--- Kat ---
Kat let out a deep breath as she contorted her body in ways she hardly knew was possible. Her back could apparently turn into a pretzel and her legs felt like they had two extra joints. Dodging the spikes had beco routine after spending so long attacking the sli. Fake Appoline didn’t have all that many interesting attacks and Kat had managed to lead them away out of the area with houses and into a more open field. It made finding footing just about anywhere easier.
Things were slow going. The giant sli was smaller sure, but it went from being larger than most buildings to being about the sa size as a two story house. It was a tonne of area and she just wasn’t making that much progress on it. Especially with the need to take the occasionally break to restore her energy. The fact she needed to be using so of it to keep her mind running fast ant that process was a lot slower then it needed to be.
The sli tried a few different attacks, but fake Appoline wasn’t very creative. The attacks were basically a charge, a bunch of spikes, a sli tendril acting like a club, and the sli spit-balls. That was it. Kat had seen any interesting potions from the woman. There were no unique bits of magic. She just controlled a big dumb sli and apparently wasn’t getting bored after an hour of fighting. Lily had even crawled into Kat’s kimono to just go to sleep. It was touching actually, that her girlfriend trusted her so much that she could sleep in the middle of battle. It was probably the most efficient way for her to regenerate mana as well.
Granted... it was a little bit awkward. Lily was resting on top of her boobs, and keeping her in place was sothing Kat regularly needed to spare a hand or a tail for. The swift, jerky and suprely weird movents she needed to make to dodge all of the spikes when she got close to the sli monsters ant Lily wasn’t always going to be kept in place without assistance. Still, it wasn’t too bad. No the real problem was that Kat didn’t know how long she could keep this up for.
Her demonic energy was regenerating well and she wasn’t likely to run out of practical energy all that quickly. It was the ntal toll that might end up getting her. She’d been awake all night, helped Lily with spell creation before that and hadn’t really slept because of the trip to the amusent park. For normal day to day activities this was fine. For the occasional fight, it was fine. For an hour long siege against a giant sli monster? Well it was still fine but Kat didn’t think she was even half done.
The idea that sothing needed to change was prevalent in her mind but what was she to do? Currently the best plan seed to still be bringing the sli down to a smaller size where Appoline could be more easily extracted. With the sli only a bit over two stories tall, they were probably closer to that goal then one might expect. If Lily had full mana and the sli was a bit smaller, sending shadows up to deal with the sli would be quite possible.
This musing seed to rouse Lily sowhat from her slumber. Kat felt Lily shift around a bit and nearly fall from her ’perch’ and down past Kat’s stomach. Lily managed to catch herself, but it woke her up more completely. [What was that?]
*Depending on what you’re asking it was either you nearly falling off my chest or thinking that you might be able to reach up to fake Appoline already.*
[Hmm... with one shadow hand I can definitely manage it but I’m not sure if one would be enough to pull her out?]
*Can’t you just put more force into it?*
[Yes but also no. I can... essentially ’pack’ more shadow into constructs that are closer because I’m not using it for distance. So big scary looking claws are deadlier in lee range then they are at the other end of a field. In this case, I don’t know that I can make my shadows long enough and strong enough to free her.]
*Wouldn’t two hands make it even harder then?*
[Yes but in this case I’d be using them for different jobs. Instead of just yanking her out I’d be using one to try and slice away bits of sli. Which I guess I should test actually... and the other hand would be doing the pulling. Actually, how have things been going? The sli is a lot smaller but where is all the ice?]
*Around. You can see so of it over there.* Kat dashed forward to dodge another sli splatter as she focused her eyesight on a distant shape at the edge of the poison mist. It seed like a rock but Kat knew it hadn’t been there at all when they first started this fight. No, instead it was the frozen remains of the sli.
[Huh. Alright. So, how much of the missing mass is actually frozen and how much of it is all over the ground?]
*There’s definitely more on the ground then I’d like, but it hasn’t shown any ability to control it at a distance. The closest it’s gotten is vacuuming up so of the larger sli balls that its spat out and reclaiming that mass that way.* It was true too. After about thirty minutes the sli had taken more care to pick up the various bits of itself that were just hanging around. A large portion of the area still had a thin coating of sli everywhere, but that was in part due to the fact it left behind sli as it moved. Sothing that wasn’t normal for the species.
*Hmm... now that you bring that to my attention... do you think I should keep this thing travelling? I don’t know how much of a pain the cleanup will be if I just kept running this sli around the poison area... and it might be really bad for the various crops, but it’d probably bring this down faster.*
[Go for it. The poison probably ans that even if the crops are safe they can’t take that sort of risk. At this point they’re already ’gone’]
*Cool. At least that ans there’s sothing else to do then just run around in circles.*
Kat didn’t want to make her change in strategy too obvious. Instead, she focused on baiting the sli to charge more, and then made use of that. Previously, whenever she was charged, Kat either dodged to the side if she could, or burrowed through the sli with an exceptional amount of demonic fire to make moving through it safer. Kat tended to need a long ti to recover after that, though with the smaller size she needed less demonic energy to burn through it.
Even still, Kat hadn’t tried to get ’Appoline’ to charge her often. She found that the fool was almost always ready to charge. If she was just barely out of range for the spikes but too far away for the club or sli balls to make sense, she’d get charged. Kat also tended to make distance when the turned around. Even with its amorphous body, Appoline was in control and she needed to see, which took ti.
Now though, Kat baited a charge, dodged and then harassed its side while circling around and swiftly baiting another charge. This way Kat was able to force the sli to zig-zag across the landscape, leaving behind huge amounts of sli as it did so. Kat hadn’t realised this would be so effective. Every charged shaved a few more tres off the slis height and now she was aiming for such things, it was really making a difference.
Just half an hour later, the sli had lost nearly half its height. Kat had the sa, or perhaps more ’damage’ to it in way less ti and using far less energy. It was ti. Kat prepared for the final strike, with a bit of a different plan. Now the sli wasn’t so big there were more option. Kat also had far more experience with the slis charges, so she baited it. One final ti.
The massive mountain of glittery pink goop charged forward. Kat had even set herself up to be right in the middle. The sli had learnt from that a bit and seed ready to make a corridor to crush her inside... but this ti? Kat jumped. Kat leapt up to head height and flew towards ’Appoline’. The woman panicked, getting the sli to throw its body mass between them but Kat and Lily were easily able to bat them away.
As they reached the top, Kat froze the area around Appoline the best she could. Kat didn’t trust the woman herself would be unburned, but the ice was enough to cause issues. Issues Lily exploited when two shadowy hands ripped the woman out from the top of the sli, revealing another interesting fact. She didn’t have any legs. Well, that wasn’t quite true. The fake Appoline had stumps that ended just above the knees but this was yet more evidence she wasn’t the original.
With the controller disabled... there was still the rest of the sli to deal with. Kat and Lily just weren’t quite sure what took priority now. If this was the real Appoline, getting her to Ramor had to be the goal... but this wasn’t. It was a fake. So what should they do now?
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