Chapter 346: YOINK! |
I watched my Shielding from Aura of Persistence drop to 0. The Davahn’s body shone for a moment as it sprang up over him instead.
Varrin growled. “He took my rage stacks,” he said, fist clenching.
On the bright side, while I had a lot of beneficial aura effects, none of them were themselves straight buffs. Their effects were, but most of those wouldn’t last without being in my aura. Varrin usually fought with a plethora of buffs, but they mostly came from Xim and some of Nuralie’s potions. He hadn’t bothered taking any of the latter yet, so aside from Rage he’d probably just lost…
I narrowed my eyes and tried to cancel the Life Warded buff the United had stolen from Varrin. I couldn’t. Dispel couldn’t latch onto it either which was getting annoying with this guy. Since the effect had come from my staff, that meant I’d be unwillingly protecting the Davahn for so long as he had the stolen chunk of Shielding. It wouldn’t apply beyond that, since the staff’s ability was inherently limited to the Shielding I’d granted.
I shuddered when I thought about what would have happened if I’d gone ahead and used Wall of Force to give myself another 3,000 Shielding. The Davahn would get to use Life Warded to transfer 3,000 of the damage he took to me as we fought, and that would have been–
O b n o x i o u s.
While the theft wasn’t too devastating, the debuff trade was probably what the United had really been aiming for. Given the debuff he’d transferred, it would have been terrible for someone else. Against me and Varrin, it barely registered.
You have gained 553 Toxicity!
You have 50% resistance to Toxicity.
I did the damage math and saw that this would cost me 408 health.
“Cute,” I said, then glanced at Varrin. “You good?”
“My threshold is 121 and I just took one of Nuralie’s antidote gummies.”
“Cool. Wait, how did you get one of those into your helm?”
The United scowled at our total lack of concern over getting more than 500 stacks of Toxicity tossed onto us. He charged before Varrin could answer my dang question.
I used Shortcut to get in his face, and Gravity Anchor held me steady as we collided. I cast Explosion! on impact, my staff adding a tumultuous ringing to the spell. Grotto kept up his psychic assault, trying to pour on debuffs until the Davahn’s resistances gave out, but the Davahn held steady through both our assaults.
My Shielding dipped as my spell triggered Life Warded and transferred my own damage back to myself, then the United ravaged me as well. My arm burned as I kept bringing my shield to bear with more speed than my body should have been capable of. Two hits chipped into my health before the Davahn roared as his center split open and bit down on three of Gracorvus’s hexagonal plates with his big gross torso mouth. He tried to tear my shield away like he had with Guar, but the moment his giant mouth clamped shut, I separated the affected plates from the main shield. The Davahn stumbled backwards from the unexpected absence of resistance, his teeth screeching as he reflexively tried to chew on the indestructible metal.
I teleported back to give Varrin room as he flashed in with two clones this time. All three moved through the Davahn, cutting his spiritual essence like their bodies had been forged into Spectral blades. Their assault terminated in three massive, overlapping storms of cutting force, ripping into flesh and soul alike.
The Davahn spat out the pieces of Gracorvus alongside a few broken teeth and pushed through the midst of Varrin’s tempest to swing wildly at one of the clones. Despite the clone being incorporeal, the Davahn’s hits landed with waves of Dimensional force that disrupted its ghostly form.
While the United was momentarily distracted by Varrin, I spent the stamina to restore my 3,000 Shielding. I was really hoping that the guy couldn’t do that whole swaparoo thing all over again. I used my second focus to summon portals beneath Kai and Guar, letting them both fall into a private medical facility in Closetland.
With Guar and Kai taken off the field, Varrin and I didn’t have to worry about collateral damage anymore. We’d thus far been partially focused on playing interference, getting between the United and our less robust allies. Our movements had also been limited by positioning, trying to keep from getting in their way. Three melee fighters against one human-sized opponent made for a tight squeeze, especially since we didn’t have much experience fighting alongside Guar and Kai, which is part of why I’d stepped back to go full mage mode.
But I’d spent a lot of time fighting alongside Varrin, and I’d spent more time in one-on-one training with the big guy than anyone else in the party. We knew our roles and how to fight around each other without a moment’s hesitation. Alongside my subtle use of Reveal to share my perception and intent with Varrin, the two of us could move though a battle like we were a single organism.
As soon as we flipped from running interference to all-out assault, the tenor of the whole fight changed.
I separated Gracorvus into two, letting four more plates join the three the Davahn had spat out. This became my portal shield, and I forced it to appear in the United’s face as I teleported in to take his next hit. He made a frustrated growl as he kept trying to smack the shield away. When that didn’t work he tried dealing with the nuisance by murdering me as fast as possible. When his first combo landed without leaving a single scratch, I let the portal to my floating shield close so that he could glare at me. The soft glow of my Shielding faded out of view as the man’s hits stopped coming.
I waggled my eyebrows at him. “Did you think you had a chance here?” I asked. “That’s kind of sad.”
This sent the Davahn into an absolute frenzy. While this had been my goal, and the United’s style did suffer for his anger, this also caused the man to stop holding back.
I hadn’t exactly realized that he’d been holding back.
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The slippery power that fueled the Davahn’s telekinesis wrapped itself around his entire body. Each hit he landed gained yet more force, ramping up in potency as the man continued to pummel me. His muscles rippled and his skin tore from the strain of forcing his own body to move like this. The short talons on his knuckles shattered, though it did nothing to make the attacks more bearable. The man was also sucking wind through bared, gritted teeth.
This entire time, Grotto and I were both pulling out all the tricks to avoid getting overwhelmed. I was mixing up blocks with Shortcut to take me briefly out of range. Given how fast the United moved, these were barely a stutter in man’s attack tempo. Grotto had his own shields rotating into the hits to give me even more protection. His shields had some limited autonomy through the Animate Object spell, leaving him free to continue his psychic attack in an attempt to disrupt the onslaught. When my new heap of Shielding was exhausted, the Core threw out a Rebuke, which wrapped me in yet more Shielding and hit the Davahn with Holy retribution on his next attack. It didn’t slow the man down one tick, but left the scorched impression of his own fist on his chest.
I opened portals leading back to my floating shield whenever I could, but the Davahn had gotten wise to the gimmick and flowed around the portal without interrupting his rhythm. I even started using Shortcut offensively, mana shaping it into an attack so that I could teleport the United away, rather than myself. This was good for a couple of interrupts, but the one-second cooldown was a long time in this fight.
Every scrap of mental energy I had was bent towards keeping this guy’s fist from making contact with anything other than my shield. I abandoned trying to do anything else, not just because I didn’t want to eat the raw damage from an unblocked hit but also because I didn’t know what the conditions for this guy’s knockout stun were. I hadn’t given up on offense, though. I was just waiting for the right moment.
Varrin was right there with us the entire time. One of his clones had been destroyed, but he summoned another to replace it, the last one he had available until he could meditate to restore them. That left three Ravvenblaqs at the United’s back and sides, taking advantage of every opening that the Davahn’s mindless assault presented.
Whenever I teleported, Varrin was ready to follow with Spectral Dance, the skill that let him become a lightning-quick ghost. As I naturally moved to deflect hits, Varrin had already adjusted his positioning to stay out of my way. When I teleported the Davahn instead, Varrin took that brief pause to cast Enrage and build more Rage stacks. The big guy didn’t have the raw speed of the Davahn, but could keep up through tactical use of his abilities.
His helm had come to life with the burning blue flames of his berserker mode, but that just meant his Rage built faster. Like the Davahn, he was boosting his damage with every strike. Unfortunately for me, the Davahn was boosting even faster.
Every block gave me another burst of Shielding, and I activated Rejuvenation to heal myself whenever I could. Finally, Varrin’s assault hit some critical mass of damage, and the United’s soul flinched. My staff sang as I cast Explosion! overhead while Grotto hammered the Davahn’s mind with a mana-shaped Despair.
The United was forced down to his knees from the detonation and lightning arced across his body, causing his muscles to twitch. His expression went vacant as his eyes met Grotto’s own, and the man froze for a crucial instant.
I hit the man with another Explosion!, driving him further into the ground, electricity causing him to go into a full-on spasm. Grotto’s attack grew in intensity, locking the Davahn’s brain down in an endless reboot sequence. The two of us kept this up as Varrin made a final series of attacks, ending with a coup de grace that decapitated the United and sent him slumping into the crater we were all now standing in.
I shook out my arm as one of Varrin’s clones dissolved, having hit the limit of how long it could be summoned. The big guy’s helmet continued to burn bright as he hacked and slashed at the United’s corpse. I could feel each slash connect as the ground vibrated as the air whumped. I spent a moment considering how to approach this situation, since Xim wasn’t around to Cleanse the big guy.
I decided it was best to let him work it out on his own. The Berserk state would end naturally once all his enemies were dead and a little bit of time had passed.
Although, he didn’t normally beat this hard on a corpse. That led me to double-check the United’s soul, and I saw that it wasn’t departing. Portions of it were melting into one another, becoming more of a singular entity than they had been before. Looking at the Davahn’s decapitated body, I realized that Varrin’s blade wasn’t doing shit. Even his clone’s spiritual weapon was bouncing off the guy.
Then the world erupted in burning light. The Davahn’s body was swallowed in white fire, and as he climbed to his feet I saw that the flame rose up to form into a new, ethereal head. For a moment, the man looked oddly angelic.
Until his chest opened up into a vicious mouth and he launched at me.
The man was no longer fighting with any technique, giving it up to bite, rip, and tear as best he could.
He wrapped his entire body across Gracorvus and managed to reach around it for my arm. He caught me with one hand, then gripped and squeezed until my forearm split apart like it was made of soft cake. He tore my hand off, and in my brief shock I failed to send Gracorvus into hover mode. His left hand went up into my right armpit and out through my deltoid, severing the arm completely. His right hand blurred across my neck, scattering my gorget and throat with the ease of a man slapping a stream of water.
Varrin’s attacks clattered off the United like he was a toddler fighting a brick wall with a foam sword. In exchange for the Davahn’s power of apparent invincibility, the white flames were turning the Davahn to ash, his body flaking and peeling apart with every passing moment.
I mana-shaped Shortcut to catch Varrin alongside me and Grotto, triggering the spell’s long-range cooldown to teleport us as far as I could away from the untouchable United. I wanted to buy time to let the man fall apart on his own.
Shortcut took us ten miles, which bought us about as many seconds.
My dismemberment had dropped me below half health. That had triggered the Lifeguard buff I always kept on from Xim, restoring 1,400 health, which had promptly been removed along with my throat. I cast a Rejuvenation after we teleported, the 220 points of healing feeling rather pitiful as it restored about 10% of what I was missing.
I stared at the ground wide-eyed as I worked to suppress the pain of several surprise amputations. I tried to groan, but a feeble whistle came from the hole where my throat had been instead. I wasn’t bleeding, since I couldn’t, but a few chunks of tissue dislodged with the breath. That was pretty gross. I was just barely capable of enough foresight to burn another giant chunk of stamina on more Shielding.
My body felt heavy. Between spending 600 stamina on Wall of Force, maintaining Gravity Anchor and Aura of Persistence, and triggering Rejuvenation several times, I was running close to empty. I hadn’t felt this tired in a long time.
During the ten second reprieve, Varrin’s Berserk wore off. He shook his head to clear it. “I will admit,” he said, “this has become more serious than I anticipated.”
I tried to reply, but made a wet fluttering sound instead.
“Are we escaping into the Closet?” he asked
I shook my head no. Varrin took that response at face value and turned to stare in the direction we’d come from.
We were well beyond the radius of destruction the Davahn had made, somewhere on the outskirts of the Dungeon where trees still stood. The Davahn tore through them with the same ease he’d torn through me, although he stumbled from side to side as his flesh poured off his bones like ashy sand. Varrin tried to intercept him, but the Davahn’s slowing movements were inexorable. He knocked the big guy away, even as his bones were exposed. Grotto’s shields came out in front of me, but the Davahn pushed past them, his pace hindered only by his body breaking down. By the time he made it to me, he looked like a thousand-year-old corpse and was moving about as fast.
He reared back, then punched at my jaw. His fist thunked harmlessly against the side of my helm, and his hand came apart. A second later, the Davahn United collapsed into a pile of ash.
Given my lack of throat, I considered using hand gestures to communicate, but realized I also had no hands. Instead, I opened a Closet portal to the copy of me running my kingdom.
I poked my fake head through and gave Varrin a nod.
“Easy win.”