Stemming the tide of Lorylim had been a difficult task from the beginning. The group had a lot of practice in fighting off a continuous assault of enemies, but even though these Lorylim were weaker from a pure level perspective, they struggled. The impact of the Arcana Strike had alleviated the initial burden. Although it had to be fired prematurely, it still killed three Lorylim outright, which activated Whisper of Mana and gave John the burst of resources he needed. Those were spent on letting Gno set up the periter for their fight.
Beyond that, things had steadily tilted in the Lorylim’s favour, loathe as he was to say it. Assaults spawned numbers the group could handle, as long as they fought properly. The Lorylim weren’t bound by such a concept of fairness. Further, they were incredibly difficult to kill. Whenever they thought they succeeded, the ‘corpse’ and the next enemy just lded together. By this point, the incapacitated Lorylim lined the walls, making the environnt they had freshly erected the group’s enemy. John thoroughly regretted that he hadn’t gone with Salamander’s unique anti-Lorylim evolution.
It also occurred to him that the reason he hadn’t and why Undine had supported him in that choice was strongly related to the remaining corruption that had been in their minds at the ti. That was a theory to confirm another ti.
While he and the girls around had been gradually worn down, he was also worried about Rave and Nia. He had no way to know what was happening with them. The last intel he had gotten was that Aclysia had been killed following their victory over the corrupted tracana. What exactly had done it, he hadn’t been able to perceive, although he could make his guesses.
Then Thana had showed up. Despite the goddess of genocide not being the reinforcent he had hoped for, he couldn’t deny that she had slaughtered a whole bunch of enemies and brought them a mont of respite with the ensuing conversation. That being said, her presence, be it only as an observer, had a profoundly negative impact on the Gar.
Grinning widely, the annihilator elental ignited fire around her sharp-nailed hands. It burned red, simple red and golden. By the colour alone, it could have been seen as natural fire.
Without a word or glance to John, Sally started flying, and all illusion of naturality was dispelled when she cast her flas at the Lorylim below. She was the source of a steady stream of extre heat, her body continuously dissolving until she was nothing but a black mass of ash and smoke that left fire in its wake. She was the only smoke, her fire burning without remains. It jumped over to stone and ate away at it as much as the Lorylim, turning the walls and the ground into burning hot magma and the abominations between them into screaming, shambling piles of charring sludge.
Within monts, the environnt was transford from one kind of apocalyptic hellscape to another. Everything was burning, lting, and John reached to Undine to allow her to fuse with Purgatory. The Lorylim charged at him; driven by madness, their impending end didn’t bother them.
John glanced up at the lting wall, to find Thana already gone. The goddess of genocide must have decided that there were more pleasant angles to view this from. Tending to agree, John focused his senses and used Magus Step twice in quick succession. Once to jump next to the wall and a second ti to jump through it.
The Lorylim cried with impotent anger and John ran for it. While the fire itself wouldn’t hurt John thanks to the friendly fire Guild Perk, the secondary effects could damage him. Above, the annihilator elental was circling. Whatever she passed caught alight and bombardnts flew out from her in random directions. Entire houses folded in on themselves as if they were made from wax.
Cries transford into triumphant shrieks. ‘They’re onto again,’ John thought, running across the molten ground. As long as he kept moving and moving fast, there was enough surface tension to let him keep kicking off the ground. He had no choice but to keep running and Sally, an unfittingly cute na for living armageddon, increased the scope of her pyromania.
John looked over his shoulder and watched the Lorylim follow him. Their bodies were shrinking with each passing second; all he had to do was to outrun them. He concentrated on his additional senses. There weren’t a lot of environntal factors in close proximity that he still had to pay attention to, but nasty surprises could spring up at any second.
One of them was the aerial Lorylim. Although burning just as much as their earthbound counterparts, they were a lot faster on average and managed to catch up to John. Where tra and Beatrice couldn’t take care of them, he needed to be ready to Magus Step out of the trajectory.
‘One more minute,’ John thought, counting the seconds in his head. The 5-type Combination only lasted five minutes. The amount of destruction they could cause in even that short tifra was evidently massive. This was the first ti he actually used one of them, rather than just reading their descriptions. ‘Sally, could you co over here?’
The request was outright ignored, if it was even heard. The annihilation elental was entirely consud by her desire to burn all that she could before she stopped existing again. As the Perk had warned, 5-types were sowhat disobedient, which made them riskier to use than less powerful Combinations.
Those Lorylim in pursuit were now collapsing, one after the other, their bodies burned to such a degree that they could no longer move and sunk into the lava lake. John, tra and Beatrice had finally made their way to the edge of it and jumped on the roof of a halfway intact building to get a good view of the final monts.
In the distance, the annihilation elental flew her last circle and then stopped in the middle of the scorched field she had created. There was nothing left. It was just a plane of molten rock and the remains of monsters, set alight. A sphere of smoke and fire, the 5-type Combination grew brighter and brighter with each second, until the smoke could no longer contain the incandescent light.
A massive bang turned John deaf for just one mont, then Gar’s Body fixed that issue and left him to experience the full volu of the howling wind that followed from the shockwave. An explosion consud the lake of lava, annihilating fully even what the elental had eradicated in the first place. The shockwave was so intense that it blew down the house they were standing on.
The trio managed to catch themselves quickly and the shockwave petered out behind them. Left behind from the explosion was nothing but a massive crater, at the centre of which five bodies fell. As for John’s current environnt, it was an utter ruin.
“What a show,” a well-known voice said with the unfamiliar tone of a predator. John looked up to see Thana sitting on top of a toppled over roof.
He wasn’t sure when the goddess of genocide had arrived next to them, but the fact that her aura had never stopped affecting him had let him know that she was never too far away. “Sorry to disappoint you,” the Gar said.
“Disappoint…? Do you think you’re safe?” Thana sounded genuinely baffled by that idea. “Watch your feet.”
John just barely noticed the rumbling underneath him thanks to her warning. Magus Step saved him from a maw that burst out from the ground, while tra and Beatrice dodged the traditional way. Infected earth elentals groaned grotesquely as they unburrowed themselves. At first it was only three of them, but more and more poured out of the tunnels. The abominations surrounded John and his group on all sides. The elentals were called back via teleport.
After all the Lorylim had left the tunnels, a tar-like material ca gushing out of the holes. Before a single drop could hit the ground, the pillars turned into trunks, growing branches and leaves. Blood pulsed through visible veins on the surface, spores were breathed out through gills, both combined to give the three trees sothing that approximated bark. Hollow, grey vines expanded from the branches, connecting to the other Lorylim around. The colour of those connections shifted red as the blood began to pulse through them as well. Under his feet, John could feel a distant heartbeat.
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