek as every artery in the monster’s body strained itself trying to pump the creature dry.
A sucker-covered hand brushed weakly across the desoph’s back, unable to muster the strength to knock him off of the downed monster’s side. Kaleek ignored it, ramming his sword deep into the guardian yet again.
Its metal skin flickered and sparkled. Patches went dark while others continued to glow, but it was pretty clear that the monster was on its last legs, but literally and figuratively.
“STABBY SMASH STABBY SMASH STOP TRYING TO REGROW YOUR SKIN! JUST LET ME KILL YOU ALREADY” Kaleek was shouting again. Mentally, Kat made a note to talk with Dorrik about finding a way to filter out the desoph’s inner monologue. It was giving her a headache faster than the rapid mana expenditure, and that was saying something.
Finally, its limbs stiffened and went limp. There was still some blood leaking from the massive hole that Kat and Kaleek had drilled into the creature, but even with the help of Overpressure, it was more a trickle than a river.
Kat glanced over to Dorrik, and he nodded back. She reached up digging her nails into the enchanted wax that covered her ears. With a ‘pop,’ the first sound she’d heard in what felt like forever, the wax came undone. Almost as if in response, the level up alert materialized in front of her.
Congratulations Adventurer!
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You have defeated the Brilliant Oval and ascended past the Eleventh floor!
For achieving this feat with three or fewer players, a bonus attribute point has been awarded. Assign it wisely!
For ascending a level as an Elementalist Initiate, you gain the following benefits:
+2 Mana
+1 Stamina
+1 Mind
Keep climbing! Your answers and the Gardeners await you at the top!
On top of the dead floor guardian, Kaleek was still hammering away cheerfully. His armor was soaked head to toe in the monster’s purple blood, but the desoph didn’t show any sign of stopping.
She looked back to Dorrik and raised a single eyebrow, as if asking whether they should fetch their companion.
“Let him have his fun,” Dorrik said with a shrug. “We stopped him from going glider hunting after all. There’s no reason not to let him blow off steam. As a little treat.”