Pecorine bounded back to Jhin's side in a few quick leaps and gave him a thumbs-up. "Nice work, Jhin!"
"Don't let your guard down mid-fight."
"I know, I know." Pecorine turned to look at the Sand Scorpion King — driven into a complete frenzy by the explosion Jhin had stuffed down its throat. "This is going to be a problem. There's no way to get close to it now."
"It's a Lord-class monster. If it hadn't taken that much damage upfront, we probably wouldn't have gotten this many hits on it to begin with."
"So we drag it into a war of attrition?"
"No good." Jhin shook his head, a thin thread of exhaustion crossing his face. "Neither of us is built for a long fight. And casting that Explosion magic with gumin drained my ntal reserves badly."
"[Guren Burst]!"
Kyaru maintained her blistering rate of fire support, targeting the unarmored wounds where the Sand Scorpion King's carapace had been blasted away — precision strike work that only a mage could pull off.
Deep-violet orbs wreathed in incantation lines detonated against the exposed flesh one after another. Racked with pain, the Sand Scorpion King recognized that open-ground combat was not working in its favor.
It thrashed its massive pincers, kicking up a dense curtain of dust that swallowed it whole and erased it from Jhin's line of sight — then plunged decisively into the earth below.
Jhin swept the smoke away with a burst of wind-elent magic, but he was a beat too late. The Sand Scorpion King had vanished without a trace, leaving behind only a gaping pit in the ground as proof it had ever been there.
"It's not actually running away, is it?"
"If soone blasted you awake with magic while you were sleeping and then a bunch of gnats kept pestering you — would you just let them walk?"
"Ahaha…" Pecorine winced at her own naïve question and shifted her left foot half a step back.
Underground, the Sand Scorpion King's sensitivity to vibration was amplified several tis over. That tiny tremor from the surface was all it needed to pinpoint its target. The earth parted around it like water, and a pair of razor pincers trailing cold light drove upward in a straight, lethal thrust.
The claws broke the surface without a sound. If Jhin hadn't felt a cold premonition crawl up his spine and triggered Ti Stop on pure instinct, both he and Pecorine would have been cut clean in half by that ambush.
"Sneaky bastard. Good thing it wasn't fighting us from underground the whole ti."
His ntal reserves, already badly depleted, were nearly spent after this activation of Ti Stop. The effect barely held for two seconds before collapsing. All Jhin managed was to haul Pecorine clear of the attack radius — there was no ti for a counterattack.
"Kyaru! Blast a hole in the ground!" Without waiting to hear if she'd caught that, Jhin shouted the order and imdiately grabbed Pecorine and leapt skyward.
"[Guren Burst]!" The mont Kyaru released that spell, her ntal power hit zero. She was completely out of the fight.
There was no sign of the Sand Scorpion King in the crater that the blast opened up. Its underground speed was even greater than Jhin had imagined.
If we land like this, we'll be hit the instant we touch the ground.
Jhin realized the creature was tracking them by vibration. Fighting through a wave of dizziness, he conjured two blocks of ice. "Pecorine — once we land, find a way to drag it out of the ground, or go straight for the pincer joints."
"Got it!" Pecorine gave a firm nod, signaling she was ready.
He hurled the ice blocks toward two separate spots and he and Pecorine split apart in midair, descending to the ground at different points. But the Sand Scorpion King's next move caught him off-guard.
A sweeping horizontal strike from the pincers shattered both ice blocks in one clean arc. The mont it detected a second set of landing vibrations, the Sand Scorpion King surged halfway out of the earth and drove its claws toward one of the impact points at terrifying speed — underground it was not only faster, but far more agile than on the surface.
Pecorine had barely found her footing when the killing blow ca screaming in from behind her.
"Pecorine, watch out!" Jhin's ntal reserves were completely empty — Ti Stop was impossible. All he could do was pull on the unusually thick density of earth-elent mana hanging in the air and throw up a barrier in front of her.
She wrenched her great sword up in a desperate guard. Pecorine felt every bone in her body on the verge of shattering under the impact. She couldn't resist it at all — she was sent flying like a paddleball, slamd into the ground hard enough to carve a crater, and went still.
Jhin's pupils contracted to pinpricks. Rage detonated in his chest. "You filthy beast!"
"Pecorine! Kyaru, please watch over gumin — I'm going to get her."
"I've got it. Be careful."
"Damn it! If I could just fire off one more Explosion magic!" gumin couldn't see the battle from where she lay, but just listening to Kokkoro and Kyaru's exchange was enough to tell her things had gone badly wrong.
Jhin's teeth ground together audibly. From sowhere in the blazing inferno of his fury, he scraped out the last thin dregs of ntal power he'd thought were gone. He abandoned every tactical consideration. All he wanted now was to reduce the Sand Scorpion King to scattered pieces.
"The World!!!!!"
The roar tore across the sky. The Sand Scorpion King felt the shadow of death closing over it and began to pull its exposed body back underground — but in the next instant, ti ceased to flow.
Everything in Jhin's vision blurred away except for the Sand Scorpion King. Ring after ring of lightning and darkness elent magic stacked along his arm, wrapping it into sothing like the barrel of a cannon.
He dragged his battered, exhausted body across the ground until he stood before the creature's exposed torso. He pressed his open palm flat against the monster's grotesque mouthparts and poured every shred of his rage into the spell alongside the magic itself.
"Dark-Corrosive Thunder."
The black lightning that heralded death condensed into a single column of darkness and drove straight through the Sand Scorpion King from one end to the other. Jhin decided that wasn't enough insurance. He raised his arm and bisected the creature's body.
He watched the blood and flesh drift slowly through the suspended air, and only then did he let himself collapse to the ground, unconscious.
When Jhin ca to again, the sky was strewn with stars. He sat up with one hand clamped over his head, which felt like it was being stabbed by needles from the inside. Kokkoro's gentle voice reached him imdiately.
"Master, you're awake."
"Kokkoro — how's Pecorine?"
"Please don't worry, Master. Pecorine's armor was strong enough to protect her life. She has fractured ribs and a broken arm, but nothing life-threatening. She'll need two weeks to recover." Kokkoro finished speaking and raised her hand, casting another healing spell over Jhin.
"I'm fine — it's just a brutal headache. Save the healing magic for Pecorine. Where are gumin and Kyaru?"
"They're cooking."
Jhin shook his head. A sharper stab of pain made him hiss through his teeth.
"Just rest like you're told. Severely overdrawing your ntal reserves isn't much better than what Pecorine's dealing with." Kyaru walked over slowly, carrying a bowl of at broth. "Here. Eat sothing."
"Thanks. But where did you get wooden bowls?"
"Kokkoro is a Spirit Clan elf — conjuring a few wooden bowls with elf magic is completely normal for her."
"What about the pot?"
"Oh honestly, you wake up and imdiately start interrogating everyone. Drink your broth and go back to sleep."
Kyaru snatched the bowl back from Jhin's hands, blew on it twice, and force-fed it to him.
____
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