The giant of a humanoid towered over all of them, his size only increased by the power of the four knights now swirling inside his radiant chassis. Flaming eyes beheld all of them for a single second, before he swung his rapier at tra, leaving an incandescent trail of light.
The First of Wrath blocked the attack with the shaft of her halberd. Astrotium screeched over the marble floor, the force pushing her back several tres. The attack rippled up her arm, decreasing her HP from half to 3/10ths. Regeneration steadily worked against the effects, but it would not be enough forever.
Electricity, claws, fists, a sword and a spear all slamd into the sturdy armour of the King. Amadeus did not ignore them all, as all knights had done before with targets that were not their challenger. In his offhand, suddenly, materialized the sleek lance of the Poison Knight and whirled around.
For all the banter John had for his girlfriend’s occasional lack of sense, her intuition could not be faulted. Reacting imdiately to the turn, the feline Lightbearer activated her Aura and Shifted out of the way. The Aura imdiately deactivated afterwards and Rave dropped to one knee. Sweat pooled on her forehead.
Unfortunately, she could not remain. A large ooze was spewed forth by the attack, consolidating into an enemy that set after her imdiately. Fighting to get on her feet, she joined with Sylph to see it undone in a perfect duo attack.
The boss, simultaneously, switched targets again. Long lance replaced with slender sword, a burst of ice cascaded out in all directions, before he swung at Beatrice. The passive maid was prepared for it and still she wasn’t fast enough. The attack caught her, slicing open her chest and freezing the open wound. Thick ice prevented the gash from closing like it usually would have.
More attacks rained down on the king of Astria, many of them breaking on the heater shield that now covered his left arm. In a small opening, he swung for Gno. The season elental, tired beyond worry, managed to knock the blade off its path with a flawlessly tid slam to Amadeus’ wrist. The cascade of tal scrap pulling alongside his rapier ca to an abrupt end.
A little mont of light and worth as little as a spark in a deep night. The shield turned into the sharp shovel of the fourth knight. The idea behind the weapon may have been ridiculous, but the way Amadeus wielded it was not. Essentially a halberd with one solid head, he swiped in a wide arch, forcing Siena and Beatrice to dodge, before the weapon collided with Aclysia. No Devotion to be spent on defence, she could only take the attack head on.
Like a cold knife into butter, it sank into her shoulder, advancing halfway into her torso, before coming to a still. Then, the scattershot of gemstones exploded inside her, bursting Aclysia’s chest open. Resembling an opened can, her shoulder and head were connected to the rest of her tal body only through a thin strip. Her HP was as dwindling as everyone else’s.
Four tis Amadeus attacked, each striking the last challenger of his knights. ‘I wonder if all of that can be pushed onto one person and if that’s even desirable,’ the Gar considered. His mind was already with the next attempt. The next attack of the King once more went to tra, beginning the cycle anew.
The First of Wrath dodged the attack; the others struggled. Gno did not pull off a second miracle and was struck in the chest. At best, Rave, Aclysia, and Beatrice managed to dodge, always losing montum in the process. They were all too exhausted or too low on resources to deliver their best and only one of them had extensive experience in the way Amadeus fought.
“Bear witness, to the power of a sovereign, empowered by his subjects!” the Knight King of Astria roared and faced the north-western portal. By sheer happenstance, that was where Beatrice was located. The passive maid managed to move out of the way with Twist Position. Amadeus thrust his rapier forwards and unleashed a broad cone of toxic energy. It filled the entire quarter of the room, from where he stood all the way to the portal.
The energy was rapidly drawn into the swirling portal, but for the mont the area was unsafe. Amadeus turned to the north-eastern portal next. There, Beatrice stood among Siena and Rave, having ended up there after her escaping spell. Spending more of her resources, Beatrice snapped out of the area again; Rave and Siena ran, but both of them got caught by the edge of the icy blast and their HP was reduced to a re quarter.
Both of them kept running, together with everyone else in the third quarter. A storm of tal was launched from Amadeus’ form. They had to stick close to him, just to make it around the curve fast enough to escape the cone attack. The poison was almost entirely drained away by the ti Amadeus wound up for the fourth attack.
“TO THE WALL!” John shouted. Perhaps an unnecessary reminder, but everyone was strained and he wanted to keep this going for as long as possible.
Running and flying down the safe quarter, while the ground in the last was turned into a storm of diamond dust, the party caught the golden glow underneath them. Rapidly, light ford into runes. The four-pointed star of Astria took shape. Just barely, they managed to make it to the edge of the room, before the explosion of holy energy filled all but the outer few tres of the arena.
A charging sound was the final alert they got from the portals. Having absorbed the energies of the cone attacks, the dinsional gateways were just about ready to burst. “Away from the walls!” John gave the next redundant order. Everyone was already hasting away.
Beatrice tried to beat her wings and gain the burst of speed she needed. The ice in her chest ruined her balance and her take-off was turned into a stumble. No resources left, no Swing to expend and incapable of turning into lightning at this mont, she made a displeased expression. John caught that much, before volatile energies spilled out of the portals and turned the safe ring at the edge of the arena into the area of Beatrice’s demise.
‘Well, still good progress,’ John thought, resigning himself to another fifty attempts or so.
“FUCK THAT!” tra scread into the room, as she slamd full force again into Amadeus. The King knocked her aside, then attempted to stab Rave with a lance, only to imdiately turn back to tra. The First of Wrath shoved her arm through a dinsional tear and Ripped the weapon off its collision course. With the target of revenge for Ina gone, Amadeus’ main target would take the additional attacks. The challenge chanic was still in place. “VICTORY, MY KING! CO ON! CRAVE IT!”
A flood of ideas entered his mind, half-mad thoughts from a soldier of a thousand campaigns. “FINE!” John shouted, half-mad laughter mixing into his voice. What harm would it do to follow a course of action that would lose them half a day if it failed? ‘Momo, take the aggro from tra. Keep the boss in the middle of the battlefield.’
‘I, uh, what?! I an… OKAY?!’ The confused exchange happened at the speed of brilliant thoughts. “Hey, you big jerk, uhm, fight ?” the fae maid declared, several of her Firefae turning into Fae Maids all around her.
“I, King of Astria, acknowledge your challenge!”
“Everyone, caution to the wind! Full burst damage! Undine, use all the mana you still have to heal tra!” the Gar exclaid his remaining orders.
“A solemn reign, for the few that rise up high.” Rave imdiately took his orders to heart and began chanting. The concentration on the words slowed her down, allowing the boss to ram his weapon through her abdon. Although at the verge of death, she held on, while Amadeus moved on to the other targets. Several small oozes moved all around them.
“Eeep!” Momo shouted when Amadeus leapt at her. More by coincidence than proper planning, the ten second teleport tir was up that very mont. What the icy sword sliced apart was one of the Fae Maids, rather than Momo herself. “I regret everything! John, why are you doing this to eeeee?” Several butterflies expanded into trees, weighing Amadeus down enough that he missed his swipe at Gno. “I AM NOT MADE FOR THE FRONTLINE!”
The scream was accompanied by Amadeus breaking off the trees of stone covering him. Aclysia was only halfway knit back together and was in no state to dodge. She didn’t try to either. Leaping into the attack, she let her lower half be cut off and latched onto the arm of the giant. Nothing but a torso and a pair of arms, she crawled up the limb, freezing her fingertips in place with Black Ice, until she had reached Amadeus’ face.
Slashing at his eyes broke his combat rhythm for a mont. First, he ripped Aclysia off. Second, he slamd her to the ground, sending her ho. Third, he shook off the Black Ice with an explosion of light.
“And we all fight,” Rave growled, blood running down her chin. The hard light claws of her left hand pulsed with concentrated power.
“Why, why of all the Raid bosses this one?!” Momo continued to panic, barely weaving around the attacks thrown her way thanks to a combination of her magic-fuelled flight, self-buffing, and teleportation. “Why the fastest, strongest guy we have t yeeet?!”
“Stop whining!” tra scread from the background.
“I have very good reasons to whine!” Momo sassed back. “How about you stop kneeling in a puddle of Undine?!”
tra and the sli woman were indeed off to the side of the battlefield, only wrapped around the other to transmit as much of the healing energy as she possibly could. Most of it were fus, barely pushed out of her reserves. Still, it was enough to slowly see tra regenerated to full health.
Gno’s, anwhile, reached zero. The season elental was inevitably struck by a slam of the shield. Already at the inch of death, the attack simply knocked her out of this dinsion altogether.
Two consecutive swipes at Momo saw Amadeus deliver two solid hits to the support. Despite all her complaints, Momo took the attacks without a sound. There was defiance in those white eyes. John wouldn’t have entrusted her with this task if she couldn’t live up to it.
“Let our worlds collide!”
Amadeus turned to face Rave, only to be pushed back by the superheated claw of hardened light. Launched at the breast plate, the golden-haired Lightbearer hovered in the air in front of the broad chest. The forward montum kept her suspended, an imnse force against a highly resistant object. Light reflected off the chest plate, enveloping Rave in a mist of shards of solid illumination. Technicolours faded into white.
With a roar, Amadeus pushed forwards. His lance would have skewered Rave, had Fateweaving not removed her from the situation before her ultimate fate.
“Welp, that’s it, I’m dead, this better be worth it!” Momo shouted, casting a last barrier spell on tra before falling at a cascade of attacks aid solely at her.
Amadeus did not set sight on any particular target next. Instead, he pulled his rapier back, aiming at the quadrant in which John currently hovered. ‘He’s aiming first where the least people are, but at least one?’ John theorized, still wondering how these chanics worked.
He did so while getting the hell away. Deliberately, he flew away from tra and Undine. By chance or by correct analysis, the attack followed him. tal, then shovel, then poison, the three cone attacks caught his feet twice, but didn’t deal enough damage to the so far unhard Ambassador Double that he could be killed. By the ti he reached ice, tra and Undine were ready to move.
Together, they moved out of the final cone. Together, they ran to the wall. Alone, Undine surged ahead. A nightmare tide unleashed, the healer turned all her given benevolence into a thousand maws, splitting her midnight blue body. A serpent and a woman and a deer – a gorgon and a wendigo – a terror beckoning in the old tongue of the elentals for revenge and the indulgence in violence. An angry tide.
Amadeus was forced back by the sheer power. All the damage he and his vassals had dealt, a fraction of it turned back onto him. He sliced through crashing waves of foaming snakes and stabbed the many jaws.
“Terrible mother chaos.”
tra stood at the edge of all happenings, slowly walking towards where the giant was wrestling the fragnt of the ocean. There was an odd sense of nostalgia radiating from her. ‘What similar sight did she see?’ John wondered. ‘A scene of Tiamat in her pri, perhaps?’
“Fallen, broken, twisted you are…”
The power of Undine’s waves began to diminish. With their ebb, the power of the Raid boss asserted itself once more. Gasping for air, Amadeus broke through the sentient knot of serpentine rivers.
“…and I still carry all your wrath.”
With a massive swipe of two swords, Amadeus sent shards of ice and glops of sli flying in both directions. Undine hissed in the ancient tongue, her amorphous body turning into one giant maw. Rows upon rows of uneven teeth crushed down on the Raid boss. Little shards of armour broke off where Rave’s attack had left a half-lted mark.
“To your nature I deliver...”
A war cry echoed through the room and Amadeus entirely ripped open the nightmare jaw clenching down on him. Sli sundered and with it the last of Undine’s strength. The bloated mass consolidated back into her usual form, only the snake-like texture of her hair and the yellow eyes in her horns betraying that the woman tumbling over the floor was the origin of that nightmare tide.
Amadeus half-splattered her under his heel, before Fateweaving took her.
“…this loathso sinner!”
tra scread with all the rage. Beating her own chest, she seed to try to force the words out of her lungs. Amadeus turned towards her and began charging.
“…I’LL DRAG HIM DOWN TO HELL!”
The fabric of the Raid shook. Chaotic energies manifested simultaneously everywhere. Entropy ground against Gaia’s design for this space. Finding its place underneath the supre deity, the chaos failed to twist any of the dinsions of this place, only ssing with the textures of the walls and the colours of the banners, constantly shifting both.
John stayed as far away as he dared, watching Amadeus turn from a giant into a human of equal size to tra. In the first place, he had only been enormous due to the demands of Raid enemies to be a simple target.
Rex Magnar scread, as tra swung it with all the force of a Raid boss. Rapier and halberd clashed, creating a shockwave that pushed the flying Ambassador Double back almost a full tre. One attack turned into several dozen, as the two clashed for the 564th ti.
The rapier stabbed and slashed, eting Rex Magnar’s shaft at every turn. The lance stabbed, its long thorn caught between the point and the axe blade of the halberd. The slender sword cut and sliced through the air, always brought off-course by tra’s armoured fist, be it through carefully asured strikes or dinsional tears. The shield attempted to block tra’s counter strike, but she simply dropped her halberd and wove into close quarters, delivering a series of punches to Amadeus’s chest. The shovel swiped and t the halberd that reappeared in tra’s hands. The rapier stabbed and slashed, eting Rex Magnar’s shaft at every turn.
For all the explosions of holy light, the oozes he spawned, the gusts of icy winds chilling the battlefield, the shards of tal tracing his attacks, and the blasts of gemstones, the Raid boss was driven back. tra took attacks, yes, she did, but for every one she took, she retaliated threefold. They were evenly matched, as was the rule of this place. Her green eyes did not burn with the power of her gift of wrath, they shone only with passion for the fight.
Anticipating the swipe in every last detail, tra grabbed the boss mid-attack. An overhead throw saw the blond king slamd into the ground. Letting out only a wheeze, he pried his hand free and jumped to his feet imdiately. Then he drew his rapier back, filling it with noxious energies.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ John thought. Not for tra’s sake, she was fine. Their fight had pushed the fight away from the centre, and that made all the dodging awkward for him. If he was out, this was over.
Burning as much mana as the design of the Mandala Sphere allowed on speed, he was too slow to dodge the first burst of attack. He was enveloped by diamond dust, feeling it tear open the magical skin of the double. When he erged, he had a re second to breathe before poison followed. He breathed the tiniest sigh of relief when he made it out of there alive as well. Two massive ‘quarters’ of the room had been filled and the other two were easily circumvented. He only had to hasten again to reach the safe edge of the room when the circular attack began.
‘What is she doing?’ John thought. tra did not even attempt to run away, instead slamming her halberd into the enemy over and over again. Each attack was accompanied by a scream of ever growing exhaustion. To equalize her power with that of a Raid boss was taxing, too taxing to be done for long and certainly too taxing to be done frequently. ‘Ah, I see… well, if anyone can pull this off, it’s her.’
The channelling of the golden light concluded, just as tra missed an attack on a stationary target. John, at the edge of the room, saw the air next to him flicker and tear, an extra-dinsional gash appearing in the world. Her weapon screaming and thumping like a one man concert, tra erged from it. The back spike of Rex Magnar sputtered plasma and lightning. Keeping the Extre Plasma Burst steady, she accelerated herself towards the wall, sohow managing to land on the vertical wall, and then half-leaping, half-rocketing back through the still open portal in the sa split second it took her to dodge the brunt of the attack.
It was the narrowest of timings, a feat so ridiculous, even John’s paranoia was almost stunned into silence. Almost, luckily, keeping him moving before the unloading portals could end this attempt.
With the force of the enchantnt, tra slamd into Amadeus’ chest. The blade of the halberd sliced into the damaged centre of the chest plate. Thundercharge unloaded, seizing Amadeus’ muscles for a mont long enough for tra to draw back her weapon and slam the hook into the narrow gash the axe had made. With one powerful yank, she tore it open wide.
Amadeus made a sudden recovery. Holding rapier and longsword in reverse grips, he was about to descend on tra like a praying mantis. She was as strong as him, but that also ant he was as strong as her. For all her good timings, she had still taken enough damage in that manoeuvre just now that the attack could be fatal or, at the very least, break the Entropy Arena.
Not allowing that to happen, John bundled all of the mana he still had, all the mana he had regenerated since the start of this phase, into two Blast Rays. Ten Arcana Rays flew out most of his fingers, two from the Companion Cube. They joined with one another mid-flight, changing trajectory each ti, until ten beca two and two slamd into Amadeus’ wrists, staying his hands where they were for the little mont tra needed.
All muscles pulling together, the Breaker of Armies clutched her halberd with both hands. Explosively unloading all force inside her body, she ramd the spear tip of the weapon into the gash in the armour. Amadeus’ face turned from stoic into surprised as the weapon sunk deep into his body.
Amadeus shivered all over. A spasm that made him drop both his weapons. The chaotic aura over the room ebbed away as the blonde king slouched forwards. “A King… is only ever worth as much as his subjects,” Amadeus gasped as his face began to crumble into dust. Within seconds, he was nothing.
John held in the victory scream, wanting to give tra that honour. The windows ignored, only eyes for her, he watched the helt of the grey-plated warrior retreat into her collar. With a groggy expression, she stumbled towards him. He wanted to catch her, but instead she put her hand to his chest and pushed him backwards. Intensely, he landed in the now empty throne of Astria. It was beyond comfortable. Even when a fully armoured, tall woman put herself in his lap.
“All hail the king,” she muttered, before passing out.
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